MarkusDark

Most of the real harassment I get is during character creation or anytime a new power is wanted. I suppose it is half my fault for not being more stern but as they try to up themselves in many ways, to squeeze every last bit from their powers, and I see it as unbalancing - I just get frustrated. Especially when I hear "But X character in CKC has it!" I am amazed that no matter how much I look over one of my player's character sheet, I can't find anything that he has cheesed and yet whenever he grabs, he almost always hits, whatever he squeezes goes nitey night and it took a Viper base, including a 350 pt villian (my PC's are at 270) to focus on him, with weapons specially desiged to fight him, to finally drop him to -2 stun.

Wha??? Tremors 4? And prequel??? OMG. Oh well, if it sells, they'll produce it.

Besides my organizational Acronyms (which I love), I enjoyed: Raven - rather common but it was the name of a mutant who found other, new fledgling mutants and then grabbed them and took them back to a safehouse - sort of like the way a raven collects shiny objects. Umbra - A shadow based hero Capasitor - A Russian Energy hurler with absorption powers to EB. Four Score - a Duplicator that would have a total of four forms and do a coordinated autofire (5 shots each).

I probably would go with the latter, including the limitation that what one dupe feels, they all feel. I played a mentalist once who had trained his mind so that although he was a normal human and had only a speed of 3, he had a 'mental' speed of 6 - so that he could use only mental powers during the off speeds (no movements, no aborts to block or dodge, etc).

Is it me or does it look like that Michael Gross is really trying to carry the entire cast on the TV series?

I believe it depends upon how much you want to crap yourself. Although a Solliquy is a zero phase action, if anyone wants to go for a really long speech, I will begin to count it as a half or full action - how else can you get the ol' squeeze them by the neck in the middle of their tirade to get that lovely "...urrk!" graphic?

I remember in the first edition of the Star Wars RPG that it seemed totally legal according to the rules to put a Jedi into a space suit, strap him to the hull and have him block all incoming fire from opposing ships.

Re: Re: My rules are a long time rules... I see it more as a testimonial to the Californian way of life - that we can judge someone as a person sans a piece of notorized paper.

Current Quote that makes me smile... "Anyone who says 'Rodger Dodger' can't be a villian."

Usually, I decide if a limitation will be limiting in my world or not. Also, I look at the way the power would be limiting. For example, I do not let someone use the limitation "Does not work underwater" unless that character can survive underwater without the use of additional equipment AND if I plan on running underwater adventures. I had one player who was adamant about the "Does not work in intense magnetic fields" since it "Was in the book!". Suddenly, most non 'super' hi-tech seemed to generate magnetic fields. If someone demands a limitation, instead of arguing till I'm blue in the face, I just make it limiting. I remember in the beginning of my gaming, I had a player who took the disad of 'goes bezerk if he sees catsup on a hotdog.' It was amazing how, just about everytime there was a fight - there was a hotdog vendor nearby. And, if anyone was knocked back into the vending machine, almost always catsup hit a hotdog. It was fun watching him plan, and try to direct others, so that situation wouldn't occur.

You learn to co-exist with them. Ol' Burt has studied the Graboids - El Blanco to give him an exact name. They have learned where he likes to move, where he doesn't and so on. They have also developed the Wrist-sciso which is a watch sized device that detects 'earth tremors' ala the approaching worm. You just stand still, wait for him to pass and then move on.

Plastisteel - Plastics that have the same strengths as steel but at reduced weight and half the thickness Flexisteel - Flexible metals that become temporarily rigid when stressed. Synthisteel - Synthetic (cloth like) flexisteel. Beta particle - a non-hazardous energy radiation from gold. A gold coin can run a semi-truck for a year. Synthiskin - latex style skin that will graft to any subject.

Realise that phasers have a series of settings. Stun, Kill, Disintegration and I believe another that helped to produce heat (perhaps the "stun" setting of Disintegration). Perhaps the Disintegration setting would drain a phaser of its power quickly so doing a gunfight with it would not work well. Also, carrying around a phaser on Disintegration settings wasn't a fashion. Cycling from one setting to the other could take time so they just draw, fire and keep firing. Now, why they didn't fire disintegration at the barrels to remove them, again I dont' know. Maybe the ease of diving for cover would make such a tactic useless. Now, to answer the original question - the phasers I had as a Multipower, full phase to change slots, with a non-recharging endurance battery attached. I would have a maximum of 12d6 Stun NND (Force Fields) [stun] and a 4d6 RKA NND (Force Field) [Kill], a 8d6 RKA for [Disintegrate] and a Change Environment, continuious, for the heat. I debated of having a no knockback option but there were times that people went flyin' a bit - but not much. Also, you can include an 8d6 RKA Explosion, No range, throwable, for the overload of the phaser - but destroys the phaser in the end. I had disruptors in a similiar manner, except no stun setting. If I wanted to have phasers as 'superior weapons', I would reduce the disruptors to 3d6NND/6d6 RKA. Not sure what is listed in the books, but I always tried to keep things simple.

I voted as well for Hero. I do have a question though - does anyone have the guidelines for what the elegibility requirements are for the Origins Awards? I was just curious...

Re: My opinion If you saw the first two shows, they set the groundwork as to how it is possible to do it as a series. Some of it was silly, but eh, you haveta allow for it for it to work. Graboids are an endangered species so you CANNOT kill them. Apparently a tenuous agreement has been set up between the government and the residences in Perfection that they know, understand and abide by various guidelines to continue living there. The second episode had a mutated bacterial cloud that roamed out of the 'secret lab' and all over the valley. This cloud shed the MixMaster formula which was used to combine DNA of various animals easily (aka the Graboid). The natural boundaries will stop the infestation for spreading but in the valley there will be an unending supply of other critters besides Graboids, Shriekers and Ass Blasters for them to deal with. Besides, Mr. Keaton with a BFG is all the reason I need to watch.

High powered rifle, nice scope, click click BANG. "Look... I got a gun... in my room. I'll go up, get it, POW, it's done. We can make it a father and son thing..."

If you like it, use it in your world. I never really answer such questions as everyone's taste varies. What it comes down to is if you enjoy it, it means you'll enjoy working on it and running it and, in turn, it will be more enjoyable for your players.

I always go with the Multipower. The VPP scares me too much - I have witnessed too many perversions of it to ever trust one of any real size. I am allowing a friend of mine to run a 10 point Gadget pool because I trust him. The Elemental Control costs too much, IMO. You'll get only a couple of spells and that's it. The Multipower helps to keep the powers defined so that I know what my mage can and cannot affect and use those areas to help build the events. For example, a SuperHero level mage would usually have a 90 point Multipower reserve but only be allowed to have 60 Active in any one slot - thus getting rid of the Light, armor, blast *thunk*.

This is one of those discussions on an idea that I often feel are thought about too much. As witnessed by the WB's Smallville - even a very rural farm community could need even more than one superhero depending upon the situation. In my game, I created the "Big Five" because I wanted to have a "top five crime cities". I chose NY, Dallas, Miami, Chicago and LA just because those are the ones that first came to mind from media and entertainment. Whether or not it was true, I just said, "In my world, they are," and went from there. My game takes place in Philly, about an hour outside of NY so they get the 'spillage'. I have played in other games where geographic regions have been broken down by super teams. I don't bother to do that as I rarely have my heroes or villians operating outside of the area of the game. I figure it is extra work that I could put into other stuff. Just my 2 cents.

First, it is imperitive that you impart upon the players that they will probably LOSE if they try to take head on most of the creatures they'll encounter. Gamers are way too programmed into Thumping mode. Most horror games I have run usually have the players assembling bits and pieces to thwart the evils. These bits and pieces tend to be held onto by other normals or low level critters. The pieces also tend to be critter specific so the assembled Rod of Squel won't work on any other critter other than Squel. To give the sense of horror and life and death feelings, usually I have the players using their 'powers and attacks' to get away from the baddie more than destroying him. They can't kill the demon Kullluth, but those little critters he just summoned to deal with the 'puny mortals' are a bit squishy. Even if they can never defeat the demon itself, they can thwart his attempts. Of course that means that the demon will begin to take notice and, hopefully, the players have some sort of protection. The old "I cannot destroy him but I can stop him from destroying you... most of the time." Perhaps an enchanted base or medallions that take the individuals off of the demon's radar (he only knows about them when he or one of his minions sees them).

To me, the limitation makes sense when it is applied to the character class it is meant for. Druids are supposedly foresty folk - the shaman and others that live out in the woods, commune with nature and surround themselves with things of the earth. They would not want to go dungeon delving or spend any time in a town. To me, a Druid going on a dungeon crawl is akin to Aquaman accompaning the Justice League on any land only adventure.

I personally feel that 350 is too much. Most of my character concepts, when working within Active Point restrictions) work out with just 275 or so. Tacking on another 75 points worth of stuff can be fun but I'd rather leave it out if it means I can leave out another 75 points of Disads. Those are the ones that hurt me head. I wind up thumbing through old supplements and pulling out random disads others have just to meet the quota.

There would need to be some sort of legislation about licencing and what is considered a WMD in regards to an individual. A person is not allowed (to my knowledge) to own or use a flame thrower but a paranormal may have the ability to hurl fire. As "heroes", they would probably need to go through some sort of police academy and be properly 'deputized' for the job of law enforcement. But, just as the government would like to know about any individual in the US who currently had an EMP rifle that could hurl car-sized objects at high speeds, they would want to know about any paranormal who had the ability to do the same thing. In my games, anyone who had the power to do the amount of damage equal to basically any weapon that a soldier couldn't carry, they had to either be in the employment of the government or had to be registered and NOT use their powers to that level of destruction.

These are the developer's tools at Palm.com. http://www.palmos.com/dev/tools/ Dunno if any of them would work.

There are many 'port programs' that translate most programming languages (C++, Java, Visual Basic) into a Palm OS environment. I had wanted to write one myself but been too busy/lazy/stupid to do it.