Shigeru

Re: Live Free or Game

In our first session, Grond has been spotted in Cambridge and is creating a path of destruction. All of the "regular" local heroes have been called in to stop him. Sentry and BLade Dancer both get word of the situation and speed in to help.

While en route, they both spy a strange situation : some cars have been parked so as to block the road outside of a bank. They make quick introductions to one another and decide to investigate. As it happens, they can see robots walkign around in the bank and all of the bank patrons are lying face down on the carpet. Time for action!

The heroes enter the buildign through the missing door at the back and proceed to fight the robots. Two of the bots are big, slow brutes. One of them engages the heroes and is easily dispatched. Two more bots are walking around the bank making sure the patrons stay prone (they have blasters). They, too, are easily dispatched. Meanwhile, one of the brute-bots is busily tearing the vault door off at its significant hinges.

Two more bots arrive. These are flying, blaster bots resembling oldschool UFOs but with mini-arms for grabbing. They proceed to give the heroes trouble, especially Sentry who has to be pissed she has a CVK and no killing attacks to make short work of the bots. Blade Dancer, on the other hand, is blasting water and ice daggers from his magic sword like crazy and really laying into the bots.

The heroes do manage to take out all but one of the bots with minimal property damage. Unfortunately the blaster bot that got away did so with a bag of money.

"Why send in all these robots just for a bag of money? Hmmm."

The heroes, both electricians, each find some microchips that look a little out of place in the robots husks. THey take them for separate investigations, share radio frequencies for later communications, and depart.

...and such end the first session, excepting soem investigation which I will summarize in my next installment...

I'll take this space and tell you a tale of the first face to face PnP RPG I've run in eight years or more. Grab a seat, we have pizza and water.

Its a standard Champions campaign inasmuch as I'm familiar with 4th Ed Champions far more than 5th. 350pt supers with 75 point DC max and such like. The game is set in Boston so I can avoid a lot of the Millenium City canon and get right to my own whacky make-em-ups.

I'll skip the boring stuff and get right to it:

Sentry - she's an ex-supervillain in the witness protection program, watched closely by both UNTIL and PRIMUS. She has taken on a new name and costumed persona and is trying to work off that bad karma she earned in her Seattle villain days. Martial Artist with some gadgetry.

Blade Dancer - He's the recipient of the family heirloom, a magic sword with water and ice powers. He's also inherited the family business, which is an R&D firm that has supplied him with a few nifty gadgets. He has a brother, a supervillain names Amber Blaze, who wants to take the family inheritence for his own. The fun shall ensue on that point, I can assure you. Energy Projector with some gadgetry.

I'll follow up with my own recollection of events as time permits.

Re: If you act, as you think . . .

Maybe its Detect Acausal Parallelisms/Synchronicitous Events and also some 8pt CSLs (or even 10 pt Overal SLs), Linked, and Uncontrolled. That way its really more like GM discretion whether there's an opportunity to make it work. Or substitute the Uncontrolled for Extra Time to indicate that it takes time to "tune in" to the collective unconscious.

Otherwise it sounds a lot more like SFX of CSLs to me.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

Hancock. Sucked.

Wathcing the first season of X-Files on DVD. My memory of it is so foggy. It has its ups and downs and its interesting to watch everyone work so hard and reach to find what works and what doesn't.

Watched Fight Club over the weekend. Another one I hadn't see since it orignally came out on video. That movie is LSD hell, but I still found myself silently admiring the whole Tyler Durdan plot to blow up credit card companies.

Re: Opposing Force: Taking a Walk on the Vile Side

Right now I'm in a game on HC where we are all Viper agents and we just completed our first heist of a semi full of Wonderflonium(not really something else harder to obtain and worth more gaurds than 1 guy and a van

we had mercs and a low powered superhero to deal with

we got away with no serious injuries cannot say the same for the mercs,the driver and the cape

In fairness to the mercs, you bushwhacked them good!

Re: dark champions from each of the 50 states

attempt at New England Coachman

Nicely done. And you got a cool signature, as well. Repped!

Re: dark champions from each of the 50 states

The Concord Coachman.

A highwayman/brigand and generally considered more of a fun-loving scoundrel than villain. He rides in a souped-up, modernized (ie.e. horeseless) stagecoach and wields both a "flintlock" blaster pistol and a standard dueling foil for those daring skirmishes.

He is a conservative and nationalist, thiking most other nationalities below that of a "good American stock". He will also pick fights on the premise of one being a "modern-day confederate" or a "west coast liberal". Alas, it seems only New Englanders receive any of the Coachman's respect...and those states neighboring his "home base" of New Hampshire are more often the focus of his atacks than anyone else.

He generally holds up wealthy or famous travellers (more for the notoriety than for wealth, as it seems the Coachman is indeed, filthy rich by his own right). He will not hesitate to stage an elaborate plot to discredit liberal politicians or those whose policies are not in light with his (i.e. "The sure voice of reason, as solid as granite"). But just as often he will play the hero, rescuing people from natural (or manmade) disasters. While he will sometimes steal money from banking insitutions or multinational corporations and glady be seen doing so, he will be sure that the recipient of his generosity is allowed their privacy.

Re: Mister Massachusetts

No, he's a crimefighter, he only looks satanic.

and he only comes out at night.

plus he reads a lot of dusty old books

and he's more at home in the caves and rivers.

plus he researches a lot into genealogy

and he tends to leave criminals in strange predicaments.

 

the Detective of Dunwich, he fights crime !

Of course, behind his back the local villains call him Mass_ole.

Re: Gettin' Crafty!

Two things:

1. Awesome work. Especially like Gargoyle! Blast from the past, there.

2. Where did you get those maps?

Re: The Ol' Cross-Genre Bait-and-Switch

Funny story about this. I tried to run a strauight Champions game for my old group. While they really seemed to like it, I don't believe they ever got the "feel" for a straigh supers game after all the wacky wierd games I put them through.

One night, after a session had ended, I heard the inevitable...

"Can you give us some more. Its early and none of us work tomorrow. You can come up with something."

THe short version of the story is that I had some supervillains drop a nuke on an island off the coastline, and the characters were all in a port city. They had to try their damndest to save people from the blast and fallout and I shut that game down...

until...

One of the players, probably realizign I had burned myself out on GMing, continued that game, saying that what was detonated was not a nuke at all..but a logic bomb,. THe world was turned upaside down in RIFTS-like fashion and many fantasy and scifi elements were introduced. It was run like a fantasy game with the other players playing their characters and me playing an NPC I had.

It was a short-lived one-shot type of game, but it was a pretty cool sort of genre table turn.

Re: Doktoberfest!

OK. I laughed so hard I almost cried. Its a good thing I work in a far, remote corner of the office. That picture is funny as hell.

Re: Famous People Super Heros

Patrick Stewart - Mentalist

Jeff Goldblum - Gadgeteer

Alan Rickman - Mystic (seen Rasputin?)

The martial artists are too easy. Tony Jaa. Jet Li.

Re: Famous People Super Heros

how so?

The big eyes and cranium, I'd say. A good call.

Re: Where to send the scientific expedition

What's of superlative interest at either of them?

 

BTW, which star in the constellation Casseopeia?

SOrry about being so vague. I was at work and din't take the proper time to flesh out my post.

Sirius has some cultural significance to earth, having been recorded by Egyptians and also the Dogon peopel in West Africa. THere's probaly some cool stuff that could hearken back to ancient man, or at least provide some explanation for ancient man's knowledge and tracking of the star.

Its ( Sirius A) also got a lot of metallic content to it, which might make for some interesting phenomena on the surface.

Cassaopeia A is a remnant of a supernova and resides in the constellation. Wikipedia says its the strongest radio source in the sky beyond the solar system. I don't have much reason to cite it as an interesting target other than the mythological significance.

Re: Where to send the scientific expedition

Sirius or Casseopeia.

Re: Heroes from All Fifty States

Very nice work. I also like the fact that you've included flags for all the state not yet represented. However, I feel obligated to point out that if you asked the average Nebraskan to show you their state flag, it'd probably look something like this:

 

 

I'm just sayin'....

I've got peopel from Nebraska on my wife's side...and you are right.

THE HUSKER could be a pretty mean hero. But what would he husk..bad guys? Yikes! Maybe he could have a HKA, useable only on armor.

"Come here, and lets get that husk offa yo9u."

<>

Re: Your Dream Projects For Hero Books

According to the creator of the first website above, our own Mark "Markdoc" Doherty, his material is fairly popular with gamers. Feudal Japan seems to have long been the historical Oriental culture most accessible to Westerners.

You know, I borrowed characters and NPCs from his website for my own game back in the day.

I suppose its not so far out of the mainstream as I might have first thought.

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

I think the single biggest thing is that the author present the races within the setting and how they interact. The thri-kreen from Dark Sun were not so difficult to use alongside elves and dwarves, because you had an idea of how they interacted with society.

 

In this case, the little capsule opinions about the other factions in some games (White Wolf) are pretty useful.

Totally agreed, but you also have to trust your players.

In most fantasy games I have run, I only allowed human player characters. THere was just not enough RP experience among most of my players to trust that they could play a different species/race without reverting to "short, drunk humans" and "pointy eared conservationist humans" for dwarves and elves.

Re: Can Characters get to powerful for some Genres/Settings?

Just echoing G-A here...

A lot of problems stem from GMs not keeping track of their Campaign Guidelines like MAX DC, CV, Skill rolls and so on. If one PC is spending all hix XP on DEX and Combat Levels (and the GM OKs it) and everybody else is purchasing relevant new skills, buying off disadvantages or such like...then there's going to be a balance issue.

At some point, players WANT their characters to move on to the next level. And its up to the GM to make sure the bar is visibly raised so that no players end up being unable to compete because they aren't building their characters up in their weaker traits. Its far too easy to say "OK, spend those points wherever you want" and all of a sudden, ten sessions later one PC is very dominant.

Re: Old School Japanese Cartoon Builds

Awesome name! I like it! I'll have to write it up sometime tomorrow as projects are getting in the way.

 

Also you wouldn't happen to know the Kanji for that would you? I figured maybe I could do a cool design for him.

Sorry, I don't know kanji. I don't really know Japanese, either.

I'm not Japanese. I just play one on the internets.

Re: Old School Japanese Cartoon Builds

I like that Now we gotta give the robot an awesome name!

 

I think i'll try and make a character sheet for this one unless you want to?

Haha. Feel free on the writeup...I've got a long enough agenda right now.

But for a name:

Daihogusha Jinzo

( "great protector Jinzo" )

Re: Old School Japanese Cartoon Builds

Maybe a giant robot samurai that only does the bidding of its creator's schoolgirl daughter. She woudl get into various troublesome encounters with space ninjas, demonic bullies, tentactled invaders, what-have-you...and then she would telepathically summon the robot.

The girl would be normal, other than some telepathy. But the Robot would be a galactic ghero, capable of saving the world from giant monsters, threats from outer space and so forth. It would have to fire missiles from its fingertips and know karate as well as fly and have a protective compartment (with windows) where the girl and her friends could witness all the action in safety.

Re: Fantasy Hero 101

Hey, if you have any of this material availabel to share...I think it would be a good idea to do so. There's lot of new players out there, and a lot of GMs spend a lot of time in their long-runnign games, but woudl love to be ablet o run a one-shot for some bnew players withotu having the preparation to worry about.

Anyway, if you have anything that you could share (besides the great summary of the events)...I would be interested.

Re: Old School Japanese Cartoon Builds

Its either Tranzor Z or Gatchaman.

Re: Heroes from All Fifty States

For Massachussetts :

Lady Liberty, via the state motto "Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem" (Latin: By the sword she seeks peace under liberty). Patriotic, sword-wielding weaponmistress. Maybe even a "blind justice" element where she has eyes covered by a cloth, but she can "see" injustice or criminal intent.

Old Ironsides - Powered Armor hero with a "sail and rigging" motif to his armor.