Tjack

I was a big fan of Greatest American Hero back in the day, based my first and most beloved Champions character on the idea of Bill Maxwell getting the suit and am currently sporting a tattoo of the symbol on my right arm.

So smile when you say that cowboy.

Over here we have the street drug SPIKE. The un-perfected batches of super-soldier-serum from your friends at Viper or Raver or whoever.

As a way of raising capital and maybe killing a hero or two, this stuff is being sold as the best cheap high there is and the bonus is that out of every hundred or so you get a super power! Like Flight! Sure it only lasts long enough to get a few hundred feet into the air before it cuts out. Or Super Strength enough to punch in a bank vault door, too bad there wasn't any invulnerability so you break every bone from your fingertips to your elbows before the high wears off.

Somebody should maybe stop this, huh.

I usually do that with an intelligence roll.  Sometimes its kind of a subtle bonk to the head.

 

"I run into the blazing fire to get a coal!"

"Wearing your gasoline soaked outfit carrying thermite in your pockets?"

"Yeah!"

"... make an Intelligence roll"

 

It was mainly for players who weren't familiar with the genre and didn't know basic things that the character would about tech or other races.

Shadowrun used to have a Perk called "Common Sense" best used for newbies, wherein if the player had misgivings about a plan or a line of thought they could ask the GM "Does this make sense?".

It seems that dropping in a power or skill slot of some number of points to be decided between the player and GM could be used to much the same effect. When the character comes up with a plan of attack first the Player rolls Tactics to see if there are any obvious Flaws, and then rolls Master Tactician and the GM more or less runs a detect weakness on the plan. Letting the player know whether or not it seems reasonable that the Villian would be fooled.

It would take a lot of trust between Player & GM but if the GM hates the idea from the start, the Power/Skill will never work right anyway no matter how many points you put into it.

If you want a bit of conspiracy tone tossed in for flavor. The edge on technology that's kept the Earth Alliance on top against any competing races is the result of a alien Scout Class starship found long ago and understanding it's still far advanced science bit by bit has kept the EA ahead of the curve.

If you're interested in an ongoing plotline perhaps that culture is coming back...

If you want a more modern take on this type of character, think about making him a rock star or Twitter/YouTube celeb. Also the online series Star Trek Continues did a sequel to "Who Mourns for Adonis" with the original now 70 year old actor in the role as a withered Apollo. The episode may give you some ideas. Good luck.

If you're looking for a modern version of Doc Savage, be happy. MGM Studios is readying a TV series for Buckaroo Banzai that will be helmed someone who truly loves the movie...Kevin Smith.

He may not be the perfect action movie director, but I'll take someone who has respect for the material over somebody who just doesn't get it.

Besides, no one was sure of Joss Whedon directing The Avengers and that turned out pretty well.

First they made Seth Rogan the Green Hornet and made Johnny Depp's Tonto the star of the Lone Ranger, now they're going to make Dwayne Johnson Doc Savage. Hollywood is trying to make me kill myself.

Liam Hemsworth should be Doc.

I find it also helps if you can picture a particular woman, generally an actress, so you can nail down cadence and manner of speech as well as mannerisms. You get different body language from Angelina Jolie than from Jennifer Lawrence.

Wonderful write-ups for begining characters but what we see in the movie are experienced...well, I'll call them heroes even though they're really more like vigilantes to borderline villains. Probably closer to 500 - 750 earned EP on top of the 250 starting.

Don't forget the second oldest profession....Entertainer. Many players with Bards spend so much time rallying troops and macking on Tavern wenches that they never even bother to pass the hat and get paid for a night of songs & stories.

Even other types of characters like Rogues, Clerics and Fighters may know enough old jokes and tunes to earn themselves a bowl of stew and a warm place by the fireside at an Inn when the Party is low on funds and hospitality is running a bit thin.

A valid opinion, but I think I'd agree a lot more if Kirk and the Klingons didn't first bring their war to the Organinians doorstep and second started with the ole' " you would never understand the motivations of our conflicts, so we'll take you under our wing and you don't have to worry your fuzzy lil' heads 'bout nutthin." (With every bit of racist "White Man's Burden" bullstuff those phrases entail.)

As far as the glowing people saw things it would be like if you came out on your front lawn one morning and found two tribes of monkeys flinging poop at one another, getting ready to start bashing in each other's heads. So you turn the hose on them, and when they stop they both start screeching at you. So to keep the peace to put up a fence that won't even shock them unless they do something dumb like try to climb it.

Just another opinion.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares

 

Frankly, I think Redwall's biggest problem is that the books were written for children, and thus it has to be repetative and the characters stupid, because that's the way children are.

 

Sadly, people all think that anthropomorphic animal characters are either kiddie-crud or smut.

 

But back on topic...

 

S.A.T.A.L.: Superhero Adventures to Adult Lechery (old joke, I know.)

 

Real Heroes (Superhero gaming meets complete reality, ensuring that at least one "power" everybody has is "Thyroid Cancer" thanks to the radiation exposure.)

This is a little like complaining that Stuart Little doesn't read like Maus.

Redwall is for kids, so what, deal with that fact and if you want something more challenging go find it with my best wishes for your happiness. I am an adult who generally enjoys thoughtful and sometimes thrilling material, but other times I like to power down with something like Redwall or Bone.

It doesn't make any choice wrong, just find something that's a better fit for you.

Are the "Swordsmen" in your game fleshed out individuals or just cookie cutter copies? If the former you can still get a good game, if the latter then then you need to talk to the players about the fun to be found in style and characterization.

A group containing Conan, D'Artanian, Inigo Montoya and Gomez Addams may have a lot of steel between them but it will be a hell of a show.

On second thought....It could be Kelly Bundy and at night she and Lilly..........I'll be in my bunk.

The most twisted thing is that when I saw ALDRIN & BUNDY I flashed on Lilly (Alison Hannigan) from How I Met Your Mother and Al from Married With Children.

Faith Lehane the Vampire Slayer!! Who needs Buffy? Put her on a team with Harry Dresden, Capt. Jack Harkness, Blade the other flavor of Vampire Slayer, Lara Croft and Edmund Blackadder as designated sneaky bastard. All led by Agent Phil Coulson.

That's a show I'd watch every week til I died and come back to life just to see the reruns.

We're all familiar, through the Mad Max franchise and others, with the idea of a post-apocalyptic world where all or most of the planet is a scorching hot desert environment. How about a one-eighty on that concept: how about a winter wasteland? The idea is the planet is in a new ice age and even setting foot outside requires you to either be physiologically adapted to intense cold or put on full cold weather gear like an Eskimo. Perils could include raging snow and ice storms, attacks by mutant polar bears, etc.

We had to dig our car out this morning, didn't we?

My second post was supposed to be a continuation of the first, so let me finish that off with...You start seeingHot Chocolate, cookies and Reindeer Chow at the Continental Breakfast Bar.

Seeker's resolution is to stop getting knocked out during combat in front of photographers who keep putting the picture on supplement books so that players will have to find another way to tell the good ones from the bad.

...and that red thing poking out from the edge of the suit is NOT Rudolph's nose!

You've stopped going to the pool because of fat boy in his Speedo.

I have two points to address, one on each side of the debate.

1) While the 250 write ups are cleverly done, I don't think they accurately portray the power level seen in the movies

2) The martial arts moves Tony performs in the films are more about the fact that RDJr. has multiple Black Belts in real life and is more capable using those forms in stunt work than the more standard types. Not necessarily about what the character "should" know.

A couple of people have described Iron Man as having multi-form. I always thought of the write up as Tony Stark having a couple of big honkin' Variable Power Pools, one larger than the other and a skill list like a phone book.

The larger VPP changeable only at base since that's how he switches from one set of armor to the other in the movies. While the smaller one represents the "Briefcase Armor" seen in IM2 and any other gadgets he might put together on the fly.

Movie scenes are typically around 3 minutes these days.

 

Assuming a typical adventure is five scenes, and acknowledging that good roleplay is worth bonus points -- who deserves bonus points for roleplay if not Robert Downey Jr.? (I could practically envision him as a real rich substance-abusing genius playboy narcissist with psychological issues!) .. Movies of 90 minutes are six five-scene adventures interleaved and mixed up into story arcs, five EP per adventure with a five EP story arc bonus for Mr. Downey, 35 EP's per movie.

 

So assuming in the first movie he was 250 pts, he's up to 400 pts on live action movies alone. Though add in comics and animation, and he'd be in the thousands.[/

 

"Envision"!!! Nooooooo! I have no idea how he managed to get into the mind of such a character. Scrapbooks, Wikipedia, maybe some old clips from TMZ perhaps.

The live action movies were all I had considered.

Well, of course Iron Man is built on more points. He's been in more movies so he has more EP's.

I wonder how many experience points he got in each movie appearance?

If you were a GM running the storyline of Avengers let's say as a group of episodes, how many EP's would you hand out at the end for the heroes?