Willpower

Hello everyone, I just wanted to announce my new game and let everyone see how things worked my first session. I am going to eventually start a website for this game, and am going to try and document each session. First off, regardless of the title of this thread, we haven't established a name yet. The game is set up group oriented, so we established a theme for the group. I'll start telling you the history, but since my players read here also, I will only be telling as much as they know as well. In the 1960's Viper came into existence. Shortly after that a new hero came onto the scene in Detroit named the Ghost. The Ghost was an occult based detective, who used a combination of martial arts, mystic equipment and a small repetiore of magic spells to combat crime, particularly occult based crime. Within a year of his first appearance though, a change began to occur, as Viper rose in power, he became more and more concerned with tem, and soon Viper was his number one enemy. He still had others, but he tried hardest fighting Viper. He began rising to the top of Viper's most wanted list as well, and thruought the 70's he and Viper were arch-enemies. This went on for several decades, until in the early to mid-nineties, the Ghost fell off the Superhero map. He seemed to disappear without a trace. A lot of people thought Viper had finally got him. Though Viper knew otherwise. He was still high on their most wanted list, though even they weren't sure what happened to him. By the year 2002, Viper had all but stopped looking for the Ghost. He was still on their most wanted list, but since he hadn't been seen in a decade or so, they assumed he was gone. In reality, as age set in the Ghost became even more obsessed with taking down Viper, and on his last mission he recieved an injury which never quite healed, even with his magical resources. This is when he decided, that he had been fighting like a soldier during his entire war with Viper, and what a war really needed to be won, was a general. He went into hiding and started working more in secret, building resources, to relaunch his war with Viper. He managed to get informants inside of Viper, and even managed to get a worm into their computer system. This worm, has yet to be discovered, and filters a very small amount of Viper's money to a swiss bank account he had set up. This way he would use Viper's own money to fund a war against them. The Ghost had also managed to get together a list of potential recruits for a team set up mostly from within Viper. Viper's extensive list of Villains included some that wanted out, but didn't know how to get out. This included; Strike, a spanish fencer, who was also a technical genius and used several hi-tech gadgets. And the Imp who was a demon who had taken over a young mans body, and could teleport in, kill people and be gone, so he was a top rate assassin for Viper. Another was a girl Viper had created during some of their genetic research studies in the early 80's. She was used as an interrigator for Viper, as she was a touch telepath. Viper kept her under lock and key, she wasn't a normal villain for them, but was more a prisoner, who had never seen the light of day. They called her, Mentalina. The Ghost, also had a few allies, one of which harted Viper nearly as much as he did. This was a mystical Aikido master, named Ki Warrior. He can use his Ki energy to supplement his normal prowess in may unusual ways, including putting on a burst of speed which allows him to run over 150 km/hr, and to throw, and sometimes lift around 100 tons. The Ghost managed to plan an exodus out of Viper one nights, where, Ki Warrior attacked a Viper base, with a few assistants, to cause a distraction, and Strike and Imp escaped rescuing Mentalina. a few others escaped with them, including some Viper agents, who also wanted to turn over a new leaf. Some of these villains and some of the agents died in the break out, and some of them, after freeing themselves, just wanted to be free of Viper, so they went off on their own. A few remained though to help build the Ghost's army. These were Strike, who eventually created a powered suit for himself and took on the name Hi-Tek, Sebation, who has now reasserted most control of his body from Imp, and Mentalina, who has never known any life outside of Viper, she also changed her name and is going by Esperz. Together with Ki Warrior, and under the guide of the Ghost, they have now foguth Viper for over a year. The team lives in a mansion outside of Millenium City, that appears like a normal mansion, but the basement is more set up like a base. The mansion is run by the Ghosts longtime friend and butler, Mr. Reginald, and the rest of the staff, is primarily made up of ex-Viper Agents. This allows the Chauffeur to also fly the VTOL. FRED (Fully Realized Electronic Database) is the bases artificial intelligence.

How long does it take to set a trigger. I am wondering because I looked in the book and it mentions that a power with a trigger needs to be reset whenever the trigger goes off, but aside from an example that uses extra time, it doesn't mention how long it takes to set up a trigger. I can see three alternatives. Activating a power is a Zero Phase action, so setting a trigger could be done as easily as saying its set when you can next do a zero phase action. The second way I could see it is simply taking a half phase to set the trigger. The third way I could see it is taking how long it takes to use the power. For example if you have a movement power set on a trigger, it might take a full phase to set because to use the full power would take a full phase. The specific reason I am asking this is because a character in my new group has taken several powers set up with the "And now I am Gone" option for the Shadow Boxing power in the online USPD for teleport powers. Basically, he can attack, and then the attack triggers a teleport that teleports him somewhere else. As he does this many times during an encounter I need to know how long it takes him to reset the trigger on the power.

I agree with you completely. That is what I was meaning. If the villain is making a plot around how the hero should react, based on known weaknesses. Then it is the GM's job to enforce that. If the Hero doesn't care that the villain wins by making the hero go against there weakness, then it is the GM's job to make that weakness come into play. (IE if the villain gets the hero to kill, which is against his COK which is bought at total, then the hero shoud probably have things happen based off that. Bought as total, this could include but not be limited too, psychological problems, maybe the hero starts to crack, maybe even starts another dual identity, which is something that happened to Superman once. Other things include affecting their rep and making them outlaws too, but in all cases, the GM should make it a problem. If the heroes are already wanted by the law, then it doesn't change much, but playing against a weakness, particularly when it is the center of a storyline should have consequences.

Just a comment on the Joker versus Superman thing. Some people have been replying with the notion that Joker only threatened Superman once, and there was a reason to it. Like he had a lot of kryptonite. Joker has actually challenged Superman MANY times, and has nearly defeated him almost every time. Now everyone is right in there is always a reason and generally he can't challenge him in direct confrontation, but he did when he stole Mxy's powers. He was more than a direct threat when he had those powers, but even the times he faced Supes without those powers he found a way he could threaten him. He did it from Jail, by having poisoned Lois Lane, when the only antidote that could be made was from his blood, but Supes would have to kill him to get the antidote. Which is using Supes CVK against him. So people like the Joker can threaten Superman, but yes they generally have a reason, as people have said that they can, and it is generally a plot reason, not just a chuink of said heroes susceptibility, though that is another way to do it. This type of villain, CAN work in a Champions game, but it is hard, as it requires the players to play in character, and a lot of good planning on the GM's part. For instance, when Joker poisoned Lois Lane, it might have been easy for the Hero in question, if it were a player, to just say, "Ok, I kill him." Which then unless, as a GM, you planned on backing up the plan of the villain, and making all sorts of trouble, legal and psychological for the hero, there isn't much bite to the plan.

Yeah, Check the site in the first post of this thread. Sapphire beat Officer Prometheus.

I would say not completely, but for the most part Supers from other countries take some association from American supers. Comic books, at least, Superhero comic books is pretty fairly an American idea, that spread out, so it only makes sense, that supers in other countries would draw inspiration from and modify American outfits. Though, American supers costumes have varied dramatically from their first incarnations? Anyone remember the first Superhero? Its not who you might think. Some think Superman, though the Shadow and a few others were out in Radio format and such before him, though they aren't always considered superheroes for some reason. The first was actually Popeye. He was the first comic character to do genuinely superhuman tasks. His first was to tear apart a jail cell with his bare hands, and the second, I believe was to survive a gunshot at point blank range to the chest and be pretty much fine soon after.

Mine has still got to be when my character Flavius, in order to stop the Eurostar from getting away, (Eurostar was trying to destroy the U.S.S. Constitution, the ship not the paper, and we were trying to stop them) picked up the U.S.S. Constitution and smashed them with it. Nothing like a self-defeating adventure.

Yes, didn't Steve Jackson actually help develop the Hero system. I know I read about him being linked to the system somewhere, but its been years.

Just noticed, that with the new format, and since we all had to reinstate our login names, that I am now considered an Incompetent Normal. This isn't fair... I been posting since the board started, I should be more than a minor NPC by now... J/K

This might be different in different parts of the book, as some have pointed out there are a few places M&M contradicts itself, but this is the way Villain points are supposed to work anyway. Villains don't get individual villain points, the GM gets 12 villain points to use during the game to split up for all the villains. Not sure how this is supposed to change later on when heroes get more hero points. I think the only villains to get individual points would be the ones that have purchased extras. I can look this up and include the page where it talks about this later, don't have my book with me, but I think it is the gamemastering section.

My experience with M&M was different than others seem to be. Everyone always talks about how quick M&M plays compared to Hero, but in all the games I ran the fights in M&M were only minimumly quicker. Certainly not enough to switch systems, thought their were some aspects of M&M I really liked, like the Hero Point aspect. These though could be retrofitted to Champions with little problem. I certainly never had a problem with one shot KO's. Particularly when a Hero Point could help.