Querysphinx

Re: Answers & Questions Q: Did you know the word augery originally meant studying the flight and behavior of birds? A: He had hair a minute ago.

Re: Let's make a superhero base auditions (Topside description) I still think the abandoned mall idea is the best. Lots of floorspace. Crates of left over merchandise. Oddly shaped stores, no practical subdivisions that could be called living space. Lots and lots of places to hide. Fountains constantly in need of repair. Bathrooms crammed into weirdly inaccessible corners. The heroes bought the mall base because it was (a) cheap ( located above the forgotten Golden Age hero base.

Re: Nature + Fire = What? Pitching in late here: The first thing that sprang to my feeble little mind was rebirth. There are certain species of pine trees including the mighty sequoia that can't germinate their seeds without fire. There's also an old Chinese legend where a prospective suitor to a rich man's daughter. Naturally he was given three impossible tasks to perform. One of these tasks was "Kill something and bring it back to life." In the tradition of such tests he chopped down a tree, killing it, and then making a fire which was "alive." If I was you, I'd go with "Transformation"

Re: Opinions: A 'Hero' Stealing Their Gear.....???? There's also the Redcap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redcap

Re: Opinions: A 'Hero' Stealing Their Gear.....???? If you wanted a more historical name you could go with Boudica the warrior queen.

Re: Answers & Questions Q: They said the graviton collider was safe. A: The buffalo is empty.

Re: Answers & Questions Q: Did you hear he invested in a brothel just outside Vatican City? A: A record setting large-mouth bass.

Re: Answers & Questions Q: Three hours in, and NOW you wants latex and Vasoline? A: There are things you just shouldn't do with an I-phone.

Re: Answers & Questions Q: Why do the call the show "Blind Spot"? A: A six inch screw with counter-clockwise threads.

Re: Answers & Questions Q:Is that Steven Wright in Tony Stark's gear? A: Righty Tight. Lefty Loosey.

Re: How do you write up this power VPP 60 pts + 30 Control cost: Change Powers as 0 Phase action +1, "Leggo my EGO" Requires Ego Roll +0: <60 Active Control Cost>: Limited Group of Powers, "Only stuff I saw in the Matrix" -1/4, All powers have limited duration before needing to be reactivated (3 phases) - 1/4, All powers have increased END (<=20 ACT pts x2END, <=40 ACT pts x3END, <=60ACT pts x4 END) -1: <24 real control cost> Total Cost 60 +24 END Reserve 100 END +10 REC = 20 pts

Re: How do you write up this power Define "Distorted". The the matrix reality was distorted mostly to allow the characters to do superhuman things, notably strength and speed. That's a simple build. If you want it to do more than that, it becomes more complicated.

Re: New Pulp Hero Game on Hero Central Thanks. Me an my lead-based paints. Mmmmm. Yummy. I wonder what happened to Mallet.

Re: Answers & Questions Q: What's this you've claimed as a business expense on your voucher? A: Five thousand square feet of pink aluminum siding.

Re: New Pulp Hero Game on Hero Central CASSIOPEIA FALCO Stop me before I post again! Cassiopeia Falco, Cass for short, though her mother would never call her that, or let anyone else do so within ear shot, was out in the back woods by the crick with a mason jar collecting bugs for her science fair exhibit. Girls weren’t expected to enter the science fair. They were supposed to enter the baking contest, or the sewing contest. Girls entering the science competition were frowned-upon, which was below tolerated but above not-talked-about on the social scale of Mixon, South Carolina. But Cass had read the rules and they didn’t quite come out and say ‘no girls allowed’ –that would be crass, Mama said—and Cass figured she’d been living in frowned-upon territory so long that she might as well homestead there. Let them frown all they want, just so long as she made them admit that she knew more about bugs that Horace Bigsby. She was just selecting a fire beetle from the grasses when a strange white light hit her from above and her whole body went tingly. And then everything went dark. +++ Cass felt a heavy muddy pressure on her eyelids, but she opened them anyway. It took a lot of effort to do so. Likewise it took some effort to focus her vision. Green light filtered slowly into her eyes, moving more slowly than light usually did, but it eventually resolved itself into a thick green liquid. She was floating beneath the surface of an emerald sea. Wouldn’t she drown? Apparently not. In fact, she didn’t feel the need to breathe. She didn’t feel anything at all below her neck. What’s happening to me? Fear rose, but sluggishly as if it too were mired in muck. Why am I so tired? Even her thoughts seemed to come lethargically, like a clock… slowly… winding… down. About the only thing growing in intensity was the a strange buzzing gurgle in her brain. The slow undulating motion of the gravy like liquid slowly rolled her head over and she saw other shapes floating in the mix. Familiar shapes. Oh my Lord, is that my arm? She recognized her own right limb, complete with freckles and a scar from falling out of the tree. And there was her leg and… Is that my heart? It wasn’t beating. Her mouth worked in silent horror as she saw the sum of herself scattered about in the solution. She’d been disassembled. Taken apart like a watch. The gurgling buzzing noise began to resolve itself into something comprehensible. Not words, precisely, but concepts. >Life sciences exam #$%^ Not &^$#^& to harm the subject!< >Patience #$@%!*$ dissociation tank &^$#^ safe. *^$%^ test it’s @$#%^& functions.< Cass was appalled. They—whatever they were—were treating her like… like a bug in a science experiment. No no no! >Able ^%#$@! reassemble?< > Affirmative &^$#% locate the species baseline?< The voices were becoming clearer and more distinct. >Here they are. The M coefficient is .05< >That low? Are you sure?< >That’s what the manual says.< >That’s got to be too low. It could never survive with such a weak metabolism.” Cass would have held her breath if she’d still been attached to her lungs in anything but a metaphorical sense. There were trying to put her back together, but it sounded like they’d never done it before. Help, help, I’m being reconstructed by amateurs! >We’ll boost it up to .06.< >Will it be able to handle the strain?< >Yeah, we’ll just nudge the tensile flexibility a little?< >And I suppose we could put in some symbiosis prot-organs in case we left anything out. It can grow what it needs own.< >You’d think the exam board would automate the re-assembler.< >Then it wouldn’t be science would it.< There was a flash of green light. +++ No one at all believed Cass’s story about being kidnapped by a beam of light and minced up into small pieces. Instead they chastised her for running away. And where had she been for these last three day. “I told you there was this flash of light!” “Young lady, you will never speak that lie anywhere ever again.” After that Cass’s social status in Mixon South Carolina was somewhere between not-talked-about and not-admitted-to. +++ Cass’s breath came in ragged heaves as she pounded up the mountain road with a burlap scarecrow slung over one shoulder, the howl of an overtaxed engine in hot pursuit. Mama told me not to go to Georgia, she thought, casting a backwards glance at the car full of white-hooded figures laboring up the trail after her. But Cass couldn’t have stayed in Mixon her whole life. Chances were, she couldn’t stay anywhere. Ever since the incident with the light beam she’d been different. A woman who was stronger than any of the three men put together, and who could read newspaper from half a block away, and who could hear voles tunneling underground didn’t fit in well very many places, especially if she was uppity, and Cass was definitely uppity. Uppity, uppity and away… but that was a secret no one knew about. Take tonight, for instance, everybody in this little town knew that Charlie Hendrix was no good. He was a black man without a master, so when that old lady turned up dead it had to be Charlie’s fault, even though there wasn’t a stamp-lick of evidence to show it. So a group of Klansmen showed up to Charlie’s shack with a rope woven from threads of sheer vendetta. The message seemed to be, how dare you think of yourself as human, you animal. Cass had gotten there just in the nick of time, snatching Charlie from the noose and racing into the woods with him. She’d left him in a thicket with strict instructions to get the heck out of town. Then she’d picked up the straw dummy decoy she’d left there for that purpose and lit up the road with the Klansmen on her trail. Gunfire rattled the night as the Studebaker gained on Cass. The maniacs couldn’t hit anything, bouncing up the road like they were, except maybe by accident, but accident’s did happen and Cass was pretty sure she wasn’t bullet proof. Sweat poured down her back. She groped for endurance as she rounded a final corner to a chasm with a missing bridge. Almost there. The Klan Kar roared at her heels, so close she could feel the heat of its engine. With on final effort Cass lengthened her stride. Two steps. One. Leap! Cass leaped out into darkness a hundred feet deep. The Klan Kar squealed and fishtailed as the driver applied the brakes. Cass turned her attention inward, focusing on the strange inhuman knot of tissue in the small of her back. The organs grew warm and stretched. There was a noise like sheet being torn in half, and long hollow bones sprouted from her back, putting on feathers and the unfolded into an enormous pair of wings. She scooped the air and rolled upward, faster than any bird. A thousand feet up, she turned to see the Klansmen trying to extricate themselves from their Studebaker even as it teetered on the edge of the chasm. She smiled and turned away. She only had about an hour until this pair of wings dissolved into dust, and then it would be several hours before she could conjure another pair, and she wanted to be well away from Georgia by then.

Re: New Pulp Hero Game on Hero Central

Re: New Campaign Help Interesting Idea. Important questions: What crime did the PC's supposedly commit? Were the PC's all in for the same crime or for different crimes? Are any of them actually guilty of crimes? Are those crimes real crimes or thought crimes? It sounds interesting, though. Is this to be FTF of Hero Central?

Re: Opinions: A 'Hero' Stealing Their Gear.....???? It really depends. If the first thing Elvish does upon acquiring said artifacts is prevent mystic bad guy from instigating Hell on Earth then a really good case could be made for letting her keep the items. If she's the curator she might be able to convince the Museum/Donor to bequeath the items to her own alter ego. Or the "elf" could simply claim to be the item's rightful owner having her soul kept in the sword for 3000 years and released in time of need. Who could contradict her? Of course then the museum could claim to own her as she is part of the artifact. Of course the Govt. would probably declare the items to be too dangerous for some unsupervised elf to possess and confiscate them and give them to "Top Men" inc. The possibilities are endless.

Re: Duplication... but different Seems like shapeshifting linked to duplication to me. If the character has no control over which dupe they get it could have a limitation to that effect.

Re: Name that flag-suited hero! Captain Destiny Captain Liberty Captain Banner (Could be his real name, even) Captain Prime Captain Victory

Re: Discussion on costs of Characteristics This whole argument just validates the maxim: The rules do not control the game; the GM does.

Re: Why should I care? When I run fantasy the heroes tend to do a lot of traveling, so wilderness encounters are common, but I stick to my old adage: There is no such thing as a "random" encounter. I have had to deal with a player whose self-described alignment was "neutral greedy."

Re: Why should I care? This reminds me of a time when my wonderful heroic PCs in a fantasy game decided to steal some horses from a caravan. By way of distraction they set fire to the market square... The town hired the villains to hunt down the "heroes"

Re: Query's Art & Stuff Thread This is a commission I did about ten years ago. Yes, I do commissions.

Re: New Pulp Hero Game on Hero Central Because I just cant resist throwing out new ideas. Skunk Victorie Mephitis was very calm child. She never cried as a baby or threw a tantrum as a two year old. She did not shriek at the sight of spiders or jump back from snakes. Neither did she squeal with delight at the affections of a puppy or an unexpected birthday surprise. It wasn’t that she didn’t care, she just couldn’t seem to get worked up about any of these terrors and delights. For her life was listless. Nor was Victorie a vigorous child, by the time she was twelve she looked to be ten years old and her development seemed to be slowing down. Victorie’s poor mother, Marianne, always said the Victorie was so emotionally and physically stunted because her father, Piotr, was a selfish bastard who had kept all his passion for himself. Not that Piotr was a bad man, he loved his wife and his daughter, but he was also a Grade-A, World-Class, Limited Edition, Mad Scientist. When he wasn’t terrorizing graduate students and faculty at the local university, he was down in his basement lab (five stories deep and still growing) conducting experiments that endangered all life on Earth at least once a week, usually on Thursday. Occasionally he would rise from the depths like a vampire from his crypt to play with his daughter and remind his wife why she had married him in the first place. *ahem—edit for PG audience—ahem*. Rarely did he seem to notice the passage of time between these visits. It was not until the day that Victorie had wandered down into his lab (he’d left it unlocked…again) and nearly been killed by an exploding trans-electric-matrix-inducer of dubious parentage that Piotr noticed his daughter’s oddity. (Anyone who spends that much time staring into the blinding light of inspiration is bound to have a few retinal burns) For a mad scientist, quick reflexes are almost as important as a quick mind—You just never know when the powdered cesium is going to impact the water vapor—but Victorie seemed to have no fight or flight reflex. Something was wrong with her adrenal glands, or perhaps her hypothalamus. “Well we can’t have that!” he exclaimed, and before you could say, “Transdimensional phase-induced macrovalence” five times really fast, he had her strapped face down to an operating table. Victorie didn’t panic. She couldn’t. That was the whole problem. Piotr was a brilliant man, but not terribly patient. He didn’t waste time pondering the best solution to the problem, when he could be busy implementing the first solution that came to hand. Ah yes, there was the atrophied hypothalamus. Add a little stimulator to help it function. That should fix the problem, but anything worth doing is worth overdoing. There were her adrenal glands, and he had some adrenal tissu handy. It was from a skunk. Well, skunks are pretty fierce, right? They’re related to badgers after all. Lets just dip those in a normalizing solution and graft them on. And what about those other glands… When Victorie woke up, she felt funny, tingly in the body and in the brain. She was still strapped to the table. Panic slapped her in the face. Panic is a horrible emotion. Being hit with a tsunami of adrenalin for the very first time in your life at age almost-thirteen is ever worse. She snapped the leather restraints like they were made of tissue and bolted into a corner. What’s happening to me? What are all these… things I’m feeling? She heard footstep coming. A shadow descended the stairs. It was deep and dark and terrifying. She screamed and bolted, scrambling into an air vent and scrambling racing up several stories until she burst up through the first floor chimney. The scent of the place hit her like nothing ever had before. It smelled like baking bread and bleach and just a hint of ozone. It smelled like home. Her frayed nerved calmed. She burst into the kitchen, wrapped her mother in a sooty embrace, and began to weep. Ever since that day, Victorie has had emotions. Lots of them, strong ones. She’s in control of them, most of the time, except when she’s not… like that night Bobby Gordon wouldn’t leave Suzy Tallfellow alone and she’d punched his nose so hard it broke and his ribs and his jaw. Only the fact that nobody thought a girl could possibly hit that hard kept her out of trouble, but she couldn’t just stand by and watch. He underdeveloped body kicked into high gear. She didn’t so much achieve puberty as exceed it, blossoming into a remarkable young woman who turned so many heads that she became a leading cause of whiplash in her high-school. She’s learned to control her adrenaline surge…mostly There’s a muscle near the base of her skull and if she flexes it. Well it feels like being hit with liquid lightning. She gets strong, she gets fast, and she also gets really, really mean, as in pissed off, as in give me one good reason I shouldn’t rip out your spleen, monkey boy? Then of course there’s the problem with her body odor. A citrus bath once a day just about kills it, almost, unless she get angry and sets off her adrenaline. Then it’s “who ran over a skunk?” time. “What? No, that’s not me. Check your shoes.” Her father has cooked up an antidote that kills the smell instantly, but it also numbs her brain and kills her emotions for about an hour, an experience she loathe to repeat. As she approached adulthood Victorie has come in closer and closer contact with the seamier side of the world and she doesn’t like it. She loathes bullies and the world is full of them, people who think they are entitled to take what they want from good honest folk just because they’re bigger and stronger. Once she happened on a gang of thugs beating up an old man in an alley. He was late on his payments and he was going to pay with his kneecaps. Victorie’s rage boiled up and she went through the thugs like a hammer through a ripe melon. She left four battered and very smelly thugs tied to the lamp post for the police to find. The next day the newspaper headlines read “SKUNKED!” Unfortunately the thugs were released from jail the next day. “No evidence on which to detain them,” said the crooked judge. She realized that the thugs would come looking for the person that attacked them, and that the city’s corruption ran very deep. Victorie had two choices. Fight or flight. That night she donned a black mask and a black wig with white stripes and stepped into the darkness. Skunks are hunters after all, and they’re not above eating a few cockroaches. Powers: Super Adrenaline: It's a big rush, but it makes her really cranky. Enhanced Senses: Keen smell and hearing Stink Bombs: Recently Piotr has found a way to bleed off Victorie's scent glands to help keep the stink down. “And why do I have scent glands, daddy?” she asked in exasperation. He shrugged helplessly. “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.” Mixed in with the right sort of aerosol dispersant, her personal musk makes an extremely potent anti-personnel “Stink-Bombs” which can leave a man gasping and puking his guts out.