Scott Ruggels

Returning to Selversgard to report that the old cemetery needs reconsecrating, we discover a violent argument in the marketplace - a number of the village women have Mikki, the entertainer at one of the village pubs, surrounded. Apparently they’re accusing her of being a bad influence on the morals of the town, saying that her admittedly lascivious stage shows encourage their husbands to attend the brothel, and that’s why the ghost attacked people.
 
Arram is forced to admit that the actual reason might be because he’s purchased the manor and THAT is what has disturbed the ghost. It’s certainly a hypothesis to consider. Mikki makes her escape.
 
Gonno moved in the wrong social circles to know if Emilia had any close friends she might have confided in. She’s probably just lucky that the arranged marriage was voided whe killed herself - none of us would put it past a Chelaxian to marry the corpse.
 
Arram: Chelaxians would check the contract first.
 
But examining the interior of the manor reveals that someone has definitely been in here - someone with small bare feet. They looked around the ground floor then headed upstairs. Shev’s study of the prints suggests a small woman or adolescent, used to going shoeless. 
 
Shev: I swear the locals are part-halfling.
 
The second floor includes the family bedrooms - only one door is open, and the tracks lead in and out. It’s probably Emilia’s. Her armoire has been opened, as well. There’s still a fair number of her personal items inside - brushes, combs, some jewelry, and a conspicuous triangular gap in the dust. About the right size for a broad-bladed dagger, in its sheath. But as Gonno muses, it doesn’t make any sense for it to be the suicide weapon - why would the family have put the weapon back in her armoire, and it has clearly been moved recently. It’s all very depressing - supernaturally depressing. Gonno, Arram, and Skave fail their saves against magically induced despair.
 
Arram: Well, let's find who's responsible, I suppose.
Gonno: Is there any point? Is there any point to anything?
Arram: Yes. I quite want to stab them for making me do all this extra work.
Miya: You have a small child, Gonno. There’s one reason.
Skave: *plaintively* I want to go home now.
Shev: Let’s all get out of here.
Miya: Don’t make me get the pointy stick.
 
The despair wears off after we leave the building. We really need to talk to some of Selversgard’s oldest residents, like Gelvert the dwarf and former mayor. And think about which teenager in town is most likely to break into a boarded-up building. Vok, following the scent of the tracks, leads the party back to the Garund household. And Toby Garund, the 12-year-old son of the family, certainly fits the build of the intruder.
 
Arram: Toby, you’ve been a very naughty boy. 

Shev: I’m just thinking of his terror when his school teacher turns up at the door. ‘No no no, you’re a school thing, you don’t come to my HOUSE’.
Miya: ‘BEGONE THE SCHOOL HOLIDAYS COMPEL YOU’
 
Toby is currently out in the fields with his father. Time to go scare the short pants off him. 
 
Toby: … how.. How did you know?
Shev: Hi. I know where all you kids go.
Arram: I was going to go with the whole “I’m your teacher, I know everything’ but suddenly it’s the rat that’s the scary one.
 
The dagger is gold chased and has a ruby the size of his thumb in the pommel.
 
Shev: … yeah that’s the fetter.
 
But even returning the dagger to its place won’t necessarily put the ghost to rest. We still don’t know exactly why Emilia took her own life, beyond the obvious. Mother Maybell doesn’t want the dagger anywhere nearby.
 
Mother Maybell: Don’t get me mixed up in this!
 
Gelvert and his son Gelbert are surprised to see us, and definitely remembers the tragedy - he was one of the people organising the wedding, and had considerable business dealings with the Tollands. The wedding would have reopened the silver mine. He also recalls the high turn-over of servants at the house - and the feeling of crushing gloom even before the wedding. Emilia’s grandfather was an excellent businessman, and much more likable than Emilia’s father.
 
Gelvert: A man of his family, but the son was always a man of business. I never really liked him.
 
Gelvert doesn’t understand why Emilia killed herself - even in Selversgard no-one would have stopped her fleeing town to escape the wedding. Arram has some suspicions about that despair aura.
 
Gelvert: Young Skave, isn’t it? I hear you’re an alchemist.
Skave: Yes?
Gelvert: Emilia’s father was an alchemist, as I recall. Certainly liked to take things apart to see how they worked.
 
That’s ominous, especially if he got on so well with the Chelaxians. We now have some suspicions about that stone-lined tunnel the Ysoki unearthed beneath the manor.
 
Gelvert: You know, it’s strange but I never did find out where his lab was. And I did rely on his potions from time to time. When you get old things stop working quite as well.
 
Sennsa-Auel the elven madam might know more - she’s been running the Yellow House since the time. Old Meg, one of the fishwives, is now deceased, but she was the queen of gossip in Selversgard at the time. Perhaps one of her daughters, granddaughters, or great-granddaughters recall something. Gelvert is happy he can still be useful.
 
The manor certainly doesn’t have a basement (too close to the river’s flood level) but we do find one end of the tunnel - hidden in the servant’s stairwell. And a suspicious gap in the floorplan behind the master bedroom. Gonno can’t find any hidden doors in the stonework, but Vok can sniff out an alchemical lab even decades later. Even if it’s a combination of alchemical lab and torture dungeon. 
 
Gonno: I think we’ve found where some of the servants got to. 
 
Most of the accouterments are long since dried out, but there’s one long tube filled with grey fluid that’s still intact. It does not Detect as magical. Skave gets out a q-tip and goes to take a sample - holistic investigation is certainly his modus operandi. It attacks him.
 
Arram: I think this is a teachable moment and leave him to it.
Skave: I think we should get that thing off him, he’s got a kid!!!
 
The Ooze is horribly caustic, and also inflicts psychic damage. The Ysoki alchemist is almost overwhelmed. Those of us without ranged attacks backpedal fast. Gonno dives for two magical daggers that Arram Detected earlier. The suicidal despair it radiates certainly doesn’t help. Skave throwing a firebomb into a confined space doesn’t help either.
 
Arram: Shev I’ve always liked you but I’m going to have to kill your brother.
 
We are extremely fortunate that the thing succumbs to Arram’s Burning Hands spell, eventually. We turn to the younger Ysoki with various expressions of wrath.
 
Skave’s player: … I’ll start making a new character, then.
Miya: Skave, get up on the torture table.
 
We turn - and face the ghost. She reaches out to Arram, who offers the dagger. Her hand passes right through it, she smiles, and fades away.
 
Miya: Remind me to make an offering to Pharasma when we get out of here.

 

Lord-Mayor Barzillai Thrune, AKA “The Dogf***er”, is a man with multiple strikes against him. Firstly, he’s an Inquisitor of Asmodeus. Secondly, he’s a member of the Thrice-damned House of Thrune. Thirdly, he doesn’t like mint ice cream. This all adds up to Evil with three ‘E’s. EEEvil. Unfortunately, he’s also a bit smarter than we thought.
 
Admittedly, that might be on us. The so-called ‘Ghosts of Kintargo’ have been running around the city with so little difficulty, and successfully distracting the authorities with our fake ‘Nox the Redeemed’, that we may have started underestimating him. The fake Nox was certainly a good idea, and must have enraged Thrune no end. Even the rumours that his devil-sworn bodyguard was now working for the rebels would have been terrible PR for his administration, and there was still the question of how the Ghosts could possibly have switched her allegiance. Assuming the ‘Ghosts’ actually exist.
 
Of course, illusion magic is a thing. And further, there is absolutely nothing stopping Thrune having his own Nox. Revealing his own version, real or fake, at the Ruby Masquerade is a masterstroke, since there are over 300 of Kintargo’s richest and most influential citizens in attendance. Thrune can probably also guess that some of the rebellion leadership are in the crowd - although the jokes on him, we all are.
 
The really bad news, however, is that the dogbotherer seems willing to kill all those attendees in an effort to slander the Ghosts of Kintargo, and just said as much, as his dotarri lock the doors to the opera house with ourselves and hundreds of mostly-innocent citizens inside. And there’s the urgent question of WHY, when we’ve already established that assassinating Thrune in front of hundreds of witnesses is a bad idea, Civilla Alazario unilaterally decided to attack him. The rest of the Ghosts aren’t privy to the deal she made with the contract devil Cizmerkis, current owner of Nox's soul - and that deal was just called due.
 
Although Thrune is hopefully right about one thing - the colours of the Ghosts of Kintargo are indeed the colors of blood, of betrayal, and of death. HIS blood, betrayal, and death. He certainly seemed surprised that one of the Ghosts was standing right next to him on the stage. It’s just a pity that the assassin Rajira wasn’t standing on the other side, to stab him in the neck when he turned to yell ‘Betrayer!’ at Civilla.
 
Terzo OoC: I am trepidatious about tonight’s session. The only combat monster in the party is you.
Rajira OoC: I’m not a combat monster.
Terzo OoC: If your opponents are asleep you are.
 
And then our situation goes from bad to SO MUCH WORSE.
 
True, we’re trapped in a building with hundreds of civilians, and dozens of heavily armed dotarri and a high level Inquisitor of Asmodeus, but we’ve got Vendelfek the faerie dragon in the crowd, and Captain Sargaeta planted our fake Nox upstairs earlier. Chough, the Dire Corby adopted sister of those Kenku we recruited, has also been busy - she’s been disabling those cockatrice cages just in case Thrune WAS planning to drop them into the crowd. Alas, she isn’t in position to drop on Thrune from 60 feet up. And then, suddenly, a huge beautiful bewinged serpentine creature appears in and emerges from the orchestra pit, and a bunch of flying angelic figures drop their invisibility in the crowd, or fly in through up-stairs windows. Apparently they’re Azatas, benevolent celestials native to the plane of Elysium. Perhaps Thrune’s actions have finally provoked a response, or it’s some protocol to defend the Opera House when mass bloodshed is imminent?
 

 
Civilla: Do they have horns and are they spitting fire? No? Then they might be on our side.
 
Perhaps somebody else made plans for this evening. The Lillend Azata moves from the orchestra pit into the crowd, which panics in abject terror. Several of the party goers are crushed. Not a good start.
 
The Ghosts of Kintargo: What?!?!
 
And then one of the other Azata attacks Terzo.
 
The Ghosts of Kintargo: What?!?!?!?!!
 
The Azata are actually magically disguised Devils. 
 
The Ghosts of Kintargo: !!!!!!!!!!!
 
Even with all the rest of this happening, Civilla is skeptical that the chained Nox on the stage is the real thing - after being dismembered and scattered over multiple graves, it would take a Wish spell to locate her, let alone raise her from the dead. Our fake Nox doesn’t seem to care - the moment she spots the original her attention is entirely focused on her. Possibly we should have provided a script. Appearing on the upstairs balcony and shouting “The rumours are true, Barzillai! You DO F*** dogs.”, perhaps.
 
Civilla Dimension Slides two stories straight up, onto the chandelier, and unleashes a Xill onto Barzillai. Xills are ethereal marauders with four arms that use their poisoned mandibles to paralyze their victims and implant eggs, but right now she’s beyond caring whether they're evil or not.
 

 
To her shock, Thrune shrugs off every attack. Happily another of the fake Azata goes after Shimza and comes within claws-reach of the Xill. Although it’s extremely alarming that the Barbed Devils seem to know exactly where the Ghosts of Kintargo are in the crowd. Although it’s likely they devils have been studying the crowd and marking everybody with a Good aura that is powerful enough to be a threat. Certainly they didn’t target Rajira.
 
Rajira uses her claws and her poisonous saliva to injure Thrune, but once again he shrugs off the venom. 
 
Barzillai: You DARE attack your Mayor?!
 
He attacks with his flaming mace, which is exactly when Avya explodes into a vortex of tattooed creatures, which is certainly surprising. Thrune certainly wasn’t expecting it. Nor was Thrune’s Nox. Shimza joins Civilla in the chandelier, and casts Euphoric Cloud on some of the Bearded Devils and dotarri. It might not drug a devil, but it DOES fill a large chunk of the dance floor with obscuring fog. 
 
The real Nox spots our fake - and Dimension Doors upstairs to fight her. Terzo leaps into the orchestra pit and sings a suitable aria to inspire his friends and the crowd. The crowd, thus encouraged, rush the doors. A few get shot down, but the dotarri get trampled and the exit forced open. 
 
Ayva: Do what you’re good at, Terzo - get people out of the opera!
Terzo: RUDE.
 
The big fake Azata seals the main doors again with a wall of Ice. Happily, we have Shimza, who is notably proficient with fire. Unfortunately, another devil cast Unholy Blight into the crowd, but thankfully doesn’t kill too many people. 
Thrune DOES goes down under the Xill’s next flurry of attacks, but is not revealed as another devil. This surprises Civilla - by this point she was expecting it to be Cizmerkis, who by provoking her original attack NOW, against the wrong target, was ensuring her damnation. Although, even if it’s another fake, seeing their Lord-Mayor violently disemboweled does shock the assembled dotarri.
 
Terzo’s performance inspires the crowd again, and they start pouring out of the building. At least somebody is going to get out of here alive. Because with all the devils now focusing their attacks on the Ghosts of Kintargo, it seems quite likely that we’re not getting out ourselves.
 

India lands on the moon successfully!
https://www.space.com/india-chandrayaan-3-moon-landing-success

India lands on the moon successfully!
https://www.space.com/india-chandrayaan-3-moon-landing-success

India lands on the moon successfully!
https://www.space.com/india-chandrayaan-3-moon-landing-success

Traveller had a  slightly more detailed  tech level system, with several categories. (This also shows why people used to run Westerns using Traveller rules). their speculation on the future might be a little off, as the first iteration of this was in 1977, but it has been massaged a little in subsequent editions. This is the framework most of the older gamers remember, and what Star Hero borrowed from.
 
https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Tech_Level_Comparison_Chart

It's these sorts of discussions that chase me back to want to use 2nd or 3rd edition rules. Much less to read.

Try this:
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/24002078/
 
 
In general, a "Heroic" level game will be "samey" by definition. The non-spell casting heroes will have about the same strength and dex,  and the castes will be around the same Int and dex, and speeds will be 3.  Hero ha always lacked granularity around the low end. Differentiation, then tends to be skills, knowledges and Disads.  For monsters, and High Fantasy heroes, it's the powers that lend the differentiation. in "Hig Fantasy" the differentiation is through powers bestowed upon the heroes and the monsters. Giving the Erquigdlit tracking scent, a bite, and low light gight
 

It's these sorts of discussions that chase me back to want to use 2nd or 3rd edition rules. Much less to read.

It's these sorts of discussions that chase me back to want to use 2nd or 3rd edition rules. Much less to read.

Breaking down everything into abstractions is a good idea... in the abstract. 
 
But we're people, who don't think about these kinds of things in the abstract.  We're playing a game in which our "playing pieces" are intended to represent people. 
 
We're not playing a physics engine or a biology simulator.  I'm fond of saying "good enough is good enough", and I think that what we've got in 6e is good enough.  The mix of stats and the breakdowns and all. 
 
If we keep breaking everything into pieces parts, you could have a character who can lift 12.5 tons but can't damage a normal person by punching them, but I can't imagine a person (which is, again, what our playing pieces are supposed to be) who can do that. 
 
It's nice to keep some concrete representation.

I'll sum up my feelings and bow out also.
 
There is merit in Doc and Hugh's ideas. More system balance is a good thing.
 
But I feel they are diving too deep into the mechanics and losing the passion. They're writing for The Advanced GM Guide while I'm working on the Player Handbook.

This isn't about gameplay so much as it is about marketing.
 
HERO is a Supers game at heart and has always been linked most strongly to Champions in the gaming world. So, when we look at first impressions, newbies will want their PC to "Be as strong as the Hulk", or "As nimble as Spider-Man", or "An engineer as good as Tony Stark". And what will your system show them? Not a tangible value but a bonus to a roll. It takes 6th edition and makes it dryer and wordier and you'll still have to use Characteristics to describe the roll type. All you're really doing is eliminating high base skills because you'll have to buy the bonuses for each or at a higher rate for a group so no Figured Skills.
 
Your system does make system costs more balanced, but it lacks emotion in character creation. The RPG industry has been going for 40+ years and I've never seen a product with no Characteristics. And all of those games use those Characteristics to (Wait for it...) give modifiers to rolls. They just make it easier to visualize a character concept and certainly to individualize one. 
 
HERO's problem isn't in how fun the gameplay is, it's how complicated character creation is perceived to be.  As a halfway measure you could just change the costs of Skills. Make them cost 2 points for a base 11 or less and 4 points for a base of 9+Char/5. You can only add All Combat/Noncombat and Overall levels to the 2 point Skills but can buy up the 4 point Skills at +1 per 2 points.

Almost bought one of those in the 80s, but looking at the demolition ranch folks they found problems that were not spoken of back then like the less than sterling accuracy, and the number of dud rounds. Still it was quite cool to see that they are indeed lethal.  

I did a bit of stuff with the Golden Age about 15-20 years ago.
 
Golden Age superheroes were very cookie cutter. After noticing this, I created a template that included the common features of most Golden Age heroes, allowing me to really churn out the write-ups.

If I get around to it, I will post it here. It's on my old computer, so I can't just grab it. In any case, it was based on 250 point 5e characters, and would take a bit of modification for 6e and another point total.

Briefly though, I went with 20 Str, 20 Dex, 20 Con and 5 Spd as the baseline. About 100 points of characteristics, 125 of powers and 25 points of skills. Modify from there. Fairly low powered, but everyone was more or less the same. Naturally, these were starting versions of the characters.

Almost bought one of those in the 80s, but looking at the demolition ranch folks they found problems that were not spoken of back then like the less than sterling accuracy, and the number of dud rounds. Still it was quite cool to see that they are indeed lethal.  

I’ll let people know about the sphere when Ibgo to Vegas late September. 

If I recall the newer editions correctly, one cannot add to one's focus STR damage beyond the point of doubling the damage dice.

That was pretty cool for an animation that I am pretty sure qas rendered with a Sega Genesis.   
 
 
as cool as it was, though, I suspect our long-standing history as land animals has a lot to do with underrepresentation.  Even a space habit, we think "well, at least it be quick" when we consider catastrophic failure.
 
swimming to exhaustion and drowning awake....   That's a lot harder to get behind, I am afraid....
 
 

From my notes in the current Sunday D&D Campaign
Once past the bridge we hid from another RoboT-Rex. That's the second we have seen. that plus the orcs with the fused weapon arms, and the glowing mouths, mean there is an Alhoun  turning the entire city of Esme into his private hunting preserve. (The comment was, "A supervillain in his building phase).
 

What I did, was require spellcasters to buy an END Reserve, renamed "Mana Pool." You can put whatever Limitations you like on the RECovery of that END Reserve; including only refilling once a day. I ALSO put the "Requires a Roll" on the END Reserve and NOT on the spells; this has the effect of still requiring a roll to cast the spell (because you can't cast the spell without spending END, and it has to come from that Reserve) but the roll is not so cripplingly penalized because it's hard to spend enough Active Points of END to invoke the penalty. (no penalty at up to 25 END.) When the spellcaster is out of Mana, they have to stop casting until they replenish it (however you define as a way to replenish - rest, prayer, study, doing good deeds, sacrificing small animals, whateve
 
Here's an idea if you want to up the stakes.  Proceed with the mana pool, and have a magic skill roll to tap the mana pool.  However if they blow the roll, the END cost comes off the caster's end not the Mana Pool.  Recovery is as normal, for both the caster, and the manna pool.  Zero manna in the mana pool, but it does allow the caster in dire circumstances to whip off a few spells before they fall down. (and get captured by the baddies for their nefarious purposes)

23 becoming Default DEX is also possibly the fault of the "Joy of DEX" - another Goodman's School of Cost Effectiveness pointers in Champions II.

I think that's an underappreciated argument.  The absolute SPD and CV matter much less than the relative SPD and CV.  SPD/CV inflation starts with the baseline.  When it's too high, it forces everything else up...and it's even worse, because there's less *relative* difference between 4 and 6, than there is between 2 and 4.  The highly agile, quick types tend to need a 7, not a 6.
 
Another point here might be making +1 to all DEX rolls cheaper...so you can define the Olympic-caliber gymnast with a 13 DEX for initiative purposes, but +1, possibly even +2, to all DEX skills.  Maybe that's not needed, but it'd help cases like that, or for the master thief as we've mentioned.  
 
Last point for now...figured characteristics probably played a major NEGATIVE role in this process.  Because it was so much cheaper and easier to buy the brick's DEX up, and let the CVs come along for the ride.  5E doesn't even have a mechanism to raise CV directly.  That creates a pretty strong assumption that you're expected to go with it.  That slow super's 3 CV isn't good enough...and looks even worse on paper.  Flip side...if you define OCV and DCV as characteristics in their own right, where the baseline value is tied to the DEX, as it is with SPD...well, suddenly the grossly disproportionate, broken cost of DEX becomes explicit and glaring.