Blue

Re: Weird Entangle Situation I would think (And I'm no expert) that the entangle would attack once per each of the Druid's phases, not once per hex the person moves through. So if a guy could traverse 5 hexes, he need only break the entangle once and move his five hexes. Again I'm no expert. And right now I'm trying to remember if once one person broke the entangle if that breaks it for everyone... but I don't think it does. Also, I think a good way to simulate the effect might have been "Sticky". Thus anyone coming into the area after it was cast would wind up with the entangle trying to grab them as well, regardless of when the Druid put up the entangle.

A one use Time Travel back to the beginning of the previous Turn (I don't allow such things in my game, but I did create this power once for the heck of it)... simply called "Come again?" Also, the stinking gas cloud called, "Pull my finger", the dizzying power called "The Tea Cups" -- referring to the Disneyland ride, and the extra-dimensional space called "Baba Yaga's Pub".

The "reformed" criminal will still be a loose canon, trust me. The only female of the group, not raised in civilized society, she has a code of personal ethics, and this will directly conflict with anyone pledged to uphold the law. Should be entertaining as heck. There are ten of us in all. Of those, I can expect 4 to 6 on most game days, which is... manageable. But there's the potential for that odd Ten-man slugfest day. I'm feeling better about the campaign this morning. I think I need to sweep them into it more, get the assimilated. Then if they suddenly get an inspiration for a character that works better, I'll let them swap that one in.

These are not the kind of guys to let me make their characters. The three or four that have turned out fairly well so far are because the player asked me questions, sent me samples, let me make suggestions, etc. The others showed up with no character concept and I was stuck trying to juggle them all at once. The character making session was both a good and bad idea, it turns out. Wish I had time to build the characters one at a time with them, or that they had the wherewithal to send me questions about what they want so I could build samples and e-mail them back. But many of them are just not motivated character builders. But that holds true for most of the games they play; difference is that come game day they know the system and can build a character quickly if need be. Here they don't know it and expect me to help them last minute.

Woohoo! I was just thinking: "There are not enough simian related supplements for this game." Problem solved!

Funny you should ask. I just reworked my site to get it out of a very encumbering MSN group. It looks pretty sharp now without all that microsoft advertising jammed in there. http://home.earthlink.net/~webstudio In a nutshell, the City of Lazarus has lost it's team of heroes. They were demolished in a horrendous incident only hinted at by the GM and not fully documented. After a protracted legal battle, the city has gotten permission from the inheritor of the local Super-base to house a new team of heroes. The city has put out a call and gotten... the player characters. The city has grown up out of nothing in the short ten years it has existed and is already rivaling much larger cities. It is also under a crimewave that is disproportional to the rest of the country. There are undertones of a pending apocalypse keyed around this city, only no one knows the full story, and the guy who probably had most of the clues, is dead. Characters are employees of the city, given the base and it's resources with the proviso that they prevent super-powered crime and minimize their impact on the surroundings (Translation: Don't just arbitrarily cause collateral damage)

I've actually been thinking about this. I figure the only way they can work together is if he thinks that he's there to guide that individual. And I've already built into the campaign a function for allowing reforming criminals on the super-team, with a "watched". He can easily be the person responsible for monitoring the criminal. Now yer just reading my mind! (Cut that out) That's what the first scenario was going to be last night, to familiarize the players with the mechanics of combat (and refresh my memory). It was a sort of virtual combat. They were going to log onto the base's computer and perform a virtual fight. After all, no one can afford to really blow up danger room after danger room. This is the base's alternative. The guy arranging the test combat was going to sell it to them as a "team building exercise" then afterwards tell them about the fight. If I hadn't been so worn out by the character making, I might have pushed for the test combat. I sense the only way they're going to get what a pain this procedure is, is by actually experiencing it. Hero-math is intensive. After having to re-design their powers before every combat, they're going to get the message. But it will be painful at first. Plus I expect the other players to start beating them about the head and genitals anytime the players bog down the gameplay with power manufacturing. The individual is called "rodeo clown" and he's a fairly tough physical combatant, and probably the best rounded character (stats and powers being appropriate to one another) but I don't think the player would be happy with me posting his work. Thanks for the suggestions. I've been going over my alternatives since about 6pm last night, so I'm accounting for some of this stuff already. It turns out I'm probably here mostly for reassurance

I considered that as well. Of the campaigns offered to them (One D&D, one a sort of Vampire/Mage/Abberrant Hybrid, and my Champions campaign), I think all of the people who bothered to cast an opinion at all picked mine as their first choice. And these are guys who love Vampire and D&D. So I felt very positive about things. I think lack of system knowledge has slowed them down. And four of us have FREd, but only two of those were present at this character making session. So two books were being shared by six people. Anytime I was asked a question I had to try and pull it from memory because my book was in use. By the end of the evening I was kind of glad when they didn't seem to want to hang around and do a sample combat. I was dying to fall back and regroup at that point.

Yeh, I'm going to have to roll with it. These are experienced players, but I'm not seeing the flair out of them that I was seeing in the past five or so games we played (Vampire and various D&D incarnations). I'm not all that good at classifying the campaign. I've been targeting a sort of traditional contemporary marvel/dc universe. Most of the characters in CKC would drop into this campaign pretty well. I've got one player who is making a misplaced D&D character (actually, a misplaced D&D monster). Interestingly enough, his is one of the tighter concepts. I have one person making a former criminal with problems focusing on being heroic. In and of itself, this works fine for roleplaying. But there will be definite conflicts with... The character who is a judge, complete with gavel and robes, who brokers no criminal wrong-doing from anyone Two scientists with gadget pools that are based around different effects. I expect both guys to spend great amounts of time manufacturing powers and slowing gameplay, despite my strong suggestion that they get together some useful gadgets now. One of said gadgeteers spent a chunk of points on a vehicle. This will make him effective about HALF the time. The half when he is outdoors. Four of the characters have very weak stats. They're built like they are practically human. I expect two of the seasoned players to wind up doing most of the fighting while everyone else sits around regretting their 3 and 4 SPD. I've done my best to cajole and coax them toward higher abilities. They seem completely unconcerned with making balanced characters. What I figure will happen is this: I'll get them into a fight, they'll realize that their characters have definite problems, then either a)They'll revise said characters (with my blessing), b)They'll want to bring in new characters altogether, or c)They'll want to play something else because they aren't getting the hang of it. Either way, I'll run and hope for the best. I'm defintely going to have to start with easier villains though. (Did I mention the clown? Funny thing is that most of the other players seem to hate this character concept; have read the character, it actually works better than most of theirs.)

This topic is very much on my mind this morning. Last night I managed to wrangle together most of the players to be involved in my campaign. There are those who have plenty of ideas, and those who show up and hope for some direction. Naturally, I hoped the two would mix (as in... "I have an idea for you--try this!"). So they made characters while I rolled around the table from person to person, answering questions... After five hours of character making, I have come to the conclusion that this will be the most screwed up campaign ever. I have a terrible feeling about this campaign, for the following reasons: 3 to 4 of the players have some concept of what they want to do. The others put no imagination into it. Two players are making characters that border more on villains from "The Tick" than on solid superheroic characters. No amount of cajoling seems capable of getting them onto the right path. There are a disproportionate number of gadgeteers, and no one seems to care. No pure bricks, just two people with above average STR and martial arts. No Energy Projectors!...This is so inconceivable to me that I could have never seen it coming. Worst of all, I think the players less interested in the proper tone of the campaign are turning off both me and the other players. For a minute I thought about switching the tone around, but then I'd have the same problem going the other way. So I thought I'd ask: Have you ever put together a campaign that seemed doomed from the outset? If so, how did it turn out for you?

D20 is to Call of Cthulhu as a) National Enquirer is to Literature Boy Bands are to Music c) ShadowShulker is to Intelligent discourse d) All of the above

"Behold your worst enemy. And by that, I am referring to yourselves, weakling heroes." "Of course. Hope springs eternal. Or, no, wait... It's ME that seems to keep coming back. Hope is a distant second, wouldn't you agree?" "You need not try to impress me. All you really need do is bleed." "Yes it is I, Mechanon. And I suspect that if I could smell, sweat would not be the only bodily fluid escaping you right now." "Pathetic. Do I need to show you how to use your own weapons?" "I, children, am Mechanon: Cure for the common human."

I actually have a tentative considerations in my campaign where the campaign is at 80 Active Pt Max on attacks but if it's in a Multipower it can only be 75% of the multipower pool Pools are fixed at 80ts to start. (Thus they can only have attacks at 60 Active points or less). And that's great for controlling the campaign at it's start. My worry is that even with this rule in place, through the far cheaper cost of raising a power in MP, those MP-based characters will soon outpace everyone else.

In my old campaign I didn't allow multipowers, just to keep life simple. For this campaign I'm willing to give them a try, but I can't get past one thing: That with an MP your powers would mathematically raise at a higher rate, far outpacing someone without an MP. By my calculations, I can make sure at the campaign start that everyone is within reason on their level of power, but once they start getting experience, it seems like people with an MP should be able to climb up the power scale far faster. Example: A guy with 3 Attacks at 60 Active Points each would have to pay 15 Exp. to get each of them up by 5pts. - BUT - A guy with 3 Attacks in a Multipower could raise the pool by 5pts and each slot by 5 active which is 1pt slot cost, and it only cost him 8pts to raise those three powers. Are you folks experiencing a problem with MP-based characters outgunning the rest of the player characters over time? If so, have you developed a way to combat it?

Here's my take: To start, like Neo, you don't have any special skills or abilities because you are handcuffed in the matrix by the same perception of yoruself as you would have in real life. So a superhero jacking into the matrix might have the same superpowers he had in the real world. But to do matrixy effects one would have to be taught to lose their misconception of how the world works. This means that in my game, any heroes plugging in will be able to do thier own abilities like in the real world, but if they want to do more than that they'll actually have to spend experience and buy skills/powers with a limitation specific to only working inside the matrix. "Blue" is built entirely this way. She is normal in the real world, but has learned to go beyond that in the net, since she practically lives there, and therefore has all sorts of neo-esque abilities that she can't do when awakened into the real world. She also has special SPD and DEX bought for only in the net, with the special effect that it's the product of having actual cyber-jacks, as compared to everyone else who has to use electrode-type hookups (and who operate at their normal real-world speed when in the matrix). I've had this character concept for seven years now and only refined it since the first matrix came out. Now that I'm finally getting around to runnng it as an NPC, it almost seems totally borrowed because of Reloaded.

And here I just figured it had finally spontaneously combusted. Didn't think to look for it somewhere else.

Patriot Martial Artist: This is a toughy. I've been trying to think of slang names related to soldiers in the revoutionary war. Minuteman is as close as I get. I was hoping for something kind of like "Johnny Reb" from the Civil war. Patriot Metamorph: Revolution, Revolutionary, Patriot Mystic: American Spirit Are any of these female? For my own use I've been hanging onto "Liberty Belle" but haven't had a place to use it yet.

Yes. I'm in Orange County and I got my copy on Saturday from Game Castle in Fullerton. It was my fourth store I checked that day before finding one...and they had 5 copies. According to Brookhurst Hobbies website (also in OC) they got their shipment in the past two days. So yes, the book is here.

There is nothing more frustrating than getting those bad boys home and making them look only half as good as the picutres!

Reaper has certainly set the bar high. Of course I think that the coolest miniatures are the Confrontation minis. But superfigs are (practically) the only game in town with reaper only putting out 4 superhero figs so far (which are awesome btw. Sandra Garrity has real talent)

I likely shared this story before. It was a murder as a result of a character's poor choice of disadvantages. For some unknown reason the player chose "Berserk when struck by falling debris". I wasn't picky back then because it was all about getting the player out there to do battle. So naturally the character encounters someone on the street who taunts her. When one offers her a few bucks to go in the alley with him she punches him full bore. Now this was the player's fault, absolutely! Didn't pull punch or anything. So this brick kills the guy by virtue of a punch plus knockback! He goes THROUGH the wall. Then unluck kicks in (I was deciding if cops were nearby). Gets TWO levels of unluck. So I say that debris falls. The player remembers his berserk and rolls... sure enough, the character flips out and begins to beat everyone in sight much the way they had hurt the first person. It was a massacre! I'm not sure that player ever took a berserk again. But they were hunted by the police, but never brought to trial. I sort of let that storyline drop, unfortunately. I'd love to do a trial now, if that player was still around.

Four new ones, two of which are vehicles.. http://www.fourcolorfigs.com/catalog.html Hard to tell the scale on those vehicles though.

Nick "Fist of God" Hardcastle Phillip "Judgment day" Hayes Sal "Battering Ram" Cole Mark "The Saint" Del Santo (Okay, this guy was a boxer AND mafia in my game) Ron "Executioner" Hexton Jack "Battery" Flannery Mike "The Defendant" Tyson "The People versus" Mike Tyson Okay, maybe not those last two.

Best real life boxer nicnames: Thomas "Hit Man" Hearns, "Hands of Stone" Roberto Duran, and James "Bonecrusher" Smith. Moe "Kid Presentable" Sizlak. Okay, so that last one is not from the real life, but I had to squeeze in my daily Simpsons reference. A little war influence on the name might help. "Air Raid" Tony Lynch "The Brooklyn Bomber" Butch Holt Ray "U.S." Steel "Howitzer" Al Cross Lou "The Hook" Carmichael Sam "Shellshock" Hope I kinda like "U.S. Steel" as a nickname, personally. Though U.S. also works with the last name of Bonds.

Ya know, these are the kind of twists I *love* in a campaign. But it's never happened with a player character in one of my superheroic campaigns. I've switched an NPC or two, but that's it. But now I have evil thoughts running through my head. I think I need to build some temptation into my game...