GDShore

Your Deuterostomia does not cover a tri-lateral being or a quadrapedal. Although I suppose it could be shoehorn them into it.

Yeahhh, it was probly that, I rewatched twice and in that penultimate fight the protaganist is by far the better swordsman (I used to teach fencing). It reminded me of the Errol Flynn, Robin Hood, Flynn was such a poor swordsman vs. Rathbone (Sir Basil Rathbone,, British Army Fencing Champion twice, he even tried to teach Flynn, did successfully teach Tyrone Power) that the penultimate fight of that movie it had to be filmed as shadow's so as to not reveal Flynn's weakness. For me watching a period flim in which swords and other melee weapons are to be used can be embarassingly painful. [ I know that given that opening my opponent would be ended ]

I have just watched the Northman, not a bad film. I agree with your stats on 'Dragur' just one thing though. If it could chop thru mail and bone/flesh why did it not break his uncle's sword or at least his shield, as it did cut the head off his uncle with one blow. (I have always been opposed to the John Ford school of film making) Still other than the finale its a good film.

I am not sure about using an existing baddie, I believe that creating one from scratch is a better idea. It would give new player's and especialy new GM's an insight into charactercreation, from concepting, to fleshing the characteristics, to choosing the powers and skill sets and disadvantages. Creating your first character in "Hero System" is quite a jump if what you are used to is D&D, if we can make that esier we may extend our base. I like the idea of an apartment fire to 'assemble' the party. My first event was a multi-car pile up on a major highway as a result of a police chase of "bank robbers". There are at least as many possibilities to bring hero's together in the apartment senario as there are hero tropes.

That's too bad about Webber's work I thoroughly enjoy them but each to their own.

THere was one small, little detail I forgot to mention in my list of things a ship's Captain would have to accomplish to make the cross galaxy trip. Refeuling, the ship that is, one assumes they have enough storage for at least 3 months of consumables onboard. So, at least 12 to 18 months to make the voyage.

In the players section should be a how/why to on character build. First define what you want your character to do, then how to do it. What are your strengths, what are your weakness's, who is your nemisis or whose nemisis are you. The GM should be active in assisting the player in the process of building characteristics, powers, skills and disadvantages so that the hero will fit well within the GM's world. (guiding as gently as possible) There should be a chapter on maximizing the characteristics for lowest cost, developing a balanced and coherent powers and skills set. (not having a fireball with an ice based character) Under characters you will need to flesh out your NPC's and DNPC's these will be needed to give clues to help move the story along, and also to turn the player's around when they take the wrong turn or the misreasoning from the clues found. Under adventures, the GM will need to tailor the adventures to the size/makeup of the group and will need to know how to reshape or adapt an adventure on the fly particularly if a player misses a session. How to build each session as though it were a chapter in a book is also animportant skill to have, also incase the GM mistimes how to stretch or shorten seamlessly. Finally a couple of prepared adventures with explanations of why this or that was done and how to implement or change things as neccesary. I would very much like to contribute to such a project.

This sounds like an awesome project. First I think it will have to be devided into sections, one a GM's section, one a player's section and an adventure's section. Under GM , defining the campaign - is it local, national, inter-national or global. Is the campaign a solo, duo or group, What I think will be needed is a primer, to teach a novice (very often a group of friends will get togetherto role play, one will volunter to GM, and his knowledge will be near non-existent) a journeyman and a master how to do and how to improve their skill set. The tricks of the trade, how and why they work, the pitfalls that can break a gaming group apart what not to do and why. (this might be the most improtant part of the GM section, the why has to be explained not just told) Next is fleshing out the campaign world, who are the baddies, are they individuals, part of an informal group or a large well defined group with a clear defined goal. (eg. Injustice League - a gather of villains who are associated because they are hunted by a single hero or a batch of heros not neccessarily a defined group, the villains will have their own individual needs, drives or goals not shared by their fellows, or a SMERSH - a large group all working towards a defined goalthat may only be known by the inner cabal, while the minions toil towards it's eventual achievement.) The GM will need to have in their mind what the world will look like for an extended campaign. For the novice an existing set of villains and group[s] of villains is almost a neccessity, for the journeyman/master a DIY primer on purpose, goals and needs of their villains. As you can see I have been thinking about such for some time my self.

True Mr. Taylor true. At the same time you don't want to take so much time moving from star "A" to star "B" that your players lose focus and intrest.

Marcus is correct, it will take 2000 hours to cross the galaxy assuming the 100,000 LY width. 2000 hours = 83,3 days or just shy of the 3 months. In actuality it will probably take at least twice that, refueling, eating, sleeping and general maintainence on the vessel will extend the trip to a year to 18 months. You will have to achieve my short list of tasks to complete this goal, mainly sleeping. It has been a very long time since I pulled an all nighter, back then I went "5 days" without sleep during exam week, the end result was not pretty.

There are some very pointed questions to be asked and answered about this before using it. 1. is the transfer v forced or voluntary? (does the transferer have permission of the transferee to take their body or do they simply steal it?) 2. what happens to the body that has been acquired after the transferer decides to leave it? (does the origional user return to the body? is it left a lifeless husk? what happens to the transferee?) How many times can such a transfer be achieved? (how easy is it to do? how expensive? what resources dos it eat up?) As you can probably ascertain I am not in favour of such a concept. That is most certainly a condition of my age, I am plus 70, but my knowing that does not change my feeling, this is an evil concept, as a plot device that allows a party to face off against and oppose and in game defeat (at least that is desired) this is with out peer. I can only conceive of two circumstances in which this has a valid non-evil function. 1. transfer of the cortical stack into an android body, 2. transfer the cortical stack into the body of a clone of the stack origionator. As for how to create this in game terms, yes, eidetic memory, plus a new talent muscle memory (as a martial artist when conducting my art, I do not think of what I will next do, I simply do, if I stop to think of it I lose) [cost of this talent should be 15 character points] there would also likely be an ego, (strength of will) intelligence and maybe a perception factor at the bare minimum. Talent --- Muscle Memory - an ability to train the body to perform a series of tasks without having to think about their performance. The actions become as inate as breathing and simply are.

Regarding Robin, I later got a good copy of the azzises a Robin Hood appears in such for about 200 years (late 11th century to early 13th) with one twenty year exception falling across the period when John Lackland was in charge of England, there are two schools on why. 1. - that John was determined to create a kigdom where a naked maiden could cross it carrying a bag of gold in each hand safely (supposedly John was interested in the maid) 2. - he was jealous of the competion only he could steal in England, at any rate he pursued an anti-bandit policy throughout England that was exttemely effective. (almost 100%)

Environment can be more than one thing, fear can be a very hard thing to overcome but it can also be the climate environment. From '80 till 2000 I ran adventure's every other weekend, then I got a promotion at work (or as one of my friends called it a demotion with higher pay) and had to work every weekend from April till the end of September and sometimes into the end of November. I have always used the weather as an antagonist in my adventures. I would keep a weather diary actually 4 or 5 such. Tempreture, precipatation, wind conditions and severe weather having to face a blizard in May can be a bit of a schock. With the Change Environment Power maybe not so much anymore although, a 3-4 tornadoe might just play havock with that too. Having your party wet, cold, misarable can and will affect thier ability to function. I created at one point a table of weather effects on melee, ranged and spell casting, I wasn't capricious with the weather, I would have friends or relatives send me a daily weather report on thier locale conditions. I would use those offset by a year, to handle weather in the campain. Then there is the political environment laws, culture, prejudices and locale mores. It enrich's your world.

Did not miss a thing, had idiots for brothers who were into heavy metal and hard rock I heard it,, did you know massed highland pipe bands played on a real good expensive stereo can blow a cheap phonograph while playing acid rock right off a table thru two walls. Turned up to 12 on a 20 dial for volume, brothers were not happy, Dad was though. Also in the late 80's a freind introduced me to Kate Bush and Annie Lennox, two great artists.

Geddy who. I stopped listening to AM radio in '64 when the Beatles (shudder) showed up and drove a stake thru the heart of rock-n-roll, today I'm a lot like the "Duke" minus the metal.

Oy, that one is simple. Take one old man, put him in mismatched piece's of armor, seat him on a bedraggled charger with a chubby MPC companion riding a donkey. Voila!

This occured during the Regan years (during the air traffic controllers dispute) We had been in a long campaign which involved a 'coup' against the Canadian government, which we foiled, then traced the group back to a base near Curchill Mabitoba. After fighting our way into the base, defeating the evil doers, we discovered that the leaders were space aliens, who escaped in a private jet fleeing southwards, I was in command of the group, and contacted the Canadian forces base outside of Winnipeg, I ordered air force units to scramble and force the jet down. When they refused, claiming to be FBI agents I told the pilots "I don't care who they claim to be they are violating Canadian airspace." Two weeks later, The Calgary Herald, ran a cartoon, "two Mounties, one mounted the other dismounted wearing the red serge uniforms (which are actually dress wear) holding his hosre's reins and a smoking pistol pointed to the ground, a short distance away a figure is buried to his shoulders wearing a cape, on his chest a logo 'a diamond with an S inset. It's captioned "I don't care who he was he was violating Canadian Air Space".

First time I saw this was in a not so good western staring Roy Orbison, can not remember it's name, synopsis, a traveling minstrel show, 2 guys 2 gals ste4al a gold shipment meant for the Union during the 'civil war'. A guitar had a rifle embeded in it. Just remembered the films name -- The Fastest Guitar Alive. I think Dobie Gillies was in it, can't remember the ladies at all. The civil war ends with them still heading towards Texas.

Like the Duke I run a scenario for new players, " Zombie Apocalypse" They play themselves, do not create characters, as what I am trying to learn is their level and style of play. Only one group has survived more than 2 sessions and that became a long run campaign. Most die horribly within 2 hours. AS for re-cycling I have 12 scenarios I've been replaying for 40 years. If I play it with group 1, I later can play it with little change with group 2. (maybe just some updating)

Back when I started running a campaign (Campions E1) I would collect crme stories (started as a hobby collecting stupid criminal stories) rework the tale and and publish it as a broadsheet. For instance ' a bank robbery in which the robbers shot there way out, I'd give them high-tech weapons and armor and the body count would be way higher ' then the team would choose which set of bad guys to go after. Very quickly the team began hunting up and sending me interseting crime stories one of which lead into a loooong story arc. That one ended with the line "I don't care who they said they were they were violating Canadian airspace".

When I ran my champions campaign, a weekend where someone earned more than "2" points was a big weekend. I've always been somewhat of a miser.

Like everyone, superhero's have to eat, have shelter and wear stuff (I say stuff because one of the P.C.'s in my campaign was a clothes horse). If they constantly flited off to stop this bank robbery or that jewll heist or to face an alien invasion they would soon be out of a job or secret identity, so they all became part of "Dept. N of the R.C.M.P" reporting to the 'Govenor General' of Canada. Th3ey were based all across the country and were expected to hold until the entire team could be assembled. (much like the SWAT - Anti-terrorist team formed by the RCMP in the mid 90's) They recieved a salary and a per diem and either an apartment or house depending on circumstance. One of my players was an accountant and workeed all that out so that there was no time wasted on it in game. For a single session or 2-3 sessions money is not an issue but in a long lasting campaign it does become so, particularly if all your players are adults. (not all of them can be multi-millionaire's) We played a somewhat grittier super hero campaign, over a 7 year period more than half of the hero's died or medically retired.

I ran for about 7 years a monster month, in April, when origionally monster movies were released when I was a youngster. I did "Godzilla, Rodan, Giant Ants, the Blob, A variant of the Thing, a hidden world of Dinosaurs and finally it was how the Entomologist storyline began. Usually the group used their regular characters but sometimes they would create somone entirely new. As for magic, I have always used it as a science I never liked the D&D form. After all it has been said,, "A science sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic".

It can be a lot of fun running the big "score" event but it is taxing too, after every weekend of the 'Entomologist' I felt like I had run a marathon and I had lost 2 - 3 kilograms off my already light frame. I do not know that I would do it again but I am glad I ran that one. It is a good worthwhile memory.

Mine is actually from"Traveller Hero", The party is hired to retrieve a runaway scion, along the way they find they are not the only ones looking for him. The other group is trying to kill him. Shortly after that they discover he is an Imperial prince, fifth in line to the throne. Much adventure some heartache (one of the party is lost permanently {shot out of a missile tube into a sun will do that}) they succeed. When they rendevous to hand over the princeling, the Imperial Chancellor greets him as "Your Majesty" there had been an attempted coup and the prince was the last of the Imperial line. THe story arc took just under two years and was my second best storieline.