SSgt Baloo

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease In one campaign I ran, there were 5-6 PCs, depending on who could show up. one of the characters was a wealthy industrialist (15 pts wealth), another was potentially as rich, but he had an array of expensive toys (super vehicles, base etc.) and only had 5 points of wealth to represent what was left over after he maintained the "good stuff". All the rest but one were "Default level" wealth (0 points). The last one was completely destitute. He was also an animal (no civil rights) and the team's mascot, so it's not like he slept in the gutter and ate out of garbage cans. At least not once he suckered, Errr... joined the Super Team.

Re: Muppet Champions Am I the only one here having Greg the Bunny flashbacks? Let's hear it for Fabric/Americans!

Re: Smelly Bob Oboy! Sounds like Sewer Urchin from The Tick (the animated series).

Re: KISS vs MEPD? Howzabout KISS vs MELD? It has just occurred to me what an unwieldy acronym MEPD is. I hereby propose that MEPD be replaced by MELD (Model Every Last Detail).

Re: KISS vs MEPD Nonsense. "Silly" is too mild a word to penetrate an engineer's ego. Attempting to humble an engineer by calling him silly is about as effective as trying to protecting yourself from an attacking grizzly by wearing armor made out of marshmallows and coldcuts. "Stupid" is sharp enough to deflate an engineer's ego without causing lasting harm to his psyche. Anyhing less is unlikely to divert his attention. Save your indignation for words that convey truly vile sentiments. Mature people can use most words to convey civil meaning even if children (some in adult bodies) may use these same words in an uncivil manner. If you can't hear certain words without breaking into a rash of indignation (and without regard to context), you're too thin-skinned to be allowed in public without adult supervision.

Re: Dr. Hannibal Lector (Preliminary write up) Emphasis added. Why not just buy his telepathy with the Invisible advantage? Also, my knowledge of Hannibal Lector lore is very superficial. Is he truly psychic* or is he just really, really good at figuring people out? *I would've asked if he was really mental but that would only obscure the issue.

Re: Real life drug effects in Hero terms? SNK! Repped!

Re: Supress & Dispel: How effective? Actually, most versions of that attack lost effectiveness with each retelling. Remember, a joke stops being as funny when you've heard it before (and survived).

Re: Supress & Dispel: How effective? That reminds me of several different fictional weapons: The Blame Thrower from Mystery Men. The Tasp from Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle's Known Space series. The Joke Warfare skit from Monty Python's Flying Circus. I was so impressed by the Joke Warfare skit that over the years I've created several different versions of a lesser, nonlethal joke. Most times it's been a NND with the defense being that the victim must be able to perceive and understand the joke. You can tell the joke to your dog all day and he'l just sit there and wag his tail. People who are simply too literal-minded to understand humor without having it explained to them are immune. If you're deaf and can't read lips, it might still work if told in AMESLAN*, etc. *AMErican Sign LANguage.

Re: Teen Champions - Sacramento Google yourself a map of Sacto. Examine the area north of the American River, south of Fair Oaks boulevard, within a couple of miles of Watt Avenue. That's the High Rent District, with expensive homes, exclusive schools, and access to parks all along the river, in case your teens want to play hookey.

Re: Power up a TV or movie character. If I could remember all their names I'd suggest the characters from Are You Being Served?

Re: Power up a TV or movie character. I first saw the 1951 fantasy/comedy You Never Can Tell when I was five years old. I remember one scene where a woman (the reincarnation of a race horse) is trying to catch a bus. As the bus accelerates up through 35 MPH, she keeps up with it, running in high heels, accompanied by the sound of hoofbeats. The detective, Rex Shepherd, is the reincarnation of a recently deceased dog, sent back to Earth to bring his killer to justice. Despite the silly premise, I liked the movie. Perhaps these characters already have superpowers? ISTR that they could communicate with other animals just by speaking to them (at one point the race horse goes out to the track to exchange gossip with the other horses). If the ex-horse can run as fast as a real horse, perhaps she has other horsey abilities, such as strength and stamina? Perhaps Rex can run as fast as a dog and possesses superior senses that enable him to do the detective thing all that much better? In 1980, Chevy Chase and Benji stood that premise on its head in Oh! Heavenly Dog!. OHD was one of the few Chevy Chase movies that was any good. At several points in the movie, Chevy Chase's character switches between Dog and Human forms, though the circumstances are beyond his control. I did once write up Dennis the Menace after watching Home Alone. The latest edition of Adventurer's club I had at that time just happened to have wierd martial arts, so he wound up with kid-fu, lots of luck, and a variety of weapons based on children's toys.

Re: Power up a TV or movie character. Great topic, but most of the TV series that I watch are either documentary in nature (Animal Cops: Houston, Mythbusters) or the protagonist(s) are already super in some way {Heroes, The Tick, Greg the Bunny). If I can think of anything, I'll chime in.

Re: L.A. Caveman That's okay. I grew up in a non-rep environment. Just being told I done good gives me a warm fuzzy. Er... In an unambiguously masculine, nonsexual way.

Re: L.A. Caveman The truth is a harsh mistress, and she's really kinky. I googled several permutations of "hyena", "sex", "mating", "behavior", and "social". I found many websites which substantiate Vestnik's claim. Here are three: Sex and the Spotted Hyena, an article on the Smithsonian Institute's National Zoological Park website. An article written by a claimed expert (or perhaps it's a book excerpt?) This one's from someone's Animal Information Website It's official. I'm boggled.

Re: Supress & Dispel: How effective?

Re: KISS vs MEPD You don't know engineers. That extra "S" is absolutely necessary because their egos tend to blind them to potential improvements in their designs (and most of them know it). The inclusion of "Stupid" at the end of KISS is a reminder that a little humility* enables you to look objectively at something you designed, to "see the warts on your own baby" as it were. This allows you to find more efficient ways to do the same thing. You don't have to like it. The engineering community has embraced the KISS principle as an eternal TRVTH, a valuable tool that helps produce better work. It just so happens that the above principle has applications in other fields of endeavor, and so I embrace it as well. That one word "Stupid" is an essential part of keeping things simple, and makes the acronym a poetic mnemonic. KISS isn't just about simplicity, it's about approaching problems with full knowledge of your capabilities and limitations. If you aren't aware of your limitations, you will never overcome them. If you simply cannot abide the notion that you might have some blind spots (aka: Stupidity), or simply don't want to admit even occasional, slight stupidity, then perhaps you still might find utility in Colin Chapman's aphorism: "Simplify and add lightness". Whenever you see KISS you can simply substitute SAAL. *Humility isn't thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less. Humble people know their limitations and are therefore able to compensate for them.

Re: Older Gamers, Older Characters? It is if you're approaching from the other direction!

Re: KISS vs MEPD When I first read the above I thought "Wasn't that an episode of Family Guy?"

Re: Building a Giant: the Checklist It's Super Surgeon! With his fantastic Remove Growth power, he can treat everything from warts to cancer to that ever-so-annoying conjoined twin!

In another thread, I'm endorsing the "Keep It Simple" approach. There are a few things that are fairly simple IRL that aren't overtly covered by HERO System rules and I'd like to know how you might model them in a Champions setting. Example: In one campaign, one of the heroes (yet another Paraplegic in Powered Armor) wanted his character to have a cell phone built into his powered armor. This was in (about) 1992, and cell phone tech wasn't widespread. The phones were still pretty big. Mostly people used them for busines purposes. I figured that, since he had High Ranged Radio Hearing built into his suit, cell phone capability should be included free-of-charge. Still, I'm curious. Nowadays they have cell phones that do more than allow you to call someone else. Some have GPS capability so that emergency services can send help to you, even if you don't know where you are. Others offer internet access, digital photography/videography, and I don't know what all else. If you absolutely had to model it (say, one of your PCs had a suppress against cell phones) how would you do it? Furthermore, what other mundane objects are worth modeling, even if you never actually make anyone pay for them with character points?

Re: KISS vs MEPD Actually, that's an elegantly simple approach. That method is just the opposite of the excessively nitpickey methods fostered by MEPD.

Re: KISS vs MEPD The following applies only to Superheroic campaigns and is not intended to suggest, imply or accuse anybody/anything else. If someone takes the focus you paid points for, you will eventually get it (the focus) back, or at least the points it cost so you can replace it with something similar. If you pick up Evil Pediatrician's Lollipop of Doom®, you can use it so long as it's a universal focus. If it isn't a universal focus, you still may keep it. In either case, the points it's built from aren't yours, so it is entirely up to the GM how long the thing remains functional once it's been removed from the person who routinely does whatever maintenance is required to keep it that way. If Captain Illuminator's powers of illumination are so feeble that he can't compete with a flashlight from K-Mart, Id've had him rewrite the character until he was superior to a flashlight. Normal equipment that does what superhero equipment does is bigger, heavier, liable to failure when operating at maximum capacity, liable to run out of fuel sooner than super equipment, etc. It only takes 15 points to be fabulously wealthy. Why shouldn't Splatman's 12D6 physical Energy Blast (a big jet of water) be superior to Fire Man's 1952 LaFrance fire engine? At least Splatman doesn't require a crew of professional firemen to wet something down. The following applies only to Heroic[/i] campaigns and is not intended to suggest, imply or accuse anybody/anything else. In my heroic campaigns, nobody pays points for equipment without special GM permission (and probably Inventing and some other relevant skills, besides). Money for equipment is the default condition.

Re: KISS vs MEPD This is all good feedback from everybody (even, or maybe especially the irritated ones. Archermoo and Occam's Spoon explained the origin of the KISS principle perfectly. It's not something to browbeat others with, but a Mantra to remind yourself not to be so impressed by your own genius that you forget that unnecessary complexity is the enemy of good design. As far as mundane or found items go (aka Possessions Of Opportunity), I give two different examples: The Frequency-Adjustible Radiation Transmitter carried by Acronym Man that acts as a flashlight is still better than a flashlight. The flashlight Blind-as-a-Bat-Man bought on sale at Wally-mart will produce some amount of useful light. It will also be liable to failure at the GMs discretion. Acronym Man's device may, as A-M earns experience, be tinkered with and improved. The thing is, its points are his points. If he loses it, he can make another or, in the case of a unique item, it will show up later. If Captain Klepto finds the Thermonuclear Potato Peeler dropped by Atomic Vegan in their last battle, he can keep it. If it's a universal focus, he might even use it. It will, however, cease to function at some point. Afterwards, if Captain K wants it to do more than look spiffy in his trophy case, he'll have to cough up the points for a working model.

Re: L.A. Caveman