SSgt Baloo

Re: The Ultimate WWYCD: Ninja or Pirate! The Cat With No Name: Who cares as long as somebody feeds me fish?

Re: WWYCD: Egg-olution! Didn't Jimmy Neutron already deal with these guys?

Re: Mission hooks, getting your players into the game http://www.gaffney-sc.com/Waterpeach.htm Scientist character: "Hmmm... It looks like some form of petrified fossil. Ah-HA! Look here! I was right! it's a giant butt-o-saurus. See the petrified toilet paper caught in its crack." Likewise, if the campaign world were set near Roswell, NM, you might discover one or more "crashed" flying saucers. There were were at least two mock-ups: one in each of the two competing museums. There were possibly several other scattered about the countryside for advertizing purposes. For that matter, you might discover a saucer cult whose members eagerly await the return of the Space Brothers.

Re: The Benchwarmers: Semi-super heroes Actually, he goes to undead night school. He hopes that when he gets his degree, he might, at last, get a head.

Re: An Avengers Campaign, version 3.0 Good stuff, Maynard! Repped!

Re: WWYCD: It's time for the Megaman KidZ Show! Bob Tiger (Via telephone): "Exellent treatment! Love your stuff, baby! I have just a few minor problems with the material you've shown me so far. Before I sign anything I'll need script approval, a conference with the creative staff, and my agent needs to see anything you want me to sign before I'll even look at it. Tell you what: have your people call my people and we'll work out the details. Gotta go!" *Click* Thunder Rabbit (Also via telephone): "Yes, I got the package you sent. It looks like a pretty good show. I noticed Chuck Freling directed the episode you sent me. No, I know there weren't any credits. I just recognized his style. No, I wasn't complaining, keep him on. I wanted to know if I could meet him in person? Y'know, get his autograph -- that sort of thing? Hell yeah I'm a fan! I've been watching his work since I was knee-high to a hamster! No, that's just a figure of speech. Yeah, I know I look like a linebacker in a bunny suit. I wanted to ask one other thing. I know you've already got somebody to do my voice, but I was wondering if you could let me do some scratch work some time? Okay, If ya gotta go then." *Click!*

Re: Swashbucklers & Sorcery Aquatic Carriage: The spellcaster summons aquatic animals which will then tow his boat. The size, number and type of creatures summoned are dependent upon the spellcster's ability. An Arch Wizard might be able to summon a team of whales able to tow a galleon into the teeth of a hurricane, whereas an apprentice would be lucky to summon a large(ish) turtle barely able to tow a small dinghy in calm seas.

Re: The Benchwarmers: Semi-super heroes By this I shouldn't suppose you ever plan to have children then?

Re: L.A. Caveman Something like this perhaps (the one with the spots is supposed to be Hyena-American)? Of course, if D&D gnolls had looked like that, I suppose we wouldn't have been so unfriendly to them?

Re: It's Full of Tiny People! Actually one power I thought "the ship" should have is an extremely high resistance to mental attacks, since there are about 250 minds packed into a space the size of a human body. At one point it was planned to look like a 4' diameter model of the C-57D from Forbidden Planet, because it was a wicked-cool flying saucer, the first I ever saw on TV or in the movies that wasn't piloted by the bad guys. And I really liked the movie.

Re: Golden Age Heroes... Thanks! It was a lot of work and some of the references need updating, but it's nice to hear some appreciation. Thanks! I'd forgotten about the marathon poker game. I enjoyed M*A*S*H so much that I read all of the sequels, or at least as many as I could get my mitts on. Our games weren't quite as perpetual as my description may have let on, but we'd sometimes go 2 days continuously with breaks only for the necessities (bathroom, food, liquor, & occasionally a "haircut" downtown). Sometimes we'd continue the roleplaying on the way over to the chowhall (excuse me: dining facility*), while we stood in line for our grub, while we were eating, and during the walk back (we were really big on character interaction). Sleep came when the scenario was finished. Thanks in advance, then! [Captain Aphorism] Study hard, listen to your elders and obey your parents and someday it will be YOU doing great things! [/Captain Aphorism] * The Chow Hall staff would always correct you if they heard the term: "Chow Hall". So we always did!

Re: The Benchwarmers: Semi-super heroes Excellent concept, but I like the next one better. Could you imagine Ben Stein as this character?

Re: The Benchwarmers: Semi-super heroes That description reminded me of a character from the 1960s Alvin Show. Sam Valiant, Private Nose was featured in one episode (he looked sort of like those big-nosed guys with the bushy moustaches from the Pink Panther cartoons). If I remember correctly, he wore a trench coat, fedora, and dark glasses. He seemed to be blind, but compensated for it with his terrific sense of smell.

Re: Name That Cult Imagine a titan wearing overalls and a baseball cap. He carries a toolbox in one hand, and an oversized wrench in the other. There's a greasy rag hanging out of his hip pocket. And then of course there's his business partner, The Quantum Mechanic.

Years ago, I was trying to come up with a new (for me) character concept. I came up with what seemed at the time to be a pretty clever idea, but I kept "wrapping around the axles" when I started to fill in the details. The main idea was that the character was a starship, dispatched to Earth to study the natives and determine if Earth was ready for contact. When the vessel arrived, however, it was discovered by several supervillains who just happened to be monitoring space about here the ship dropped out of hyperspace. The ship was immediately placed in stasis by one villain, (and subsequently stolen and re-stolen by various other villains). Eventually, the PCs' hero group finds it and turns off the stasis device, wherupon, after some negotiating, the ship's captain decides to remain on earth under the condition that the heroes help them in their mission to understand and analyze Earth culture without revealing that the ship is anything but a robotic device. The ship itself is ~2m long, 1m wide, and 1/2m thick, and vaguely resembles a model of Battlestar Galactica. The crew numbers about 250 human-like beings who stand 1/4 inch tall (roughly 6.25mm). The ship is protected by force fields, armor, etc., and has a comprehensive sensor and ECM suite. Offensive capability is limited to energy weapons (think miniaturized phasors) and tractor beams. How would you begin to construct this monster?

Re: Defining the "Mystery Creature". Yep! Some of the best gaming sessions take off in unexpected directions, with some minor plot point turning out to be the linchpin around which the entire scenario revolved. I am a firm disbeliever in forcing the characters into situations they're too strong/smart/clever to get into just because the scenario calls for it.

Re: L.A. Caveman Well, f'rinstance instead of wolves, there were the carniverous descendants of rats, called Ravenes. For the nonhuman sapients, I gave the apes human-level intelligence and speech of one sort or another (chimps had sign language 'cos it was cool!) There was one nonhuman race modeled after that vaguely humanoid canine thingy from D&D (not kobolds. Gnolls maybe?) I borrowed bits and pieces from different Post-Apocalyptic fiction. One bit was that demons were created from the energy of nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons that were either just being unleashed or still in the stockpile. It was sort of like a whole bunch of malevolent genies in shell casings just waiting to be unleashed. Gunpowder and explosives became lesser imps and devils, while hospitals, schools, (occsionally) churches, and police stations becoming locuses for spiritual forces related to their former functions. They were usually opposed to demons, etc, except for cases like, f'rinstance, the police in that locale had been corrupt or maybe the church in question was governed by other-than-altrustic doctrines, etc. As the campaign progressed, the demonic forces would remain about as powerful as they were when they started. The benevolent forces would start out much weaker than the demonic forces, but as they gained adherents, they were planned to rival and eventually overhrow the demonic forces. Unfortunately, I PCSed (was transferred) before we had run more than a few scenarios. I never even got to trot out the Dachshund (descendant) that had been bred to be as big as a Clydesdale (but so much lower to the ground, don'cha know?)

Re: Timestop Difficulties

Re: Mollusk Man Build I might also suggest: Geoduck (pronounced "gooey-duck) Super Clam (The clam of steel!) If he were a beatnik he could be The Bearded Clam The Flying Scallop The Amazing Oyster-man! The Human Snail Or my personal favorite: The Incredible Conch! If he's a mollusc-like alien, then perhaps his various forms should be more different from each other than you currently envision? Suggestions: Shell Closed = Spaceflightlight mode. The character has abilities suitable for a space environment. Life Support (need not breathe, immune to vacuum/high pressure, etc.), FTL travel, megascale flight or megascale teleport, senses to help find suitable places to land (possibly a megascale discriminatory sense based on spectroscopic analysis?) Shell Partly open = Aquatic mode. The character has senses and abilities appropriate for living in an ocean, to include offensive and defensive abilities far beyond those of mortal clams. Shell wide open = Terrestrial mode. Character has abilities suited to dwelling on land. May glide about on his foot, breathe air, etc. Note that molluscs come in a variety of shapes and ablities (though I admit space-faring snails are a bit of a reach). I hope you share this character with us when he is done. I, for one, would be interested in seeing how he finally turns out.

Re: L.A. Caveman

Re: Swashbucklers & Sorcery I would have expected there to be more resources for pirate campaigns. I'll share a few of my own, as I am a self-proclaimed expert on the subject. Don't believe me? I have poof! Just look at these pictures: Admiralty: Miniatures rules for the Age of Fighting Sail. Bilge Munky: Follow the path to piratey enlightenment. Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: 1811 version -- still very useful in parsing piratese. Historical Money and Prices in the Carribean: A useful aid to the cost-conscious pyrate! Pyracy Pub Forums: A great place to ask piratey questions, especially if ye have a hankerin' for real, historical piracy (or the reenacting thereof). Tales of the Seven Seas Forums: If theatrical pyratin' be more to ye'r likin', then these scurvy dogs'll help yer find plans fer "Quaker (non-firing) cannons" or advise ye on how ter assemble yer pyratical garb without sinkin' yer wallet!

Re: Running jokes in your campaign It was once my honor to become the running gag in our Call of Cthulhu campaign. When rolling up my character (a scholarly professor), I wound up with the highest sanity score of all the characters. I knew this was a good thing, and was happy about it. Little did I know... In our first adventure, we encountered a living mummy. The GM called for us to make our sanity rolls. I confidently rolled the dice and -- blew the roll. Badly. Very badly. On D100 I'd rolled a double-nothing. Fortunately, my sanity score was high enough that the GM ruled out a "critical failure" result. Unfortunately, I maxed out the sanity loss dice anyway. The GM consulted his charts and the result was that the Professor fled as rapidly as possible in the opposite direction -- right into a brick wall. Knocked him out cold. At the end of the scenario the other characters got some sanity back because they defeated the monster. I didn't because I was taking a nap. Things grew worse from that point on. In every investigation, the Professor managed to blow his SAN roll and either bugged out or fainted. His sanity score began a steep decline, but at least he was entertaining. In every subsequent scenario, the Professor became jumpier and more cowardly. In one scenario, the Professor elected to wait in the car while the rest of the crew went inside the spooky-looking building to investigate. He saw something that required a SAN roll anyway, blew it, ran inside the house to "help" the rest of the team, ran into something else that required a SAN roll, blew that one, ran outside, jumped in the car and drove away as fast as he could. The final blow inevitably came. We were investigating a mystery and something happened that required a SAN roll. The ordinarily meek and fearful Professor became serenely confident and unafraid. This was rather unbsettling to the other players because this could only mean that something truly evil, mean, wicked and nasty was happening. The rest of the scenario had the rest of the crew trying to discover what had happened to the Professor and how to stop him (He'd been possessed by something intent on introducing nuclear warfare to a world not ready for it). Even I stood up and cheered as they finally executed the plan which sent the evil something-or-other back to wherever it came from, leaving the Professor a gibbering, drooling, mess. The men in white coats had no trouble getting him aboard the bus to the Laughing academy. I have never before nor since had so much fun playing such an inneffectual character.

Re: Name That Cult *Wince!* So much for that idea, but how about The Prometheus Society, The Promethians, The Promethius Project or something similar? The preexisting myth of a titan who brings fire to mankind even though he's subsequently punished for it might generate a positive image for the outfit. That is, at least until they unleash that first hoard of Zombie Dachshunds™ in a premature attempt to strike terror into the hearts of men (women, too!) who get freaked out by yappy, rotting, undead wienerdogs. Or, perhaps I've said too much...?

Re: Defining the "Mystery Creature". That's the thing. In the dream it wasn't clear just what these things were up to. That leaves you clear to design them as you see fit, and others to design them differently.

Last night I had a dream. In it, I was part of a largish colonizing mission to some distant, Earthlike planet. The native wildlife was, for the most part, exotic, but nonthreatening. After dark however, it became apparent that there was something unexpected prowling the night. Only a few night patrols were keeping an eye on things once the sun went down, and that's when the wierdness started up. Citizens were reporting strange, colorful lights in the surrounding trees. When the patrols began investigating, they'd see colorful lights, then start losing coherence (as if they were under the influence and couldn't think straight), then stop communicating altogether. Somehow, I could tell what was going on from a distance, but could not see the creature(s). Somehow the creatures were causing the patrolling officers to vanish, leaving their vehicles untouched (in some cases the vehicles were locked from tyhe inside with the keys still in the ignition). There wasn't any clue as to what was happening to the vanishing patrols but I could tell that the creature(s) were phasing in and out of reality, and guessed that the missing people were being taken to a nearby dimension. There was a sense that people inside buildings were somehow protected even while those outside, even in locked vehicles, weren't safe. Your job? Given the description of the mysterious creatures, describe them (or something very like them) in HERO system terms. What are these things doing to the missing people? Are they intelligent? Hungry? Curious? Dangerous?