rjcurrie

Re: Worship the Destroyer

Re: The VPP - my bugbear. Please help! I guess it all depends on how visually oriented you are, I've always found the written descriptions of VPP to be clear, whereas that diagram would send me screaming into the night .

Re: Absolute Range Sense

Re: C25 Island of Dr. Destroyer: Official? Personally, I think you and many other are overvaluing how much of an impact your comments on these boards have on DoJ. Note my earlier comment that if you offered people free copies of Hero products for life they'd find something to complain about it. The complaints about C25 really don't seem to be much more than the usual grumbling that comes around about every product.

Re: C25 Island of Dr. Destroyer: Official? I'm curious exactly what you mean by this statement.

Re: Canadian Whites - Interviews More information on Canadian comic books, Canadian comic book characters, and Canadian creators: http://members.tripod.com/~mitchellbrown/cancom/index.html http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/c/canada.htm http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/c/canada.htm An article on how Canadians created the whole genre: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Study/4273/begin.html

Re: C25 Island of Dr. Destroyer: Official? To be honest, the adventure is a pretty basic one anyway. It's not like it is any kind of special masterpiece. I'm not sure how updating Steve did to it (I haven't looked at it yet) but I believe you can get the 3rd Edition version as part of the 3rd Edition GM screen from the online store for $1.95. Heck, you can probably find the 1st edition version on e-bay from time to time for not much more than that (I got my 1st edition copy of the rules on e-bay a couple of years ago for $2).

Re: Queer heroes I'd be interested in reading it. Having information on how such things as race, culture, or sexual identity may effect a Hero's world view is never a bad thing.

Re: Absolute Range Sense Personally, if the ability seems appropriate to the character I am creating, I buy it -- or at least, put it on the list of things I want to buy. Then when I'm bringing the charater down to campaign levels, I'll have to decide how integral to the concept the ability is and thus, whether it stays or it goes. In short, I treat the 3 point Absolute Range Sense in the same way that I would treat a 3 point KS: Exotic Plants. If I think it's appropriate for the character, I buy it if I can fit it in.

Re: The Saga of the Smiling Fox -- possible future convention event Okay. Gotcha. Something for me to keep in mind. And believe me as someone who writes software documentation for a living, I'm quite used to people not reading what I write.

Re: The Saga of the Smiling Fox -- possible future convention event Perhaps. I am aware of the risk of mixing this game with my other ones. I currently have no plans for doing so.

Re: The Saga of the Smiling Fox -- possible future convention event It doesn't feel right to me for this game. In the right game, such characters could be fun.

Re: The Saga of the Smiling Fox -- possible future convention event

Re: Queer heroes I missed this thread the first time around and just thought I would chime in now with my thoughts on the subject of gay characters in con games. When I first started my SuperSquad America convention event, I made one of the characters (Dynamo, the cyberkinetic) gay. Now, in fact, Dynamo was still in the closet the first year of the event although his sexual orientation was revealed to the rest of the team in that year's final round. By the third year, Alan Kepperman (Dynamo's secret ID) had a regular boyfriend. In that year's final, the Squad was to choose one of its own to sit on the Template throne and to be used as the template for the tone of life on Earth for the next cycle. Without much consultation with the rest of the team, Dynamo simply strode forward and attempted to take the throne. I believe Silver Bow may have actually entangled him and the team briefly asked him if this was something he really wanted to do. Upon hearing his answer about wanting to make the world a more accepting plaxe, they freed him, and after telling to say good-bye to his boyfriend Kevin, he took the throne. It was a great roleplaying moment (I'm pretty sure the guy who played Dynamo in that final was gay himself) and I loved it. However, I was a little disappointed that I wouldn't get to see that character develop further. Why did I make Dynamo gay? When I created SuperSquad America, I was attempting to create a group of characters with diverse opinions and world views so that any moral questions presented would not have clear cut answers for the team. Also, I wanted each character to present a bit of a roleplaying challenge. As a result, I thought that one of the characters should be gay and for some resason, Dynamo (despite not being gay in his original incarnation as one of my PCs in a friend's campaign) seemed the logiccal choice. In the three years (about 15-20 gaming sessions) I used Dynamo as a PC in SuperSquad America, I don't remember getting a single negative comment from any player or a single stereotypical portrayal (but then the character sheet contained a note that Dynamo was not stereotypically gay). This was actually somewhat surprising to me, espcecially in the first year, when players wouldn't find out Dynamo was gay until they read his background. I've considred returning to the idea of including a queer character in one of my convention events, but so far I haven't done so. For the first few years, it was a mainly a matter of avoiding the "okay, we've lost a gay character -- we need to add a new one" vibe and since then, none of the new characters added to SuperSquad America seemed queer as I developed them. I seriously considered the question of character sexuality again when I createtd The Remarkable Wrong-Righters, but once again it didn't feel like it fit any of the characters. But the Wrong-Righters are a new team and their roster is likely to get shaken up over time, so who knows what kind of charcters I may add. I have had players speculate that Silver Bow, SuperSquad's workaholic leader with no social life, may be lesbian or bisexual. Although she currently does have a male romantic interest, who knows where I may decide to take the character in the future. There is also a drag queen NPC hero in the SuperSquad America universe. But so far, Sandra Victorious (named for a common school child misinterpretation of the line "Send her victorious" from God Save the Queen), one of the members of "Her Majesty's Own", the British superteam has not actually appeared in a game.

Re: Marginally Powered Sit-Com Heroes Yeah, I meant that I blamed Alan Moore for the technique currently being overused. I'm well aware that it dates much further back and I think it's an interesting technique but like many interesting techniques it is best used sparingly. For example, I never cared for Roy Thomas' blending of things like Gladiator and Frankenstein (and others possibly but I can't recall right now) with the DC Universe back in Young All-Stars in the late '80s.

Re: Marginally Powered Sit-Com Heroes Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree. But many of these arguments about portrayals and write-ups of established characters are a big part of the reason that I dislike (or am at least leery of) games with established characters.

Re: Marginally Powered Sit-Com Heroes

Re: New Disad:POWER BY Association. When you say that these are psych lims, you are saying that the reason for the powers only working at certain times is purely psychological and that the character can actually access the powers at any time if can he can overcome the psychological block. Is that really what you mean to say?

Re: Marginally Powered Sit-Com Heroes I find it interesting that you find Hogan more than "marginally powered" but not the Fonz.

Re: Marginally Powered Sit-Com Heroes Oh. I understand why you do it. I guess I would just rather see the GM commit himself and possibly be wrong rather than take the wimpy "well, there are several ways to do it, you decide" approach.

Re: Marginally Powered Sit-Com Heroes I've got to admit there are a few things that keep me away from playing this game: 1) I don't trust myself to portray the character to a high-enough level to satisfy myself. Truthfully, I have the same problem with any thing that uses characters from other sources and I have gotten over it for other games, but I am still much more comfortable playing characters where there is not well-known preivous portrayal. 2) I don't like the "add or change abilities" bit. For some reason, that sort of thing makes me feel that the GM doesn't feel he has a grip on the characters he is using. 3) I'm particular fond of the character pairs -- it's hard enough to try to portray one well-known character let alone two. 4) It falls into a category of games that I think have been overdone in recent years, which is the grouping of fictional characters from different backgrounds. I blame Alan Moore. But the game does sound like fun and I may very well play it sometime if I can get over my own issues with it.

Re: The Saga of the Smiling Fox -- possible future convention event I'm thinking only humans -- but the existence or non-existence of other races has not been previously established.

Re: The Saga of the Smiling Fox -- possible future convention event My main inspirations in this were Robin Hood, the Court Jester, and Star Wars with a little bit of the Princess of Anastasia of Russia thrown in. I was thinking that the world is mainly low magic with the occasional powerful magic user showing up. Of course, such powerful magic users are often trouble-makers, so it wouldn't surprise me if the Duke has either co-opted or destroyed the few powerful ones that were around. Magical items are fairly rare. I'm not sure about the whole MacGuffin war. It gets a little more complex than I would like for a series of convention games. There definitely won't be much technology as it has been previously established that higher tech items don't work in modern Eyratha so the tech level is about that of medieval Europe. Some of your character ideas are interesting, particularly the circus performer and I am thinking about including one. I well know the usefulness of such characters as a long-running and well-loved Fantasy Hero game at GenCon had the cast of a traveling carnival as the player characters. However, that is one of the reasons I may not include one -- of course, including one could be seen as an homage to that earlier series of games as opposed to a rip-off.

For quite a while now, I have been looking at adding another game to my slate of convention games (SuperSquad America, The Remarkable Wrong-Righters, and Friends of Justice). I have talked a brief bit about it on the boards such as in the thread that had me settle on the name of the Hero as the Smiling Fox. In brief, this game would tell the story of the Smiling Fox and his associates in their battle against the unrightful ruler of their land. But, unknown to that ruler and his minions, the Smiling Fox is not a specific individual hero, but rather anyone who wears the Smiling Fox mask which grants a number of abilities to its wearer. The idea would be that the mask is in the possession of a group of rebels who would be the player characters in the events. As for the world it is set in, I got thinking about settings for this event and realized that I already had a more fantasy-based world in my universe. That would be Eyratha, an extra-dimensional version of Earth which was home to the mother of SuperSquad America member Silver Bow. So, I decided that to set the Saga of the Smiling Fox in Eyratha, several hundred years ago. What do we already know about Eyratha? At least until recently, it has been ruled by a royal family (Silver Bow's family to be precise), whose royal blood gives them enhanced strength and dexterity. Also, Eyratha is home to several mystical places such as the Forest of Futures, where people are prone to receiving visions of their future. There have also been some very powerful magic-users in the universe, but nothing has been firmly established about how common magic is or what types there may be. One idea is that many years before, the humans grew tired of meddlesome interference from the Eyrathan gods and actually fought and won a war against the gods, who were imprisioned within the world itself. It is the powers of the gods themselves that are leaking through to create places such as the Forest of Futures. So, here's the set-up I'm thinking of. About 15 years ago, the evil Duke Duvelle overthrew and slaughtered most of the royal family with the aid of powerful allies among the other nobles. Unbeknownst to Duvelle, a servant of the Royal Family escaped with the baby Princess Amelita and that servant's family raised Amelita as one of her own. Amelita is now 16 years old and has begun to show the enhanced abilities of a royal -- so her adopted family has told her of her heritage and she sets out to join the rebels to regain her rightful place on the throne. So, after that somewhat lengthy intoduction, here are my questions to folks: Does this sound like an interesting setting for a continuing convention game? What types of characters should be part of the group with Princess Amelita? I picture Amelita as primarily being a fighter type with her enhanced STR and DEX. I'd like to avoid stock D&D types if possible or at least provide a twist on them. Any thoughts on an interesting approach to magic for this game? It should be practical for a con game, but also allow for the creativity of players. I am thinking that there may be one or two magic wielders amongst the player characters. Any other thoughts and comments? Thanks Any thoughts on a simple flexible magic system to use for the game?

Re: Marginally Powered Sit-Com Heroes