archer

Firewing could be highly offended that a human defiled the sacred furnace and vows to wipe even the memory of her from the universe.

Whether anything at all happens is up to you as GM. "Malva's Furnace of the First Ones" is just a name until the GM gives that name some power to accomplish something. Maybe the old Malva's Furnace of the First Ones which gave out superpowers was wiped out in an accident (or is on another world) and the NPC went into the memorial of the original Malva's Furnace of the First Ones. Maybe the furnace only works while there's a lot of sunspots and the planet is going through a cosmic storm. Or only works on alternate Thursdays. If it worked 100% of the time, there'd be riots with hordes of people trying to get in and every 2 bit criminal on the planet would be scheming to jump into the thing. But if the furnace works at all, I would feel that it takes the person's potential and amps it up. If the NPC started off as a world class combat champion on Earth, maybe it would take her up to Firewing levels. But if she couldn't fight her way out of a wet paper bag, her powered up form shouldn't be any more than starting point superheroes in the campaign. Given that the origin story is a furnace, the powers given should be heat themed in some manner. If you don't want to turn her into a fully-scale super, you could make her normal characteristic maximum but toward the top end and make her highly resistant to fire damage, for example. It might even take her a while to figure out she's fire resistant but when she does, she wants to become a fireman. I don't think you should try to mimic Firewing's powers unless you think that would be good for whatever story line you have in mind.

I like the targeted-against-law-enforcement concept and the idea of her banking favors from the criminals she saves.But I'm not sure that the pistols and silencers goes well with the idea of ambushing the target while he's already in combat. The existing combat itself is going to attract attention to the area while using silencers is supposed to avoid attracting attention to the area. Pistols are short-range weapons rather than long range. So if she's going to end up more or less in the thick of ongoing confrontations, the silencers don't make a ton of sense to me. 2 cents

If she's doing this cyber-manipulation on Spencer in order to gather information for a media newsgroup and her blackmail enterprises, it occurs to me that should could be planning cyber-manipulation of dozens of people. If the cybernetic upgrade that Spencer got is fairly common among accountants and advisors, she could eventually build a vast network of backdoor information. Of course at that point, she would be unable to personally look at all the information and would have to depend on flunkies to do it for her. Heck, she probably would be able to personally sift through 24 hour surveillance of just Spencer. I could see some surveillance-processing underling noticing that the mastermind is making millions then look at his own paycheck and decide he'd be better off using some of the information to make millions himself. The mastermind might be good enough to completely cover her tracks in stock market manipulation or blackmail schemes, but an underling going into business for himself for the first time might be clumsy enough to draw attention to himself.

That's better than a gas-based PC called Flatulence....

An over-sized gun in each hand and no holster in sight. I sense a "Limited Manipulation" drawback in her future.

Loved the original Power Man comic books. I have an homage in "Sweet Mother of Mercy" hospital. That catchphrase of his always sounded like a hospital name to me.

Thanks, that might be what I'm half-remembering.

If Spencer is borderline android, it occurs to me that someone might have messed with his cybernetics. For example, if he has a computer implant, he might effectively have been given a split personality during his last upgrade. So whatever difficulties have come up might be funneled through Spencer and his knowledge of Rogen's operation but are happening without Spencer's conscious knowledge. Spencer could be jacked in ordering more pastrami for Rogen's sandwiches and his computer uses that opportunity to send sensitive information, or the PC's exact location, to Rogen's enemy. Or to send the PC's location directly to their Hunteds if Spencer knows enough about the PC's backgrounds. But I do love the Batman-Alfred relationship going on in the story. Having an assistant that trustworthy would be a HUGE asset to someone like Rogen. If you don't want Spencer directly involved in the evil and Rogen's enemy is savvy enough, he might leave clues for the PC's to find that would lead them to suspect Spencer is the bad guy. The enemy might hope the PC's will find a way to kill or neutralize Spencer which won't be traced back to him. Sounds like that'd be a huge blow to Rogen's operation and could potentially set Rogen and the PC's against each other if the PC's handle the situation badly enough...pretty much exactly what an enemy mastermind would be looking for. I can see why you wouldn't want to take the story in that direction. Just letting my mind come out and play. Are the PC's fully aware that Rogen is guilty and cut corners where he shouldn't have? I'm trying to picture whether their characters are "Shadowrunners" who are accustomed to taking jobs from a "Mr. Johnson" who is in no way clean or an upstanding citizen? Or whether they're more like the "A-Team" or the "Rebel Alliance" who are seeking their own brand of justice because the system sometimes sucks at bringing justice without some outside assistance?

1) Try to get the players to envision what they want their characters to become in the future before you get started. There's several reasons for this but not all players might be looking for the same thing out of the gaming experience. If one person wants every play session to prove himself to be the best hand to hand combatant on the planet, one wants to become a starship captain, one wants to build romantic relationships with NPC's, and two (separately) reveal they want to discover that they are long lost princesses, you might have to put some effort into figuring out how to build a satisfying play experience for each of them. Or talk to them about how they might better manage their expectations of their play experience. Heck, I started off one game where three players, whose characters very obviously could not be related at all to each other, each told me they wanted to discover that they were a long-lost princesses. ? 2) Try to keep the character's progression in spending the character points they earn at least somewhere close to the character concept. For example, there's a tendency of some players to buy a defense against whatever they faced last week: if they got hit with a Flash attack then, they want to buy Flash defense now. If they get hit with a Power Drain this week, next week they want to buy Power Defense. That might be okay for some character concepts but not everyone should become immune to everything just because they have some points to spend. If nothing else, it makes it difficult to create a good story: sometimes the bad guys are going to do something that is going to be effective against the characters. The players trying to prevent that by using good tactics is great. The players trying to prevent that by becoming immune to everything is not great. 3) Sometimes when giving out character points, you might want to spend it for the character. For example, if they're in a kingdom where they don't know the language for a few months, you might award them a point of familiarity with the language rather than a point for them to spend at random. Or if they're guards for a merchant's caravan and are highly successful, they might get the merchant as a contact. If they've lived in the desert for months, the might become familiar with that environment and how to operate effectively in it. If they spend months in one city or kingdom, they might get an area knowledge for it. By the way, don't present it to the characters as "I was going to give you this point to spend by I decided to spend it for you instead". That might be what happened but present it to them as "as a bonus, you earned fill-in-the-blank". You'll have fewer bad feelings if they feel like they're getting something "in addition" rather than "instead of". 4) Players can change their minds about where they envision their characters progression. Be open to the change as long as it's not something stupid like the self-described dumbest swordsman in the world suddenly becoming the most learned scholar in the world without spending any time or effort making the transition. 5) Sometimes the dice say the character died. But remember that you are in charge of the game, not the dice. If you want them to survive, they can survive. But if you want them to die, don't waste their deaths by having them happen at random times for no meaning. You can secretly "bank" their death scene and save it for a more dramatically appropriate moment. Dying getting bitten by a giant rat on the roadside vs using his last dying effort getting the party past a giant who is guarding the mountain pass by knocking the giant off into the gorge...which of those is more satisfying and memorable to the player? If you play the kind of game that has players die, have the death count for something. If the player enjoys roleplaying, you could even tell him about his impending death before the next session so he can cooperate to make it a memorable experience.

You have basically four avenues of ideas to explore 1) someone is after Rogen 2) Spencer is deliberately screwing over the boss 3) The aliens who were "accidentally kidnapped" weren't kidnapped accidentally at all but wanted to be there 4) Rogen is guilty 1) someone is after Rogen - almost all motives come down to sex or money ex-wife ex-business partner business rival romantic rival relative or friend of someone Rogen squished along the way to power vigilante who couldn't figure out another way to bring Rogen down other than to set him up 2) Spencer is deliberately screwing over the boss. (One a side note, was that really the best craft Spencer could have procured?) Rogen screwed Spencer's wife Rogen has been underpaying/under-appreciating Spencer Spencer is a lunatic Spencer thinks he can take over the Rogen's whole business Specer has been embezzling but he's in so deep that getting rid of the boss is his only way out. 3) The aliens who were "accidentally kidnapped" weren't kidnapped accidentally at all The aliens needed transportation and stowed away. Maybe criminals or political refugees. Maybe working a business or political deal. Maybe they assassinated someone (slowly) and got a free trip home: how much radiation can they emit anyway? The aliens' plans were unknowingly foiled by Rogen so they want revenge on him The aliens wanted to see human technology up close. Maybe the ship malfunctions were due to the aliens experimenting with controlling ship systems. Prelude to invasion or maybe they just fiddled with whatever defense systems or commerce systems they found along their round trip. Seems like they might be great spies for their own civilization or for another. The aliens wanted to examine another solar system up close to find a gas giant or two to quietly colonize. Were there only three aliens kidnapped or might there have been more and one was deliberately left behind? Is anyone completely sure the envoy is coming alone and doesn't have an invisible friend? 4) Rogen is guilty Rogen kidnapped the aliens to examine them and try to find an easy way to exterminate their race. Rogen got some kind of ransom on the side which was worth the legal troubles he's in. The aliens themselves are a valuable resource which could be enslaved to power devices or ships cheaply. Or perhaps leave a residue behind which is useful. Or their energies can transmute matter when they're agitated: how much of the most valuable substance in your universe could three of them transmute in their few days/weeks of captivity? And what is the most wild thing that substance could possibly do?

Back in the 1970's, WWII simulation board games were all over the place at hobby stores. I know there were several abortive attempts to make WWII games into RPG's but I don't remember if any of them actually made it to the market.

I wouldn't be surprised if many flags of settled worlds were based somehow on the corporate emblem of the company or companies which played a major part in the original settlement of the world. So for example if ATT helped settle a world, the flag would likely be blue and have an image of the Death Star on it. The other option would be flags that were derivative of the settler's homeworld or of pop culture from that homeworld. For the pop culture example, the flag might have a white background with five interlocking rings like the Olympic flag. But instead of simple rings, they would be round portraits of Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Spider-Man, and Black Widow to remind people to rise above themselves and be heroes for the community. Of course in 400 years, the original meaning would be lost and most of the citizens would probably think those were the portraits of their founding fathers rather than of fictional characters.

For cursed items in general, I've done Side Effect, costs extra END, and a Transform which makes the character unwilling to get rid of the item and have a burning desire to use it. What the item does really doesn't matter. If the Side Effect happens, using it drains his END to the point of stunning him, and he wants to keep and use the item anyway, it is sufficiently cursed for almost any purposes. For Side Effects, I'm particularly fond of Flash (sound or sight) if it's a combat item or long-term INT drain for non-combat items. You can make the effect of the item "awesomely powerful" if he gets to use it once then falls to the ground deaf, blind, 0 END, and stunned. If you want, you could add mental illusions which affect only the user so that he only thinks something powerful is happening. In that case, a long-term EGO drain might be more appropriate than an INT drain. For completely useless items you could also make them AoE one hex attacks (RKA, Blast, Transform, etc.) which affect only the user, which cost massive amounts of additional END, and which has extra Side Effects. Those are always good items to leave lying around a wizard's lab to deter intruders and is very much in flavor from various fantasy novels. If you go the Transform route, it might be a suitable punishment item for stealing from a temple (or otherwise dealing with an obnoxiously greedy player): the thief wakes up from a very long "nap" and suddenly finds himself cursed with a significant amount of Unluck. As for the original question, I did like the earlier suggestion about the item having its own Hunted. I think that's a more elegant way of having the item "summon a monster" than a straight summoning spell. You could work the Hunted into the campaign and make it seem more realistic than just a straight summon (perhaps whoever shows up hunting the weapon is appropriate to the area or lets you play keep away with the McGuffin rather than doing the traditional "adventurers have to find the McGuffin"). If you use it for a certain period of time or a certain number of times then a monster shows up, most of the people I've played with would try to game the system and try to trigger the summon when its convenient for them rather than have it happen at an inconvenient time ("Hey, it hasn't happened for a while so lets fight something that's a pushover repeatedly until it triggers so we know we're safe in the upcoming boss battle.") And that's not really the effect that you're looking for. Hunted is already supposed to be completely under the GM's control and the players aren't supposed to be able to figure out a pattern and exploit it. You aren't going to have a player with an Examine Magic Artifact skill devote three months of research (extra time) into increasing his skill roll and figure out exactly how and when the item is supposed to trigger if it's written up as a Hunted.

You give me a sack of puns and I can spin out superhero teams for hours.

Alpha - unit strongman Bravo - PR front man with minimal powers Charlie - Vietnamese martial artist Delta - speedster Echo - Sound-themed gadgeteer Foxtrot - a nine year old blond boy whose imagination comes to life Golf - Scottsman who carries a club and wears a kilt Hotel - One of the Trump scions India - Multi-form woman who has elephant and gurkha as her primary forms Juliett - obese Italian matron named Julie who can eat, and bite though, anything Kilo - density increase powers Lima - super-athlete from Peru Mike - infiltration specialist, particularly parachutes ("Drop the Mike!") November - of White Russian descent (non-communist dissenters who were hunted to the point of extinction during the Soviet era). Grew up living off the land in Siberia and has a massive hatred toward the remaining communist regimes Papa - Russian and former communist patriot hero. Would like to see Russian nationalism succeed and bring back a communist state. Bitter rival with November. Mind control and general manipulation expert. Quebec - a Quebec separatist who has been suspected of various terrorist activities but nothing ever proven. Having her on the team is a way of bringing separatists to the table but not promising them anything. Romeo - French movie star turned superhero after he was kidnapped by cultists and his mutation turned. Vain and a bit pompous but his striking appearance covers many flaws. Sierra - ecology activist with elemental powers Tango - filthy rich playboy who solves his problems by writing a check...or by a blast from his power armor. Uniform - duplication powers make him a one man army. Or at least it would if he could learn to use weapons properly. More than a little unluck, near-sighted, colorblind, dyslexic. Only speaks and reads English. Victor - Kumite champion twice marks him as one of the deadliest hand-to-hand combatants on the planet. Whiskey - Grew up on the Tennessee/Kentucky border as the son of a moonshiner. When his mutation turned, he used his flight powers to help distribute product and used his blast powers against the police a couple of times, which ended up with him having to flee the US. The UN offered to mediate in exchange for his services but as of this moment, he cannot operate in the US or US territories. He's learned the Drunken Monkey style of martial arts because he thought it sounded cool. X-Ray - teleporter, energy projector, and communications specialist. Yankee - Appears to be a burned out hippie dude wearing an Uncle Sam costume. But he's a savvy defensive fighter with a small amount of super-strength and a pocket full of patriot-themed non-damaging gadgets. Zulu - An African warrior who appears garbed as a traditional African warrior. He's extremely ticked off at the Black Panther movie because several people have accused him of ripping off his look from it, despite the fact that he's been around and dressed like that for years. He is not ethnically a Zulu (he his code name picked for marketing purposes while he was a mercenary) which has the Zulu people ticked off at him.

I wish Adventurer's Club had been monthly instead of once every 14 months....

I had a boxer villain from the 1980's called Rocky Four which I made shortly after the movie Rocky IV came out. Unfortunately, I lost the character sheet decades ago...but it was probably pre 3rd edition anyway. The concept was a man who could duplicate himself into 4 persons. "Activating his defenses" would also activate a shapeshift which caused him to look a bit like the Thing from the Fantastic Four. He had a habit of setting up crime scenes were there would be few if any witnesses then having a copy of himself be seen very publicly on the other side of town while the crime was being committed. So there'd be dozens of witnesses and video to "prove" that there was no way he could have been the person who committed the crime. The "criminal form" would monologue about boxing and the Rocky movies and constantly throw out quotes from the movies as if he were obsessed about it. The "non-criminal form" would never talk about boxing or the Rocky movies unless forced into it (and was damned careful if forced into talking about it to say nothing remotely close to what his duplicate had been saying on the topic). The story he told was that he was neither a hero nor a villain, just a guy who had some brick-like powers Of course, he had always kept his duplication powers a very deep and dark secret which required the heroes to do a ton of work to reveal that the criminal and the person who had all the witnesses in his favor were indeed the same person. Then at the end, they had to deal with all four of him. For your arena: duplication costs END to activate, extended time (5 minutes) to activate, concentrate to activate, side effect flash when activating, etc. For the arena scenes, he will have had time to prepare. When the heroes get around to busting up the place, he'll be caught flat-footed and not be as formidable...but the other villains coming at them can take up the slack. brick level STR, but maybe a bit less than the average brick a point less SPD than most other competitors, which to some extent in compensated for by having 4 bodies to use a better rounded martial arts than boxing but still some of the classic elements of it, armor, resistant defenses, extra limbs (plus two arms, originally having four arms was part of his "Rocky IV" shtick and the reason the public thought he'd chosen that name: a rocky guy with four arms total and who was a bit dim ) ambidexterity breakfall analyze combat style some mental defense from the habit of running multiple minds, mindlink to his selves for better coordination, He wouldn't necessarily have to shapeshift back and forth from a normal form or be charismatic and persuasive since he wouldn't be hiding anything. Distinctive Features Overconfident when duplicates are present Enraged when a duplicated is seriously wounded (less than half BODY) I can't do a full write-up at the moment but if anyone else wants to take a stab at it, feel free.

Dealing with the Crimson Uh-Venger plus 8-Ball means a group of a lot more than 26 members....

I like the story even though I don't like tying HERO campaigns too closely to political views. The ALT Right was a term created by an American ethno-nationalist, Richard Spencer, explicitly to define his political philosophy which he came up with as an alternative to the American political right. And his alternative to the American political right is a European-style ethno-nationalist fascism. For example, the guy's own website has articles which are written explicitly and deliberately to explain why everyone should be anti-Semetic (link available if anyone wants it). Since Trump's fervent embrace of the ALT Right, it has been very successfully recruiting among people who had formerly self-identified with the American political right. And of course among Republican politicians who realize that Trump as president also became the leader of the Republican party and controls not only the campaign money the party has but also controls the party apparatus which can recruit people to primary sitting congressmen, senators, and governors. But philosophically, there remain HUGE differences between European-style ethno-nationalist fascism and the constitutional conservatives which I consider to be the American political right. In my opinion, of course. But my exposition on political philosophy is probably a snoozer for most people reading this conversation. As a small note, you referenced the INS which hasn't existed since the second Bush administration. It was rolled into the Department of Homeland Security when it was created and the current acronym for the agency which does that kind of work is ICE.

I've always thought it was up to the setting rather than the mechanics. You can make a phaser but it's still going to do what an energy blast or a RKA does regardless of what you decide to call it in the system you're playing.

I wouldn't be offended at a sign but I also wouldn't expect players to respect and obey a sign. If you want no phones at the table, tell the players you want no phones at the table and tell them why. And if someone has a legitimate family or work emergency where they need to be available (wife is very pregnant or the player is an on-call doctor), make an exception for them to take calls from that one source. People will take calls, "take a quick look" for something in a sourcebook then end up surfing for an hour, start playing a phone game, or do Facebook if you don't let them know that kind of behavior is unacceptable. Today you can be having a face-to-face conversation with someone and it's become acceptable for someone to interrupt the conversation to do whatever the hell they want on their phone and only half-pay attention to the conversation. So your players likely aren't coming into the game with the mindset that using their phone whenever they want, and however they want, is inherently disruptive. So if you want them to know that, you have to tell them.

Yeah, that character concept was not exactly the world's best kept secret....

Most of my dice have come from finding them left behind on and under tables at Magic the Gathering tournaments. Though I was given several nice d20's by the organizer at a Magic pre-release. Each player was supposed to get a d20 as a promo item but most players didn't want them so I got several.

What I remember of the original Traveler RPG books from the late 1970's and early 1980's. Niven/Pournelle's Co-Dominium universe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoDominium - a nice look at the aftermath of Earth's first big interstellar empire having fallen apart and being put back together. Planets at all ends of the tech scale from barbarism to the latest cutting edge research according to where you happen to be. A political system which doesn't even pretend to be fair but is seen as necessary to prevent future divisions which might lead to catastrophic wars. People/politicians turning strongly toward religious ritual (and hegemony) as part of tying humanity back together. Powerful trade guilds. Firefly - the Brownshirts movement. Badly terraformed worlds, considering how much time a terraforming project would take, it isn't surprising that whoever doing it might run out of money or otherwise go out of business. Star Wars - nothing with the Force, just the idea of tramp freighters wondering the galaxy trying to make a living, borrowing money from gangsters, running guns for deserving or undeserving causes, etc. When I watch Ancient Aliens, I imagine what it would have been like for Han Solo and Chewbacca to have landed on ancient earth and what those two might have done which would have created whatever things that episode is displaying. Imagine the temptation to go to a low tech planet and trade a few cheap technological trinkets for all the gold and jewels that will fit into your ship....