archer

This show was highly recommended to me, so I just started watching.  I'm a few episodes in, and I was struck with this thought:
 
"She forgot to buy rPD."
 
Some people don't learn the lesson Seeker taught us all back in 3rd Ed.

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.

If you go by the official lore of Malva, "sacredness" is where the potential complication lies. Per Champions Beyond pp. 99 and 108, the Furnace of the First Ones is the focus of the ancient Malvan religion of Rathuliorn, "a monotheistic religion with messianic and fire-worship elements that considers Firewing a divine being." Most modern Malvans consider religion a quaint superstition, but a small sect of Rathuliorns still exist on Malva, worshiping at the Grand Temple, where an order of Malvan priests conduct elaborate ceremonies and tend the Furnace.
 
From what we know of Malva, I doubt most Malvans would care if a human walked through the Furnace of the First Ones. But the reaction of the Rathuliorns is hard to predict. It's almost certain they would never allow a human even within the Great Temple if they had any say in it. But if a human actually entered the Furnace, and not only survived but was empowered, would that be viewed as blasphemous, or a sign of divine favor? That's uncharted territory, so I'd say you should choose whichever works best for your story.
 
A few things to keep in mind: Per Firewing's origin (most recently in CV Vol. 3) the legends of the Furnace state that it "burns away" weakness and imperfection. Per the statement of the Wisdom Stones, all others who tried to fulfill the prophecy of the Firewing perished. Ariax Thone experienced great pain when he entered the Furnace. However, he possessed "minor fire powers" even before then, which may have helped protect him; and that similarity may be why the Furnace granted him the powers it did.
 
Also, p. 102 of Champions Beyond, describing the Malvan/Elder Worm war, notes that the Malvans fielded a cadre of elite warriors called the Golden Hunters, granted super-powers through Malvan science. Yet "the most powerful of all were the Starwings, who'd walked into the Furnace of the First Ones and been granted superpowers even greater than those given to other Hunters through Malvan ultra-science." Implicitly, being empowered by the Furnace isn't a once-in-an-eon event, although it's likely that only a fraction of volunteers who walked into the Furnace survived. The precise powers of the Starwings aren't described, but the similarity of their name to Firewing's suggest thematic similarities. Also implicitly, the prophecy of the Firewing post-dates the Elder Worm war.

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.
 
 

Best wishes to your father! 

Ooooo, some valid points and interesting possibilities here.  Tech is something that can be hacked and Spencer, while cutting edge and well defended, would not be "perfectly" covered.  I like the idea that he is being used, although maybe rather than being controlled, he's just got some form of monitoring software installed that is reporting to "X" whatever information he gets.  They know he is trusted by Rogen and is using that information to their advantage by listening in or watching unnoticed within his system.
 
I also like the idea of the savvy enemy being something a little more to Rogen than just your everyday rival.  I think maybe the enemy is female, perhaps an ex-lover or relationship Rogen has long since forgotten.  An incredibly brilliant all be it jilted ex who thought she'd be the one to take Rogen out of his hedonistic lifestyle and get the eligible rich bachelor to settle down with her.  Now she's making millions behind the scenes stealing his business ideas, contacts, and getting him manipulated into hot water with his other known associates and these legal problems are really just a distraction to slow him down so she can get the leg up on his company. 
 
She can be his Lex Luthor, to smart to be directly implicated in the criminal aspects of whats going on, working behind the scenes as the puppet master to sully his reputation and build herself up as his viable replacement.  She should have decent security, maybe is linked up with one of the PC's hunting militia groups.  Then grant her lots of social and political pull.  Maybe have it be manipulative as well.  She's got dirt on people that don't want it getting out in the public... Maybe she owns a media newsgroup... Yeah, I like where this is leading.

I see X as being a business rival of Rogen's. His original plan was to catch Rogan doing unauthorized gas mining, and get the concession/claim for that area himself. He'd sent the aliens into that area to record Rogan's activities, without expecting them to get captured. When that happened, he tipped off the authorities anonymously and concealed his involvement in the matter. (The aliens will not be happy when they learn he abandoned them.)
 
I'd thought about the idea of X having a mole in Rogen's organization somewhere. Freelyx's idea of Spencer being wired would work well for that. 

That's one we tossed around!  This player has gone through several names for his character, including Killer Fog (he started as a villain), and The Green Gasser...

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.
 
 

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

If the players are not following genre tropes you want them to follow, this is often because you are penalizing, rather than rewarding, them.  Design the game around how you want it to play out.
 
Examples: 
 
"My players always try to kill the villains". When they don't, the villains escape and make their lives miserable.
 
"My players distrust everything to the point of paranoia."  Everyone they trusted has betrayed them.
 
"My players never show restraint."  If they do, the villains take the opportunity to crush them into the dirt.
 
Ensuring you and the players are on the same page about the game is important in any game, but even more in Hero where the game can be varied so markedly.

Sorry, things have been nuts in the Bolo house - dad hospitalized (and now discharged) plus his 97th birthday party, and other crap going on.  If someone else wants to post a picture, I'm good with that. 

Archer there is the Weird War series of games from Savage Worlds. They are WWI, WWII and Vietnam Nam. Called weird because like Deadlands, there is magic and monsters in them.

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?

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.
 
 

The democrats also oppose everything I'm for at present.' They're just coming at it from the opposite direction. Voting for the dems to spite the republicans won't "put the fire out" in terms of my political values. The house will still be a roaring inferno of debt and government infringements.  Please take the following as a tongue-in-cheek expression of a very serious sentiment:
 
I'm a good old libertarian.
That's just what I am.
And for your progressive politics
I do not give a damn.
 
The same goes for populist social conservative politics.  I don't see the dems as a lesser evil, just a different one. I voted libertarian and I'm proud to have done so. And, odds are, I'll be doing it again. Now, if the Dems would run a modern day JFK, I'd vote for them. Indeed, my parents were "Reagan Democrats" and I used to refer to myself as a "Kennedy Republican." But he could never win the DNC nomination today. He's too far right of center.

Good grief.  I have been putting together a script for a video on how to build a character.  It is amazing how much I do from instinct and how difficult that is to describe...
 
I decided to do a fairly basic character type but getting to a character from a blank piece of paper involves a LOT of moving parts.  I also realise I have done almost no character designing in 6th Edition.  The pathways laid down in my brain over decades take over and then I realise I am not sure if I am rules compliant.
 
I think I have a script, just need to put some slides together and then create a video that I can put up on YouTube.  I was thinking I would do a brick, an energy blaster, a martial artist and maybe something else.  I am wondering whether it might not be more informative to go through the stock characters in the rule book as a GM might assess a character submitted to a game to highlight the key points and how things work together.  You might get more insight from the critique of a finished character than watching one being put together.
 
it might also be useful to do a conversation.  Perhaps me helping someone who does not know the system put a character together.
 
all I need to do is find the time for all this stuff...

Most of the suggestions I'd have are going to be general to GMing any game.
Remember everyone is there to have fun and its a game, not a competition between the GM and the players. Remember the rule of cool: if its fun, cool, and entertaining, its probably right, even if not technically according to the rules. Never give exact, specific details until people have completely investigated something or need a hard nudge.  Use ambiguous terms like "seems" and "appears" Never roll the dice in front of the players, that way if you have to you can fudge them and hide results they can't know yet (did that perception roll work?) Go overboard on descriptions and NPC interactions.  Ham it up, don't be afraid of looking stupid.  Be entertaining and broad, like you're on stage. Remember what the players guess, their paranoid fears and predictions are often more creative and better than what you had planned. Take note of NPCs (especially mooks like a Viper agent or a goblin) who stand out and are memorable.  Give them a name and have them return. Use the simple system of combat for non-important mooks: assign them a number of hits, no matter how solid, and have them go down when they reach that number.  1-3 is enough. When non-'Boss' enemies are knocked out or downed, they stay down for the duration, they don't recover and get back up again. Use a combat program such as the very old GSPC or the new and more compatible Hero Combat Manager If you aren't sure on a rule, guess based on common sense and experience with the system, and look it up later Allow players to adjust characters slightly after the first session, a build not be what they had intended or have a hole they didn't plan on. Treat the rules as a guideline to handle specific situations rather than controlling you.  Break or bend them if it makes for a better game. Mix up your scenarios: funny, scary, serious, dramatic, romantic, surprising twist ending, etc.  If you've just run a long series of comedic adventures, do something different, like a mystery. Try to give each player a chance to shine each scenario (if not their character) so they feel they've been a useful part of the game Look at and identify each player's "style" (murder hobo, romantic, puzzle solving, etc) and try to find ways to give them what they are looking for Try to end each session with some tangible goal met and something important accomplished, so it doesn't feel aimless or like they aren't getting anywhere. Try to challenge the player characters as much as you can, without being frustrating or humiliating to the players. Only require a skill or characteristic roll if drama or the difficulty of a situation demands it.  If someone tries to do something very elementary for a skill (like stand on one leg with an acrobatics skill) then they succeed without needing a roll. Overall: read and study Strike Force for how to run a good long term campaign.

The best way to build curses into items is to add side effects and complications to them.  That gives you a rules framework to build from, and controls over what happens.

For bringing a group together, if they’re wanting to play younger people, they could be cousins coming of age at roughly the same time. Or perhaps the offspring of a group of former adventurers.
 
 They could be coming together for an anniversary service commemorating some great victory or defeat, a funeral, or some family event. Their travels on the road could be the first adventure and their shared background would provide plot hooks for the future.
 
Perhaps inherenting personal rivalries, enmity from some organizations and gratitude from others. People could show up looking for help from the original heroes and have to settle for the kids.

A wife foreign policy. Unless your group has monolithic political views, or has been briefed and bought in, its a recipe for disaster. The same is true of religion. There are a lot of different kinds of liberals and conservatives out there. There are a lot of different kinds of democrat and republican voters out there. Painting one side or the other with a broad brush runs the likelihood of alienating people.

And, of course, once discovered and freed from said control, we find that he'll act that way even without mind control.

I would say, even at the height of my gaming, it was really a once a week occurrence for the RPG thing. Yes, sometimes more, and we had our long weekends of multiple games when we pulled people in from far away... but I didn't play multiple regular sessions every week. Our group had one weekly game night.
 
That said, even then, when I basically ran a large meta-campaign that lasted for 25 solid years, and five more sporadically, I could only do that by changing things up. Make a big world, with players having multiple PCs, so moving between small arcs of certain characters kept things fresh. "Ok, on we are playing the Vanguard, ,high-powered global heroes" vs. "Ok... let's play Mavericks for a while... NYC based, mid-level heroes on the edge of the law"  vs. "Now it's Malta Professionals, metahuman and cybernetic mercs working for whoever pays in Euro-African theater" etc.  The games had different feels and scopes and PC interactions... but at the same time, inhabited the same world, and got to see larger plots from different angles... maybe one group would set something in motion that another group might have to deal with... so the players really got to become part of the larger world.
 
That really helped me both, stay focused enough to continue moving a large campaign forward, but varied enough to not get stale or bogged down. It also allowed players to GM their own storylines at times. I found that really empowering, as I could then riff off some small thing they introduced, some technological MacGuffin stolen from a lab, whatever, and wind it into my larger plot, and it helped everyone feel like they were contributing to building the world. That level of interaction made it easier to GM, as it wasn't just people waiting to be entertained and I had to do all the prep.

This is such a basic soft skill (socially) that my mind boggles at the notion while at the same time finding myself  teaching younger co-workers how to be professional in the office.
 
Gaming is just like having a work meeting and the same expectations apply: be on time, wear clean clothes, smell nice, put your phone on vibrate and leave it in your pocket, chat with the people who are in the room with you before and after the meeting. You make contacts and build teams and trust that way.
 
NO PHONES AT THE TABLE. FULL STOP.
 
Its discourteous and says "I'd rather be doing something else" than participate in your boring game. Call it out and don't budge. Its bad behavior stemming from dopamine addiction. If their kids or SO or work must be able to call them in event of emergency they can set a unique ring tone and leave it in their pocket forsaking all others. If they are there to play they owe every person at the table their undivided attention and active partcipation.

You honestly want to know about Pornpool?