RDU Neil

The Ultimate Sacrifice... Hey... getting slaughtered because we bite off more than we can chew in a fantasy campaign is par for the course. Not what I'd call the "ultimate sacrifice" but just the price you pay. Live by the sword... die by the necromantic magic. Comse comsa. Now, in that same fantasy campaign, I DID get one of my few shots at a meaningful death. I'm referring to the female sword-dancer I played. Female human, young, misused and misguided. (I'm ashamed to say I can't remember her name... )She was an assassin, who inadvertently got the party held for execution by the high elves, because she didn't know the people she was working for wanted the Elf Queen dead. She had a strong sense of honor, and was trapped by her code to try and complete the assassination, but didn't want her new friends to pay the price. She came up with a single option. She openly challenged the Queen to battle, using Elven law to ensure that if she succeeded in slaying the Queen's champion, the Queen forfeited her life with no repercussions on the party... and if she failed, well she would die and the party would still go free. This wasn't the 50/50 chance it sounds, either. In this campaign, the elves were truly superior to humans. They were faster, stronger, and had centuries to learn and perfect combat skills. My character was one of the finest duelists in the land... and she wasn't even CLOSE to the ability of the Captain of the Light Guard who championed the queen. My sword dancer fought with a twirling, spinning, two bladed style. The elven champion, also female, fought with a single straight sword, in a style of absolute stillness and precision. The fight lasted eleven seconds. My character managed to nick the elven champion's shoulder, parry one thrust, then took a crippling shot to the stomach. The elf offered me a chance to surrender, but it would have violated the terms. My character declined, took a staggering swing... and then stared at the length of mithril steel thrust though her heart. She smiled, her lasts words, "So beautiful..." in reference to the precision of the sword strike... and then it was over. It was a great moment. Eric, playing a half orc ranger who had fallen for the beautiful warrior child was distraught. Rick, who's elf character had over reacted to the situation, and put my character into this predicament, was stunned and shamed. It was a good death.

NICE! VERY nice. I like this idea a lot. If my players weren't all reading these boards, I'd probably steal it. BWAH HA HA HA HA!

Re: Re: The Ultimate Sacrifice... Now those are good stories. Those are the stories you look back on, and realize that you've created some myths in your game. Those stories are why I game. Thank you. (Oh... and yes, Storn... the ultimate sacrifice is always a motivation for me... though with Cyber Blade, the reason would have to be very personal. She's too much the mercenary to do it for some abstract "better world" or people she doesn't know. Pulse, on the other hand...)

Oberon, AAAAAHHHH!!! I think that would have caused a fist fight, if I'd been you. That is a perfect example of what I'm talking about, and the GM fudges it so you LIVE! AAAARRRGGGHHH!!! To me that is a GM who has no sense of drama or closure or story telling in general. They don't deserve to GM. Ugh. Better luck next time with the glorious death!

A little idea... If you are planning the adventures as you stated, it might be fun to link them, but very subtly at first. Have your wife's PC get information from an unknown source, or a police contact... but have it be information that would not be easy to get... but it's helpful in handling Bogeyman... maybe she gets some blueprints of Harpcorp to help her with the Sniper... whatever. Then... after these are done... have her find out that Cardshark was behind the info... using her to help clean up his competition, or some other sinister plot. This makes the introduction of Cardshark "personal" to the PC, rather than just another organization. It also helps set that classic theme of many a Dark Champions game... conspiracy and lies. "Games of deceit and death" as Shang Chi used to say. This really works if you wife's character is a vigilante killer type. Then she'll find that she has killed for the badguys and you can wrestle with moral dilemmas. If she's a "tie 'em up and leave 'em for the cops" type, it will just be frustrating, but still gets the blood going to take out Cardshark. Let us know how it goes. I love Dark Champions. My favorite subgenre, really.

The Champions Genre book is important, if you have newbies to the supers RPG concept. Even more so if they are comic readers, but not supers RPG players, yet. They will come with an idea of what a supers world should be like, and it may differ quite a bit from what you are thinking. The Champions genre book is good for getting them thinking about the fact that not all comics are the same... not all super worlds are the same... and help them see where you are coming from. If you have experienced super gamers, then you'll likely need Champions less... though it can be good for discussion purposes.

Well... Heromaker isn't going to help you much with 5th Edition. Seriously, though... the usefulness of Champions Universe depends on what kind of world you want to have, and how much work you want to do. If nothing else, you could steal bits of the world, and use the book by having players read certain pages, chapters... but ignoring the rest. I don't use it... but I have a world 17 years old, and don't need that kind of material. YMMV.

Assuming you've read the excellent... Avengers Forever... by Busiek and Pacheo... right? Wow... great stuff. Wrapping up all the twisted time travel plots in the Marvelverse was no small feat. Just wish Marvel had more of a legacy style universe, so we'd see characters aging and retiring and dying a bit more... which would allow for time travel stories to have even better resonance.

This is referred to in comics all the time. It is done well in many DC comics, where the sense of "legacy" is strong. Heroes falling in battle... dying to save the world, or maybe just one little girl from a collapsing wall. In Millenium City, which is based on the destruction of Detroit... I understand there will be a memorial to the heroes that fell in battle with Dr. Destroyer. My world has similar events in the "history" write-ups. PC origins often start with picking up the mantle of a fallen hero... ... but has anyone ever ROLE PLAYED out the great event? Has a player in your group ever managed to sacrifice themselves for the greater good? Even more so, has there ever been a "Doom Patrol" moment, where a team sacrificed itself, or went down fighting? I'm not saying this should happen very often. Very RARELY, actually... but it should happen. I've had heroes die in battle, but rarely have I seen players pull the "I know it's certain death... but it must be done!" and pull a "Spock in the reactor chamber" moment. "He's dead already!" Funny thing is... very few of my players dwell on the sacrifice. They have lost charcters... and they just move on. Only one players has ever "role played" building monuments, going to funerals, etc. Both times, it was when important NPCs died. Others have made tough decisions, retired or whatever... but rarely do they seem to go for the "blaze of glory" kind of ending. I wonder at the gamer psychology behind this... as to me, how you die is a very important aspect of being a hero. Maybe I'm just weird that way... but I think this genre/style is steeped in the "ultimate sacrifice" concept, but if so... why don't we see it happen more, in games? If any of you have stories about true, heroic moments of sacrifice in your games, I'd love to hear them.

Top 10 10. Beast - Making the best of a bad situation 9. Static - Comic geek gets powers, and is still a nice kid 8. Robin (Tim Drake) - Really smart kid who works really hard 7. Nightwing - Side kick grows into his own man. 6. Green Arrow (Connor Hawk) - Innocent hero. 5. Hawkman - Reincarnated hero with rich history. 4. Shang-Chi - The living weapon. 'Nuff said. 3. Starman (Jack Knight) - Legacy hero smart enough to retire. 2. Quicksilver - "Have you ever stood in line at an ATM..." 1. Jenny Sparks - Alcohol, sex, swearing... and the will to use her powers to make a better world.

Or even better... 7) Have the Lord of Time actually be one of the PCs future selves! That subplot has been running through my campaign for years. One PC had it thrust upon him, and his whole character changed direction in order to avoid that possible future at all costs. The other came up with some ideas himself (his character is immortal already) and in a "time squall" scenario he began to have flashes of future events and people, including two different futures selves... and he really groks on it. He'd LOVE to become the Zen Master of Time at some point Just found that control issues aren't as bad as the fact that some players hate time travel stuff, and others like it. If a player hates the theme of a game, they aren't going to enjoy it, no matter how well it's run.

While I totally agree about the "feel" of a campaign... I think that the "supers vs military" discussion often misses the biggest issue... logistics and infrastructure. A military weapon might have more total firepower than an average Champions character... but think of all the support required to maintain tanks, Apache's, and F-16s. Ammo, fuel, maintenance parts... all of that stuff is expensive and SLOW. A super just wakes up in the morning, eats some Wheaties, and off she goes to kick @$$. Now, it's true that, unless they are VERY powerful, it would be stupid for a super to take on a fully mobilized military force... but the fact is, they don't have to wait for it to mobilize. Go attack the factories, the supply dumps, command centers, etc. Fly below radar and take out planes on the ground. Super stealth into Ft. Benning's basic training camp and slaughter untrained enlistees in their beds. Cut off supply lines and destroy airport runways so tanks run out of gas, and planes can't land or take off. Supers are so much more FLEXIBLE than military might, that they would win by destroying the infrastructure that society and the military depend upon. Humans get tired, hungry and worn out. Supers don't. Most don't need to breathe or eat... can fly or otherwise easily and quickly move over difficult terrain, etc. These are HUGE advantages in warfare... far surpassing the advantage of "bigger guns." In my campaign, this has always been the question. "Why have the supers NOT taken over the world." Military and super police forces do exist... and in my world, very few metahumans are Alpha level threats in terms of raw power. At this point, society has developed enough high tech, self-supporting, secure and resourced military, that it would be hard for supers to do so... not to mention those metas that protect the status quo... but it would not be impossible. The war would be bloody... with heavy casualties on both sides... but the basic fact is... supers are fast, flexible and able to take out major targets in th time in takes for a tank to rotate it's turret in their general direction. In the end, my answer to "Why haven't the supers taken over the world?" is "Well... they haven't really tried."

This argument doesn't make sense. The player can spend 1 for 1 EXP on their "true form" if they wish... but if they want to spend points to build up the flexibility they get with a second form, it costs slightly more than 1 per 1. I don't see how that is a problem. The flexibility of two or more separate characters with distinctive powers and abilities, that you can switch between, depending on which is more appropriate for the situation at hand... is certainly worth a 20% tax on point cost. That is LESS than a 1/4 advantage on EVERY ACTIVE POINT SPENT. It's an unbelievable deal, compared to any other method of building a character. To say that the other characters become "less and less powerful" is a false comparison. Leave multiform out for a second, and take the difference between two 300 pt. characters, both of whom earn 10 EXP. One puts all 10 into upping their EB by 10 active points. The other puts 10 points into their VPP, getting 7 active points, because the control cost of 3 has to be paid. (If you round in the players favor. Next ten points, it will be 6 and 4.) If this happens over time, would you say that the first player far out powers the second, because the second doesn't get 1 for 1 active point value? I'd hope not. The second player is simply paying for flexibility over raw power. Multiform is the same thing. The MF cost is just a control cost for a much, much cheaper VPP with the limitation "Always the same secondary character." It's an extremely beneficial, flexible power... with a very low cost, without being bah-roken like the official interpretation. Why is that so hard to see? Anyway... to keep things simple, I'll probably go with Monolith's basic idea. You pay a MF cost upon construction, or when the power is initially given to the character. After that, the player just gets EXP like everyone else, and spends it on whatever ever form they want, 1 for 1. It's slightly unbalanced in favor of the MF character, but not anything close to a 5x rate of EXP growth or more.

How can you defend this rule? It is moronic, and I have a problem with anyone who doesn't see that. >>> "One good check on the whole situation is to allow a player to spend only 1 Experience Point of every 6 he earns on his Multiform. That way, the true form improves by 5 points for every 5 points his Multiform(s) improve by." <<< So if this was intended to be the case, why isn't it in FReD? There is an entire paragraph under Multiform dedicated to how to spend EXP, and it doesn't even mention this kind of required GM oversight. It is still saying, "Here's a power that, as written, is abused by spending any EXP to improve extra forms, so you have to have special oversight on it. Not just special oversight at creation, but continual oversight, every time EXP is rewarded." This isn't a "Spyglass" or "Stop Sign" issue where a power MIGHT be abusable or over powered in certain situations, this is a power, by definition, that unbalances a character... period. I you want a better write-up... here it is. Multiform costs 1pt per 5pts of POTENTIAL character points in a second form. Example... 60 points buys 300 POTENTIAL points that have to be filled up by Base points (equal to the true characters base points), Disadvantages (equal to the true characters disadvantages, more or less if GM allows during construction), and Experience. Example... starting true character is 300 points, 150 bsae and 150 disads. Second form is 300 points, 150 base points and 150 disads. When EXP is earned, the player can choose whether to spend to spend the points on the True character or on the second form. If the character chooses to spend EXP on the secondary form, it can't put the forms total point over the POTENTIAL total, as determined by the Multiform cost. Example... a 60 point multiform means a MAX 300 point second form... so if you wanted to spend 5 EXP on the second form, you'd have to spend 1 pt on the Multiform cost... now 61... and you get the POTENTIAL for five more points, which is then filled with 5 EXP. Six points of EXP gain only 6 points of powers/skills spread among the two forms. 1 into Multiform, five into actual skills/powers whatever on the second form. If you do it the way suggested earlier, you still net 10 EXP for every 6. Five for the true form, and five for the secondary form. Still unbalanced. Even more so if you have multiple forms. Then it is 10 + 5 for every form beyond the second... all for 6 points. That's nuts! My way, it's one for one, like every other character. The player does have to pay 6 points for every five it wants to increase the second form... but this is a small price for the flexibility of having two unique characters and the ability to switch between them. Think of it like a control cost on a VPP (cheaper by far 1 per five, instead of 1 per 2) where the VPP is limited to the second character. You can't increase the VPP without increasing the control cost... and you certainly don't increase the VPP by ONLY increasing the control cost. You have to put points into both. Why should Multiform break this common concept? Answer: It doens't have to, it shouldn't, and with my write up, it won't.

YES... RONIN! Thank you for reminding me. Heck... I own the movie. LOVE the movie Ronin. Other movies that make for good, "more realistic" style adventures. China Town Any of the Godfather movies. The Bodyguard (yes, cheesy as it may sound, it's a solid DI adventure) To Live & Die In LA (heck, the main PC bites it half way through the movie!) Man On Fire Platoon Year of the Dragon Heat and Manhunter from Michael Mann Serpico Taxi Driver from TV, the old Edward Woodward show, "The Equalizer" (loved that show) the new Michael Mann show, "Robbery Homicide" ahhh... I really want to play DI again, darnit

YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING! So the rule is basically, "If you have multiform, you get five experience points for every one that the other players get." As a bonus, the GM has to ride roughshod on how those points are spent, essentially telling the player what to do with the experience, causing conflict in the group, to maintain ANY semblance of balance in the game. Absolutely, ridiculously stupid. That is utterly moronic.(Not you, Monolith... the person who made that rule.) You build a character with an interesting concept, and find yourself gaining EXP five times faster than the rest of the group. Billy Batson never changes, but Captain Marvel gets five times the experience. If you play the character like Prime, from the Ultraverse comics, there is no reason ever to change back into the child form, and the player gets five times the rate of power growth as other players... because of an utterly broken rule. One that was NOT broken in 4th Edition, because the "true form" had to be the most expensive. That, at least, made some sense, if somewhat limiting. This new ruling is not just abusable... it is flat out unplayable.

Multiform states that the "true form" must pay the cost of the "most expensive form/5" That's fine. I have a 300 pt. character with a 300 pt. second form, so the true form pays 60 pts. out of the 300 points they have to play with. Then the character earns experience. Now the "true form" has 20 EXP... and is more expensive than the second form... so is it NOW the most expensive form, and thus HAS to pay four more points into the Multiform cost for a total of 64? That is how the rule reads... unless the "true form" is not considered as part of the "forms" when figuring out what is the "most expensive form." Some clarification, please? I could find nothing in the Rule FAQ. If the former is the case. Then a character starting at 300 points, with a Multiform of 200 pts., would originally pay 60 points, even though their only form is 200... correct? If the latter is the case, and the true form is kept out of the "most expensive form" consideration... then it makes more sense, but can be very easily abused, as a 200 pt. "true form" could be a normal with a five hundred points "most expensive form" and spend 100 points for this... and then spend all their time in their expensive form. I'm sure this has been answered before, but I'd appreciate some help, here. Thanks

Re: Re: Relieved... I should give props to Storn Cook, who pulled off a similar concept, but in Fantasy Hero (and his own system) rather than modern day. He basically took our "ragtag adventurer" types, and, having built a fantasy world based on Forgotten Realms... gave us political/royal power. My character was made a Duke of a small town... based on my adventures and some precog powers that had conviced the queen the importance of this small area of her kingdom. The other players became my advisors and generals... often doing much more of the adventuring than I did. We all had multiple characters, as our main guys became stay at home and administer types, and others became the adventurers, soliders, explorers. This worked really well, as we could lose characters to battle, without the campaign itself ending. Even though the campaign petered out after a few years, for a number of reasons, it still has to be one of the two strongest fantasy campaigns I've participated in.

Are you kidding! An orange, rocky Thing wearing a Groucho Marx glasses and nose? WHHEEEE!! Here's my ten bucks! (Seriously... after the success of X-Men, Spider-Man, and likely Daredevil... they want to make a comedy out of the FF? What the hell?)

Y'know... I'd heard he was doing this... after his success with Harry "Ripped off of Neil Gaiman's Tim Hunter" Potter movies. Could be worth seeing. We really are in the era of geek heaven. Movies and comics and RPGs and video games are all advancing, so that we can experience our geek loves in ways we could only imagine as kids.

Relieved... ... to see I'm not the only one who likes this "more realistic" style of game. My players have no problem with gritty, but they do want to be "larger than life" and their characters are the prime focus, not the organization. That's fine, and I run a very complex superworld that is very satisfying. I guess I just miss the private detectives and ex-Green Berets, trying to stop terrorists, or lying gut shot in a back alley when things go wrong. Players who play "normal people in extraordinary circumstances" rather than "extraordinary people." Not something I want ALL the time, but would like to play some it some times. Do love the idea of focusing ont he "agency" and not the "agent" but I'm not sure if my players would like that. Again, all a matter of personal preference... not saying one game is better than another.

Did you see the latest Bond film. Pretty lame, IMO... but I loved the title sequence, with the female figures digitally enhanced to be covered in ice or flame. The flame effects were outstanding. I kept thinking, "If they do a Fantastic Four movie, then the Human Toarch will look amazing!" Hope to see more "power effects as costumes" in future super movies, since I think that will be a way to make the costume work, unlike spandex.

I love continuity... In fact... I'm obsessed by it. I read comics, but I despise the constant updating of timelines. IMO, Spider-Man SHOULD be 57 years old. I hate that he's not. I stopped reading most Marvel comics in the early 90's, because I was sick of classic stories and a very solid continuity being ignored. (If not, year for year, from early sixties to mid '80s... Marvel's characters had a steady progression from teens to young adults, to full adults that mirrored the times... after twenty years or so, things began to stagnate, and I lost interest.) In my campaign, which is in it's 16th year... time and age takes place, just like the real world. Characters that started out in their 20's are in their late 30's to early 40's now... though most are NPCs by this point. My original character, Pulse, who was 20 at the time, is now 35, has a wife and kid, and a VERY different perspective on life. Characters that don't age, are beginning to be noticed, and their relationships with normals is strained. These kind of changes add drama and pathos to a potentially shallow comic book world. The actions characters took a decade ago, still have repercussions today. Characters live, age, die, retire... whatever... just like real people, they just have wild, amazing, super adventures along the way. The world itself has changed dramatically. It is no longer a status quo earth with supers. It has drastically changed with alien and magical cultures introduced, radical technology and war changing economics... politics very different, but still somewhat mirroring todays real world. I love this part of gaming. Long term world building/world development. This is WHY I game. I have a written chart of EVERY SINGLE GAME run in the campaign (issue number, title, what heroes and villains starred). I have writeups of months and years of change, tied to specific timelines, for all this as well. Again, this is where I get my pleasure in gaming. When a character meets an NPC, and realizes this is someone with a rich history... the players enjoy this. When players can look back on ten years or more of gaming, and see how their characters have grown and matured and changed the world... they get off on that... and that is satisfying to me as GM. Again... continuity and long term storytelling is WHY I game. I love it.

To add on here... Tom, First off, love your mention of Density benchmarks. Great idea. I wanted, though, to comment on what you stated above about EMP and Earth Manipulation. While, from a 20 year plus veteran of Champions, I have no problem figuring out how to create these powers... I really think we have to look at things from a newbie perspective. A newbie, who has read the Titans, and wants to create a Terra clone character, will open FReD or another book, looking for "Earth Powers" or something similar, so they can build their character. They won't find it. Hero gives generic powers effects, and you build the "superpower" you want out of them. For some of us, this has always been intuitive and cool as hell... but after a long time, I think we all need to admit that this is NOT how the majority of gamers view Hero. More than the math issues, more than the munchkinism that Hero allows... it is the lack of FLAVOR and lack of FAMILIARITY that I think keeps most folks from Hero. Newbies don't start the game thinking, "I want to have a 75 active point multi-power, utilizing seven ultra slots, and 3 variable slot, with nine attack powers and two movement powers, with up to eleven different power advantages and seven power limitations, which, through description and role playing, will simulate manipulation of soil and rock similar to that displayed in comic books I've read." (This is how I think... after so long with the system... and that's fine, but it's not how MOST people think.) No... what they think is, "I want earth powers." We have to give them "Earth powers." They need a full page with FLAVORFUL description, and simple, flat point costs, that they can go, "Oh... look... Earth Powers. 93 Points... scribble, scribble... ok cool... I've got Earth powers." Done. The system is there... FReD has all the rules, supplements have all the advice... now we need to give them books that have done all the work... even work vets like us think is common and easy. ESPECIALLY the work vets like us think is common and easy. If the Powers Sourcebook can do this... then it will succeed. If it doesn't, then it will not reach a new audience, it will not allow a GENTLE introduction to a very complex game. It will fail as a product. Think of it this way. If I want to learn tennis, I pick up a raquet and ball, and with some guidance, I learn how to swing and hit, and move my feet... I am NOT handed a physics text on action/reaction, compression, force and velocity and formulas that abstract the concept of playing tennis. That is what Hero has, for too long, expected players to do. FReD is a text book, explaining the underlying physics of a game, rather than the game itself. We all know this. That was the intent... but at some point, they have to publish the GAME itself. The players have to pick up the raquet and ball, and swing a few times. This Powers book needs to be the raquet and ball of Hero. Something the player can pick up and swing with... even if they don't do a good job of it, at first. A veteran player will serve an ace, first time out of the bag with this book... new players will put it in the net... but ALL players are able to easily take a swing... which has not been the case for Hero in the past. IMO, this kind of supplement really needs to be the focus NOW... or Hero will fail to catch on, and only us old farts will be sticking around to watch it fade away, once again.

This kind of campaign is actually my favorite style of superheroic campaign. Wild stuff exists... but the PCs have to be much more normal. This kind of campaign I can get people to play in, because it is more wild... less "realistic" because of the setting, and you can justify high "luck" powers and the like to keep your characters alive... though death does happen. I guess it's just hard to find folks who want to play in the "real world." LIke I'd much rather watch Law & Order than go see the Daredevil movie (though I'll do both) I'd much rather play a normal private detective, ex-military type or new photographer... rather than a superhero. Just a matter of taste, I guess.