Nekkidcarpenter

-CHAT Logs, 6/15/21-
 
Mom made this cape: So, 'Bigpikture' you're a former member of GENOCIDE? Srsly? How messed up with hate are you?
BigPikture: You're the one who chose me out a bunch of bad guys to interview, sidekick.
Mom made this cape: More because my mentor made trying to understand certain criminal mindsets a part of my training. I thought you were reformed,  But now I learn the only reason you're not still a member is because the organization is dead. You still hate mutants? Srysly? in 2021?
BigPikture: The problem is still the same, and with Genocide gone, accelerating. 
Mom made this cape: Oh no, more flying people. How will mankind survive? Jelly much?
BigPikture:  Geez kid, how old are you?
Mom made this cape: Old enough to know a Nazi.
BigPikture: Says the vigilante in training who will one day bypass laws 'for the greater good'. 
Mom made this cape: Man, if I didn't have to put up with you in order to get an extension on my patrol time, I'd exit this chat now. Fine, if it's not jealousy that fuels the hate, then what is it?
BigPikture: I'm trying to save mankind, and believe it or not, future generations of mutants too.
Mom made this cape: .... wth? How is killing mutants SAVING them?
BigPikture: How much do you know about Evolution, Genetics?
Mom made this cape: Enough to know it's natural, and inevitable.
BigPikture: Is it natural to have a species fracture at an accelerated rate? The answer is 'no', should it be so random an inconsistent ? Again, no.
Mom made this cape: It's adaptive is all...
BigPikture:  Adapting to WHAT? Tell me, what strange evolutionary need has two brothers, both mutants: one gets gills, the other sets things on fire with his mind? Where is the consistency? 
Mom made this cape:  Scientists are looking into that.
BigPikture: Yes, we are. You think we didn't have scientists in Genocide? We did look into it. What we saw was not normal mutation! It was not typical evolution. It was a genetic apocalypse brewing ready to kill billions.
Mom made this cape: You're full of #$$#. Maybe not all mutants pass on the same powers, but a lot of times its similar when it passes down at all.
BigPikture: Not as often as you would think, and believe me, we had more time to study such than 90% of folks out there. Sure, sometimes the genetics hold, and eventually some will lock down. How much do you know about human nature? Sociology, Power Dynamics?
Mom made this cape: Obviously still a student, but if this is a 'mutants are inherently driven to crime' argument, you can go #$## yourself.
BigPikture: Actually, there does seemed to be heightened aggression among mutants according to certain studies into their brain chemistry. Yes, not everyone agrees. I'd show you the study but it would be over your head. But no, let's focus on the fracturing lines, then human nature. Let's say some powers breed true. Homo homo Sapiens become a minority. Some will say it's time for Homo Divergent will rise, no big deal. But Homo Divergent is a catch all, what you'll really end up with is Home Divergent Fortis, Homo Divergent Solaris, and everyone's favorite, Homo Divergent Psychicae! You won't have 'the next step in evolution', you'll have dozens of steps, many of them mis-steps, but essentially different species! And as soon as they start competing and fearing others not in their particular evolutionary track, they'll turn on each other.
Mom made this cape:  That's crazy. They're in the same boat. They need each other.
BigPikture: Do they? Maybe the idea of a hundred people with the ability to take down a bridge with a single punch doesn't frighten you. How about mind control? Telepaths. Don't think they wouldn't click together, band together and think they were better than the OTHER Mutants divergent lines.
Mom made this cape: This is conjecture.
BigPikture: PSI.
(A pause)
BigPikture: Ah, you have heard of them, either that or you're googling fast as you can. They're supremacists as well as a criminal organization, and they don't think for one moment they'd see a standard 'brick' as an equal. They'd eventually rationalize, enslave the others. And not just them, how about Home Divergent Velox? You know, Speedsters. Everyone else would be so annoyingly slow. The only ones they could relate too would be is each other. They wouldn't see other genetic adaptations, they'd see them just like they often see you or me: tortoises acting as speedbumps on their highway.
Mom made this cape:  You don't know that's how it will go down.
BigPikture: Right, and people would never war or enslave over SKIN Color either, or Cultures, or whatever. Wake up, MMTC , Powers are ten times more reason to form rival  tribes, and tribes do not play well with each other for the same resources. GENOCIDE Kept those numbers thin, like culling rabbits that would other wise pick things clean, only on a scale beyond just devouring nature. 
Mom made this cape:  We can BE better. And fear of what might be doesn't excuse the hate. And you still don't make sense. Why just mutants? Why not the guys who had lab accidents, or aliens who visit Earth? or mystical sorts?
BigPikture: Ah, the real question. Some guy gets flight and super strength from putting Kelvarite in a blender, why isn't he a target but the mutant with super strength and flight is? Come on, Cape. You know this. Lab accidents are not as likely to carry on mutation in their genomes. Some might, but it's not nearly as great a threat. Aliens? We already have folks watching them, and the Earth Authorities and heros DO fight them, otherwise we'd be invaded a dozen times over. It's not Genocide that's hypocritical, it's supers like you who pat yourselves on the back for stopping the latest threat from outside our solar system, while shutting your eyes to the threat from our biological systems run wrong. Mystics? They appear to have their own rules that have nothing to do with genotype. Honestly, we didn't have time for the 'whataboutism' of pissants who tried to equate the few dozen lab accidents, aliens, or mythic things that might breed true compared to the hundreds of mutants that eventually would. 
Mom made this cape:  You've got an excuse for everything. If Genocide rises again, I, and others, will stop you. We'll fight for our mutant friends. Hell, we'll fight for the mutant strangers!
BigPikture: Oh god, you actually think we haven't adapted with the times already? Oh kid you have no idea how the mission carries on. Genocide is gone, but we've learned how it works now. And you can't stop what the movement to save humanity has become with a punch.
Mom made this cape:  Genocide is dead.
BigPikture: Not dead. Just evolved. You'll thank us one day, when you see for yourself we were right, if you live long enough. Later, Cape.
 
-END OF CHAT-
 

To be honest, none of them really float my boat.
 
The Price of Dreams (Teen Champions)
Obviously, as potential child soldiers, they can't do official missions.
 
That just makes it another super school game, with extra authoritarian bits.
 
Turncape: The Defectors (Cold War period Champions)
This feels like it would require heavy handed GMing to avoid it going off the rails - and I would be at the front of the derailing queue.
 
Universal Rejection (Champions)
Probably the most traditional game, which is why I voted for it - but it's really just a traditional game with a bit of extra fluff.
 
Wrongfully Convicted, Divinely Conscripted (Champions)
Meh.

Lets say Zuckerberg suddenly starts promoting and branding a superhero with a costume and secret ID.  Upon what conceivable basis would anyone assume it was him?  The natural assumption is that it is someone else he's bankrolling, nobody would figure he was out there doing anything.  Rich, powerful guys with money don't go fight crime, they pay OTHER people to do that.  Iron Man being an employee wearing Stark tech makes a hell of a lot more sense than that its Tony Stark.

Where's the love for Prince Humperdink?
 

I am trying to launch a "Play-by-Post" HERO 5th Pulp game and need a site where my players/I can share maps, discuss "In Character" and "Out-Of-Character" topics, roll dice, essentially game in an asynchronous fashion.  Just to be clear, I do not need a VTT...
 
I attempted to use "World Anvil" but everything there makes me feel like I spend FAR more time fighting their overly convoluted interface than creating my game content.  At one point, I attempted to generate a link to join my campaign that sent my player to a TOTALLY different campaign!  Argh!!!!
 
Does anyone have any suggestions for a low cost place to host a "Play-by-Post" HERO 5th game?
 
Thanks in advance!

What I am going for with this topic is how the typical person has responded to the presence of the heroes regardless of the nature of the campaign.  If you are using supers, how have they responded to the presence of those with powers? What is the situation in social media like?

Oh, I would love to have run a really long-term campaign.  Every time people wanted to play something else it kind of broke my heart.  I would pour days into prepping for each game, building the settings, etc.  It felt like they were rejecting my work.  BUt they would do it  no matter who ran.  Let's play Star Wars now!  Let's play a wild west game!  I have an idea for an Indiana Jones game!  I bought a new game, let's try it!  *sigh* ok (crumpling up notes)

So I got to see my girl today, for the second time since Pandemic. And I was talking on how much the world has changed, and how comic book universes have not kept up. And I mentioned that I thought the Avengers Project would have moved to a Gig economy model after MCU movies. And she really liked that idea. If you join Avengers, you can down load an App, that works like Uber, Door dash etc. Bank robbery within 5 blocks, are you available? Heroes can be paid bounties, and docked for excessive damages. And make a living as a full time hero, And live a private life, if wanted.
 
What other changes should the Comic book universe contain?
Do you wish to Tip your hero? Did He/She arrive in time? etc...thank you for helping Avengers become a better service!

Congratulations!  That's fantastic.  Lasting friendships are priceless.
 

I'll tell the the bad character concepts I remember:
 
Photogen!  The hero who can take pictures with his eyes, and pull the picture out of his stomach. That's all the player wanted him to do initially. We managed to convince him to take a light-based attack.
 
Mr. Pain! The 50 Str hero who wanted to Haymaker everything, even the unarmored agents. 😬  Eventually, I made him a villain with the reasoning that he liked inflicting pain so much he became a villain so he could do it more often.
 
Timelord  A Dr. Who rip-off who was just plain weird. Even the player could barely stand him. A one episode hero.
 
Major Ugums (a villain): A 50 Str villain who is so generic that he joined a group of other bad concepts... they don't even have a villain team name!
 
Razorback The name is taken from a wild razorback hog, he had a killing attack on his back that he had to do an acrobatic flip to land on the villain because the razor killing attack was on his back. He also had a 20 pt Code vs Killing 🤔  He only had a 20 Str to do any other kind of damage. He spent alot of time on the sideline doing nothing.
 
Amoeba Man! The all-time winner of loser-dom! He was a taxi driver who could transform into a giant amoeba. It/he could float and use a weak ego attack... because he bought so many things for his appearance he had very little points leftover for an attack. Originally, he wanted to be able to duplicate every time he was hit but Champions 2 had just come out - and we weren't going to tell him about the power "duplication".  His grand appearance went like this:  other heroes arrive to stop a bank robbery. The bank has a large glass window so people can see in/out. The taxi is driving by with a passenger in the back. The driver sees the robbery in progress, swerves the taxi and crashed through the bank window. He immediately then transforms into an amoeba and "splurps" out of the taxi, floating. EVERYONE in the bank stops and stares while the passenger gets out of the taxi and runs screaming down the street. Both heroes and villains pause to consider teaming up to attack this monster. Amoeba Man starts to attack the villains so the heroes decide to finish off the villains, while keeping an eye on the monster. After the fight, Amoeba Man (who never said a word or communicated, although he could) just floats off into the sky.

We celebrated the 40th anniversary this weekend. I had made medals for each player. I also made one special medal (which I kept) for all the bad character concepts that have ever been made. Do you realize that's 2080 weeks for so long a campaign? Also, my brother made a video for the players to watch before the Champions episode started. The video simply ended: "Now, let the game begin!".

If so, it renders the rulebooks moot in their entirety as anything can be overridden by the GM.
 
 
DINGDINGDINGDING
 
A Naked AoE Radius, Selective lets you make a full OCV attack against many targets.  It also does not let you make half a dozen full DC attacks against a major opponent.
 
 
 
 

It also works in Marvel because of one crucial difference in X-men stories vs all other stories thru 2010 or so.
 
The X-Men never send their villains to jail.
 
They show up and prevent crimes just like every other hero group but their villains always escape. They can say they fight Magneto, but they've never handed him to the authorities. They've used a private secret prison or given him parole on honor. They've even made him part of the team and team leader. They'll fight to keep an innocent mutant out of jail but they never aid in the arrest of a guilty one. They'll stop a rampage but at the end they run away before the authorities show, just like the villains they fight. And the majority of their adventures take place outside the public eye so the only thing most people know is that a band of mutants fought another and caused a lot of property damage.
 
I can only recall one time they fought the good fight in public(Trickster/Siege Perilous) and they were proclaimed as heroes. So the next year of stories was therefore them being underground/undercover, hiding from the public eye  and ending with one of those stories where their heroic actions were cast in a villainous light and they naturally fled the scene rather than give their side of the story.
 
It's a conscious choice by the writers and editorial staff and it continued because it sold. X-titles were definitely the leading cash cow of Marvel before the MCU. It just got dated because the X-stories were definitely in their own private universe.
 
Present day they operate pretty much as a sanctuary nation for heroes and villains alike. They're North Korea with a smaller population a bigger arsenal and leadership of comparable stability and sanity. They aren't trying to exist alongside humanity and and are flaunting their superior abilities and saying "What ya gonna do?" to the whole world and the world is poised for that one bad act from a militant mutant to show them.
 
They'd better move to Mars, life on Earth is not gonna go well. 

I didn't post it but the effect rolls are basically the same as with mind control; a result equal to BODY will get them to do what they would like to do, BODY+10 gets them to do what they aren't opposed to doing, etc.  The structure is essentially the same as mind control, so a character could try to break out, although obviously inanimate objects like a smart phone have no will to try to do so.  Probably the attempt to break out should be an Ego Roll since Hero got rid of Body rolls entirely by making it a secondary characteristic (originally that was my concept; Their Body vs controller's Ego).

What makes a mutant different from humans? Is it one or two genes? If that was the case, then normal human children would need to be classified as a new race since they meet this same criteria. In science,  they say that two lifeforms are different only when there's sufficient difference between them that they have no ability to mate under natural conditions. An example would be dogs and cats.  Once they were the same animal and today they are different that they are not able to interbreed naturally,  resulting in two different species.  Marvel's mutants fail to make this required benchmark, so they should be called homo sapiens,  not anything else. The primary reason for hatred that is expressed in Marvel is nothing more than common old-fashioned hate mongering,  and that has been going on since humans have been able to walk. The hate-mongers only have a new target to focus on, but the message has not changed. 

Well... The question for me is: Does the allegory or satire make sense on its own terms?
 
Bigots believe the hated group is fundamentally different from them. With Marvel mutants, this is true. They have different genes.
 
Bigots believe the hated group is intrinsically dangerous, even if individuals aren't harming anyone right now. With Marvel mutants, this is true. Any super-powered person is potentially dangerous to the non-powered. They are destined to supplant baseline humanity, and some high-profile mutants speak of doing this by force, right now.
 
Bigots often believe they can detect members of the hated group no matter how superficially they might "pass" For Marvel mutants, this is true: There really are mutant-detecting machines.
 
If one wants to condemn bigotry, it seems like an odd approach to create a fictional group for which the delusions of bigots are actually true.
 
The argument, unpacked, seems to be: Minorities really are different, are "Other." Maybe even dangerous. But you must not hate them for that.
 
Still, if this feels "right" to people, I guess I can't argue with feelings.
 
Dean Shomshak

My problem with Mutants hating is encapsulated in a story I read once.  I will attempt to repeat it here:
 
Jim Bob is walking down the driveway to his friend Billy Ray, when he sees Billy loading all his hunting gear into his pick up.  Since hunting season is not for a number of weeks, Jim is curious.
 
Jim Bob "Billy."  
Billy Ray "Hey Jim."
Jim Bob "Whatchu doin?"
Billy Ray "I heard a mutant moved into the old Johnson place.  I'm gonna run him out!  No place for that type of scum in our town!"
Jim Bob "Hey Billy, he ain't no mutant.  He was the victim of some experement!  He just wants to find a quiet place to live and get out of the press!"
Billy "Yeah!  Right!"
Jim "No really he has a certificate from Captain America stating he's the victim of cercumstance!"
Billy "Your not joshing me?"
Jim "The Lord strike me down if I'm lying!" "Anyway I'm hear to see if Bobby Sue has any of her pecan pies left?  We plan to do a house warmin for him of Friday!'
Billy "Wellll......"
Jim "And he like Hooters!"
Billy "Well lets take em there Saturday!  What does he drink?"
Jim "Bud."
Billy "Well, no accounting for taste!"
 
Billy turns to his house "YO! Bobby Sue!  You have any pecans pies left?"

The Advanced Player Guides have a bunch of neat new ideas and ways of using powers in them, and I recommend picking them up for the thoughts.  Some are so great they really should have always been in the rules, like Extradimensional Space.
 
Here I am going to share some of the new concepts I have for Hero, for people to look at, suggest adjustments, or just giggle at.  If other people would do the same with their house rules, this could be an interesting, valuable thread.
 
For today:
Area Effect Scatter: Costs half as much as Area Effect (any) and is bought the same way (basically buy AE: Any then get double the number of hexes/2m areas).  But instead a choice how it hits, target a location then roll d6 for direction and 2d6 for distance that each of the 2m areas lands on from a targeted central location.  All scattered areas go off at once, and they cannot share locations; if one is rolled exactly where a previous area/hex has been rolled, then it lands adjacent to that or in a new randomly determined area.
 
EDIT: Been thinking about the scatter distance, maybe a d6+1d6/8 2x2m areas is better?  Something that gives more area the more areas you have to throw around so its not super concentrated in one area.
 

You could do the same thing but with distributing drinks.
 
Call it Scatter Shots.

https://sports.yahoo.com/kid-goes-crazy-receiving-racket-191158124.html

Hey, just got back from NTRPG and I ran Champions 4e and would like to run a Champions/Hero System game at my house now that restrictions are being lifted.  Anyone interested please PM me.

As a heroic game, the default rules for the setting are no knockback (this is a fantasy setting, and only special attacks can do knockback).  Knockback is still calculated, but only to determine knockdown (fall the same 2m area) rather than knocking them flying.  This spell blasts them with wind up to a maximum effect of 32m, average around 6m.

As far as I can tell, it works the same. An area-affecting constant power affects anyone who enters it when the enter it, and every one of the power owner's phases thereafter while they remain in it. A Damage shield using area of affect-surface affects anyone who touches it when they touch it, and every one of the power owner's phases thereafter while they remain in contact with it.

I think the problem with the portrayal in Marvel isn't the existence of anti-mutant bigotry, but its almost universal status.  It would have worked a lot better if most people shrugged at it, but a mean, nasty group hated mutants for being mutants.  That would not only fit bigotry better (no group has ever been universally bigoted or been discriminated against) and would carry more impact.