matrix3

Re: Supergirl (Cir-El) Great write up! Eh, "Must spread rep around..." blah, blah, blah.

Re: [Campaign] DEFENDERS CONGREGATE!! Sounds like another great session! So...are you doing this on HeroCentral? Hm? Maybe looking for players?

Re: Super tech effects on the world at large. That is how I usually run the stuff that would really upset the status quo. I let governments, terrorists, and a few select corporations have plasma cannons or power armor, but it is always at a diadvantage: bulky, very rare elements, or very labor intensive. The really wild science like matter-energy conversion, force fields, or slim, portable energy weapons with coin-sized "atomic batteries" all fall into "SCIENCE!" (gotta be all caps, and with at least one exclamation point). These all have to be special focuses or gadget pool stuff that can only be used by the character, although if two characters (or a PC and an NPC) have very similar special effects to their SCIENCE!, then I usually allow an activation roll to use each other's gear.

Re: [Campaign] DEFENDERS CONGREGATE!! So they don't know Invincigirl's identity, huh? And, she's the brick...I can already see some drama in the situation...

Re: [Campaign] The Fearless Monster Hunters Yay, Fearless Monster Hunters! I take it that Shaylarra was a bit of a "radiation accident" so that the Castilla and Illy could reconfigure some disadvantages?

Re: Characters you've always liked but who never fulfilled their potential... So...what was the third?

Re: [Campaign] DEFENDERS CONGREGATE!! Woo! Thanks for finishing that session write-up. Can't wait for more!

Re: Soul Calibur I've never been that much of a video gamer, but I would occasionally hit Aladdin's Castle (the local arcade) and play Soul Caliber and Virtua Fighter with my friends. I got reasonably good with Sophitia, and that was a fun game, but I had a blast with the old Drunken Boxer in Virtua Fighter. I remember that I'd tried the Mantis style fighter, and made it through a couple rounds, then I tried the Drunken Fighter on a whim and nearly mopped up the game with him. I don't know why, but the button mashing required for his moves just worked with my random mashing style and I was actually good! I haven't played that in a looong time, though...

Interim We did some work by email here. Roger solidified his holdings in the dojo in Chinatown, and ironed out the details to buy part of a paintball business that had a warehouse sized obstacle course in Renton and was opening another one in Fife. As a co-owner, he is looking to be able to take certain weekends and customize the courses to set up military-style training courses as paintball exercises. Johnny keeps up a dialog with Socrates, and talks with a local representative of the Irish Overseas Occult Directive to see is Socrates could be a Fey instead of an Aberration. He is told that this is a definite possibility. He also gets a response from Faust Force about Agent Rembrandt. Faust Force tells him to not attempt contact, and that they are sending Karl Nikloveitch to investigate. It turns out that Johnny has a history with Karl Nikloveitch, having given him a nickname, Drago (so named after a group of OCCULUS field operatives ended up drunkenly watching Rocky IV after an interorganizational team-building meeting; Nikloveitch’s associates found the nickname hilarious, and the name spread quickly through OCCULUS). There is also some friction because Drago is a Special Forces level military operative and finds Denominator’s lack of military discipline and cavalier attitude irritating in a field operative, while Denominator finds Nikloveitch humourless and demanding. In an attempt to keep his deep cover a secret, Johnny meets with Drago at a small home-brew friendly bar. Johnny discovers that Agent Rembrandt is a match for a missing Faust Force operative, Jan Krieger, who went missing in Toronto, and it is feared that unknown forces could be remote controlling his corpse. Johnny shares any information he has about Rembrandt, including his suspicions connecting Rembrandt to Haldemann. Drago leaves to perform some reconnaisance on the Haldemann campuses.

Session 2 Ok, I just lost the results of lots-o-typing, so here is the condensed version: Johnny looks at the data and finds that there are four classifications of Aberrations: Alphas, to be immediately captured and studied, Betas, under close scrutiny, Gammas, persons of interest and believed to possess powers, and Deltas, persons who are related to people with suspected or confirmed powers. There are no Alphas in Seattle, and only four Betas: Alexander Solonik, Kenchiro Sumitani, Chan Ho Nam, and Socrates Hythenium. The first three are organized crime figures, and there is data in their files from the FBI and interpol. The last is an interior decorator, performance artist, and GLBT activist. Socrates was briefly an Alpha for supposed mind control and illusionary powers, but then was bumped back to Beta after he unwittingly evaded a botched capture attempt. There is extensive debate in his file about whether he has powers, or is merely a talented street magician and performer. Johnny contacts Socrates to redecorate the WGN offices, and finds that Socrates could best be described as a hyperactive Legolas in a Willy Wonka suit with an expensive hair cut. Meanwhile, Roger wants to start a side business providing security. This is just a cover of course, to having his own little army for use against Haldemann in the future. While researching dojos, he has an energetic sparring match with a very skilled martial artist. Due to the combination of natural PD, combat luck, and his armored skin, he never takes any body, but he is stunned briefly after an open palm strike sends him almost 20 feet across the room. He manages to land a solid blow of his own, then yields. When he asks his partner about sparring in the future, he is told to ask around Chinatown for Chan Ho Nam. Roger learns from the instructor that Chan is a big wig in the Chinatown gangs, but learns more from Johnny when he later relates the sparring match.

Re: [Campaign] Seattle Underground The joint team quickly made their way over to Building Alpha, discovering an empty cube farm and some offices. The advanced sensors in Johnny's custom Motorola Q found an anomaly in the wall that led to a concealed stairwell down. Johnny and Tarot made the group invisible and went down. In the basement, the team found themselves on a catwalk above a large vertical ring held within a horizontal ring suspended above the floor. Both rings had arcane script running along their rims. The rings were connected by thick cables to banks of computer equipment along the walls, with a dozen or so lab smock clad figures shuffling between the rings and the computers. One female figure, matching the description of Patricia Haldemann, was directing the others, when she suddenly swung around, looked straight at the team on the catwalk above her, and called for security. The team quickly exited the building, laid a large entanglement ward outside the building, and withdrew. They split up, and the guys were on their way back to the WGN offices when there was a rumble and a glare against the clouds behind them. Ten pounds of C4 leaves a nasty divot.

The guys met with the B-Team at a predetermined location at 0100 hours. They found Jake Danger, Tarot, and hedKase waiting for them, with BoneDaddy already ensconced in a strategically placed sniper's nest. The infiltration went smoothly, with Jake getting them through the fence and hedKase redirecting camera feeds and getting them through the electronic locks. They were greeted with an enormous file vault in a climate controlled room. hedKase informed them that these were copies of files still being fed into the database, with originals held in Area 51. Through the file vault was a door into the server room, and it took hedKase a little longer to get through the electronic security this time, but he eventually won through. Once inside the data center, it took hedKase a little bit again to hack through the security on the servers while Johnny used it technomagic Motorola Q to play with the external security. A guard had discovered evidence of tampering on the fence, but Johnny diverted the security forces with a false alarm at a side gate. Once hedKase cracked the server security, they were confronted with some hard core encryption. Fortunately, hedKase had acquired certain protocols before escaping, allowing them to decrypt the database. Johnny had brought along a 1 TeraByte external hard drive, and started copying over all the data that would fit while hedKase altered his biometrics and corrupted some of the data to cover his tracks. He then backed out, made sure the server was set to push the database to the field offices at 0300 hours, and exited the room. Roger asked how long the data push would take, and upon receiving a response, suddenly pulled a large belt of explosives out of his pack, and set the timer accordingly. He then hid the explosives atop a row of shelves, and followed the group out.

Re: [Campaign] Seattle Underground Back at the WGN offices, Johnny goes into the magical research lab. He sets up the summoning table as a scale replica of the layout of sidewalks and power lines at the shoreline campus, with redundant containment wards around the table. He energizes it, and a small ebon flame erupts right where Building Alpha would be. A moment later, a thin tendril emerges from the flame, feeling around blindly. Careful not to disrupt the wards, Johnny drops a goldfish next to the flame. The questing tendril brushes the flopping fish, and strikes. A thousand hair thin filaments erupt from the tendril, piercing the goldfish as it thrummed with electric pain. Mouth agape, the skin shrivels and crisps as the tendril consumes the small fish. The filaments retreat, leaving a dessicated corpse. Roger is shaken by the miniature demonstration, and Johnny banishes the tendril and vanquishes the ebon flame, then obliterates any trace of the dimensional connection that might remain, minuscule as it may be.

Re: [Campaign] Seattle Underground The PCs exhaust their resources for both hedKase and Co. and Haldemann, so they start looking into the black SUVs they saw cruise by looking for the guys. They find that a team of Federal agents in suits is looking for hedKase & Co., and using military contacts and good old journalism tricks they find out that the supervising agent is Agent Rembrandt. The PCs find that the Federal team has apparently set up in a hotel, and they infiltrate posing as security analysts from the home office, there to test the hotel's security systems. All the agents are skittish of the security cameras, and the guys are only able to get one good still image of Agent Rembrandt. Roger tries to intimidate the hotel security force, which does not go well, and the guys barely get out with the cover. Johnny contacts OCCULUS and sends around the still of Agent Rembrandt. He learns that Faust Force is interested in this person, and he is not to approach in any way. The guys get an email from "bteam911@hotmail.com" and a meeting is arranged for a Denny's off Highway 167 in Kent, WA. At the meeting, a few plans are made for infiltrating the Shoreline campus of Haldemann, near NE 150th St. and 15th Ave NE. The database is readonly, distributed once per day over dedicated lines to three field offices. All updates are handled offline, thus the need for infiltration. hedKase is too well known to disappear from the database, but he will be able to alter biometric information and corrupt other portions of the DB, then it will propagate to the field offices. The B-team has been performing reconnaissance, and show the guys their plan for infiltration. While Jake is making notes on a map of the Haldemann campus, Johnny gets a creeping sensation. He realizes that he recognizes the swirling patten of sidewalks, combined with the odd placement of power and phone lines, makes for an efficient summoning and containment circle. And if his hunch is right, it is set to summon one of the Cthluloid infovores, which feed on information. Like, say, the personal details of thousands of individuals. If these details are specific enough, such as DNA samples and fingerprints, then the infovore may well be able to use it like a "true name" and dial them up long distance to suck up a few souls. The DB is held in Building Delta, while the summoning circle centers upon Building Alpha. The B-Team and the PCs agree to hit the DB in Building Delta, then investigate Building Alpha to prevent any summoning. A last few details are ironed out, then the teams split up. Johnny immediately contacts OCCULUS in Vancouver and asks for satellite photos of the Haldemann campuses. They come back looking very different than Jake's recon results, showing nothing out of the ordinary and definitely nothing that would act as a summoning circle. Johnny drive up to the Shoreline area, and magically hijacks a pigeon to do a fly over. At first it confirms the satellite photos, but as the pigeon descends below about 100 feet in altitude, the campus's appearance shifts to match Jake's recon report. A very subtle persistent glamour covers the whole area. Then, the connection is broken as the pigeon disappears in a puff of feathers. Johnny quickly removes any trace of his magic, makes sure he wasn't tracked, and high-tails it out of there.

Re: [Campaign] Seattle Underground The PCs pointed their guests to a roll up cargo door in the back that led to a long alley that finally emptied into a small, little used street some distance away (a feature the PCs had written up as back story for their base). Then, Johnny thoroughly scanned the computers for any illicit tampering by hedKase. Detecting none, they researched their new friends, and the company that supposedly had the database of "Aberrations," Haldemann MicroNautics. They discover that information is readily available on the whole group's backgrounds. hedKase is Edward Kase from Moorhead, MN. A gifted programmer and "White Hat" hacker since his early teens, he is now wanted for a laundry list of crimes, including electronic espionage, terrorism, and (of course) escaping from Federal custody. They soon find a website hedKase set up for his high school graduating class, with information on the rest of the group. Jake Danger is Patrick Roberts, and a little digging shows that he was dishonorable discharged after attacking a superior officer. Roger calls up a contact to get more info, and finds that Jake Danger was probably in the right, since it was a "morally ambiguous situation," but the superior officer had family political connections, and he was lucky to avoid incarceration. Tarot is aka Arthur Cushing, is a very normal individual, except he always seems to be near any "interesting" development. He won a car two days after his sixteenth birthday, only to have a frozen hog carcass fall out of the sky and demolish it in the middle of the night two weeks later. He won tickets to an exclusive concert, and then an insanely devoted PETA member wearing an explosive vest parachutes in and holds the entire concert hostage. Google news shows a dozen examples in the young man's life mixing implausibly good luck with equally outlandish bad luck, and this is in addition to the unusual Tarot card based magic he wields. BoneDaddy is aka Bryan Holding, who they find joined the Marines after high school and became a highly skilled sniper. He was recently injured in Iraq when an enemy rocket dropped half a building on him. He was fortunately not paralyzed, but a spinal injury left him with less than 30% mobility in his legs. Researching the company, they find that Haldemann MicroNautics is, basically, a big brain for rent, putting the "R" in "R&D" on a consulting basis for an eclectic range of clients. While companies that contract with Haldemann frequently have their own labs, and just need personnel to jumpstart or complete a project, Haldemann does have laboratories on their three campuses in the Seattle area that clients can use, in Shoreline, Redmond, and SeaTac. Haldemann specializes in electrical and optical engineering (microcircuitry and optical switching), but they also have labs and well-trained personnel for chemical engineering and genetics research. Haldemann does not actually manufacture more than a prototype, and rarely go beyond the planning stage before a client takes over full time. n 1952, Henry Haldemann came to the U.S. from France, where he had worked with Matarre in the late 1940's on his development of the transistor (parallel to the Bell labs development), along with certain RADAR applications during WW2. He gained a contact with Boeing and started Haldemann MicroNautics in early 1954, working on integrated circuitry and improving the use of RADAR in the planes, as well as improving the jet engines in the 707. Much of this work was rolled into the inaugural 727 in 1963. Following him from France was his wife, Sophia, a woman many years his junior. Reportedly brilliant in her own right, she provided an unknown amount of research behind the scenes for years before she left Henry and returned to France after apparently getting pregnant in 1965. There was no reason given for her return to Europe, though some say that she wanted to raise the child with "European sensibilities" and others said she returned home because Henry was neglectful or abusive. In 1972, it was reported that Sophia died in a car accident, and Henry took a few months off to be with the child he had never seen, a daughter named Patricia. He returned in early 1973, leaving Patricia in a boarding school. She apparently inherited the full measure of her parents' intelligence, eventually studying at top universities around the world, including Oxford, Cambridge, The Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology. She took over Haldemann MicroNautics in August of 2000 after her father's death. The PCs suspected Seeker or Nazi involvement, but haven't discovered the full truth. They have discovered that Patricia doesn't show up on scrying or magical detection. The truth is that Henry Haldemann was really Heinrich Haldemann and didn't come from France, but rather Brazil by way of Morocco, Algeria, and then France. He was among the wave that took over the Seekers of the Golden Truth. Also, Patricia and Sophia are the same person, created in a Nazi experiment in 1937, the result of early genetic engineering and magic. She has mental powers and a towering intellect, and is invisible to magic and mental awareness.

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing. If the munchkin's magic wielding uber-cyborg gets one shot by the main boss's henchman's flunky, maybe you need to rethink the campaign guidelines...

Re: What is Your Favorite Item? I remembered another item I heard about but never encountered: The Mace of Healing. As I recall, it was a 2d6 HKA with a linked 2D6 of Healing per turn for every BODY done. Thus, do 6 BODY and the target will be healed 2 Body per turn for 6 turns. The PC's soon found out that one had to be careful if the target was too close to death... Then there was the story of the Pebbles of Transmogrification. Used with a sling, they would do some small amount of damage, but had an 8- activation roll to transform the target into something harmless for an hour. The GM had a list of possible forms, including a slight chance that the target turned into a piece of fruit. Well, the PCs forgot about the time limit, and when one of them defeated (I believe) a minotaur, he ate the small piece of fruit as the ultimate insult to his defeated foe. One hour later, the rest of the party was showered with bits of their former team mate as the GM described in graphic detail the explosive result of a piece of partially digested fruit suddenly becoming 500 pounds of partially digested man-beef.

Re: Most Oscure Reference You've Ever Worked Into a Game Ooo, that's genius. Who've you pulled that on?

Re: [Campaign] DEFENDERS CONGREGATE!! Gah, what a cliff hanger! More! And, a great way to set up Tomorrow Boy as the creator of Mechanon!

Re: Looking for another character name I used these guys as agents of an evil shadow government within the U.S. government, and they were a whole department not just a strike forec, so I didn't think of this earlier: DARC - Department of Armored Response and Containment

Re: Looking for another character name ERRANT - Experimental Rapid Response Armored Neutralization Team Three similar thoughts: X-CAT - eXperimental Combat And Tactics (Not exactly a word, but sounds cool to me) ExACT - Experimental Armored Combat and Tactics ExTRA - Experimental Tactical Response Armor What was this program supposed to counter. From what I understand, SWAT came about because the drug cartels started using paramilitary forces on U.S. soil and grew from there. Is your power armor program a response to Drug Cartels using power armor, or is it targeted at super powered threats, or occult, or extra terrestrial...? EDIT: One more, quickly, building on ACE from Supreme Serpent: BRACE - Brigade Replacement (Armored/Advanced) Combat Exoskeleton - This is more military than FBI to me, though

Re: The Super Darwin Awards This almost turned into a Darwin Award, but the player was too tough and went unconscious and was just captured. One player, S, likes to play bricks. We were playing Star Hero, so he couldn't go Champions brick, instead he pushed the NCM and dumped a bunch of points into STR, CON, and BOD. Oh, and he had a Distinctive Feature of being big (6' 6" and 300+ pounds). The characters had raided a military base to get some information. They had all been disguised. Well, except for the big guy with the Distinctive Features. The raid was a success, so they went to a star base that was technically still in system, but they knew to be a seedy place, to hock what some incidental technology they had grabbed during the raid. It turns out that their raid had brought out the military even in a shady place like this. S had a beef with the military, so he decided to spy on a group of them while the others did their black market merchant stuff. He overheard the troops talking about the raid, and heard the troops say that stills from security cameras had been circulated. He then saw the commander go into the bathroom, so he decided to follow him. I thought he was going to jump the commander, but no, he just wanted to "count coup" and brushed against the guy on his way to a urinal. The commander glanced up, finished his business, then left. S was gloating about the "coup" as he came out of the bathroom -- and straight into the rifle bores of the troops. Being the brick, he charged them, but took relatively little body. The STUN scores were something else, though, and he was soon unconscious. The next session was breaking him out of the military hospital.

Re: Confessions of an Online GM How do people do maps on HeroCentral? Is there some functionality that you can use, or is it really a BMP edited with mspaint?

I wanted to post a link to this MP3 of Neil Gaiman reading his short-short story called "Nicholas Was..." that just strikes me as pulpish, with a rather strong dash of Dark Champions thrown in. It is

Re: Elementary, My Dear Watson I'd rep you if I could! I have to introduce Bat Logic into my games.