tec-9-7

The sexual assault element of his character is going to cross so many lines it'll never show up at all in most modern games, the ones where people respect hard boundaries and X cards are in use.  Using that kind of thing without discussion in advance and a full-table buy-in doesn't fly the way it did even ten years ago.  Good thing, too.  I don't roleplay so I can experience the worst parts of everyday news, and damn few stories in any medium are improved in any way by the inclusion of rape - especially when it's done solely to coerce a male character into doing something, as in the example.  Tone deaf in the extreme, that.
 
 

The original.  Not very complex but man that killing attack is brutal.  I used him several times when I just want a near unstoppable villain.

Justice, Not Law appeared in my mail today. And I'm happy to have gotten it. It definitely filled a hole in my collection.
 
Since ordering the above, I found out I was missing just one more 4th Edition print product. Pyramid In The Sky.
 
I have since ordered it from the same place I got all of the other classic supplements I mentioned in this thread. They really floored me. Because all the books were at their original cover price. So I didn't have to pay the Ebay tax on any of it.
 
www.dragonstrove.com is where I got all of this at. And they have great service.

It's almost complete. I just got a shipment today of nearly all of the books I didn't have. And I just ordered today the final book that I didn't yet own. It should be here in a week or so.
 
Horror Hero
Hudson City Blues
S.H.A.D.O.W. Over Scotland
Watchers Of The Dragon
 
I got those today. The next one coming is Justice, Not Law

Hi Duke -
 
I can confirm 100% that it DID exist.  I read it; I ran it.  Winner of the tourney was literally in tears at the end.

The BBB is certainly a classic - I spent more time playing this edition than any other. Love your character challenge!

The BBB is certainly a classic - I spent more time playing this edition than any other. Love your character challenge!

The BBB is certainly a classic - I spent more time playing this edition than any other. Love your character challenge!

A couple of years ago, I started reexploring Third Edition Champions. It's the version I first learned, way back in the fall of 1986. But my favorite iteration of Champions has always been 4th Edition, a/k/a/ the Big Blue Book (BBB).
 

 
So I have recently begun a 4th Ed building challenge. I'm building 250-point characters with the following guidelines:
Do the Disads first. No stats, Powers, Skills, or anything else until the Disads are done. No more than 50 points in any Disad category (BBB allows up to 75). After the Disads, spend at least 10 points on noncombat Skills, Talents, Perks, etc.  Build as normal after that.  The idea here is to build Characters, not just gaming pieces. To paraphrase Ron Edwards, a character should be someone you know and like. I'm trying to flesh out who the character is, and not just what they can do.
 
So far I've completed only two or three characters. I'll share them as time permits. 

If you're interested in a fusion of 3E Champions and Espionage!/Danger International, you might want to look at Super Agents by the late great Aaron Allston, which weaves together rules from both systems. Its examples might be useful to you. It's also a really cool book, like just about everything AA wrote.
 
 

Yeah, Champions 3e was great! It was the last edition released as a saddle-stitched book, for one. And it was the first edition that was properly typeset.
 
But after chewing on the idea of a simpler core for HERO System for a while now, I decided to dump the Espionage! PDF into a text file yesterday and plan to go through it and see if it can be massaged into a smaller, better core for how we use the HERO System. (The core's basically word-for-word the same as JI, so no real conflicts with 3e in general).
 
I have a vague plan to use bits of HERO 3e stuff as optional supplemental material (Weird Talents from JI, for example) along with (probably) the Champions 3e (or 2e?) Powers system.
 
But first I need to cut Espionage! down to size, reformat it, etc.
 
Unfortunately my free time is very limited, so it's going to be very slow going. But it should be fun and I'm looking forward to it.

I can't be the only one who still uses pencil and paper? Like, no matter what edition, I still sit down with a piece of paper, a calculator, and the book. Does anyone else do this?
 
Well, these days I usually use Notepad and a PDF of the rules--usually it's 5e, but I have 3-6 as pdf files. And I have the Calculator open. I tried Heromaker but I really have always been in love with the pencil-and-paper method. I run mostly play-by-email games now--a lot!--but to me, the pencil/paper part of it is almost sacred. I find it *so* relaxing to work through the character creation "manually" I guess you'd call it.
 
Am I the only one?  (I have no problem with the software. But to me it's like, honestly, a microwave dinner compared to cooking it yourself. Like, I'd use the software in a pinch but it's not something I'd enjoy. Which is no offense, I think the software is well made.)
 
I guess I want to get a feel for how many people still do pencil and paper...?

One of the few things I remember from 3rd Edition was the declining value of Disadvantages as you took more of the same type: the 1st two were full value, the next two were 1/2 value, the next two were 1/4 value and any more after that were worth zero.
 
I thought this was an interesting limiter on preventing you from loading up on Psychological Disadvantages or Hunteds. In 6E, it's simpler now, you can only take so many points from a single type.
 
Did anyone ever take four Psychological Disadvantages or six different Hunteds?

A significant factor in the OSR revival of earlier, permissive, editions of D&D.

Okay, this is the part I was talking about at the very bottom  (that would probably make more sense if I liked Doctor Who):
 
I wanted to have put this in at the very top, but I didn't think about it until I was done.  Not having posted it yet, I still had the option to do so, so I will in just a minute so that it's here, at the very top:
 
First and foremost:
 
This isn't argumentative or dismissive or personally directed at _anyone_; it's for _everyone_ who hasn't really had the chance to enjoy the old stuff, and I'm only putting it here to take advantage of a question asked by Ninja-Bear by using that question as an opening into what turned out to be a much larger look at the philosophy and feel of the old stuff.  So let me up front say "Thank you, Ninja-Bear, for this opportunity."
 
Thank you, Ninja-Bear, for this opportunity.
 
There we are; all done, courteous and fun.  I'm done now, but here's the stuff I wrote before I wrote this lovely closing:
 
 
 
By declaring it at the time you buy the power: your t-port is "velocity-free."
 
If you want the option of doing it either way, use a multipower (personal suggestion) or, since it's still legitimate in 3e, an Elemental Control.
 
Now let me justify this:
 
 There is in those older editions no rule that says you can't determine your facing at the pop-out end of a T-port, and no adder or advantage to buy so you can, so it stands to reason that nothing prevents you from choosing your orientation when you T-port.  Frankly, given that you can do it with _all_ other movement powers, it'd be a real shank in the eye to suddenly add "except for tele porters,' wouldn't it?  That being the case, it occurred to us early on that a character can teleport so that he is moving "up" with that velocity.
 
So there's no reason that you can't teleport so that you're moving up, and when gravity has neutralized your momentum, *pop*  and there you go.  Still two miles in the air and can't teleport that far even with your NCM?  Do it repeatedly.  And for the first couple of times it came up, that's how we handled it.  Lots of fun at first (Oh, I must concentrate!  Must time this perfectly! etc, etc-- exciting bit of role-playing, the first couple of times)
 
Given that this is rather irritating and slows things up a lot (hilariously funny, but after a the first couple of times, the drag on game time does get irritating) we just ruled "declare that you can or can't when you buy T-port."  The take away here isn't the idea of "how to solve this problem with T-port," or even "you don't need a two-page write up fix this."
 
 
The thing to remember when we get caught up in all the "freedom"  (not derisive; I'm really floundering for grammar as my eldest daughter is in the shower giving us all a concert. Not only is her taste in music beyond questionable, there's something about being in the shower that makes her almost exactly eight-and-a-half times louder) of the newer editions is that super hero concepts have _not_ changed.  
 
To put it more simply, let's take a moment to remember that all 4e did was gather each and every rule or interpretation from _everything_ that had been written so far and put it all into one binder.  Then we played for twenty years.
 
Then Steve wrote 5e, which included rules and rulings of interactions, etc--
 
I remember shortly after I read my copy commenting that "it reads like I just paid a boatload of dollars for someone else's house rules."
 
And I did.  I did exactly that.  At first, I confess, I meant that derisively, as I was extremely frustrated.  I wanted something new and wonderful, and I got "how to do shape shift for only two hundred points or so."
 
But then I thought about it.  It's what we do.  It's what we _all_ do-- no.  I'm sorry.  It's what we all _did_, prior to the modern day internet.  We all had house rules.  We all ran into situations that weren't expressly covered  by the rules.  We made rulings: sometimes on the fly, to come back and change later, sometimes interrupting the game for a few minutes, or character generation, or whatever.  But whatever happened, we were making, by default, a house rule, because there was no published rule.  The example I have given most consistently is vehicles, because I really believe that was an early issue for a _lot_ of us old farts: it was a couple of years before there were "official" vehicle rules (Champions II, if I remember correctly).  So did we not drive?  Did we not have crime mobiles or Army Jeeps or space ships or whatever might go with our adventures?
 
No.  Of course not.  We made rules.  In fact, to this _day_ I use those home-brewed vehicle rules because I like them _better_ than the official ones.  First and foremost, they require _no_ special rules.  You make a vehicle on a character sheet, using the same exact rules you'd use for making a character.  Frankly, I think this does a _much_ better service to the "universality" of the basic rules than does an entire set of special rules for this special circumstance, etc.
 
The thing that I dismissed (at first) as someone else's house rules is _not_ a bad thing, on it's own.  It just ensures that I am making characters the same way _you_ are making characters.  It ensures that you can take a character from _your_ table and play him it _my_ table.
 
Let's not take a minute to realize that it's never going to happen, or wonder why, given that we don't know where each other lives and likely it's on opposite ends of the continent from each other, it's remotely important that we are playing the exact same way.  Let's not consider that no two GMs are going to rule the same on every subject, or even allow the same bits of the actual published rules.
 
But I digress:
 
After 5 came re-5 ("we have the technology.  We can make it bigger, heavier, bulkier than before"), then two books worth of 6, then a whole book of martial arts, then _two_ whole books of "more rules when these two things combine or collide or interact in any way" and talk of a third book featuring more of the same for new combinations or situations.
 
Or we post in the "ask Steve" section-- don't get me wrong; I think it's damned generous of him to give of himself in that way-- and the minute he speaks  BAM!  New rule.
 
 
 
What did we do _yesterday_, before Steve said "do this?"  When  Joey GM or Peter Player posted this question last week in the discussion forums, what was my response?  How did I suggest handling this?  How did the other folks suggest handling this?  What did I do last summer, when that came up in my campaign?
 
So...  I have to change now, right?  There's an official ruling on this, and eventually it will end up in another tome of official rules, if Steve can find the time and the money to get it put together...
 
 
So now we have a question to ask:
What do we do without a rule?
 
There's been a steady progression, as the "core rules" become more and more complex, as they delve deeper into the minutiae and micro-managing of every possibility of the game.  That progression seems to slowly be leading toward the growth of the idea of "you can't do that because there's no rule that says you can."
 
Once upon a time, you could do it because there was no rule that said you couldn't.  (not the Teleport / velocity thing: there _is_ a rule (p62, Champions 2e) that says you can't remove velocity.  I mean this in a general sense).
 
Now I have _never_ met Steve, or Bruce, or _any_ of the big names in the history of HERO.  Not _once_.  Given my age and my status and my life in general, I don't think I even have to _look_ at a limb to state as irrefutable fact that I likely never, ever will.  But I'm absolutely _certain_ that there is not a one of them that wouldn't, even as voluminous as the rules are today, who intended us to get to a point of "you can't do that because there is no rule for it."
 
 
There is a word that escapes me right now-- probably because of the horribly off-key concert that won't get out my thinking space--  that perfectly sums up my disappointment with 5e (though I would play it a thousand times before I considered 6):  each time you say "this aspect can be done thusly" or "you can add this feature for x amount," you are not adding a new thing.  You are taking away a thing that was always there.
 
 
Oh--
 
you know what?  Let me just scroll up and add it at the beginning, where it belongs.
 
Thanks, NB!  You're a gentleman and a scholar.
 
 
Duke

Hi Duke -
 
I can confirm 100% that it DID exist.  I read it; I ran it.  Winner of the tourney was literally in tears at the end.