BoloOfEarth

The more I consider Barry and Caitlin, the more I think it would be like Barry and Felicity: they may seem great for each other, and they could try, but ultimately they'd both decide the spark just wasn't there. Which is really a shame in both cases, because both women are nice, incredibly smart, incredibly attractive, and genuinely like him for the person he is.

Watching last night's episode, half of me was cursing Cisco for being so dumb, while the other half (my gamemaster half) was pointing out it was plot-necessary stupidity to line things up for the future. Last night's villain wasn't as great to me, but I'm loving the various other villain personalities, especially when considering their future as a Rogues Gallery. Imagining Captain Cold and Pied Piper and Captain Boomerang working together -- I wonder if all Flash will have to do is some fast talking (pun fully intended) to get them at each other's throats. "Really, Hartley? Taking orders from a thief with a cold gun? No wonder Dr. Wells sent you packing..." Drunk Caitlin was amusing. "You're a good guy. You deserve a peek."

In an attempt to head off calls for US registration of paranormals / metahumans / superpowered individuals, a coalition of American hero teams proposed a team be created to keep an eye on superhero activity. This group, known as Oversight, is composed of three superheroes plus three government and/or civilian representatives, with additional superheroes or government agents called in for short-term assignments as needed. (So a PC superhero might get asked to work with Oversight on a particular investigation or assignment.) Government / civilian reps are selected by US Congress, while superhero members are selected by the various hero teams participating in Oversight. Oversight is typically sent to look into superpowered activity at the President's request, but they regularly report to Congress on superhero activity. Active membership in Oversight rotates on an annual basis, so the postings here are for the current members. Examples of government or civilian reps could be US marshals, FBI agents, US military, federal prosecutors, Senate or House members, special investigators, journalists. Please provide info on either one of the three current superheroes, or one of the three current government / civilian reps assigned to Oversight.

Some heroes have super-vehicles to get from point A to point B quickly, or carry their spare weapons, criminology equipment, or what have you. As a speedster, Quickchange can typically run faster than his vehicle can travel, and he doesn't have extra weapons or exotic equipment to be lugged around. What he does have, however, is clothing. Hundreds of outfits, all of them designer originals. Plus accessories. And a half-dozen camera drones to record all the combinations and poses -- oh, and the crimefighting action as well, if you're into that sort of thing -- and show it on his own online marketing channel. Quickchange was a failed male model who leveraged his mutant speed powers into a nominal crimefighting career that is much more a sponsorship bonanza. He typically switches outfits several times each fight, and obviously plays to the cameras. (According to his critics, often at the expense of whatever investigation Team Fabulous is pursuing).

"Don't worry, boss. There's no reason for me to upload that video onto YouTube of what you did *before* painting yourself pink and climbing onto the roof. Unless, of course, I find myself unemployed and short on cash. By the way, can we talk about a raise?"

I'm almost positive it was a no-knock warrant. The guy they were going after was wanted for murder, for shooting and killing a teen two days before. I know it was technically the wrong address -- it's a two-story house split into two separate apartments, with two separate exterior doors at opposite ends of the front porch - one door leading upstairs to the flat they were raiding, and the other opening into the ground floor where the girl was shot and killed. The officers went in both doors during the raid. What gets me about this is that they were filming the raid for a reality show (A&E's "The First 48"). A Special Response Team (basically SWAT) conducted the raid, using flashbangs and SMGs. Unfortunately, the TV show cameras were outside and didn't get the shooting on film, so it comes down to he-said, she-said -- the officer (Joseph Weekley) said the girl's grandmother jumped up and smacked his gun, causing him to pull the trigger and shoot the girl. The grandmother says she was on the floor when the gun went off. Weekley is no green cop. During the first trial, he said he's served 300 warrants during his seven years on the SRT at the time of the shooting, and has been first man through the door for about 100 of those. So this is somebody quite experienced. And has appeared multiple times on "The First 48." The cynical side of me is wondering whether the raid being filmed had an effect on the mindset and conduct of officers conducting the raid. Something like, "Gotta make this look good - it's gonna be on national TV."

How's this one for obscure? On the surface, Project: Orbital was simply one of PRIMUS' early studies of how superheroes came about. Beneath the top-secret clearance, however, was a plan to create their own hand-picked team of super-patriots. Agent George Wood was one of Orbital's test subjects. After rather painful year-long exposure to gamma rays, cosmic rays, and injections with various experimental serums, Wood developed relatively low-level light powers, including the ability to generate semi-solid light "refraction balls" that could redirect ranged attacks. Unfortunately, the pain of the procedures drove Wood insane. When he heard that PRIMUS considered him a danger and was going to lock him away, Wood escaped. On the run from the authorities, he took the name Refractor and began a life of crime, vowing that some day PRIMUS would pay for what they did to him. While not a very powerful energy projector, the rest of the 3-D Six like the fact that he helps protect them from enemy attacks.

Must... resist urge... to make joke... about things being... fully inflated... Guys will pay attention to more than the commercials during halftime. NT: surprising things people are going to bet on during the Super Bowl, other than anything related in any way to the game itself.

New Team: The 3-D Six These six villains were once fictional characters, literally comic book RPG villains, until they came to life one day. They refuse to say how that happened, but apparently it's a short-term thing because any of them that get captured seem to disappear after a handful of hours, only to appear somewhere else, hale and hearty, days later. (Pick an obscure Champions character, file off the serial numbers and rename him/her, but put the original character's name in a Spoiler tag. Bonus points if people can't figure out who the original character is until they check the Spoiler.) For anyone who don't know how to do a Spoiler, put {Spoiler} {/Spoiler} tags, but with square brackets instead of curly brackets.

"He's short, he's cheesy, he's very hard to please-y!" (cue obviously fake laugh track) "Ladies and gentlemen, let's welcome the world famous magician, back from another failed tour of Lost Angeles and If-Only-It-Were-Lost Vegas -- Reductio!" (cut applause, even more obviously fake since it starts in the middle of the clapping and cuts off just as unrealistically) Reductio (his full villain name is Reductio Ad Absurdum) is 3' 6" of bad puns, poorly executed stage tricks, twisted ego, and the dangerously powerful mutant ability to transmute himself and others. While his abilities are by no means restricted to changing a person's size -- he can grow wings, for instance, or claws -- he seems to get a particular thrill over turning a person's feet, hands, head, or other body parts either abnormally small or overly large. (The Champions still talk about Reductio's boob job on Ironclad and Witchcraft's "big hair day.") Since these transformations (never for more than 20 minutes, and usually for just a handful of seconds) do not suffer from problems with blood circulation, people had thought they were actually mass mental illusions, but that has proven not to be the case. Contrary to his public persona and general actions, Reductio actually is quite intelligent. If forced into it, he knows how to use his powers quite dangerously -- say, shrinking a person's lungs to the point that they can hardly breathe, or blind and deafen people by making their skin cover their eyes and ears. But he generally takes the "ad absurdum" part to heart and often does things with his powers that are only moderately effective.

If it's any consolation, BoneDaddy, there's a decent chance that having to work harder to learn will make her better prepared in the long run. Give her better study skills, help her find ways to retain things better, than someone to whom learning comes easy. And she won't take education for granted like many do. And having someone on her side, like it's apparent that she does, is not something to discount either.

Before my question, a little background: I'm running a Morrow Project Hero game on RPoL -- for those who don't know, MP is a post-apocalypse game where teams are trained, outfitted, and frozen before the coming war so they can help rebuild after the worst has passed. However, instead of waking up a few years afterward as planned, they wake up over a century later on their own. In my game, 130 years after the big one. In the original MP game world, teams were frozen in the 1970s and early 80s, with the war happening in 1989. I altered the war's start to 2016, with most of the current team having been frozen in 2014 but the knew that some Morrow teams had been frozen decades earlier. However, the PCs are going to be communicating by radio with another Morrow person who was originally frozen in 1975, then woken up in 2014 for retraining and re-equipping, before being re-frozen in 2015. So he has extensive early 1970s knowledge, and just a smattering of 2010s info (some of which may be misconceptions). He also has good reason to be paranoid and not implicitly trust that they are who they say they are. So he's going to ask them questions to make sure they're the real McCoy. I'm figuring he'll ask when they were frozen, and who was president then. Maybe a question or two specific to the Morrow Project, though different teams had different training, and a lot of the Project was top secret, so the teams won't know a lot of the inner workings or details. He'll want to ask a trick question or two (maybe "who was the first woman president"), to see how they answer. (And he's a crotchety old man, which will color his interaction with them. I plan to have some fun with this.) What other questions might somebody like that ask to make sure the PC team is who they say they are?

The leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties are betting which of them can trash United States's principles and international reputation faster and more thoroughly. Thus far it's a dead heat.

Discovering that somebody has stolen the hubcaps. And the engine.

So, a divorced woman puts out a personal ad in the paper: "WANTED: a man who won't hit me, or leave me, and somebody who is a good lover." A few days later, her doorbell rings. When she answers the door, she sees a man in a wheelchair sitting there, without arms or legs. "I'm here to answer your ad," he says. "I think you must be mistaken," she says. "I don't think you fit the ad." "Of course I do," he replies. "I have no arms, so I can't beat you. And I have no legs, so I can't run away from you." "But what about the 'good lover' part?" she asks. "Lady," he says, "how do you think I rang the doorbell?"

Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, and Rebecca Black. (Which would also work for a worst possible musical act for the Super Bowl.)

An all-mime a cappella group. (Though to be fair, their air guitar bit is pretty impressive.) NT: The worst possible advertisement to air during the Super Bowl.

There have been nearly 300 teams created here. Believe me, we've already revisited numerous themes, and I'm sure it will happen many times in the future. As to Fun Sized... Carl Brown is the only child of a 6'7" tall, 350-pound professional football player, and he loved football just like his dad. Unfortunately, Carl topped out at a whopping 4'9" tall, and was skinny enough that other kids joked that a strong wind could knock Carl down. It didn't help that, what Carl lacked in weight and strength, he also lacked in agility and speed. He was still in high school when he reluctantly gave up his dream of playing football, but he decided he wasn't going to let other people push him around no matter how much they tried. And they certainly did try -- especially Andy Aaronson, the biggest bully at Central High. (There are rumors that Carl's dad was deeply disappointed in his son and was abusive, but Carl refuses to talk about it.) One day, Aaronson was shoving Carl around when the smaller boy finally snapped. The stress activated a latent mutation, causing Carl to lash out telekinetically and throw the bully across the school yard. Aaronson was badly injured and had to be hospitalized, but Carl didn't care. As far as he was concerned, the bully, like most "big, tough people" had it coming. Despite being only 17 years old, Carl is an incredibly strong teke, able to telekinetically lift and move tons of mass without effort. He can also resist being picked up or otherwise moved against his will. Realizing the power at his command, Carl left school and his family behind, deciding to take what he wanted regardless of what other said or the law dictated. He calls himself Lineman, after the position his father plays.

Vince Kramer was not happy to learn that VIPER had built a training and supply Nest right under one of his company's factories, especially since he only learned this when superheroes and government agents galore descended upon the factory en mass and the resulting battle between the forces of law and the Goons in Green destroyed much of his factory. The authorities weren't convinced that Vince was an innocent dupe, insisting that since it was on (or more specifically, under) his property, he must be a part of it. Finally, after years of legal battles, Vince proved his innocence. Unfortunately, the factory was a total loss. And even though the court found in his favor when he filed a civil suit against the government and the hero team, the amount awarded was nowhere near enough to restore the factory. But Nancy Kramer's little boy hadn't gotten rich by simply accepting bad situations. He had gotten where he was by turning bad situations to his advantage. And the VIPER Nest was in relatively good condition, even after the feds and heroes had stripped it of anything even remotely dangerous -- in fact, the Nest was in much better condition than the factory above. VInce wondered if maybe people would pay to tour an actual VIPER base. So he spent the proceeds of his civil suit to fix up the base. Old computer equipment was purchased and used to restore the Control Room to at least a fraction of its former high-tech glory. Plastic molded "blaster turrets," consisting mainly of laser pointers, web cams, and rotating servos, were fitted into the pop-down mounts in the ceiling. An old scrapped Herkimer Battle Jitney was bought, towed into the underground garage, and painted bright green and yellow. Actors and guides were hired and outfitted in faux VIPER uniforms with cheap plastic "blaster rifles". To Vince's surprise, people ate it up. Kids and adults alike loved donning cheap knockoffs of VIPER, PRIMUS, and UNTIL uniforms, or chose one of a wide selection of superhero-style spandex costumes, to run through The Gauntlet (basically, the VIPER Training Room converted into laser-tag). School groups came to hear a retired federal agent talk about fighting VIPER in the 1970s, or meet a reformed VIPER agent (currently on probation after serving 6 years of a 10-year sentence). Some people criticize Vince Kramer, saying he is "glamorizing" VIPER, but he insists that "VIPERWorld" shows a very balanced, and ultimately negative, view of the criminal organization. Others worry that the real VIPER will take umbrage at the site, but thus far they've made no move... at least, not yet...

As to useful, turning into the size of a small bug would be similar to having invisibility and desolidification -- you could get into places you otherwise couldn't, and can observe things (or do things) with minimal chance of alerting anybody. Great for information gathering and sabotage. I ran a Champions campaign that had a shrinking PC. She was great at scoping out hostage situations or bad guys' bases before the heroes attacked. Imagine how embarrassing it would be for the villain to push the missile launch or self-destruct button and have nothing happen, because somehow the wires got disconnected... And let's not even discuss sneak attacks. It's not as up-front and straightforward as, say, a blaster or a brick, or even a mentalist. But a little creativity can make shrinking pretty useful and heroic enough when all is said and done.

That's seven. Procyon, do you want to post a new team name, theme, and number of members?

Sealand - A trio of superpowered millionaires bought out the former "royalty" of this self-declared independent principality, originally built on a British WWII gun platform in the North Sea, and expanded it tremendously, building a combination hotel/casino and shipping port on the site. There are rumors that illegal activity is run from there now, though authorities have thus far not been able to prove anything.

And when the people all got in... it seemed bigger on the inside. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

Some feedback on Screech (pun fully intended): First, a heads-up on something in Hero Designer: for the Endurance Reserves, you have to put Limitations on the REC separately, or you're paying full price for the REC. So for the Stage Keyboards, I put the END Reserve with an OAF Bulky limitation, and the REC with a Requires Electrical Outlet limitation on it, and for the Portable Keyboard, I gave the END Reserve an OAF limitation, and the REC has the Requires Electrical Outlet limitation. Second, by adding a Barrier to the Stage Keyboards, I realized that would get in the way of his own attacks, so I added Indirect (Source point the same, direct to target; +1/4) to all of the Stage Keyboard attacks. My thinking is that he spends the END to create the Sonic Wall, and then modulates his attacks to pass through it. (Note that with Barrier, you don't have to spend END every Phase and keep that slot active in the Multipower unless you give the Barrier a Costs END to Maintain limitation.) Also, on both keyboards, the book writeups had a mix of ultra and multi slots (fixed and variable slots in 6th ed.) but frankly their choices of which were fixed and which weren't seemed f---ed up to me. I see you had all yours as fixed slots, which is usually how I do Multipowers. For the Stage Keyboards, I bumped the pool up to 76 points, with the Barrier using the full pool when it's created. Then most of the rest of the powers are approx. 60 points, with the Darkness to Hearing at 15 points. Oh, and I moved the Force Field Usable by Other into the Stage Keyboards, since that made more sense to me. For fun, I also added an Images to Hearing group (AoE 32m radius) as a variable slot. At 16 points, it's only +/- 1 to PER, but at full it's at +/- 15 to PER, so he can do intricate orchestral scores and incredibly convincing sound effects. For the Autofire Blast, as with Heavy Metal you need to add the All or Nothing to the AVAD. In addition to Indirect, I also added Half END and bumped the Autofire up to 5 shots. That costs 10 END total but you can potentially hit multiple individuals, or hammer one person. On the Darkness, remember to change from hexes to meters. As to the Gadget Pools, note that 6th Edition allows you more freedom with VPP Pool and Control costs. I made the Stage Keyboard VPP a 48 point Pool + 60 points Control. With the -1 1/2 Focus limitation on any powers, the max pool cost for any 60 AcP (active point) power would be 24 points. So he can create two 60 AcP powers (24 + 24 = 48). For the Portable Keyboard, I made it a 15-point Pool + 30 points Control, and added an Advantage that he can change the pool as a Half-Phase action (+1/2) with at Gadgeteering roll. Since all powers in there have OAF (-1), the max pool cost for any 30 AcP power is 15 points. Speaking of Gadgeteering, you should have that as a Power skill, based on INT rather than a Custom Skill. Much, much cheaper. When I've got my HD version finished, I'll try to remember to post it.

Doesn't show for me in Firefox either.