BoloOfEarth

Re: His partner helps carry him, though... He was cool. If only he wasn't saddled with that good-for-nothing Angel Summoner...

Re: Storn Art from idea to Full Picture Year 5

Re: A campaign for my kids Oh, and as they become familiar with the rules (and get older), you could always move them into high school, transitioning into Teen Champions.

Re: A campaign for my kids Caveat: I do not own either PS238 or Teen Champions, nor have I seen either one yet. If my understanding is wrong, I apologize in advance. However, I understand that PS238 uses a simplified version of the character rules, kinda like Sidekick (but not exactly the same). Since your kids (if not your wife) are starting out new to the system, that might be an easier intro to the Hero System. Also, I think the setting might be a better fit for the kids. You could even maybe slightly adjust things to make PS238 a middle school / junior high rather than an elementary school. Unless you home-school, that could make it a familiar setting to the 12 year old, and a "promotion" to the 10 year-old, adding to the appeal. Just my $0.02, YMMV.

Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat I can't give the details on a public board, but it involves her magic lasso, a nun's habit, and six tubes of Crazy Glue. NT: One of the "Eight Wonders of the Champions Universe."

Re: Answers & Questions Q: What would prefer instead of that CD collection of William Shatner's and Yoko Ono's Greatest Hits? A: He joined the Narcoleptic Bomb Disposal Squad.

Re: Answers & Questions Q: I don't wanna nitpick, Tom, but is this really your plan: spend your whole life locked inside a mall? A: Code monkey not say it out loud, code monkey not crazy, just proud.

Re: THE BOOK OF THE DESTROYER: What Do *You* Want To See?

Re: GM's guide to XP That looks fine as-is. I only threw the "darkside" one in as an example, and agree that it's better to hash that kind of thing out in-play.

Re: Answers & Questions Q: What's this paper? It reads, "I, Victor Von Doom, being of superior mind and body..." A: Triple sudden-death overtime.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... The heroes of S-Squad are still exploring a portion of an alien spaceship (converted from the old D&D module Expedition to the Barrier Peaks) searching for lost soldiers on the run from Subterrans. After throwing a vegepygmie into a lift shaft, only to discover the shaft had no power, and thus the antigravity field isn't working. Squeeze: I swear, to my dying day, I thought vegepygmies could fly. While exploring the ship, college student and Lexington, Kentucky's lone superhero Cobalt Kid asks various heroes of S-Squad, individually, how they got their powers. To each of them, he tells a different tale of how he got his powers (lab accident; he's an alien; kidnapped by VIPER). Sentinel overhears this. Sentinel: So, which is it? Did your chem lab get hit by lightning? Or are you Clark Kent? Or what? Cobalt Kid (very embarrased): Do you have any idea how lame "I woke up one day with powers" sounds? The heroes are exploring the atmospheric ballast level, a huge area 60 feet tall and several hundred feet in diameter. Synergy, flying 50 feet up, sees four shambling mounds below him. Synergy: Are they doing anything? GM: They're doing this (looks up and shakes fist angrily) Synergy: Why aren't they attacking me? GM: Maybe because they don't have any ranged attacks... They find the reactor powering the habitat module, and some of them don radiation suits in some nearby lockers, but the suits don't fit well. Styx: They're like a cheap hotel. No ballroom. Serendipity: Do we *need* to wear radiation suits? Synergy: Depends. Do you ever want to have any kids? The soldiers wait outside while the heroes enter the reactor area. Inside, a modified and reprogrammed police robot is attacking anybody trying to enter the control room. Sentinel blasts the robot with her "hard radiation" attack, but misses. GM: Suddenly, you hear alarms, and armored blast panels begin dropping over the doors and the control room window. Over the language translator, you hear, "Warning... Radiation leak in reactor control room... Initiating standard containment protocols." Squeeze: I grab Serendipity, Sentinel, and the Cobalt Kid and get them all into the room before the door comes down. Serendipity: What about the soldiers outside? Squeeze: Relax. I don't think anything can get out of here to get them. GM: The robot hits Synergy with an energy beam. He stops moving and drops from the sky. Squeeze (OOC): Can I see the energy effect? If it's an entangle, I could attack it to get him free. GM: No, it's a paralysis beam. It's not affected by physical attacks. Squeeze (OOC): How about if we call it names? Sentinel is finally able to hit the robot with some hard radiation and scramble its circuits. GM: (describing the effects of her attack) ... and the head begins spinning around. Squeeze: Cool! (turns to Styx) Grab its head and make its body spin!

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "Man, I had the greatest date last night! We were making out as soon as we got in the car, and by the time I got her to the hotel, we practically ripped off each others' clothes. If the boss ever finds out I'm doing it with his daughter... um, dude, why do you look so freaked? (pause) He's standing behind me, isn't he?" NT: Most surprising new Olympic sport

Re: "Neat" Pictures

Re: "Agents of ILM" campaign idea: Help me flesh it out? Some ideas to help: 3-D movies, especially horror movies, as a plot by evil forces to reinforce fictional infringement on reality (making the fictional seem more real). A 3-D zombie movie could cause zombies to literally step out of the screen and into the theater. Increased use of CGI in movies is an attempt by ILM to use computers to remotely recapture fictional characters. In fact, the Hulk was all CGI for this very reason. However, internet fanfic and fan-made videos on YouTube interfere with this recapture plan with some characters. The Harry Potter universe (a magical population actively hidden from the real world) as an attempt to "brush" fictional characters under the carpet so-to-speak until ILM can recapture them.

Re: Answers & Questions Q: How would you describe Pamela Anderson? A: Monkeys and beatles and barenaked ladies.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "Okay, guys, it will take me a while to get used to your characters' new names. Anyway, let's recap: Conductor and Boxcar are sneaking past the long line of locked, unbreakable doors while Caboose is aiming at the only open door at the end of the hall. Meanwhile, where are Engineer and Ticket Agent?" "We're down by the station, early in the morning..." NT: A "railroad adventure" you really wouldn't mind being on.

Re: GM's guide to XP Good stuff, and repped. The only things I can see to add/change are: 1) If you have players that are doing things you don't like or that interfere with the other players' enjoyment, you might want to include some "no-no's" that might lose the character XP. Things like: Stomping on Someone Else's Schtick Taking Things To The Darkside This Is Four-Color, Dammit! 2) Maybe include specific rewards for specific "above and beyond" actions. Fr'instance, when I start a new Champions game, I award 5 XP for a detailed background (and thus have gotten 5-10 pages of character info from some players). If they get a base and/or vehicle along the way, I'll give 5 XP to whomever would write one up (characteristics, powers, etc.) with a 10 XP reward to anyone willing to create a hexmap of their base. Edit: a side note, this most recent campaign I asked each player to provide a list of 3-5 people in their lives, but NOT as DNPCs, to help flesh out their lives. So the college student working his way through as a teaching assistant provided: the professor he's working for, a computer-lab buddy, a friend's girlfriend who keeps setting him up with female friends, and a girl he's never met but keeps seeing around campus (though not in any of his classes). Worked wonderfully, and I plan to do this for any future games.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat

Re: Internet themed gadgets If it's a really tongue-in-cheek campaign, you could: Invoke Godwin's Law: Cosmetic transformation, only to change target's clothing into Nazi uniform.

Re: Internet themed gadgets

Re: Villain tactics and GM dirty tricks I also look at the team as a whole and look for things that they may have trouble with, to give them a good challenge.* For instance, if none or only one hero can affect Desolidified, then a Desolid villain with powers that affect the real world will really rock the heroes' world. If almost all of the heroes use HtH attacks, someone with high movement and ranged attacks (especially with No Range Modifiers) will force them to think. A team without a mentalist will generally have a tough time fighting one, even if the heroes all have a modicum of Mental Defense. If the team is light on Enhanced Senses, villains with Invisiblity or Darkness or Flash will make their lives miserable. You can also use this to make one player shine. For instance, let's say your energy blaster is the only person that can affect Desolid. As soon as you throw that Desolid villain out there, it immediately puts that hero in the spotlight. *I also like to make sure they have at least one way I can see to overcome any challenge, even if it's obscure or requires them to use something outside their own powers. I once saw a hero take a villain out of the fight with a simple fire extinguisher, and another time a HtH fighter used a bunch of bar stools to defeat a villain with a nasty damage shield.)

Okay, we've all run agents and other mooks, but most of the time they seem to be two-dimensional props thrown in. "Okay, VIPER agent #3 fires his blaster rifle at you..." How do people here give them some personality, some life? I've done the following: 1) A PC hero breaking into a base belonging to the Ultimates overheard a discussion between some hired thugs on the various supervillains they've worked for. "If you gotta hire on temp with a cape, go for a fanatic. They're more interested in some 'loftier goal' and generally let you have a bigger cut of the cash." "Yeah, but avoid the psycho ones. I worked for Black Harlequin once. Once. Never again. That psycho gutted Ralph as a lark!" I can't claim credit; I think I got this idea from an article in Digital Hero, or maybe a post on these boards. 2) A PC hero overheard two thugs talking, and one managed to mix up half his words. "What am I, some kinda persona au gratin? They treat me like I'm some kinda idiot. I know how to read, I'm not illegible!" When the thug mentioned the new supervillain group he was working for, the hero had to translate the names from "Phil-speak". Can't claim total credit here either. It's a variation on a Capitol Steps comedy routine. 3) A mook about to get pounded by a male hero asked him to "cut him some slack" so he could look good in front of the hot supervillainess. Basically, take into consideration something going on at the time. So, what have you done to make your mooks a little more interesting? Any tips I can steal... I mean, borrow?

Re: How to start one off with a bang? Okay, off the top of my head: "Psych" is outside an office building, waiting and looking for a friend he's supposed to meet for lunch. (If he has a DNPC, it could easily be that person.) He decides to use Telepathy to "tap into" some random guy standing with a better view to see through his eyes (using most of the effect to make the effect undetectable by the target). In the process, Psych gets the following surface thoughts: "Man, just 48 hours! It's gonna be beautiful! That building's gonna come down, and nobody's ever gonna rat out VIPER again!" Unfortunately, he immediately loses the guy in the crowd so he can't hit him with any other mental power. The guy gets onto the subway / bus / into a car and speeds away, so Psych can't get more information from him. All he knows is that VIPER is going to level a 20-story office building on Thursday afternoon, but he doesn't know how, or exactly when, or why. About the same time, a powerful subsonic wave generator/amplifier is stolen from a lab near where "Black Hole" works, and a security camera caught a group of VIPER agents loading it into a truck. The news doesn't report what was stolen, only that VIPER was involved, though BH finds out details from a friend who works in that lab. The former MARS agent is on hand when VIPER tests the generator on a nearby construction site, causing the half-completed building to collapse and necessitating the rescue of several construction workers. The amplifier is hidden in a city utility truck so the former agent can't capture it. (VIPER was verifying the harmonic frequency of the support columns, which are the same material as those in the office building. It's also a dry run for the real deal.) Without knowing more on the last guy, I can't suggest specifics for him. But he could catch some VIPER agents stealing blueprints of the target office building's support structure. Or he might learn that the company that owns that building is under investigation for possible dealings with VIPER and the CEO is now cooperating with PRIMUS. Or stop a scientist from being kidnapped -- an expert that can tell the heroes that to use such a device to generate harmonics to level a building, VIPER would need to get the generator within 100 yards of each of the four main supports of the building, and each time keep it going for 10-15 seconds (in effect, 1 Turn). If all else fails, he might just get pointed toward "Psych" by the Velvet Phantom, based on info gleaned by the tarot deck. They could have the battle outside the office building (a VIPER commander jumps the gun when he sees the heroes sniffing around just before zero hour, and sends in the troops), or if they're really good follow leads back to the VIPER's nest and take them on there before the big bang gets set into motion. [Edit: That isn't the order I'd run the encounters. I'd probably go Theft, Kidnap, Test, Eavesdrop, with Psych knowing the target and therefore the one to call on the other heroes and bring them together.]

Re: How to start one off with a bang? That first PC looks like a possible catalyst to bring the team together. Before being disgraced, the psychologist may have been called in as a consultant to do a psych profile on the agent after the accidental shooting, and thus knows about her powers. He might also know the astrophysicist, or at least know of him. If that player were willing, I'd enlist his help in getting the team together. Maybe he accidentally picked up a stray thought and knows VIPER or DEMON is planning something huge, but he doesn't have enough details and neither PRIMUS nor the cops will listen to him. I got my current heroes together through a bunch of seemingly unrelated crimes that ended up tying together into one big plot. This is one example, though I'm sure you could come up with something similar that fits your world better: Synergy interrupted a pair of makeshift robotic constructs (created by Artificer) stealing bags of laundry from a company that he later learned had the contract to clean PRIMUS uniforms. Sentinel ran across a supervillain (Dr. Discus) and some hired thugs purchasing a bunch of weapons from VIPER. (They got away with most of them, which were actually stolen PRIMUS blasters.) Serendipity fought two supervillains (Fractal and Beamline) breaking into a bank after hours to clear out the vault. Squeeze captured Ogre, and while waiting to testify at his trial, witnessed a bunch of dogs (robotic followers of ROVer) somehow steal the waiting prisoner transport vehicle while almost all the PRIMUS agents were inside; the vehicle had hologram generators to disguise it during transport. Styx overheard a hired goon trying to recruit his younger brother as a driver for a "big job" coming up, involving among other things the theft of a dozen UPS trucks. Styx had overheard the goon mention the new team of supers he was working for, though the goon mixes up words constantly, so he called the supers Artificial, Dr. Disco, Fracture, Beeline, and Roper, as well as Soundcheck (actually Soundwave) and Psycho (Psyche). Styx figured out who the actual villains were, noted that some local solo heroes had been mentioned in the news having dealt with some of those villains lately, and contacted them to compare notes. They figured out that the villains were going to try to break Utility out of PRIMUS custody during prisoner transport. Their plan involved swarming the transport convoy with UPS trucks, remotely triggering the actual transport vehicle's hologram generator to make it also look like a UPS truck, then forcing it down a side street to break Utility out during the confusion. The heroes ended up keeping Utility from getting free, and in the process set up a nice enmity with the villain group as well as with Utility. And the heroes naturally decided to stay together as a group afterward.