BoloOfEarth

Re: The artwork drives me nuts Caveat: haven't seen VVV yet, so I can't comment on the artwork there. I've seen other art in other Hero publications that made me wince a bit, though nothing that would chase me away. I don't think I've *not* bought something just because I disliked the artwork, but I know I've bought several gaming books from other game systems *mostly* for the artwork (character art) and related characters, with the goal of converting them to Hero stats for use in my Champions game. There are many talented amateurs out there, but I can easily understand the problem that many might not meet deadlines because, well, it's not their main job, or they might have bitten off more than they can chew, or whatever. However, I think DOJ could use Digital Hero and such as tools to try out prospective artists, let amateurs cut their teeth and show their reliabliity, and then use that to pick the best and brightest (and most reliable) for their larger books. Someone's suggestion of DOJ purchasing generic art on the cheap from prospective artists is, IMO, a good one, and could even lead to new characters for later publications (in the same vein as the original creation of Foxbat, or more recently the MC8 from Digital Hero). Like it or not, many people nowadays are drawn to something by flash, rather than substance. Hero Games has substance in spades, but if they're going to stay a viable concern, they need to have some eye-catching art to bring new customers into the fold.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "Okay, from now on I shall be known as Spider-Stud!"

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... From last Sunday's D&D game: The band of heroes has been following a dozen heavily-armored giants, carrying a stolen shipment of magical and mundane (but high-quality) weapons bound for a massive group of orcs. They see a man and woman riding on the shoulders of the lead giant, and decide to attack -- four members of the party attacking the rear giant, the other two attacking the man and woman at the front. Devlyn (rogue, starting off the combat): I run forward and backstab the giant. (rolls, hits, rolls decent damage). DM: Ignore the Sneak Attack damage -- these are undead. (looks at dice) Your knife bounces off, it doesn't seem to have had an effect. Devlyn: Ok, I say "Sorry, slipped, don't mind me" and run back into the woods. Leila: I'll summon a Huge air elemental and have it take out the woman first. Il'Marcum: No, wait, I want to see what she can do. Yllek: How about we kill her and later we can *speculate* on what she could have done? The unknown male flies back toward the party attacking the rear giant, casts some sort of "suggestion/mind control" spell and tells them, "You don't really want to do this. You'd much rather go back to Ore Rush, find a pub, and drink some ale." DM: Okay, make a Will save at 21. Aren: (swears under his breath) Nope. Devlyn: I failed mine. Yllek: Not a chance. Ryan: I guess we're going to Ore Rush.

Re: "Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..." Death traps... I know I've got a few of them around here somewhere... Ice character trapped in a room where the temperature is increasing... check. Electrical character (susceptable to water immersion) in a room filling with water... check. Non-flying character on a pedestal in the middle of a pool of water with sharks, other pedestals scattered around of various heights, water slowly rising... check. Any hero forced to listen to a Foxbat monologue... check. (Hey, I'm the GM, "cruel and unusual" is second nature.) Had one powered-armor type trapped in one room, while his DNPC was in another room strapped to a chair with a bomb on the underside. The villain had temporarily overriden the powered-armor to keep the hero from moving, long enough to tell him that a motion sensor in his room would trigger the bomb on his DNPC. Then the villain released the control, forcing the hero to stand rock still while he figured out a way to disable the motion sensor. (I think I borrowed that from an Iron Man comic book.)

Re: Villains Vandals And Vermin (VVV) One of the best villain teams I ever created started out as too-low-powered one-shot wonders. The heroes ran against them individually, beat them handily... and then the Ravager got ahold of the loser villains and upped their power levels to make them a challenge to the heroes. The next time they fought, the heroes were quite shocked. They became a team the players looked forward to facing. Caveat: I don't own VVV and haven't seen it yet. So this is pretty general. Another use for otherwise wimpy villains is to take advantage of a hero's Vulnerabilities or Susceptabilities. If PC #1 can beat Buzzsaw with both hands behind his back, but PC #2 gets trounced by him, you've set up a good emnity. Also, I don't know if anyone else throws news items into their game, but I've used otherwise-unusable characters in news items to flesh out the world. So they're not *completely* useless, if used in interesting ways.

Re: Getting the heroes together (the first time) The way I got the players together for my current campaign was to have them investigating seemingly unrelated pieces of an upcoming new supervillain team's plot. If it helps, you can feel free to modify or steal this for your game. PC1 fought some robots at a laundry company, turns out one got away with a bunch of PRIMUS uniforms (the local PRIMUS base used that company for cleaning all their uniforms). The robots are minions of a fairly new supervillain. (Feel free to subsitute other minions, or throw in the supervillain himself, so long as he can get away from the PC somehow.) PC2 happened upon a supervillain and some thugs buying some crates from a small VIPER front company. The villain got away with some crates, but PC2 discovered the others contained some stolen PRIMUS and SWAT weapons and equipment. PC3 fought two supervillains breaking into a bank vault after hours for quick cash. She captured one, but the other got away with a bunch of money. PC4 fought and captured Bulldozer after a bank robbery, and was asked to testify at the trial. After PRIMUS brought Bulldozer to the courthouse, and in the middle of the trial (while PRIMUS' attention was centered around Bulldozer), minions of a different supervillain stole the prisoner transport vehicle. PC4 learned that it had a hologram generator to appear as various normal vehicles (panel truck, UPS truck, ice cream truck, etc.) PC5 was investigating the theft of a number of UPS trucks from a local distribution hub, and discovered that an ex-con worked there until just before the thefts. At a seedy bar, he overheard the ex-con telling his brother about his "new gig" working as a driver for a new group of supervillains (whom he named and the hero overheard). They have cash (from the bank break-in) to pay well. The villains had something big planned and needed more drivers. After nabbing the ex-con, who of course refuses to talk, PC5 saw in the news where various heroes fought minions or individual members of this new villain team, so he contacted those heroes to meet and compare notes. They figured out that the bad guys are going to try a bait-and-switch to get a captured villain (Utility) out of PRIMUS custody during transport, hoping to recruit him into their team. Of course, PRIMUS didn't believe the heroes at first, but allowed them to accompany the transport (in a different chase vehicle). At some point, a bunch of UPS trucks pulled out at the same time that a villain jammed radios, remotely commanded Utility's transport to change holograms to a UPS truck, and remotely drove it down a side street. The police and PRIMUS chase vehicles fell for the bait-and-switch, but the heroes followed the right vehicle, battled the villains, and kept Utility from getting free. And viola! Instant superhero team!

Re: Trying to figure out a good villain name Well, the one-time head of the Fool's Guild in Ankh-Morpork was Dr. Whiteface. You could always go for a variation on this, such as Baron Whiteface.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... From last night's D&D game: Susan, who plays Devlyn (our sneaky rogue) is still driving back from up north when everybody else had already arrived. The DM decided to get started anyway and then we'd bring her up to speed. Il'Marcum: So, I guess we're without our rogue for a bit. Yllek: No, she's just made the best darn Hide roll ever! We've been chasing after two people on horseback, accompanied by a bunch of giants, and from all indications they are not stopping at all, even for the night. DM: On the third day, you find the remains of two horses. They look like all the life essence has been sucked out of them. Aren: They might be undead. Ryan, anything from your sword? Ryan: (draws his undead-bane sword) Nope. Aren: Maybe you should stab them, just in case. Ryan: Okay, I attack them. DM: Let me get this straight. You're actually going to beat a dead horse? Leila, our druid, changed into a bird form and flew ahead to scout. DM: You see 8-12 giant creatures in the distance. Something on them is glinting in the sunlight. Leila: Glinting? What's that from? Yllek: (OOC, mimes somebody looking through a spyglass) Yep, she's almost within range...

Re: How to kill characters? I'm tempted to be the "devil's advocate" here and say *not* to have them die in a climactic, heroic fashion. Have them shot in secret ID (assuming they are defenseless in SID) by a crazed sniper who sees them as "randomly-chosen targets #5 and 6", or subjected to an incurable disease (not targeted on them, they just happened to catch it) as part of some supervillain's mad plot, etc. In other words, just kill 'em, don't reward them for their pigheadedness by setting up a "noble sacrifice." But then again, it's late but I can't sleep, so I'm tired and cranky. Actually, in all seriousness, you could pull a "DOA" on them. They are poisoned with a slow-acting poison with no antidote, and have a limited time (i.e. that game session) to catch their killer before they die. Still not earth-shatteringly heroic, but at least they have an active part in stopping a homicidal maniac.

Re: Character Backgrounds I never used to write up character backgrounds; just envisioned the rough details in my mind and wrote up the character itself (characteristics, skills, powers, etc.). But a few years back I found that writing up a background can really make a character come alive. And like Oddhat, I often modify the character write-up to fit something I decided to put into the background. That said, I think shorter is generally better where backgrounds are concerned (but not *too* short). This is especially true for something like a character for somebody else to run (like at GenCon or other conventions). As to the actual writing of a background, I often have trouble getting started. When I get stuck, I'll look at somebody else's background writeup for inspiration. For example, I really liked how Hermit focused on a number of different points in time when he wrote up Stalker's background in Digital Hero #13, and I've used that same format on several characters. Some characters lend themselves well to a "first person narrative" style of background, like Bulldozer in CKC. Once I figure out the *how* of writing the background, most of it flows pretty well for me, since I already had a (very) general idea in my head when I started the character write-up. It mostly becomes a question of fleshing it out. Not a lot of help, I know, but that's how it works for me.

Re: Rope Soap on a Rope: Cosmetic Transform: Dirty to Clean, OIF.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat

Re: What Kind of Heroes do you GM? He thought he would stop being the "new guy" when we got another new guy, but *that* one only lasted a year or two before he had to move out of town. (I wondered if anybody was going to catch that.)

Re: What Kind of Heroes do you GM? Players: I've had the same core group of four players for the past 17 or so years, with one added about 10 years ago. I try to balance the combat and noncombat stuff, since some like combat more than others. Everybody gets along very well; we're basically friends first, and gamers second, so roleplaying inter-character conflict doesn't always work well. Character Archetypes: The PCs tend to be more on the physical (than energy or mental) side. We generally have a martial artist, a brick, and maybe a TK'er, plus an energy blaster (or two) and maybe a mentalist. The current lineup of heroes is a martial artist, two blasters (though one if more a healer/protector), one semi-metamorph, and a luck-based character that probably best works as "Miscellaneous." Character Personalities: Generally comic-book heroic, they're probably "tarnished Silver age." Lots of wisecracks and poking fun at the bad guys, but they're big on protecting innocents and stopping the bad guys' plots.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

Re: Superhero Legal Disclaimers Or, my favorite from the mouth of a player: "Stop, evil do-gooder!"

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... I would think Gideon should be able to thank Bypass for telegraphing her kick, thus effectively negating her surprise. Unless her quote came *after* the kick or was a "thought balloon," that is. I like her quote, though. I assume it came with a Texas drawl.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "Stretchy and His Homeys"

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat Yo, Adrian! It's Rocky!

Re: Half-Move and Sweep I recently created an NPC character in Champions that I gave an off-hand penalty with his second attack, since it fit his concept. He had two wrist blasters, but hardly ever used the left one, so he was -3 OCV with that. (Both blasters ran off the same END Reserve, so firing both consistently would eat through his END.) During the battle with the heroes, he became somewhat Enraged and fired two-handed several times, but IIRC he never hit once with the off-hand attack. Edit: In this same game, one of the player character heroes will frequently fire two-handed (he has two different Multipowers), and I do NOT impose an off-hand penalty on him.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "I'm Flaming!"

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat (Looking at the side of the cereal box) "Hmmm... Sodium, 35 grams... Protein, 7 grams.... Cyanide, 150 grams...." NT: Things you don't want to see or hear as you're buying a new house.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Last night's D&D game: A noble was killed by what appears to be an Infernal Dire Were-Wolverine, and his 12-14 year-old servant boy was the only witness. Thinking maybe the boy was the actual culprit, the heroes offer to take him in "protective custody" to another town to supposedly turn him over to the orphanage there. Aren (male fighter): "I'm teaching him calisthenics; I'll make a man of him." DM: A few moments later... Aren: After we get done, I want to take the lad to a "guards bar." DM: Aren: Is there one nearby? Y'llek: Well, there's Ye Olde Blue Oyster Pub... DM: So are you all going to the "orc castle" to the north, or heading to Randarn to investigate the Infernal Dire Were-Wolverine? Y'llek (rabidly orc-hating ranger): Orc castle! I'm telling you, the orcs are behind Lord Whyte's killing! This whole "wolverine" thing is just a subterfuge! After the four male heroes argued over whose room the kid was going to sleep in (none of them wanted a potential were-wolverine in the same room with them): Devlyn (female rogue): To heck with it! The kid can stay in the same room as Leila and me! Ryan: *She'll* make a man out of him! Y'llek reluctantly agrees with the rest of the party to investigate Lord Whyte's death after all, and the heroes travel south to Randarn, the noble's home city. We discover that an engaged couple staying at the same inn as the noble were using fake names and left Randarn with one of Lord Whyte's caravans (a huge shipment of fine weapons) heading northeast to a city on the coast, whose name I've forgotten. We travel at best possible speed (augmented with magic) to try and catch up with the caravan, verifying at several towns enroute that the couple was indeed traveling with the caravan. And just five hours travel from the coastal city, we encounter the caravan heading *away* from the city, back toward Randarn. The couple is not with them. We also discover that the caravan never went to the city, but instead turned off the road, and somebody (likely a druid) covered up the tracks with a bunch of raspberry bushes. Il'Marcum (in a Dark Helmet voice): Only one person would dare give us the raspberry! A few Survival / Tracking rolls later, we find out the couple, along with some huge creatures (leaving giant footprints) are heading northwest. Ryan: What's in that direction? DM: Well, if they keep heading that same direction, the only thing that way is the castle... Y'llek: I TOLD YOU! IT WAS THE ORCS! NOBODY BELIEVED ME! IT!!! WAS!!! THE!!! ORCS!!!

Re: Your "2007" Pet Gaming Projects My current project is to finish up and submit two related adventures to Digital Hero. Curse of the Eagle's Eye, a Pulp Hero adventure, lays the groundwork for The Secrets of the Eagle's Temple, an adventure for Champions. They're written so either can be run alone. And for a Champions campaign, you can run the adventures in sequence (using provided heroic characters for the Pulp Hero half). After that? For a long time I've wanted to write up a DH article, kinda like Jason does in YGHC, on Nicola Tesla. Maybe I'll get going on that (though I have no illusions I'll be able to do as good a job as Jason). Other than that, I'll continue running my Champions campaign, featuring Chicago's very own superhero team, S-Squad.