BoloOfEarth

Re: This has got to be someone's team plane "You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to proditor again." Great site! Doesn't the Pathfinder II look like a flying sub? (It's the one at the bottom of the page) Piasecki 16H-1A Pathfinder II The German tail-sitter whirligig (scroll down a bit) looks hilarious! Imagine what would happen if the fuselage stopped counter-rotating... BTW, you can force a translation by typing in "http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=" followed by the http address, ie http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://prototypes.free.fr/vtol/vtol-3.htm.

Re: This has got to be someone's team plane Check out this site. There's about 15-20 different sketches of various cool-looking concept planes, plus some actual ones. Just keep clicking Next and I'll bet you'll be blown away. Radius Design Experimental - Air And if you're into boats, check this one out: Radius Design Experimental - Water

Re: i call upon the heros of the forum to help me!! (plz) I'm assuing that you want the people of the city turned against the heroes before he teleports the city. If so, over a period of time, you could have the local papers / tv reporters ripping on the heroes (a la J. Jonah Jameson) under Backlash's or Dreammaster's sway. If a player character has fire powers, Backlash could also set fires and make it look like the PC hero was responsible. Alternately, you could work all the villains' powers together and not move the city at all; Tempest creates an amplifier with which Howler "sings" the entire city to sleep, then Dreammaster makes everybody *believe* the city was teleported to an alien planet due to reckless action on the heroes' part, but in the dream Tempest and crew "save" the city by returning it to Earth. Backlash (wearing earplugs) spends the night creating a burn mark circling the city (so the city denizens have physical evidence after they wake up), and Tempest hits the city with a hail storm (which the citizens "remember" happening on the alien planet; further physical evidence).

Re: This has got to be someone's team plane From the Sept. 2004 Air & Space Smithsonian: "A few years ago, Starship pilot Bob Bass was flying at 31,000 feet over Kansas when he received a radio call from a U.S. Air Force jet that wanted to pull alongside. He looked out the window and saw a $2 billion B-2 bomber join up on his wing. The B-2 pilot was shooting photographs of Bass' airplane." And Raytheon (who bought Beech Aircraft) is trying to buy all the Starships up so they can scrap them rather than provide parts. There are only four in the hands of private owners. I can understand, but somehow it seems criminal to destroy something that pretty.

Re: This has got to be someone's team plane I always thought the Beech Starship was a pretty plane. (It's the one flying over SpaceShip One.) That tops my list of "Ooo! I Want One!" Well, right after the DeLorean from Back to the Future.

Re: Building a Campaign for Newbies I just had another idea, both for a recurring foe and for a get-together adventure: Istvatha V'han. In the first adventure, the player characters individually fight groups of V'hanian soldiers who are spearheading an invasion. As the military responds, coopting the heroes for help, the PCs meet and can work together to strike at the V'hanian foothold (a dimensional gateway where the troops are coming through).

Re: Building a Campaign for Newbies Ideas: Set in MC: Champions are missing, and the PC heroes come together to investigate their disappearance. Set in NYC, especially if starting at the very beginning of January: PCs are all at Times Square before the ball drops, and individually learn that something bad will happen at midnight. (I ran this once; Terror Inc was launching a missile with a biological warhead at Times Square.) Set anywhere: Individual supervillains, equal in number to the player characters, attack individual heroes. The heroes learn that the bad guys are all part of a team, and must team up to defeat them.

Re: The supporting cast - in the limelight I ran an adventure in the middle of my Champions game where a massively powerful alien telepath switched the player characters' minds with those of a bunch of PRIMUS agents going out on a run to stop a group of supervillains. They found they had to actually work at taking out a trio of "pushover" villains. That same week, I also ran a solo adventure where the team's electrical character (to whom water immersion was fatal) was switched with a Silver Avenger -- as he was jumping into a pool. The look on the player's face was priceless.

Re: The "Whoops" Thread My current campaign's player characters have no vehicle and, for the longest time, had no base. After a while, the vehicle thing became a non-issue since one character developed the ability to create teleport gates across the planet. The base became a running joke; the Champions saying "We'll run one over to your base... oh, that's right, you don't have one" and so on. They now have a volcano base in the Pacific, with a standing teleport gate to Millennium City. They also have no mentalist to speak of (Mosquito can "whisper in peoples' ears" to get some info) and had little or no Mental Defense for a while.

Several years ago (I think 2001, but I may be off a year either direction), I went to GenCon and played in a game where Foxbat was the secret mastermind. Afterward, I was talking to the GM and several players, and someone talked about their rewrite of Harmonious Fist. I won't go into detail, but the rewrite was more in harmony with the character's name and, IMO, quite a cool idea. If anybody here is that person, or knows who that person might be, please let me know by email, private message, carrier pigeon, or any other way you prefer. Thanks.

Re: Need help forming a scenario idea It occurs to me that, once the bidding is over and there's one winner, there's no reason for the villains to play nice any more. I'd imagine old vendettas would kick into gear the instant both parties realized they hadn't won. I'd also imagine some villains would go after the winner, to take the information by force. I'd also imagine the person organizing this would realize this would happen. Perhaps it's what he planned all along. Let his rivals take each other out, leaving the field clear for him. Perhaps the Achilles information is completely bogus, just a prop to get the villains together and primed to fight. Of course, that would hurt the bad guy's rep. Now if a hero "found out" about the auction and changed / stole the file, the big baddie could hardly be blamed... But then, I'm an evil GM. Alternately, the info's legit and the big baddie could plan on selling it to *everybody* and just using the pretense of an "auction" to run the price up. Bidding is private -- each participant is given a wireless PDA to see the current bid and place his/her own bids. This PDA is also used to tell each participant, "Congratulations! You won! To minimize the chance of you getting attacked by jealous rivals, however, we suggest you act as if you lost. Transfer complete; Achilles files downloaded to this PDA. Have a nice day!" On a side note, a goodly number of bad guys will try and steal the info beforehand. (They *are* villains, after all.) So Geist will have competition if he tries to steal the file(s).

Re: DNPC: My Cat

Re: DNPC: My Cat Remember the cat in Men in Black? The cat could have a special necklace that somebody is trying to steal. Or Inner Space? The cat was at the vet's and got injected with something (or an itsy-bitsy somebody) that VIPER wants to get their hands on. Or Grond really likes the 'pretty kitty.' (I kinda like this one. I can imagine the other players saying, "I'm not fighting him. It's *your* cat.") Or a mage's spirit is using the cat (the reincarnation of his familiar) for some twisted purpose. Or the cat likes to hide PCs' foci around the base. ("Dammit, where's the left gauntlet for my armor?!") Note that I didn't say "That PC's" as it could be taking other player characters' stuff to make that PC's life difficult. Hermit's Foxbat suggestion is a classic.

Re: What Do You Look For In A City Setting? A city map is good, but what I'd like to see are maps of key landmarks, and maybe maps of a few generic buildings identifiable with that city (for instance, MC might have classy upscale eateries or high-tech offices, HC might have seedy bars and warehouses, etc.). But then, I'm a map nut. I agree about the lack of need for NPC writeups, especially for non-combat types. Use the space for a good description of the NPC (appearance, personality, etc.) with maybe some key skills (e.g. "Cabbie Joe DiMarco has Combat Driving 15- and KS: Campaign City 13-"), but I don't need to know his stats if he's probably not getting into combat. I heartily agree about the lack of need for more than a few solo heroes, and these should be strongly geared to be supporting characters for PC heroes. (A mystic superhero who can shed some light on things magical, a vigilante type to cross swords with the PCs, etc.) Plot seeds. Enough to plant a freakin' plot garden across Central Park. One-paragraph bits-in-boxes, the kind of stuff that is entertaining to read and points out the quirks of the city, organizations, or key NPCs. Quotes from NPCs (even nobody-types) about the city or landmarks would be neat, too. Something to break up the text and makes the whole reading process more fun. The old VIPER sourcebook had some that made me want to flip through just to read them. I never read San Angelo, but it sounds like the Top Ten lists were like that. Stuff the players can see and read, as well as stuff they're not allowed to. (HERO seems to be doing a pretty good job of this as-is, though.)

Re: Old Adventurer's Club magazines Thanks much, Agent X and Teflon Billy, for the link, as well as Derek H for compiling the list. It answered my question perfectly. The only issue I own is #12, but I rather liked the piece on superheroes and the legal system. I seem to recall a rather amusing article, I think it was in an AC issue, on a martial art based on the Three Stooges.

Hi. Does anybody know how many Adventurer's Club issues were published? Also, what were some of your favorite things from AC? Both in general (teams, organizations, adventures) and specific (Stooge Fu, for instance).

Re: Most Embarassing Champions Moment Sometimes the embarassment is not the players, nor the GM's, fault. Sometimes it just happens. I borrowed (okay, stole) a plot from a book once, involving a woman who inherited a house from her father, but her brother wanted it. The father was an inventor and developed a way to broadcast electricity, and the key to it was hidden in the house. The woman didn't want the house (her father had abused her when she was young) and wouldn't set foot in it, but she didn't want the brother to have it (I think he had tried to follow in their father's footsteps). The brother got some help to force her to sell him the house, and the heroes got involved helping the woman. Of course, she didn't share the whole abuse thing with the heroes until quite a ways into the plot. It was at that point that one of my players tells me that the father's name is exactly the same as her best friend's father. (I used the same name as was in the book, it's not a wholly uncommon name IIRC.) No, the friend was never abused by her father, but that made the whole thing uncomfortable nonetheless.

Re: Speeding things up I forgot who, but somebody else suggested this long ago: Require each player to make a quick, short soliloquy before each action. If they don't say something, they don't do anything. This gets around setting a time limit on the player, and it motivates the players to think beforehand about what they're going to say and do when they're "on camera." I haven't actually done this, but I've heard it speeds up player actions, and adds to the fun besides.

Re: Q: Move Through... with an LTD Oh, and I'd reward the player with Weapon Familiarity: Pimpmoblie afterward.

Re: Q: Move Through... with an LTD Allow me to add a little something to this discussion. While the game rules say many things, there is one thing to remember, from p.343 of the rules, in bold, all caps (not my doing, that's the way it's presented): DON'T LET THE RULES GET IN THE WAY OF HAVING FUN. C'mon, guys, we're talking about a pink LTD with freakin' fuzzy dice and (God help us) a fur steering wheel. This thing's just begging to be picked up one-handed and smashed into scrap against a dim bulb like Grond. Casual-STR action? Sure, why not? Area attack? Yepper-doodles! Additional damage? What the hey, add 1d6 for the shock value of a pink LTD. (It goes against the rules, but it's all in fun.) Additional penalties? I'd say the standard move-through stuff for OCV and DCV, throw a random minus for an unwieldy, unbalanced object, and roll to hit. If Grond gets knocked back or down, do damage like everybody else said, but have the LTD's alarm go off only *after* Bastion sets the trashed car down. If Grond doesn't get knocked back, Bastion still takes regular move-thru damage *but* plows through the rear window, ending up upside-down in the driver's seat -- while Grond prepares to play "car crusher" with the hero inside. Before I get flamed, I know he was asking for advice, and all of you provided him with detailed, technically correct answers. But my advice would be, wing it and have fun, so long as you don't have a meta-gaming rules-lawyer player who'll whine or take advantage at a later date.

Re: Speeding things up I always draw maps, because I'm a visual person. Some people are; they can't easily visualize something, or miss key details (since we game at a friend's house and they have kids, the noise level sometimes gets out of hand). I make them in advance and often fairly detailed, and I've found it helps the players get into things and come up with some interesting tactics. I agree with the non-wargaming mentality. But you can just skip hex-counting altogether (maybe don't even use hexmaps, just plain paper) and move the characters and judge ranges by eye. At GenCon, I was in a game where the GM didn't draw anything, and he sucked at describing things. When we were getting our butts kicked in the big battle and finally convinced him to sketch out the layout, we saw things he failed to mention, and managed to work together (instead of acting almost randomly) to win. Of course, different strokes. What works for me may not work for you.

Re: Speeding things up I'd suggest using the pre-roll sheets or dice-rolling program for your own stuff, and let the players roll theirs. Typically, the GM is running as many characters, or more, than the players combined, so this cuts time in half and still lets the players enjoy the dice rolls. At the very least, pre-roll for the mooks and throwaway villains.

Re: Goofy Villains Let's see... In my world, Foxbat collected four other supervillains to form the Foxbat Five (even better than the Fantastic Four, cuz there's five of them, y'see?). Foxbat, Exoskeleton Man (Leroy), Harmonious Fist (from a 4th Edition book), The Amazing Static Man (stolen, er, adapted from V&V), and Dot (formerly from CLOWN, vastly rewritten). I'll probably replace Static Man somewhere along the way, though. I had the Scavenger, who was a recycling supervillain, built a huge mecha from old car parts, scrap metal, and other junk. Of course, his "secret" base was in a junkyard. BRUTE Force (Blue Cyclone, Repo, Uproot, Tremor, and Express), a bunch of pro wrestlers who got superpowers and became, um, superpowered pro wrestlers. The battle between BRUTE Force and Silver Phoenix (the hero group) was a pay-per-view event in my campaign world and one of the funnest I ever ran. The Secession Squad, who insisted that the South *will* rise again whether it wants to or not. All members had names beginning with "S" (Southpaw, Stonewall, Speedball, etc.) and many plots had elements starting with "S" (for instance, they only drove around in Sentras, Subarus, etc.). Hey, it was early in my GMing career! Cut me some slack.

Re: Top Secret Gadgets Lucky Cigarette Case: Missile Deflection vs. bullets at +5 OCV (25 Active Points); 4 charges, never recovers (-3), OAF(-1); 5 Real Points

Re: GATEWAY, the UNTIL space station I know it doesn't help with your problem, but just for sh*ts and giggles, here's a ship I mapped out for a Haymaker! article I wrote. (Edited to change from BMP files to GIF to save space.)