BoloOfEarth

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.)

Re: GATEWAY, the UNTIL space station Cat, First off, thanks for the link. I'm a nut for maps and immediately printed that off. Second, thanks for the plug on the Bayside Blimp. As to the meat of your post, DC Heroes had a module, Siege, that contained maps of the JLA satellite base. I'm not positive, but I thinkTraveller had a space station in at least one module. And I know there's a set of blueprints done of the Next Gen Enterprise that could be twisted or borrowed from to fit a space station. But AFAIK nothing official from DOJ on GATEWAY. According to the text in the UNTIL sourcebook, the station has artificial gravity, and since it is bought with a Bulky OIF, I'd say it's the sci-fi variety rather than from rotation. Of course, you could decide differently in your world. Given the size (8,000 hexes!), I doubt you'll see GATEWAY drawn out, though that would be way cool if they did. If you can get your hands on one or more of the previously mentioned maps, I'd just borrow bits and pieces for key areas (bridge, docking bay, etc.) where the players are likely to go, and wing the rest.

Re: one question... A few suggestions: (1) have a diceless sequence. Make it a group dream (maybe someone mystic trying to warn the heroes of something while they sleep), so their actual power levels don't really apply. This gives you a reason to ignore the damage levels and just get descriptive. (2) run an all-NPC intro to a plotline. Maybe have the players temporarily play the villains they're going to face later on. Give them a general idea of what their powers are, but not details (since they're going to face off against them later). This is kinda like a teaser sequence in a comic, giving the players some info that will become important later. Have them roll to hit, but you "determine" damage off the cuff. This gets away from the game mechanics and adds some variety to the game. I had the players play a bunch of normals (and one low-powered villain), paired off against each other, with a disk of information what they were all after. After that was run, the players went back to running their own characters, find the disk, etc. This was done to add some interesting roleplaying to the game, but the principle can be altered for your game. Overall, you need to have fun too. One way I have fun is by coming up with subplots and behind-the-scene machinations that the players rarely learn about (but frequently feel the effects from). And when they do ferret out one of those subplots, it's a lot of fun for both me and them. Or I try and develop an NPC that the PCs will want to interact with on a regular basis. Friends or foes, the supporting cast can be tons of fun for the GM to play.

Re: Title for the next HERO villains book I was thinking "Foxbat's Pop-Up Book of Foes" - it gets away from the alliteration, but what the heck? A book of individuals that might, for a time, work with and against the mighty Foxbat.

Re: Labs! for every occasion Demolitions Lab - combine with Concealment Lab and Breakfall Lab (mentioned above) - can you find and defuse the bomb before the lab rotates? And who the heck put a mercury switch on that thing?! Acrobatics / Contortionist Lab - bars and beams and razorwire (oh, my!) crisscross this room, making it extremely difficult to cross the room to the other door. Bureaucratics Lab - you must return from this room with form 37-B.

Re: from little plot seeds, mighty games do grow: Share you ideas! Not a computer, but I did something similar. A player character in my campaign was rather paranoid, especially about the government. His teammates signed him up for a subscription to the Hero.net Herald, a weekly newspaper in my game. This publication is put out by former and current superheroes, plus fans and superhero wanna-bes. Subscribers receive the paper every Monday morning on their bedside table, secret ID or not. Nobody has ever seen the paper actually appear, and it never appears if somebody other than the recipient is in the room. You can imagine how the paranoid PC freaked out when his first issue appeared in his home.

Re: FoxbatsMasterPlan.Com dear mistr foxbat, my name is timmy im six years old if i start a foxbat fan club can i get a rid in yore centapeedmobeel? my daddy thinks yore a loon but i think yore cool timmy

By the way, Lord Liaden, I followed the links. Loved 'em, especially the Foxbat Deathtrap stuff. As to my own suggestions, if the heroes are frontal assault types and they're supposed to wake up in the trap, have it be a cell with one armored door. (They were actually lowered in from a concealed hatch above.) The door is a fake, very flimsy and concealing a very short corridor with spikes facing the doorway. (Something like 3d6 AP KA should do the trick.) The brick's high-speed move-through merely means that he impales himself, upping the KA by an appropriate amount. Saw one in Iron Man where he came to a room with a TV monitor showing a friend of his wired into an electric chair, and a voice informed him that, if he moved, a sensor would detect it and electrocute his friend. He scanned the room to find the electrical wiring for the sensor and used his chest unibeam to deactivate it so he could move and save the day. A truly insidious way is to use a cumulative mental illusion. No matter how they defeat one "trap," another kicks in automatically (the hero's brain is doing all the work). So the hero defeats the spinning blades of death atop the narrow walkway, only to slip and fall onto huge glass spikes. He uses acrobatics to avoid landing on the spikes, but they're hollow and his foot breaks one, releasing a deadly gas. He jumps back up to the walkway, and sections of the ceiling begin to fall on him. Ad infinitum until either the illusion does enough STUN and BODY, or the player finally wises up that it isn't really happening.

A truly good deathtrap is aimed at the powers/skills of a specific character, so what works for one person won't necessarily work for another. That said, I've been in games with the following: 1) Went down in an elevator quite a way; I think the elevator was a hydraulic lift, not a cable-suspended box. After it passed a certain point, hardened armor blast doors sealed off the elevator shaft. At the bottom was a room that looked like a meeting room of some sort. Of course, as soon as all the heroes entered the room, armored doors slammed shut and heaters hidden a ways back in the walls turned on to slowly but steadily bring the room temperature up to a deadly level. Smashing back into the elevator shaft only buys some time, since the blast doors sealing the elevator shaft are too hard to break through -- and then the elevator shaft starts getting the heat too. The heat vents were too small to get through, but as I recall one character could teleport and took somebody else in to help smash the heaters. With the immediate threat taken care of, we could work on the blast doors until we could escape. 2) The hero team came to a room with switches (number equalled the number of heroes). Only one entrance, across the room from the switches. The heroes were informed that, if they did not throw the switches, a nuke was going to destroy the city. If they did throw the switches, the door would lock (too tough to break through easily) and nerve gas would fill the room. We quickly rigged something up to the switches so one person could throw them all at once, and one hero (the speedster) volunteered to throw the switch then make a run for the door, while the rest of us were outside and trying to keep the door open. I don't remember why, but for some reason the door still closed, too fast for the speedster to get through. (I think it was a second, hidden door that dropped from above.) He didn't make it.

So you're saying that Christmas is all part of Foxbat's Master Plan?

On the topic of villain motivation: think about how the villain sees him/herself. Few people wake up and say, "Well, it's time to be evil!" They usually have reasons for the things they do (twisted or delusional as those reasons may be). To the villains, their actions make perfect sense. The suggestion on acting is bang-on, too, even as far as facial expressions. While speaking as the big baddie, look at the players as if they are beneath your notice, or vermin, or however the villain sees the heroes. A distinct voice, or cadence, or word choice also helps. As to making the villains as if they are your personal characters: this has a danger, namely if the GM is so attached to "his" characters that he goes out of his way to hamstring and thwart the heroes. Yes, put as much effort into creating the villain as you would in creating your own PC. But don't get too attached to him.

Not multiple plots converging, really just a completion of some long-standing plots. One campaign I ran, three of the five player characters decided they were hunted by Malachite, all for different reasons. One, Hybrid, is a brick type that nobody can seem to hurt. He has a DNPC, a female researcher interested in his mutant physiology. Another PC, Guardian Angel, is a beautiful telekinetic that Malachite wants to study and maybe make his bride. Game goes on a few months, and the heroes discover a man with amnesia fighting his way out of a hidden lab of Dr. Draconis. They find no clues to his background, but figure out that Draconis was actually programming combat skills into his brain. Everybody he sees is overlaid with a template showing weak points (Find Weakness with any weapon, AE: Cone), plus information on equipment, known abilities, and vulnerabilities (lots of Knowledge Skills). He's a normal (all 20s on primary stats) who's a combat machine. They call him John Doe and make him a pseudo-member of the team (he stays at their base, sometimes helps them out, etc.). Campaign continues a while, with the players really getting to like John Doe. Then, Hybrid's DNPC has a heart attack in front of him, and dies in the hospital while another PC (Mind's Eye, a mentalist) was there. Ever paranoid, the other players even told her try to scan the DNPC, but she doesn't detect anything. After a few days, they discover that they were duped; she was drugged to have symptoms similar to a heart attack, and given another drug to slow respiration and heartbeat. The hospital equipment was rigged to both flatline and jam mental scanning. They figure out that she was taken to the Malachite Islands, and of course they sneak in (a great but long story I won't go into here) to find and retrieve her. John Doe goes along, too. When they're in the final confrontation with Malachite, he smiles and said something none of them understood. Suddenly, John Doe turns and starts attacking Hybrid. You see, he was a clone created by Malachite and given a deeply hidden command to attack Hybrid if he heard the phrase Malachite said. He was sent to Draconis to be programmed and to keep the players from suspecting Malachite. During the months (maybe over a year) that John Doe was hanging out with the heroes, he was subconsciously watching Hybrid and cataloguing his abilities and (most important) his weak points. The best part was that the player characters (who had been bloodthirsty at times in the past) actually refrained from hurting John Doe, instead restraining and talking to him until Mind's Eye could cancel the subconscious command. It was one of those "long-term" background things that usually don't come to fruition in my campaigns, and I loved when it all came together.

Foxbat On Ice Last week, I ran an adventure titled "Foxbat on Ice," where he tries to steal skills from the Millennium City Red Wings during a hockey game and hold them for ransom for... "One million dollars!" (A fight breaking out at a hockey game -- surprise, surprise!) The zamboni was modified with the equipment to steal the skills and memories from five of the Wings and put them into the members of the Foxbat Five -- yes, Foxbat has managed to convince four supervillains to join him in his Master Plan. "With their ice skating and fighting skills, I will be well nigh unstoppable this winter! My Master Plan cannot be stopped!" Unfortunately, Foxbat hired some thugs to cover the exits, and a technician to help with the mind transfers, and the tech had ideas of his own. First, he convinced Foxbat and his teammates, plus the thugs, to wear mental protection headgear (in case Witchcraft shows up), then he modified the zamboni equipment. The headgear actually allowed the tech to switch his mind and those of four thugs with those of the Foxbat Five. The player characters arrived to save the day, only to discover that the Foxbat Five are now bona-fide bad guys. One PC hero (Pack Rat, the team swiss army knife -- I love that term, Rechan) fired a electic dart at one of the thugs, and I decided that the power surge would trigger another mind switch, this time at random. Taking far too much pleasure from this, Pack Rat skated all around the Joe Louis Arena, happily zapping thugs and triggering multiple mind switches. The players, who actually get along pretty well with the F5, had a great time chatting with Leroy (Exoskeleton Man, who bounced into a thug, then Foxbat, then another thug, then Static Man), trying to knock opponents into the goals, and stopping the tech from escaping in Foxbat's body (he removed his headgear after he bounced back in). Foxbat rules!