Theron

Re: "Use the Source, Fluke..." or Does you campaign have a central rationale? I've done both extremes and everything in between. Since I'm currently considering doing something with Scott Bennie's excellent Gestalt Universe stuff in the near future, I'd be going with the unified origin approach for that game.

Re: Name help requested for an idealistic archer Shaft (he's a bad mutha-hushyomouth)

Re: The Incredibles -- WITH SPOILERS You've never had a small child, have you? Seriously, each of the Parr family's powers reflects a bit of stereotypical thinking about the nuclear family - Dad has to be strong no matter what; Mom is pulled in a million different directions and has to be flexible, the Teenaged Girl just wants to vanish, Junior is a mess of energy, and the baby? The baby is like dealing with a ten ton weight, a hot potato, and a raging demon. I don't think Mirage had any powers. If so, wouldn't Syndrome have eliminated her as well? Her wink to Bob was just a way of luring him in, making him think he'd be working as a super for the good guys once again. Basically, an appeal to a guy who thinks his golden days are behind him that maybe, secretly, they aren't.

Re: Animated Series Style Character Images

Re: Animated Series Style Character Images I have got to get me a graphics pad. And a better PC. And the time to play around with stuff like this.

Re: Ramifications of "Powers NOW" My old IMPACT campaign posited some things like this. Supers appeared, and the response of governments was a bunker mentality, with a "recruit or shoot" policy regarding supers. It was an idea that I enjoyed exploring, but my players weren't right for the campaign tone.

Re: The Incredibles Saw today it with the kiddo and a friend of his in tow. Go see this movie. It's one of the best, if not the best, superhero films ever made. Even better than "The Specials".

Re: ... until it becomes... a Thing of Iron! I had no idea they'd put this out. I know what I'm getting at the Funnybook Store tomorrow.

Re: Wedding Bells Are Ringing! Troubadour presents the happy couple with the use of the "Poetic Justice", a flying galleon he liberated from Cap'n Skulldugger a few years ago. Should make for a lovely honeymoon cruise.

Re: Doctor J.A. Quest Wilder. Jason Wilder I - IV. They own/run Odyssey Research. The last two were costumed superheroes who called themselves "The Hunter" and "The New Hunter" (who I presume actually called himself "The Hunter". Otherwise, that would be a bit silly. - NM fan TB

Qu Waywaywaywayback in the dawn of my Champions career, two of my players ran PCs named Prodigal and The Naga. They were adult versions of Jonny and Hadji. Prodical was a martial artist/gadgeteer, The Naga a potent mentalist. I think Dr. Q was missing, and Race was a paraplegic due to a plane crash. That's about all I remember regarding what my guys came up with. It's been two decades, after all. (The Super-Agents version isn't bad, all in all. I'd give him some MArts, but other than that, 225 + 150 in gadgets seems reasonable.)

Re: Hulk Smash: What is your favorite version? Ultimate Hulk for me, thanks.

Re: Spiffiest Power Name? Midnight Sunstone Bazooka

Re: Champions: The Animated Series I ran one for a while, set in an animated version of the New Millenium setting. I wrote an entire article on it which appeared in a pre-digital Hero publication made up of the best of Haymaker!. Unfortunately, I signed the rights over to Hero for it, so I can't reprint it here. As I recall, my major points were: Simplify. Distill things down to their core. Don't use a paragraph to describe something if you can do so more vitally in a single sentence. By the same token, unclutter. In my game, I eliminated UNTIL entirely in favor of the GUARD. Why? Well, first, we didn't need two agencies doing the same thing. Second, GUARD had the cooler sounding name. Ditto for the plethora of mystic cabals. I narrowed things down to one good group and one evil. Big visual descriptions. I can't stress this enough. Let the player's imaginations run wild. Encourage them to use their surroundings to their advantage. If you've got them fighting in an alley and they say, "Is there an old ladder around here?" go with it. The payoff is worth any crimp they might put in the fight. Episodic games. Keep your stories self-contained or, at most, two-part in nature. Story arcs are fine, but the adventures themselves should be pretty short. If I remember more, I'll post it (I don't have the file with me).

Re: the 5th Edition CU is by far the best I agree that the whole thing feels very inconsistent. I think that's an inevitable consequence of trying to be too many things to too many people. It's a good, solid setting, but it doesn't feel very much like a comic book universe to me. Then again, very few unlicensed supers settings do feel like a comic book universe, IMHO. Green Ronin's "Freedom City" and "Meta-4" being notable exceptions. Before I saddled myself with a very lengthy and ultimately fruitless writing gig, I had proposed a series of DH articles to Dave M. which would take the out of the box CU and propose changes to make it fit narrower comic book genres. I still think it's a groovy idea, but I lack the time to give it the attention it would need (plus, I'm about to kick off a Feng Shui campaign I've promised my group for almost a year).

Re: The Greatest American Hero (book). Strike Force

Re: The Event I like them thematically, but off stage, as a bit of recent history. They make good stepping off points. The last campaign I actually ran was set in an "animated" version of the New Millenium setting. I found the aftermath of the Proprietor war an excellent way to introduce new PCs (in fact, one of the PCs, an individual called Scion, was literally formed from the conjoint energies of The Proprietor, Dr. Doom, and The Marksman). If I run another four color game, I would most likely set things up so that the PCs origins are directly tied to an earth-shattering event.

Re: Do You Design Characters for the Team?? Definitely in terms of team interaction, though I tend to work personality first, powers and skills second. Generally speaking, I look for the niche that no one else already has laid claim to.

Re: Armor costs The Milanese armourers (by and large, the best the medieval world had to offer) had a surprising degree of sophistication, using specialization, assembly line techniques, and, believe it or not, water driven trip hammers to handle the gross shaping. When most folks think of an armourer, the image that comes to mind is a blacksmith, but that's like comparing an electrical engineer to the guy who installs your cable.

Re: Armor costs I half-recall someone connected with the Tower Armoury Museum in Leeds stating that a full suit of 15th century plate cost about the equivalent of $40,000. Of course, that's for top of the line head-to-toe armour, but it still reflects the expense involved. Questions like this make me wish my library were better organized.

Re: The horror, the horror. European Enemies "debugged." I'm 99% certain I have no contact information for him anymore. It's about six years and five email accounts since the project died.. At that time he was living in northern South Dakota in a very small town. If you know any of the "Omaha Mafia", one of them might know how to reach him.

Re: The horror, the horror. European Enemies "debugged." Then by all means, cherish the memories of what was. What would have been is best not contemplated. Seriously. PM me if you're all that curious.

Re: The horror, the horror. European Enemies "debugged." Wow, Michael. Just wow. I salute your efforts and ability to withstand punishment. That was a task even more frightening than my stab at editing/developing the (thankfully spiked) CLOWN revamp.

Re: Forgotten Golden Age heroes I'm not the Golden Age junkie I once was, but one of the guys in my gaming group practically defines the term. Here's his Directory of Golden Age Heroes (use the sidebar to navigate to the individual pages, it wasn't immediately apparent to me). (Yeah, I have Jess Nevins in my gaming group. Life is hard. ) (Edit: My favorite obscure hero Jess told me about is the Red Torpedo, who once piloted his crimson submarine into the underwater caves of Queen Klytora. Seriously.)

Re: The cranky thread A fresh dose of cranky: Two nights ago, I noticed my PC's performance was degrading pretty badly. Not surprising, all in all; it's a five year old HP struggling by with Win2K on a PII processor and 128 megs of RAM. It's not at all unusual for me to need to reboot it every other day to clear out the cobwebs. So, yesterday morning, I restarted the old girl. When she came up, it was clear something was still wrong. My desktop looked OK, but all of my menu icons were just placeholders. And nothing I clicked on would actually run. "OK," says I, "'Tis a cold boot you're needin'." I shut it down and restart. And immediately, before Windows can come up, I get an error saying one of the major system files is either missing or corrupted. Joy. It suggests I try to repair it using the install CD. I rummage around for a while. Then I call The Missus (who's already at work). She tells me exactly where it is. I take one crack at it, and get to the point where it asks for an Emergency Disk. Now, I'm sure I had one when I first upgraded my OS from Win98, but who knows where it is now. Lovely. At work, I use my Google-fu to see what I can do. I get a couple of suggested fixes and find out how to make an Emergency Disk. I come home and try the fixes. Nothing doing. Too much damage or something. Regardless, it doesn't work. My only remaining option: re-install Windows 2000. On the bright side, it took. I didn't lose any files. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to re-name My Documents so it wouldn't be overwritten. Last night, I thought it had taken out my internet connection as well, but I got that to work this evening. On the down side, it wiped out ALL of my settings and drivers. My CD R/W has given up the ghost. Roxio is still there, but it can't find the drivers to do the job. Hopefully, I can find the install disk. All existing file associations beyond the basic Windows suite are gone. I tried to open a PDF and had to tell it how. Then I got six error popups asking for missing Javascript before the file would open. Even my MS Office associations are gone. Of course, the best part is that I'm slated to replace this sucker in the next couple of months. I just hope I can get the CD R/W to work again so I can archive my stuff.