assault

While you can have very low powered elementals, I'm inclined to think that such uses feel like a waste of a summoned creature that is powerful in its own right.

6 hours ago, DShomshak said:

5th member should maybe be a robot ninja, practicing Ninjutsu, but I don't have a good name yet.

Ninja are masters of disguise, so it mightn't have an "I'm a Ninja!" name.

Something like Pretty Robot Maid, perhaps?

On 3/4/2023 at 4:14 AM, csyphrett said:

I would like to pick Atomic Robo Tesla as a teacher of historic exotic sciences

CES 

Snipe! Although I wasn't going to use the Atomic Robo version of Tesla.

So my Galvano-Biology Professor will have to be: Rotwang!

And I need another pick to catch up.

Professor of Constructive and Reconstructive Surgery: Charles Atlas

Quote: "Let me prove in 7 days that I can make you a new man!"

So far more Mad Science than Magic, but I'm not the only one.

Department: Anatomy and Physiology.
Dean: Victor Frankenstein.

What time in your benighted Tunisian Emu conspiracy dominated part of the world are we going to start sniping each other?

So,  "The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert", is right out.

Nice. Makes me proud to be Australian.

23 minutes ago, Scott Ruggels said:

I am also amazed at how many of you losers don’t buy your powers to Zero END. 😁 power armor FTW! 

Now it's on!

Obviously you use the points you save on reducing your END to zero to buy a bigger attack! Or at least a bigger CV. Or SPD. Or whatever.

The idea is to put the zero END character down before you need to take a recovery.

Of course such calculations are really based on comparing your character against other PCs, but hey, what else are points for?

As for power armour... well even if you have to take the Limitation, there are plenty of other justifications for it. And if you are sufficiently Goodmanized, you can actually skip it if you have to. Because Limitations hurt.

That whole list is boring. 😉

Steve Goodman gave us Bulldozer, amongst other characters.

10 hours ago, death tribble said:

No, the first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

 

Henry VI, Part 2. Act IV Scene 2

Makes me want to play the School of Law.

As opposed to the School of Chaos, naturally.

3 hours ago, Opal said:

Though, really neither of those is fair... D&D didn't claim to be an RPG, initially, but "Rules  for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures" ...

Indeed, and you can argue that it wasn't the first published RPG on that basis.

There were skirmish wargames that you could play campaigns with before that.

Here's one contender:

Western Gunfight Wargame Rules 1st Ed (Steve Curtis, Ian Colwill, Mike Blake 1970. 2nd Ed 1971)

Other people were playing similar games without publishing their rules. Some were even fantasy!

I use Hunteds as the main opposition in the campaign. They're not bolted onto adventures - they are the adventures. Even so, more than one or two per PC is a nuisance. I'll swap them out when they get used up though.

DNPCs are a problem in large quantities, especially when there are a lot of PCs. I generally would restrict them to one per PC, and not on a particularly high frequency of appearance. If there were only 1 or 2 PCs, I would be less strict.

OK, we can draft real people, and it's set in the present day, so what about people who aren't alive any more?

I guess they could be immortal, undead or displaced in time. Rumours of their deaths are likely to be highly exaggerated.

Hmm, but why would ????? and ???? be immortal? Maybe...

Or I could go with Plan B...

I have a couple of ideas, so I'm in.

Incidentally, a lot of students at early Universities were teenagers, who would now be high school students.

14 hours ago, Old Man said:

John Carter is a little weird--the stories are public domain but the character is trademarked (as opposed to copyrighted).  So you could use Barsoom, but not John Carter.

 

Flash Gordon is also a little weird--certain films are public domain but the strip might fall into public domain in six years or so.

 

Likewise, Conan is due to fall into public domain in 2029, but he's popular enough that I'm sure someone will fight you for it.

 

Dark Sun, Star Wars, and Moorcock are right out.

 

But I would play the hell out of this campaign.  I'd throw in some Jack Vance as well, just to tweak the D&Ders.

Filing off the serial numbers covers all of this.

I'm a bit intrigued by how Conan would fit in a game cooked from these ingredients. He and the Hyborian Age seem a bit redundant.

Moorcock on the other hand: are you saving the world or destroying it, and is there a difference?

Naturally the game wouldn't have to be about this, so small picture Swords and Sorcery could work as well. Boo to metaplots!

22 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

In fairness, Champions 1e was really a big bundle of mechanics, no setting (look at a comic book, or just outside your window) and a few sample characters to set the expected power level.  It wasn't much of a game.   But that was true of many games at that time, even if they had some setting elements for fantasy or sci fi.  The "setting" and "game" was largely derived from the assumption gamers knew the source material.

This is true. D&D started off more or less as "if you've read Lord of the Rings, Conan and John Carter, you know what to do". Then there was the killer app of wandering about in an underground labyrinth.

That was pretty much all there was, or needed to be, to start with.

On 1/18/2023 at 12:11 AM, Duke Bushido said:

How about a nice blend of Conan, Dune, and John Carter's Barsoom?

 

Just-  just _think_ of the lawsuits we could have with such a glorious setting!

With diligent filing off the serial numbers, lawsuits wouldn't be a problem.

D&D's Dark Sun setting would be another thing to avoid parallels with.

Still not quite to my taste, but definitely doable.

Other stuff to milk: Flash Gordon and sundry Moorcock stuff.

And Star Wars. Why not. Tattoine!

2 hours ago, Old Man said:

AD&D 5e PH alone is 316 pages.

 

FH 1e/3e is 160 pages.  Take that, AD&D!

For comparable functionality you should also add in the Bestiary and the Spell and Magic item books.

Yes, you could DIY them, but that's avoidable self-inflicted effort.

Still, that's still a lot lower page count than current D&D, and probably the contemporary D&D. Definitely the latter too once you include the books beyond the original three - but that's additional content you need to match.

The most striking difference is FH's lower production values.

Shame about the lack of adventures.

It's easy to deal with the preload problem in non-superheroic genres. It only takes one person to deal with it, scrub it up into a publishable form, and then, well, publish it.

Superheroes are more difficult.

There are already a bunch of different ways to create Champions characters easily and quickly though. And of course there are a horde of published villains and other NPCs. All that requires buying a bunch of other stuff besides the basic rules though.

Then again... I had no problem back in the day with buying three hardcover books in order to play AD&D.

20 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

I do think the trauma of their father being killed in front of them would be sufficient to motivate anyone to change the direction of their lives; but Neutron's stated direction seemed rather vague, and more based in ego than in any logical viewpoint.

For a supervillain, "more based in ego than in any logical viewpoint" is perfectly sound.

They're not exactly the most stable bunch, and the exceptions should be - exceptions.

I think this game would be improved by it being possible to overthrow the Dark Lord. Not easy, but possible. And within a reasonably short period of play time. 9-12 sessions, to pull a number out of my hat.

The less astute players might not realize this, and just keep committing atrocities, but the smarter ones will, and that's when things get interesting.

Obviously, Kal-Turak wouldn't be a suitable Dark Lord for this kind of game, but I find him supremely uninteresting anyway. I suppose he could be used if you include a suitable Deus Ex Machina to take him out for a millennium or so. "He comes back!" is fine if it is long after the PCs and their meaningful descendants are dead.

1 hour ago, steriaca said:

Also, what other character who is not a brain in a jar has a visual brain?

Validus.

Psimon - the DC character, not the CU one.

25 minutes ago, steriaca said:

I also went with the "alien energy being" aspect because, well, why not.

This is really the only part that bugs me.

It strikes me as a bit of a complication for the sake of it - one of many, many such things. A bit like the "true" nature of Cyberline - nothing can be what it is like on the surface, everything has to have a secret behind it. Any surprise or shock value is attenuated by it happening every single time.

That said, a machine that creates superbeings is always going to have to be unreliable, unpredictable, and generally messed up. Otherwise everybody will be trying to build them. (Which, come to think of it...)

If the setting is European-ish, there is always Boxing and Wrestling.

Wrestling in particular can work well with armed combat - leg sweeps, etc.

For an Ancient Greek feel, there is always Pankration.

None of these are soft styles though.

"Hmm. I wonder if you can get a beer here. Eh. At worst It's same old, same old."

Walk on in.