assault

Re: "Super Heroes" That your character doesn't/wouldn't like

So' date=' what NPC superheroes, either homebrewed or official, would really get your characters' goat? Who would just annoy them no end and clash big league in a personal way, for whatever reason?[/quote']

 

Well, Assault would clash with pretty much all of them.

 

Maybe not Kinetik, and some others.

 

He has particular problems with flagsuits, mystics and angst-mongers. About the only kind of mystics he would get along with would be John Constantine types. Well, some of the other flavours of trenchcoat mage too, perhaps. And he might get along better with Witchcraft if she was just a teensy bit more like her sister.

 

He could probably tolerate Ironclad. They wouldn't either clash or be particularly good friends.

 

Nighthawk: whiny. Defender: clown. Sapphire: Assault would ignore her, at least initially.

 

I guess Assault's just a bit of a pain.

 

On the other hand, he would get along with Shamrock very well. (Bring back Shamrock!!!) He would get along with a few other villains, too.

Re: Character Creation points for Teenager Heros

But then when you have a teenage superhero they are only going to be so powerful

That's right, of course. Teen supers are never going to be as powerful as Superboy or Supergirl.

Re: Pros/Cons of an 'official' campaign world

An 'official' campaign world could be kinda fun if regular, frequent micro-updates occured, say weekly or bi-weekly. The latest issue of Millenium Weekly, so to speak. Even people jumping in later could just incorporate them chronologically, or dive right in and use past issues as backstory. The regular print frequency of campaign material just wouldn't fly.

This sounds a bit like what Traveller has been doing for most of the last quarter century.

For examples, see: http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/traveller/oldnews.html

This stuff has been gradually accumulating over several years. If anything, it's been building up rather too slowly.

A certain amount of it is metaplot. Other bits are just random mad ideas. At least a few of the latter seem to have been influenced by posts made to the Traveller Mailing List, effectively becoming fan contributions to the official universe.

Of course, all this stuff takes time to write. Granted, not a huge amount of time, but the amount of time involved in deciding _what_ to write could potentially push things up quite a lot.

I guess, basically, these entries are plot seeds.

Hmm... Well, if Steve, Darren et al don't have the time/energy/desire to do something like this, it would still be possible to create one unofficially. It would need to be a bit controlled, with a kind of editorial board ensuring that everything stayed strictly compatible with the official CU.

It would need to be necessary to stick to the official CU, of course, simply to ensure mutual comprehension. If Foxbat appeared, for example, he would need to be Foxbat as he appears in the books, not some other character named Foxbat.

It would be appropriate for entries that coincide with Champions releases to make reference to the topics of those releases. This could extend to at least some other Hero System releases at well.

For example, the release of a DC:TAS product would be matched by an incident involving a street level vigilante. A Fantasy Hero product might be matched by an archeological discovery referring to one of the CU's "earlier historical" periods. A Star Hero product might be associated with an incident involving aliens. And so on. Of course, some of these associations might be a bit too laboured, so not every such product would be covered. But Champions ones and relevant generic Hero system ones, at least, should be.

Apart from that, anything interesting, funny or weird would be fair game. Who knows, they might even influence the official Official CU!

Or something. The preceding paragraphs are just thoughts that randomly fell out of my head...

Here's a question which I would like opinions on:

How do you map a city? In particular, how do you deal with geographical, rather than artificial features, like hills, creeks/streams, vegetation and so on?

Mapping buildings and streets is fairly easy, particularly in areas where streets run in a grid pattern, but how do you keep track of the other stuff that makes terrain interesting? The usual wilderness mapping techniques don't quite seem to work in an urban area.

Re: Old School, Yesterday's Heroes

The truly scary thing about this thread is that I started designing an "older" character yesterday. It's quite possible that this character may become the basis for a whole sequence of character designs.

The character was quite neat, with three overall skills, martial arts (brawling/boxing) and a set of characteristics that was reasonable enough. The main problem was that his Con was a little low, and I may fix that in a later draft. What really made it work, however, was that I went against my usual habits and put limitations on his powers.

The resulting character can, of course, slap my usual character designs through a wall.

Which was the whole point.

I like these kind of characters. I may start playing them.

Re: Old School, Yesterday's Heroes

Great fiction. Potentially a basis for a really cool game.

I'm a big fan of the (original) JSA, so I'm quite fond of geezer-heroes.

I also have been known to play with the fact that I've been playing Champions/HERO since 1st Edition. My characters (outside things like Teen Supers games, of course) tend to be built as veterans, emphasising skills rather than powers. (I should probably use more power tricks when I do this.)

I'd rep you, except I'm sure other people have, and I wouldn't want you to get spoilt.

So... who's going to run the PBEM?

---

Hmm... a Silver Age character born in the late 40s would be 55-60 now... That would work. He would be more or less Spider-man's age, if Spidey had aged in real time.

A Golden Age sidekick born in say, 1930, would be 75 now. How would he react to Chippy the Boy Sensation?

But then, even in my early 40s I'm feeling a little bit dodgy about the knees. (One of the reasons I gave Assault reduced aging was to allow for the conceit that he had been hanging around since the early 80s.) You could actually play "Old Codger versus Snot Nose Punk" with characters that aren't about to move into an old people's home.

It's just the attitude difference that matters.

Re: How to - The Creeper?

If it's an advantage because he has useful but distinct abilites in each form then its a multiform.

Example: Hulk/Bruce Banner. Str and def in one form, tons of science skils in the other.

I would say that this is the case that applies to the Creeper.

He spends most of his time as Jack Ryder the journalist. Most of Ryder's contacts are not available to the yellow freak. Arguably, the Creeper's insanity rules out the use of several of Ryder's skills as well. At least, I doubt that the Creeper would be much of a journalist. This form is built on fewer points than the Creeper form, but is his base form, and thus pays for the Multiform power.

This is one of the cheesy things you can do with Multiform. In effect, Ryder's contacts and skills are free.

Re: Essence of the Golden Age

I was just about to mentiopn Spitfire and Union Jack' date=' but I checked it out and they apparently didn't exist until 1976...[/quote']

 

Yeah. Good old Roy Thomas.

 

The truth is that the US comics industry pretty much only used American characters at the time. The Shining Knight is a partial exception. I suppose you could consider Wonder Woman as a partial exception too, and maybe a couple of others.

 

On the other hand, at least a few other countries had their own comics industries during the (US) Golden Age. Australia is one such case. Essentially, during WWII, non-essential imports were banned, leaving the Australian market open to local production, as well as local reprints of US material. The Australian production didn't include a great deal of superheroic material, and most of what there was was every bit as lame as the worst of the US material. But still, there was a bit of good work. See http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/a/ausgold.htm for further details. You might recognise my Avatar there. He actually first appeared in the early 50s, so he's very late Golden Age. He used to outsell Superman in Australia for almost a decade.

 

If I was going to put an Australian character on an international team, I would choose a "guy with wings", since a couple of such characters were published, and it's not an especially common character type. On the other hand, from early 1942 to, say, late 1944, you probably wouldn't expect to see Australian heroes too far away from Australia and the nearby combat zones. There would need to be a good reason for them to be in Europe or the US, for example.

 

I wouldn't create too many Australian supers during this period. Australia only had a population of about seven million during WWII. You wouldn't expect all that many supers to emerge from that small a population. Of course, you could easily find US, Dutch (from the Dutch East Indies), New Zealand or British supers hanging around or visiting, while Japanese and other Axis supers would be mucking about on the other side.

 

Then again, given that supers are extreme statistical flukes, it's entirely possible that the world's entire population of supers is concentrated in Australia.

Re: Deathstroke

I've dropped his EGO to 22.

Try 23 or 20. 22 is inefficient.

At 23, he has a 14- Ego roll and 8 ECV. At 20, he has a 13- Ego roll and 7 ECV.

At 22 he is the same as at 20, except he has hosed away four points for no benefit in the game.

Re: Essence of the Golden Age

I'm about to start playing in a Golden Age Champions game' date=' and I'm very concerned about keeping my character's attitudes and actions "in genre". So can anyone give me a simple litmus test for determining Golden Age-style conduct and characters? How do [b']you[/b] define Golden Age (other than chronologically)?

Basic aspects: your character's attitudes will be "old-fashioned" by today's standards. I don't advise playing this up too much, for obvious reasons.

All characters are patriotic, although some are more interested in fighting "crime" or supernatural enemies than in flag waving. Even the Spectre or Dr Fate will defend America. Apparently it's part of the Spectre's divinely bestowed mission!

Characters are sure of their mission and righteousness. Some do, however, suffer from angst. For example, the Spectre can't have a relationship with his True Love, because he's dead, and she isn't. He actually takes the time out to mope about this - just not too much.

Historically, plots tended to be fairly straightforward, but that's often because a lot of uninteresting detective work and so on takes place offstage. Other times, however, plots were pretty well handed to characters on a plate. So, your character may be a ultimate skillmonger, or may just be a spoilt rich dilettante, and they are both likely to be able to solve mysteries! Talk to your GM and the other players about this kind of thing.

All characters are hand to hand combatants. Green Lantern and Starman are as likely to punch an opponent in the jaw as to zap them with their gizmoes.

Superpowers are optional. In game terms, many characters are built around "non-powered" special effects. This is not a disadvantage, given what I wrote in the previous paragraph.

Characters may be quite simple, or quite complex. Some characters can literally do anything. In reality, of course, they mainly rely on a regular set of powers, but pull something new or neat out fairly regularly. But, of course, these new things are often never seen again...

Technology is a bit clunkier. Yes, there are robots and cyborgs. There are technological "magic wands", and other stuff quite beyond even present day capabilities, but basically technology is seen through 1940s eyes. The only Golden Age power armoured characters I can think of are villains, and they may be Roy Thomas retcons. Heroes don't walk around in clanking robot suits. Unless they are cyborgs like Robotman, but he's a huge angst factory. ("Hey, I'm a brain in a jar!")

On the other hand, you can have characters in the 40s who use present day technology! Air Wave's main power was his ability to make telephone calls from anywhere. Yes, he had invented the mobile phone! This is a good trick, given the absence of the kind of infrastructure that supports present day mobile phone systems. He probably really had some kind of radio thing. Note that even a character with a lame "power" like this is viable, because, ultimately, in combat he is yet another guy who punches people, just like the Batman, Wildcat, or the Atom.

Another aspect to consider is that magic origins are rather common. First of all, mystical characters like Mandrake and Dr Occult were being published before Superman came along. Second, characters like Green Lantern and Hawkman, whose Silver Age equivalents had science oriented origins, were mystically derived in the Golden Age. Green Lantern had a magic ring. Hawkman was a reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian prince. Johnny Thunder had a pet genie. And so on...

I've been mainly talking about DC characters, because I'm more familiar with them than with Marvel or other characters. Some of the biases I've suggested may be more true of DC than of the other companies. Marvel, in particular, were a bit more prone to flagwave than DC. Unfortunately, of their rather large stable of characters, I'm really only familiar with a handful of the best known ones: Captain America, the Human Torch, the Submariner, the Whizzer, Miss America and so on... Just looking at this list, none of them have true magical origins, although Namor's Atlantean origin has supernatural overtones. You would probably find a bunch of magical origins among the second bananas, though.

Finally, on killing... Most Golden Age characters killed. Batman had a CVK imposed on him quite early on, but before that was happily littering the streets with corpses. The Spectre was an instrument of divine retribution, and his victims seldom lived to tell the tale. Superman would smash planes and submarines, with no obvious concern for their occupants. Captain America and Bucky would happily machinegun America's enemies.

Of course, none of them killed gratuitously. Only the Spectre would kill in any way that could really be called sadistically.

In general, when Good is Good and Evil is Evil, the minions of Evil have no rights, and can be casually swept out of the way.

This applies to other applications of violence as well. Evildoers and criminals have no rights.

In fact, even if you have a CVK, it's amazing how many of your opponents fall into pits of acid, get electrocuted, and so on.

And remember, Pay Your Taxes and Beat the Axis!

Re: The status of normals in the Superhero genre

I love the whole back from the dead' date=' schtick... but when Colossus died, to develope a cure for the legacy virus, it seemed significant to me. I've heard that he's back, and I'm not surprised, but I am a little disappointed that he wasn't given the 'Final Death' such a selfless sacrifice potentially deserves.[/quote']

 

I presume you've heard of a character called "Jean Grey".....

Re: Lookin' for Darkseid in all the wrong places

Does anyone have a Darkseid they'd care to share or post? Any ideas on how to construct continuum control?

"Rumour has it", as in, I don't have the relevant book but..., at least part of the main relevant power can be found in the UNTIL Superpowers Database.

Re: The Essential Bad Silver Age

Just recently discovered the Collected Jimmy Olsen, volume 2, at my local library. Ugh. It's hard to even begin to say how dumb that was, even for a purely comedy mag.

 

And is it just me, or did they turn Jimmy into just about every kind of freak that could possibly exist? I wonder just how the plot sessions ran: "What will we turn Olsen into this time?" How many years did that series run, anyway?

I am SO jealous. Jimmy Olsen is one of my favourite titles. Some of the earliest stuff in my collection are Australian reprints of JO stories.

The series seems to have run for about twenty years. More than the Authority, so far.

Obviously it's overwhelming cheesiness is its main appeal. On the other hand, towards the end of its run, you had a period where Jack Kirby was doing his New Gods stuff. It was still cheesy ("Whiz Wagon"), but it was also Classic Stuff.

Brilliant.

There are a few JO stories online, at:

http://www.allaboutcomix.com/joindex2.html

Unfortunately, none of them are my favourites.

Re: Villainy Amok

I hate it when apes are put in comic book stories with the express purpose of appealing to gross childish humor' date=' the idea that talking monkeys or superheroes-turned-apes should be "funny" b/c of the contrast between sentience (or superpowers) and expected "apeish" behavior that the creature should have nonetheless, like scratching head or making funny noises. To me, it looks like a close relative of toilet humor. It's a painful reminder of when comics were pigeonholed to cater to childish tastes and perspectives. How appealing do you find stories with Batman being fed a powerful laxative ??[/quote']

 

I think you might be taking things a little too seriously...

 

Let's face it: Champions players are the kind of people who think it's fun to sit around pretending to be superheroes. That's not exactly a serious pastime. In fact, it's really quite absurd.

 

But that absurdity is part of the fun...

 

On the actual topic: obviously I would like to see a Simianopolis type scenario. It should be written seriously, of course, so it can be played entirely deadpan. Or not, as the case may be.

Re: Now what do I do?

The word you are looking for is "deathtrap".

Strapping them to a missile is good, if you can't think of anything else.

Failing that, mind control one of them, and make them execute the other. This works best if the characters are romantically connected, of course.

If you find having the PCs separated a problem, capture the other PCs as well. You can do that - you're the GM.

The players probably aren't going to be able to think of a way to escape without a certain amount of prompting, unfortunately.

Re: Super humans populations in cities

There are very few supers anywhere in my campaign world.

I'm not sure if there are any in India. There are at least a couple of Chinese ones, but these are mainly outside China. In particular, my world's version of VIPER originated in southern China in the 1950s, but were pretty much driven out by 1960.

Re: Fictional Political Parties

When I visited I was amazed by how urine-free their subway was. At least 75% less urine than NYC.

That's still a whole lotta urine, dude.

OK, I haven't been to NYC or Washington for twenty-five years, but the joke is still worth making...

Re: Teen supers ideas

The Other School is an old reliable. Even if it's not evil.

On a similar note: the sidekicks of "working" heroes. What does Robin think about all this?

The adult heroes. Both as rivals - "go home, kids" - and as opponents (mind controlled).

NPCs at the same school. The school bully and his clique. The Teen Queen and her clique, who look down on the "loser" PCs. They can either be supers themselves, and/or can be normals if the school has normal students as well as supers.

Normals at other schools in town. What happens if a PC has a DNPC (romantic interest) at another school?

The Evil Relative. There's a reason for his/her interest in the PCs, so she or he can be a recurring villain. Alternatively, the Evil Relative could be related to a DNPC.

You said this is a mini-series. How many scenarios are you thinking of?

If it's short enough, you could more or less plot the whole thing out as a single plot arc, with each scenario leading into the next, plus a couple of "random" scenarios as well.

I won't bother mentioning Bad Medicine for Doctor Drugs, coz it's silly. In a good way, of course.

Depending on the flavour you want, you could even try "relevance", and get the PCs involved in "real issues that affect teenagers". (Snicker).

I guess what I mean is: could you give us more information? Clearly you have DEMON in mind as a major antagonist. What else are you considering?

Re: What's the most ridiculous PC you've ever been subjected to?

Wasn't Forrest one of the founders of the Klan after the Civil War?

That would add an interesting element of creepiness to Tank Boy.

Re: Marvel's Exiles: Hyperion Challenge--build a team to beat him!

For purposes of this challenge' date=' Does Mister Fantastic get to reach into his bag of tricks if Hyperion gets the heroes in a fix?[/quote']

 

Well, presumably he should be able to do what he normally does, otherwise we would be saying: "Mister Fantastic is not available".

 

Which would pointlessly modify the exercise.

Re: Ultraboy Clone

However, what works in the comics could be a problem in the game.

...

How can I work around this?

You need to ensure that the character is viable in all its forms. That is, it always has some defences, and some form of attack. If he can afford Legion-style equipment, he will also have flight, life support and so on.

My similar character has Martial Arts and Combat Luck that works in all his forms. I also added an armoured costume. The result of this is a character that is fairly adequately protected by my campaign's standards, although at the lower end, even when his "invulnerability" isn't working.

Incidentally, don't worry too hard about modellling the exact details of Ultraboy's powers. It's not worth it.

I bundled a few powers together in most of his forms. For example, I added a HA ("invulnerable fists") to his invulnerable form, along with life support and defences. This gives him a decent attack in this form.

His Penetra-Vision form bundles together a bunch of enhanced senses, along with his Energy Blast.

His super-speed form has flight, and various speedster style powers.

His super-strength form has a bunch of brick tricks and, "because I felt like it", super-breath! My theory was that superbreath is a function of superstrong chest muscles.

For what it's worth, I actually built my Ultraboy homage with Multiform, not a multipower. Several of the forms have their own multipowers, though. I also added a non-powered base form, although this is highly dubious. If I were going to attempt to use the character in somebody else's game, I might make the base form a "super-intelligent" form, and probably stick in the non-vision senses I left out of the "penetra-vision" slot. And maybe find weakness.

Basically, an Ultraboy influenced character is quite viable. The main problem is that it duplicates other characters' abilities. There are good reasons, in game, to ensure that every character can do stuff that other characters can't. Mainly, it gives every character a chance to take centre stage every now and then. This character tends to detract from that.

But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't allow it. Just make sure that the other characters are better at their own specific abilities, and that the Ultraboy homage is Jack of All Trades and Master of None.

And make sure everyone has fun.

Re: Iyo: The Most Underrated Or Underused Character In Comics

Captain Comet showed up in the recent JSA Elseworlds ("Golden Age"), to my complete surprise. I had no idea who he was until they finally mentioned his name.

 

Alas, the story wasn't that good, so I'd recommend giving it a pass, despite my love for most things JSA.

Well, I liked it and thoroughly recommend it... I'm going to leave a spoiler space before the reason why.

I spotted Captain Comet first off.

*** spoiler space ***

It had the Ultra-Humanite and Hitler's Brain... What's there not to like?

Re: Consequences ...

I'm guessing I would have to prove Telepathy exists (or at least convince the government that it exists) in order to let the government enact laws against it. This might make for some interesting RP -- if Madame Mystique proves Telepathy is real' date=' she won't be able to use it as freely because she could be sued for Mental Invasion.[/quote']

 

Yes. You can't use Telepathic evidence because Telepathy doesn't exist. If it does exist you can't use it.

 

That's a handy controlling factor - you need hard evidence to back up the information you gained through your powers, or the cops won't believe you. Of course, you could just arrange accidents for all your villains, but unless you are the Spectre, or are fighting demons and so on, this kind of thing tends to attract attention after a while.

 

A useful compromise is to find a cop who will believe your wild-eyed stories. They will still need real evidence to take to court, but they will cut you a bit of slack if necessary.

 

Incidentally, since Telepathy "doesn't exist", nobody is likely to believe the bad guy who got mind-ripped. Except, of course, for the people who already knows it does exist...

Re: Consequences ...

Historical Golden Age characters were extremely likely to use telepathy in this manner. It's part of the black and white aspect: they do it because the bad guys are eeevil and have forfeited their rights.

Of course, it sounds like it wasn't roleplayed particularly well.

I'll just post a few panels from a Golden Age title, just as an example. It's from an Australian series, but US series would be similar enough.

Sorry about the poor quality of the image, and the fact that it's slightly crooked! My errors...

Re: Iyo: The Most Underrated Or Underused Character In Comics

In DC' date=' I can't get enough of Cap Marvel (Shazam!). Here is a hero that got no chances in the Iron Age, [/quote']

 

I think he would be just fine in the Iron Age with the right writer. He's completely incorruptable, and incredibly powerful. In short, he's the perfect watchdog for the Authority types.

 

Back in DC's old Action Comics Weekly series, there was an interesting Shazam story where he got involved with some Neo-Nazi types. It worked quite well. That version of the character could quite easily have coped with stuff like that more frequently.

 

On the Martian Manhunter: he originally seems to have been something like a Silver Age version of the Spectre, rather than a superhero. That is, he was a detective who secretly possessed powers, rather than someone overt like Superman.

 

His grab bag of powers makes more sense in that context, IMHO. Or at least he's no worse than the Spectre, who nobody complains about.