assault

Originally posted by ThothAmon

I presume you are referring to D20 Call of Cthulhu and not BRP Cthulhu. The former is very action-oriented (Librarians with an Armour Class rating and Handgun feats! ) whilst the latter (the original) has one of the most lethal combat systems around (it discourages combat in favour of investigation).

Yes. "Real" CoC is a game where stupid characters die (or meet a fate worse than death!) quickly, and where smart characters eventually die (see above) too. That is, of course, unless the GM is generous enough to keep the game fairly "low-level" in terms of what kind of horrors actually appear.

Calling it action-horror is just bizarre.

GM: "Ahead of you, you see...

Player 1: "I start running. As in, away."

GM: "... the bloated form of the Great Shibboleth."

Player 2: "I fire my Uberweapon at it".

GM to player 2: "The Uberweapon doesn't seem to have an effect. Your character goes 'Pop' and ceases to exist."

Player 3: "I grab his Uberweapon from his corpse."

GM to player 3: "There is no corpse. By the way, your character goes 'Pop' and ceases to exist."

Another alternative might be a heresy emerging in the existing "True Faith".

The orthodox religions leaders might be corrupt, and the fundamentalists who want to clean up their corruption could be in error.

End result: two bunches of sinners at war. Bring on the tribulations.

Assault and Battery.

Battery was designed first. He was an energy absorbing Energy Blaster.

I come up with a brick and need a name. To the amusement of the GM and to Battery's player's chagrin, Assault was born...

And the rest is history, kind of.

Originally posted by Killer Shrike

Wasnt there a limited series back in the day of this setting with a collection of messed up "superheroes", like the gay batman clone, a junkie speedster, a klan-esque vigilante, and a dominatrix, and focused on them all getting and traumatizing new sidekicks in various ways?

 

Very messed up series, early 90's?

 

Anybody?

The Bratpack, by Rick Veitch.

Very messed up indeed.

Positively readable, though, when compared to Veitch's Maximortal stuff.

Some thoughts:

(1) The source material is all over the map in terms of power levels.

The (original) Teen Titans had Robin, Speedy, Wonder Girl and Aqualad - none of which really need huge quantities of points.

But then, there was Kid Flash. To build someone like him you would need to ruthlessly cut out abilities he "hasn't developed yet", which would get you down to reasonable power levels, but you would still have trouble with his tactical movement abilities. The problem would be that it would be too easy to outrun/outfly the "speedster". There are a few ways around it, but the character would still be a little bit wonky.

(Memo to self: Cut down Dex, maintain Spd. Hope he has enough Combat Luck. Spend extra points on Megascale and Non-Combat movement, plus boosting his multipower pool.)

(2) Someone suggested that nobody has really explored the super-powered parent/super-powered kid relationship in a serious manner. This is not true. DC explored it in a seriously bad manner back in the 70s!

See:

http://superman.ws/super-sons/saga/

http://superman.ws/super-sons/little/

http://superman.ws/super-sons/nomore/

I kind of like these stories, even though they're shockers.

(3) I reread Bad Medicine for Doctor Drugs last night. My main impression was that the pregenerated characters were losers. It's actually explicitly stated at one point that "A typical alter ego for a teen hero is the classically inept nerd". For some reason, the thought of playing a "classically inept nerd" appeals to me somewhat less than playing, ohh, some other game entirely...

BMDD also has a bunch of logic holes and wild assumptions which make it unlikely to work out the way it seems to be intended to work out.

Despite all that, though, it's actually quite cool.

(4) That reminds me. Since Teen Champions will need to cover "the school experience", it will necessarily have to cover the _US_ school system(s). It won't be able to cover other systems to any useful degree. That's a mild worry, but I'm over it.

The important side effect of that is that people from outside the US are going to have to have a lot of basic stuff explained.

(5) A bad thought: people who have attended school together for years tend to know each other. A lot of high schools tend to draw most of their students from a fairly small pool of primary (elementary) schools. It's quite likely that students at many schools will have extensive networks of contacts with other students. Only new students "won't know anyone". Even recluses will have had some kind of past association with other students. Unless, of course, they have something _really_ wrong with them.

Of course, personally, I left town after high school as did the bulk of my friends. While I eventually drifted back, I haven't encountered very many of my schoolmates, even the ones that stayed here all along. These contacts have gone away - but they existed at the time.

Many teen heroes will have KS: fellow students, even if they don't have actual Contacts or Favors with them. In some cases their fellow students may have useful friends or family members of their own.

Spending points on Perks and "social KS's" seems a little unlikely for characters that are built on very few points to begin with, but it is "realistic". Other Perks can exist too - wealth, vehicles (cars!), bases and so on. Hmm. Followers too! There's no law against Super-Pets. Or Trusted Family Retainers either.

...

Well, there's a lot that can be covered. It looks like it could be quite fun.

I don't want to think about what happens when the super-teens from various different schools start crossing paths.

The main problem, of course, is that the deities that underpin both the new and old religions are real...

Hmm... I don't think you would want to be around when the gods go to war...

Re: Re: Re: Re: Land and Wealth

Sorry, Galadorn, I have no idea what you are talking about.

You seem to be confusing ownership of land with land being a commodity. These are two entirely different things.

Obviously people owned land. Duh!

And yes, its ownership was transferred. Sometimes money, rather than services, was involved. But not generally.

Land ownership was _generally_ tied up in a web of social interactions and committments. The modern pattern of "hand over the bucks and it's yours and I have no futher claim to it" was a rarity.

Unless you're dealing with diplomatic agreements, of course. Whole countries could be bought or sold in this manner.

Originally posted by Kristopher

This is just my opinion, but with the exception of point totals, characteristic maximums, and the yes/no on powers, I really prefer to not see different rules for different "levels" of character.

I don't object to them as "campaign specific guidelines".

The only real problem is its potential effect on game balance. For example, if you enhance the effect of magic, you've just said that every character should use magic... Or something else you've enhanced.

Re: Types of people

Originally posted by JmOz

Class II: Paranormals

0 HCM

May only take Mental, Mystical, and technological based powers

 

Class III: MetaHumans

0 HCM*

Powers must be linked to an origin event. Origin event can negate aspects of HCM

 

Class IV: Non Humans

No limitations, but you are not human

Possibilities that I have considered for my world include the following:

Mandatory Watcheds and Hunteds.

Mandatory Distinctive Features.

For example, all mystics would have Watched: Mystical Good Guys, and Hunted: Mystical Bad Guys.

They would also have Distinctive Features: Mystic, reflecting some kind of magical aura that can be perceived by others sensitive to such things.

Low-powered "Normal" mystics might also exist. They would be dependent on devices and rituals - standard "superheroic" magic would be beyond them.

Mentalists would be metahumans (see below) in my schema, although they may be low powered ones.

Metahumans would have "Mutant" style disads, although fairly low level ones, since I wouldn't be doing an "anti-mutant racism" game. Generally I would assume that some kind of metagene would be present in "humans" who develop innate powers.

So, they would have:

Watched & Hunteds: metahumans would be "of interest" to various factions and authorities.

Distinctive Features: genetic markers can be detected.

Of course higher levels of Distinctive Features can be bought too - wings, green skins and so on - but these are not mandatory. (Actually, you could set games during a 50s Marvel-style "monster book" period, where such things are more or less mandatory. This could be a fun prelude to a slightly darker Silver Age.)

Non-humans would be subject to monitoring and hunting too, as long as either the existence of "aliens" was known, or if they were obviously non-human. Even if they appeared human, they would have Distinctive Features to the extent that their physiologies were nonhuman. "Hmm, that's funny... You seem to have two hearts. Maybe I should do a blood test..."

Of course the risk with all this is that you could end up overformalising things, and constraining your players' choice of characters too much. That's why I've only ever speculated about the idea and haven't yet implemented it.

Re: Re: Land and Wealth

Originally posted by Galadorn

I don't know if this has been said before, I'm not going to read every post. But land is money. Yes, that's an oversimplification, but I'm saying it to make a point.

Actually it's dead wrong.

The whole point of feudal societies is that land is not a commodity. That is, it can not be exchanged - bartered or bought. It can not be bought with money. Therefore it is _not_ money.

Of course, there were exceptions - but they _were_ exceptions.

The conversion of land to a commodity was one of the key elements in the rise of capitalism. Because of that it should be avoided in a feudal setting as a discordant element.

In late feudalism money became the predominant form of rent paid to a landowner, but what was being bought here wasn't the land, but rather the right to make use of the land.

Originally posted by freakboy6117

What would be much more interesting would be to do the exact opposite of destroyer THE ANARCHIST super genius who creates super technology and tries to give it to everyone

The stuff is great but it would totally overwhelm modern society especially as it can be easily changed to produce weapons etc. the danger of utopianism is that human nature will always destroy it. (Ok I stole this idea from storm watch but still)

I'm not a big fan of "human nature" storylines.

Anyway, in the cases you gave the main problem is that the resources created are scarce, and hence able to be monopolised.

The fusion example is interesting. There is a gap between the information being available and it being converted into actual physical doohickeys. This gap would tend to favour those who own labs and factories where products making use of it could be developed and produced. Of course, the lack of IP rights would cause a bit of fun for a while, but I'm sure the market would become relatively stable after a few years, with a few big players squeezing out most of the small fry.

I haven't been following this thread, so I'm behind...

My approach to "realistic" magic is that it not only exists, but everyone practices it as part of their daily lives.

This practice typically takes the form of religion, or folk superstition, particularly where other forms of magic are outlawed or frowned upon. These are the socially acceptable forms of magic.

Other forms are more or less anti-social. While it is permissible to lay curses on enemies outside your society, it is not permissible to use them against people inside your society. This kind of behaviour tends to get you killed. For example, indigenous Australian societies killed sorcerors. At the same time, they would practice ceremonies that are arguably magical rituals that would aid their societies.

Magic is (was) commonplace in many societies. It just tends to be either integrated into the fabric of those societies, or is outlawed by them.

Of course, it has nothing to do with throwing fireballs around. Most of its effects are subtle. In the end, it's mainly about ensuring that the deties/spirits/powers that be favour you.

If you don't practice magic, they won't.

On Neanderthals and stuff: the evidence isn't conclusive. Skeletons have been found that appear to show a mixture of modern and Neanderthal characteristics. On the other hand, the sparse genetic evidence suggests that interbreeding was impossible. A weaker conclusion may be more likely: interbreeding was possible, but the identified Neanderthal traits were not passed on to the present day. That tends to split the difference quite nicely.

In any case, this is irrelevant to a fantasy world. Even in a "realistic" one, the GM still makes up the rules.

Frankly, my inclination would be to ignore nonhumans (almost) entirely! I'd go with Howard, not Tolkien, and have any nonhumans that are around be isolated remnants. But then, I'm not a huge Tolkien fan at the best of times.

The other possibility is that Elves, Dwarves and whatnot are actually supernatural entities, not "natural" ones. They may or may not have a physical presence, or may simply live "under the ground" in mounds, "over the sea", or where ever. They could even come from other dimensions!

Actually, L Sprague de Camp used that latter idea in some of his books. His demons were critters from other dimensions, summoned to this one by wizards. They weren't particularly evil, aside from being really ticked off at being enslaved in an alien and unpleasant dimension.

Anyway, the main secret to "realistic" fantasy is to forget everything you ever knew about DnD, and go back to the source material. And don't stress too much about "realism" when it's less fun than the alternative.

Originally posted by Vorsch

or does FH have 2000pt "non-super" mages:D

Why not?

It has reasonably active deities. It could well have demigods running around.

Just because most FH campaigns are run as heroic level games doesn't mean that there are big characters around too.

Not entirely coincidentally, I have a copy of the Mythic Greece book from the Campaign Classics series sitting under my desk in my ready reference heap, err, file. Hercules rules!

As for the Destroyer: he's an ex-Nazi, he destroyed Detroit, and engineered the Day of the Destroyer events (although the latter probably "didn't happen" in the current CU). So, sod him.

On the other hand, he is actually a lesser evil compared to some of the nasties out there! My characters would be prepared to side with him against Mechanon or Takofanes, if the chips were down. There are marginal cases, too: Istvatha V'han might be an example, as might be some of the alien empires that are "out there". A human tyrant might well be easier to depose than an interdimensional or interstellar one.

Nasty choices, of course.

In any case, though, Destroyer is still and always an evil, even when he is a lesser evil.

And for the record, Japan was just trying to do what Britain, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, the US and Australia had already done. The established powers only look morally superior if you forget what they had done to rise to their positions. Japan was merely the new butcher in the slaughterhouse. But this is not an appropriate topic for this particular forum.

Some thoughts:

1. A lot of medieval noble families tended to die out after a few generations. Few of the present British aristocratic families go back beyond the Tudors, if that far. Often, of course, families would rise in importance during one king's rule, and fall during that of his successor - or later in his rule once he withdraws his favour.

2. There was a tendency in medieval England for land to be consolidated into the hands of a few families. There were far fewer English knights and barons in the 15th Century than there were in, say, the 12th. Of course that could be offset in other areas by customs that divided land relatively evenly between heirs. On the other hand, various "Esquires" and other non-noble landowners had emerged to largely replace the original knightly class.

3. Sinecures were a big deal. Appointment by "merit" was very common. This also often applied to clerical appointments.

4. A data point: at one point in the reign of Henry V of England, there were 11 Earls and 4 Dukes (in England). Pretty much all the Dukes were royal princes or their immediate descendents. Most of the Earls were related to the royal family too, although generally at slightly greater distances, or through much more junior bloodlines. There were only a few dozen major barons at this point too, although the "holding land directly from the King" definition probably had broken down at this point.

5. Finally, at times you found "household knights" and so on, where service wasn't necessarily directly associated with land. This happened quite early on. Of course, ultimately the wealth that supported this system was derived from similar feudal underpinnings.

Originally posted by Jhamin

I'm almost afraid to ask, but...

 

What was so bad about the cover?

See:

http://www.trenchman.com/cap/cap76.html

(and check cap75 as well, for a laugh.)

Originally posted by AnotherSkip

Besides what if the SSS is really impotent and the Vita rays actually do the job?

Then the 50's Cap and Nomad wouldn't have received any powers...

Just on them: I saw a picture of one of the covers of the shortlived 50s Cap series. It's very easy to see why this series was such an embarassment that they declared it to have not been the "real" Cap.

Of course, there would have been continuity problems with the frozen Cap story line anyway, but that could have been avoided.

Autoduel Champions is fine, but it's Car Wars, not Mad Max.

The two are both quite worthwile settings, but they're different.

As long as you appreciate that, ADC is quite fine. I thought of it a while back, but didn't really consider it relevant. It doesn't have any/much setting stuff, and the rules aren't that useful either.

Unless you can just pull it out of your closet, don't bother.

Yeah, it's all standard arguments...

Danger International was originally the product that covered modern "non-super" roleplaying. (Actually, there was Espionage before that but...)

Dark Champions covered different ground.

Now DC seems to be covering DI's territory too. That's fine - it may be a good economic decision, if modern day non-super games don't sell too well - but, of course, it also should cover the street level superheroes adequately.

So, with that proviso, I'm over my original resistance to the concept.

As for the original DC: unfortunately the "World of Punishers" idea was heavily supported by the "guns and stuff" emphasis of the products. "Idealistic" campaigns were explicitly mentioned, but weren't the mainstream. It rather quickly became clear that characters like Batman, Daredevil, the Question or Green Arrow (Black Canary, Black Widow, the Huntress or Catwoman) were going to be swamped under a tidal wave of gits with machineguns.

Hence I never played Dark Champions.

Originally posted by Kristopher

At least with the Punisher, the extra psychopath is after all the other psychopaths, and not the innocent civilians.

 

--

 

If you read some of the older threads, Mark likes to make all sorts of changes and mash all sorts of things together. He as a Gotham with bits of Champions Universe, elements from Buffy TVS, and who knows what else, tossed in the pot.

There have been other psycho-vigilantes in Gotham over the years. Usually Batman stomps them.

Apparently he has a problem with people littering the streets with corpses - particularly of relative innocents.

---

I generally avoid Mark's threads because of this, but I slipped up in this case.

I'm just not interested in the intricate details of his universe.

I'm also not impressed by GMs who are too lazy to file off the serial numbers from the bits they steal from other sources. I'm even less impressed when players don't do it either. Many years ago I played with a guy who was playing a character based on Rogue, from the X-Men. Sure enough, he called her "Rogue". I was appalled. I still am.

Originally posted by sbarron

I'd play it 75+75 and have equipment be free.

That's where my 250 point number came from.

I was assuming 75+75 plus 100 point equipment allowance. The 100 points came from the old Super-Agents supplement, where UNTIL agents normally carried about 50 points, with a 100 point load when they were hunting supers.

Of course, they could always just pop into the toolshed and equip themselves with everything from the lawnmower to the kitchen sink, but that gets pretty pointless pretty fast.

In any case, I was using the 250 figure to compare the agents with the supers a little more directly than is possible with an unknown amount of gear.

Originally posted by starblaze

Maybe the Punisher could come and visit for awhile. He could clean up most of Gotham oh, in about a week starting with Arkham.

Shouldn't that be "in about a week starting with _his escape from_ Arkham"?

Frankly there are enough psycho-killers in Gotham that the presence of one more wouldn't make the slightest difference.

-----

Mark has just pointed out that this isn't really Gotham City, but is his own universe's version of it, so the real answer is that we have no idea.

I really can't see why he bothered asking - none of us are telepaths, as far as I am aware.

In other words, I'm a little annoyed that he wasted our time like this.

Just a hint, Mark: when people see terms like "Batman" and "Gotham City" they expect them to mean "Batman" and "Gotham City", not "Markrand Lad" and "Markrand City".

I actually spent a bit of time designing characters for this world.

If you use the concepts of "Trained Paranormal Operatives" and "Low Powered Metahumans" it makes a whole lot of sense.

The latter means that you have a few "supers" with about 30 or 40 active points worth of superpowers. This shifts the balance a whole lot. Sergeant Fuzzy would definitely like having one of these people in his squad when he's taking down Armadillo.

As for general character design, you can design some pretty fine characters with NCM and a hundred points of gear. It helps if you can use "super-steroids" to fix up your SPD. This way you can produce some fairly serious 250 point "normals".

I'd play them.

Just for a reason why the first, second and third films differed so profoundly...

The first film was camp. It was a motorcycle film, just like a whole bunch of such films being produced on low budgets in Australia in the 1970s.

The second film was more camp. It was made for the American market. It was even retitled because almost nobody in the US had seen the first one.

Lots of derivative films were made. They all sucked, because, fundamentally, they all escalated the camp elements present in the Max films.

The third film sucked because it was made for Hollywood. It involved a further escalation of the camp elements present in the first two films. As a result, it was a load of terminal twaddle. There are good reasons why fans of the first two films think the third one sucks, and they aren't entirely related to Tina Turner, or with the stoopid children.

If you really want a decent post-Apolacypse film that doesn't suck beyond imagination, check out "Tank Girl". It takes the codswallop that sucked the brain out of the third Max film and turns it into a musical...

"Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. Let's do it. Let's fall in love..."

Originally posted by Supreme Serpent

Bat-mite!

Ace the Bat-Hound!

...

I was going to mention Alan Scott, but I wasn't sure that he was still in Gotham. In any case, he's probably a bit busy to do lots of "street stuff". But I'm sure he would turn up if Oracle discovered that someone was planning on killing lots of people.

Hmm. Actually my suggestions of Catwoman and Slam Bradley aren't that bad an idea if Alan Scott (I'm not accustomed to the Sentinel name yet - he's still Green Lantern in my brain) is around to do the heavy lifting. The two normals do the investigation, and the Big Guy does the butt-kicking. It works for me.

And of course, there's always Jay Garrick. He could always spend five minutes in Gotham every day or so. (Or Wally, if Jay's been twinked with..)

Originally posted by Battlestaff

My character would walk around with a bunch of body-armor, and the biggest freakin' gun he could find. Oh, and he'd be able to detect escape routes.

Your character would die.

...

OK, my thoughts on the topic, starting from the beginning...

The thread title is, of course, rather funny. My reaction was, of course, well, duh, it would be like the real world. But of course the intention was that villainous supers exist.

This is a Super-Agents setting. This is good, and has a long Hero System history.

Now, on the setting itself: the main factor is how numerous and powerful the villains are.

In general, the normals would have to use stealth and trickery. That's why "a bunch of body-armor, and the biggest freakin' gun he could find" is a bad idea. It sets you up as a target.

A better idea is to avoid fighting when the odds aren't in your favour, and to try and set your enemies against each other.

If the enemy include lots and lots of nasty telepaths, you are probably in deep trouble, but otherwise you should be able to run an underground network well enough. That is, of course, unless the villains' goal is genocide, or they are using mass mind-control or something like that.

Many villains are weak enough to be "fixed" with reasonable weapons, as long as you get to set the terms of the engagement. Others may need nukes! A few may require something special. (How do you deal with pre-cogs? Time for some very weird science!)

You probably would want to have lots of scientists working overtime on making neat toys, as well as trying to understand the nature of superpowers, and preferably how to replicate or neutralise them.

This might result in some of your agents wandering around in half-decent armour, or under the influence of Cyberline-style super-soldier serums. Some of your early serums might be quick burnout types, which kill the heroic volunteer!

A few of your agents might approach "non-powered" superbeing status themselves. A couple of decent Batman types would help a lot.

You would, of course, also be scouring the world for previously unknown superbeings. Just because the only known superhumans are villains doesn't mean that there aren't some others out there...

And of course there are villains and villains. You might be able to ally with the saner ones against the crazies. I'm sure GRAB would be less than impressed by a world run by Dr Destroyer. You probably wouldn't want to ally with any of the nastier groups though - just concentrate on getting them fighting each other and hope that you can take whoever is left when the dust settles. Otherwise, _you're_ likely to be the ones taken out "when the dust settles".

Anyway, this could be quite an interesting game in a fairly low-powered setting. The current CU is probably a bit too high-powered. Then again, the current CU's agents are pretty over the top too.