psychonaut_raz

Re: Advice on how to gm 9 to 10 players in a Superhero campaign. I think if all your players are friends anyway, there's no issue....it's only if people don't actually like each other outside of roleplaying it could get awkward. When I ran groups with more than 7 people in the past, I laid the law down from the word go that people just weren't allowed to be disruptive; there's too much to focus on to have to worry about shushing people up or keeping track of where you were 5 minutes ago or keeping suspension of disbelief etc etc....I also figured out the following stuff while planning the game out: *different power levels; if you have Batman on the same team as Superman, it can work, but you need to be prepared for them. If one of your players can lift continents, then give him a continent to lift while the lower level players are kept busy fighting the goons. *keeping people interested - it's very rare that you will keep 8 or more people engrossed in the one situation. I used to organise games so that they could talk about how they wanted to approach things as a larger group, but then actually do it in smaller groups; make sure that group A finishes on a cliffhanger note before you move to group B, and you keep the level of excitement. Sometimes you can't avoid having to focus on one or two people for an extended duration, but you should know in advance whether it's going to be something that other players will genuinely be interested in watching play out or not. There's no shame in just saying "hey guys I'm gonna be busy doing stuff with Cap, Hawkeye and Wanda for the next half hour or so, if anyone wants to head outside for a break and a chat, now would be the time to do it". I find that players appreciate knowing they're not expected to sit there mutely and watch someone else's little drama play out, and it also lets them be human beings and relax and chat etc without really impacting the game. Some ideas anyway..

Re: What's in the moon? The Warren Ellis thing was the first thing that popped into my mind too... Steampunk dinosaurs are my favourite so far....

Re: Just the thing for a costal team... AHHH I am torn! On one hand, the nerd in me says that is SO AWESOME!!!!!! On the other hand, the comment at the end about messing about with sharks and whales made me cringe a bit....it's kind of like "hey there's some part of the world we haven't screwed with yet, but I can fix that!!" So yeah...divided. :\ From a fiction point of view though it is ace, and if I were playing a team with an underwater member, I would demand that this thing be in our vehicle pool.

Re: When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world? We stopped playing. lol I was running a game set in the Marvel Universe where most of the characters had reached Authority levels of power, and the players were half-joking about taking over the Shi'Ar Empire because they were sick of aliens causing trouble on Earth....I moved interstate around the same time though, so the game ended. When I moved back too much time had passed for us to pick up where we left off, so deus ex machina allowed for all the heroes to have been kidnapped a la the original Secret Wars to explain why nothing had happened in so long. The players all took on new (much lower-powered) characters with the new direction of discovering what had happened to their predecessors, and when the predecessors were eventually rescued, they mostly took on a backseat role as NPCs to help train a new generation of heroes. I like playing with big concepts, but I don't know if I'm really prepared for that much of a shake-up of the status quo to let them actually take over the world/galaxy...

Re: superuseless superpowers I love useless powers....dunno what it is about them, must be all the Legion of Superheroes comics I read as a kid.. Bleach was a character I designed whose one and only ability was to bleach the color from anything in her surrounding area, leaving it white. She herself was Aboriginal, but stark white due to a side-effect of her own power.

Re: Help me get into Bricks. I know what you mean.....I think straight bricks can be boring, the trick is to give them something secondary which doesn't detract from them being a brick. Colossus from the X-Men is an example of someone who power-wise is just a boring brick. Rogue on the other hand (talking about when she had Ms Marvel's powers permanently here) was a classic example of an interesting brick. Her prime use in combat was to lift heavy stuff and punch/charge with almighty force, but she also had the power-stealing thing to fall back on as an alternative to just punching stuff. Other examples would be Marvel Comics' Sub-Mariners: Namor, Namora and Namorita.....they are super-strong, can fly, can breathe underwater, swim at high speeds....depending on who writes them they can conduct electricity harmlessly and inflate like a puffer-fish.... A bit silly maybe but you get the drift. A couple of characters I always liked using in my games who fit the bill: Chrome Kisses: chrome skin, massive strength and defences, also has an uncontrolled power that turns people into metal when she touches them (thus the name). Landslide: takes on a super-strong earth form, also has earth control to make walls, earthquakes etc.. Narwhale was one I never actually got a chance to use, but I really like him so I hope I do get to use him one day; he's a mutant whale that has been artificially evolved into humanoid form....underwater breathing, big horn for killing attacks, also has sonar and can focus the sonar through his horn into a sonic beam attack. Primarily though he's a brick. Hope that helps!

Re: the goblin glider The first thing that comes to mind when I think of the Goblin Glider is the original Green Goblin being impaled on it....that to me says vehicle. Not that there's anything wrong with doing it just as a power with OAF, I wouldn't do it that way though..

Re: The Essential Bad Silver Age That site......is a thing of beauty. I have spent the last half hour on it and I am sure more time will be similarly wasted away. Thanks kindly!

Re: Seeking a character name for a Puerto Rican teleporter I vote Portador/El Portador.....I think they're interchangeable; it's like how the name of the comic is The Hulk, but people just call him Hulk to his face... Or you could just call him Shoop, which makes me think he'd be dressed like an extra from Happy Days...

Re: You, or your PC? Interesting question! I play characters for all different reasons......some specifically because they are so far from me and so I enjoy the challenge of getting into a vastly different mindset, others because they embody a facet of my personality and I can just enjoy playing that up...a lot of the time I like to know what the rest of the group dynamics are before I create my character so that I can work it for maximum interaction fun.

Got the idea for this from reading about an obscure Marvel character called the Forever Man. Okay, here's the scenario....a child who seems to be about 13 approaches your hero and tells him/her that he's cursed with an unusual ability; he can't stay dead. Whenever he dies, his body turns to ash and then a new body regenerates from that ash, swiftly aging until it seems to be about the same age. This process only takes a few minutes, and once the aging process hits puberty, he slows down to a normal rate of aging. The Forever Man explains that at first he never retained any knowledge of previous incarnations. He would simply come into consciousness somewhere as a 13 year old boy with no prior memory. At some point though, memories and intellect started transferring across to each new incarnation, essentially rendering him immortal. The problem is, he doesn't want to be immortal anymore. His memories go back a couple thousand years, but he doesn't know how long this cyclic existence has actually been going.....he may be as old as humanity itself. He has spent hundreds of years trying new and inventive ways to kill himself, and every time he simply comes back to life again. His sanity is frayed, and all he wants is a release from this endless cycle of death and resurrection. He has a handgun on him, and if need be he will kill himself here and now to prove to your hero that he's telling the truth about all of this...what he wants is for your hero to find a way for him to actually once and for all die and stay dead. WWYCD?

Re: Alternate Earth Characters #11 True...I don't think she'd really fit this setting though; her whole thing is she's a bit of a valley girl, which means that both her personality and origin would have to change so much you might as well just create a new character... For character #2 however, this setting would be perfect: Hippolyte was dropped into the modern world from her own classical origins anyway, so it's just another variation on living in a world she doesn't understand. And she would probably take much more readily to this kind of environment than normal 21st Century Earth anyway because her skills at leading a tribe and helping them thrive would be a lot more useful and highly regarded.

Re: What happens in Vegas... If he was actually meant to be there and decided a shag was more important....Hippolyte would break the door down, give him a right proper smack around the head and shoulders region for being a typical pig of a man, and at the same time give the woman a lengthy lecture about self-respect and keeping her dignity.

Re: WWYCD: My Good Enemy Hippolyte would be appalled....this child would claim to be the offspring of herself and Hercules, the man she hates more than any other (my GM went for a more Wonder Woman-style backstory for the amazons where Heracles raped Hippolyte, so he's not exactly her favourite person in the world). She would refuse to believe that they could have had a kid together, and even when presented with DNA evidence will make the assumption that Hercules must have found some way to trick her or forced himself on her again.......she would take it as a matter of honor to find the truth though, and if the child is a girl, she would take the opportunity to train her in the ways of the Amazons.

Re: The Passage of Time Good point on the villains, Tech! It is good to be able to have your villains actually develop rather than maintain the same static personality with every single appearance.....even goons have potential for growth. In the Marvel game I used to run, a few villains slowly became good or just gave up the capes altogether because it made sense as a part of their long-term character growth...and there were also those who grew more powerful or dangerous with time. Letting time pass allows your heroes to build a relationship with their recurring villains of a sort....