drunkonduty

I choose tomato sauce. It's mostly sugar and should wash off pretty easily. Also, unlike say chili sauce, it won't sting if it gets in a cut or something.

On 9/23/2021 at 12:39 AM, tombrown803 said:

Which Dragon magazine was that in?

Sorry for the late reply - but I am glad you asked. Because I had forgotten and had to look for it. 🙃

It's in DUNGEON (not Dragon) #141 - Vlindarian's Vault.

But I'm glad I went looking for it because I found another adventure (Diplomacy, meant for lvl 18 characters, Dungeon #144) I was considering using but had forgotten about entirely. 

Sorry for not replying sooner - but I watched it.

Very funny. It got me thinking (again) - just what are the Rebels rebelling against in the new Star Wars movies? I mean, they won. They've set up a government. Even it's not galaxy wide hegemony they are no longer rebels. Maybe they could go by The Alliance of Worlds. Or, you know, The Federation. Yeah that'd work, no problem with that one.

The New Order are the rebels now. The New Order may think of themselves as The Empire and the Alliance/Federation should call them something like Anti-Revolutionary Reactionaries, but at the end of the day the New Order are rebs. 

Some pretty poor world building.

On 9/21/2021 at 10:03 AM, Duke Bushido said:

Dude!

 

I remember that one!

 

I read it a few years ago and it fits very nicely with the heroes M.O. of preferring sneaking around and cons to combat. I think it'll go well.

I'm currently running 2 PF games.

In the first one the heroes are on an epic quest to find an ancient artifact from the dawn of time. Not because they want it but because they felt guilty about robbing someone (the someone was technically dead at the time and her wizard's tower taken over by a powerful demon) and want to make it up to her by giving her a present. The heroes are currently in the City of Dis in Hell looking for... gossip. The heroes want some information and the information broker they have found will swap for the name of the new lover of the Provost Marshall of Dis.

Future installments will involve talking in riddles to an ancient being. Breaking into a vault run by Beholders; this one is straight out of an old Dragon mag. Searching for a ship lost in the Astral Sea and (when found) trying to get the ship's log before the horrible monster eats them. Negotiating with agents of Chaos. Sneaking past a legion of Inevitables. And all the while in a race with agents of that original powerful demon from the wizard's tower who is also after the macguffin.

In the second one the heroes have been looking for a way to take back their fortress and protect their homeland from the nasty undeads. This involved a quest for something. They were unsure what the something until they finally found the macguffins - a bunch of powerful undead killing weapons. Along the way they chased and failed to catch a traitor. Repeatedly. Rescued a beautiful man from some sea hags and then from his Marid ex-lover. Helped a wizard achieve lichdom. Put a demon of pestilence back in its prison. They are now in negotiations with the original BBEG to kill the BBEG's boss in return for the BBEG getting the hell out of their homeland and never coming back.

I've got an intro scenario that I've run a couple of times - the opposition are all VIPER agents. I used the ones from the VIPER sourcebook. They're dug in behind some defences in a captured UNTIL base. Their mission is to get the macguffin out of the vault and get away through the basement and into sewer and subway tunnels.

I've run it twice and both times the heroes ripped through the agents with no problem. It could have gone a bit worse for the heroes but in both cases the heroes took the time to scout the opposition and so avoided the obvious traps. Fun was had by all!

So I guess that puts me in the "agents as window dressing" category. But window dressing that can be problematic in the right scenario.

Still enjoying the updates!

But I need to ask - how cumbersome is it running for characters this powerful? I assume they're throwing around 20-24 dice worth of attacks as rule.

On 9/14/2021 at 11:43 AM, Duke Bushido said:

 

and no one practicing-- is it Hinduism?  Is that correct?  No offense intended to anyone if it isn't, of course.

 

Hinduism is the name of the religion practiced by the majority of Indians. Or at least it is the largest religion in India, I'm not completely certain that Hinduism is more than half the population. There's a lot of religions in India.

For place names I just take them from a map.

For people (and related things) names I have no hard and fast rule. I do frequently end up with a lot of multisyllabic mouth full of nonsense. Or people called Jim.

So now I want to run a campaign where the PCs are all Elves or some other long lived types and there's an adventure once a century.

The PCs get to not just deal with the adventure but also the changes in the landscape (political, technological, geographical.)

"I swear there was a teeming human metropolis round here just a century or so ago. And a river."

I don't see there being a problem with multiple faiths in the game. There's no reason for there not to be. Every human culture has come up with their own version of what the god(s) is/are.

Depending on how active (or even real) gods are in your campaign this can have any range of effects on the campaign world. At the end of the spectrum where gods are imaginary or transcendent and take no hand in the material universe, there could be inter-faith rivalry or open hostility. At the other end, where the gods wander the world interacting with mortals on a daily basis then you can have loads of interpersonal conflict and/or friendships between various deities. Basically, at this end of the spectrum, they are just other (admittedly powerful) NPCs. You could even give a nod to Terry Pratchett's Pyramids and have all the various sun gods fighting over the sun like it's a football match.

The game I'm currently running has 2 main faiths in it. One for the good guys, one for the bad guys. Of course each side sees themselves as the good guys and the others as the bad guys. For this campaign the gods are at best impersonal beings, possibly non-sentient forces, possibly non-existent. It doesn't matter because they do not, nor shall they ever, appear in person. It's a Pathfinder game and we have in-game proof that things like ghosts exist. There is also circumstantial evidence that there is an afterlife and the continuity of the soul therein. 

It's definitely added to the setting. Hell, the conflict between the faiths is the basis of the campaign. But it also adds to the day to day interaction between PCs and NPCs.

Australians are basically Time Lords. 

First off I should point out that I don't like penalty skill levels except in specific circumstances. eg. range skill levels are for characters with sniper sights. I plain don't allow penalty skill levels to offset targeting locations. I mean, +1 OCV with a specific type of weapon is 2 points. Who really needs a cost break on this? 

So, with that caveat, I'd like to ask the OP - who else is in the group? If you've got a group and almost every situation is going to be solved by Legolas standing a hundred metres away and head-shotting the bad guy are the other players going to be able to contribute in a meaningful way? Some of them may prefer seducing every barmaid, or playing politics, or summoning up demon hordes. And that's great stuff as long as everyone gets their time to shine. BUT if you have a group in which more than one player wishes to contribute to combat then you're looking at a potential problem here. The rivalry between Legolas and Gimli is played for laughs in the movies (it's rather more realistic in the books.) Which of your players is happy to be the perpetual Gimli (read "butt-monkey") in this?

My first concern when I GM is that all the players are balanced against one another. Now, I realise this reflects a lot of my own preference - I want my characters to be able to contribute to the game. And... nearly everyone I've ever played with has wanted this too. I strongly suspect that most of your fellow players are of a similar mind. No one wants to be a hanger on.

You've got new GMs. That's amazing. Don't scare them off with your bad-ass, unbeatable, super-dude. Play nice. Take time to explain how combat works. I don't mean the basic dice conventions and the SPD chart. I mean explain how and what your Legolas could do and how easily they could kill off even a big dragon from a safe distance by turning every mission into special forces sniper missions. Hey, if everyone's okay with that, do it. But let people go in knowing.

Eagerly awaiting the next exciting instalment! 

Saw Black Widow in the theatres on the weekend. Even paid $8.00 for a choc top. Thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

Then again, I do live in a town with very little in way of Covid. 

On 7/1/2021 at 4:21 AM, DoctorImpossible said:

Well, I can do that for you. Look at Loki's eyes from the Thor film and any film apart from the first Avengers film. Green, right? (Except in his blue-skinned, red-eyed, form of course.) That is his natural eye colour. 

 

Now look at his eye colour when he arrives on Midgard to take the tesseract. Bright blue. 

 

Who else has their eye colour changed from whatever it was before to a piercing blue? Anyone being controlled by the stone in his sceptre. When Hawkeye is under his command, mind controlled, he has bright blue eyes, unlike his usual steely grey eyes whenever Jeremy Renner played him in the rest of the MCU. 

 

Loki isn't invading midgard because he was hoping to conquer it. Asgard has always been the only place he cared about, except for his targeting of Jotunheim simply to win his father's approval in Thor 1. Loki is here to attack Midgard as a cover for him first grabbing the Tesseract (and therefore an infinity stone) then also attacking New York (which is, canonically, where the Sorcerer Supreme is, at that exact moment) to get hold of the Eye Of Agamotto and therefore another Infinity Stone, since Earth has the rare distinction of holding two of the infinity stones at the time. Well worth Thanos risking his own infinity stone, carried by a mind-controlled god, to bring him back two more. 

 

You can even see how badly hurt Loki had been, just before he was mind-controlled and sent to Midgard to capture infinity stones, much more so than after Hulk's beatdown. He'd been tortured, for a long time, whether for information or simply to make sure that the mind control would take effect. 

 

How does this make losing a fight to the Hulk into a victory for Loki? Well, much like Dr Selvig managed to resist mind control just enough to include an off-switch for his portal, Loki managed to resist his own mind control enough to pick a fight with the Hulk and then opt to monologue instead of being ready for an actual fight. Which, much like Black Widow's punch to Hawkeye's head to "recalibrate" his brain, was able to reset Loki's mind to free it from the mind control. You may notice that his eyes, after the beatdown, are back to their normal emerald green, instead of the bright blue of the mind control effects. He also suddenly changes from Shakespearean villain monologues, that we know are not his usual mode of speech, to the casual quipster that we are more familiar with.

 

"I'll take that drink, now."

Damn. I missed that whole thing. Now I have to watch Thor and Avengers again. 

I like a good multiform. Especially if the size difference means a different suite of complications. 

Buying some powers OIAID is fine but that would change the value I'd give to complications based around size. 

Personally, I like the idea of them being rivals. It allows for different types of stories to just straight enemies. An enemy group is just another bunch of bad guys to be engaged in the usual way - a punch to the face then call the cops. Rivals means you can't just punch them in the face and solve the issue.

I mean, sure you can punch them, but that isn't going to solve the problem. Look at the Avengers/Justice League crossovers. They punched one another but that was just for our amusement, it didn't solve whatever plot problems they were having.

So anyway, yeah, rivals. Gets you different types scenes.  People hog limelight; pour sugar into quinjet<sic> fuel tanks; show off so as to attract the cute girl/guy; make a bet to kill the most orcs at the battle of Helm's Deep. This allows for different kinds of action  and variety is the spice of life and all that.

I'm pro-Giants. And as assault pointed out they traditionally have been used to fill many rolls so there's plenty of varied material to draw on.

If I put slavery into a campaign it's always to show the bad guys as bad guys. It's something for the heroes to oppose.

Looks like Black Widow has finally gotten its release date here in Australia - 8th July. Woo-hoo!

I assume Spectrum is going to go by "Marvel" at least initially. I mean the movie is called The Marvels, plural.

I find it hard to believe that, by this point in the media juggernaut that is the MCU*, there are many Marvel characters still being left to obscurity. I mean, they dragged out the Guardians of the Galaxy and the Eternals. Yeah, it'll be a long time til we see the Great Lakes Avengers (no loss), but I can't think of many characters who are important to the comics-verse who are missing from the MCU, except in the cases where IP prevents/prevented til recently them from appearing. 

Off the top of my head I can name Hercules, Tigra, and Wonderman as (so far) being absent. Alphaflight are still unused, although I'm not sure if they were ever important to the Marvel comics-verse. Spiderwoman (like Alphaflight, not sure if she's important in the comics-verse) is missing, but maybe she's included under the Spiderman IP? I dunno. From the more modern comics there's Hulkling and Wiccan... but they're mutants (and thus have been counted out until recently) aren't they? I assume the Champions are already under consideration (at least) since Kamala Khan is already happening.

*and the various TV branches that are not technically cinematic universe.

Thanks for the A-Force link. I enjoyed the series and was disappointed when it was cancelled. But by following the link I have just discovered there's a volume 2. With more actual issues in it too. yay.

On 6/6/2021 at 3:33 PM, Bazza said:

I’m a Mormon Wheet-Bix person, like a lot of Oz. 

Do you put sugar on them?

What a great session!

Wish I could convince my group to try Champions.

In that scene Danvers is being hazed. Thor is playing "flinch" with her. Carol Danvers refuses to flinch. 

She doesn't know Thor won't hit her, she knows next to nothing about him. It's a dick move on Thor's part. But Danvers was in the military and she is no stranger to men being dicks to her simply because they feel they have the right to test her. We see it in a flashback in Captain Marvel when she and Rambeau are in the bar and some dick comes up to her and tries to make her flinch. Carol Danvers refuses to flinch.