drunkonduty

Non-technological. A crossbow is too complicated for their preferred level of culture.
 
No need to eat. That makes them automatically not carnivores and not much need to create wagons, roads, or farms. (Maybe make them green=skinned with green blood if you want to suggest they might be plant-based.)
 
Ones who master magic to cover things like "Change Environment to make themselves comfortable" are likely to be nudists.
 
Zero interest in sex outside their species (the biochemical signals are just wrong).
 
Very patient, with a non-hectic lifestyle. Able to sit still thinking or observing for hours at a time.
 
Alcohol doesn't give them a buzz unless it's turned to vinegar (though some like the sensation of drinking typical alcoholic beverages or milk).
 
They like studying other cultures and seem fascinated by other species' fixation on technology. They produce fine sages and scholars if you don't mind learning things from their culture's perspective.
 
Over the centuries they've adapted quite thoroughly to the idea of having and using other culture's currency for transactions.

Tolkien had basically two types of elves, those who went to the lands of the gods and learned metallurgy and sciences & those who stayed behind in the dark then never advanced as much as the others.
 
Then the ones who came back to Middle Earth after the sun was created mostly reverted.
 
D&D seems to deal with elves as if they're granola-crunching individualists who never create cities or infrastructure for a technological civilization.
 
====
 
I thought it'd be interesting to deal with elves as those granola-crunching individualists who never create cities or infrastructure for a technological civilization...who happened to live next to (essentially) African animist tribes (or Australian aborigines) who shared a lot of the elves distain for technology and cities.
 
So the elves of today are mostly intermarried with black tribes. 
 
In the vast savannahs, they often pursue a nomadic lifestyle.
 
In areas with more rainfall, they do subsistence farming and are elaborate storytellers and gift the world with a large number of bards. 
 
In coastal regions, many of them take to the seas. Some of them have used magic to revert to a form suited for living underwater. Others fish. Many live close to large ports and are coveted by captains for their seamanship.
 
But in any case, most "elves" which you meet are at least part-human. And all are black.

I tend to agree with Chris on this, SCUBA  (no offense), and I have to say that even though I have noticed D&D is getting a bit goofier and goofier lately, I have a grudging respect for the fact that they are moving (slowly, but moving nonetheless) from ethnically evil or genetically evil or--   Dude, I have no pleasant way to say this: they are moving away from the "his kind are always evil" racism thing; I just wish they were doing a better job.  They have added things like "this kind tends to be hot and slutty"-- which may just be the fanboys; I don't know.  But regardless, that, too, is kinda racist, and I would like to see a little pushback against the general trend of "this type is always like x" or "always like Y." at least as it applies specifically to _race_ and behavior or _race_ and values.   Make it about culture, and I can live with it, because the first thing that says is that an orc not raised in the culture of his homelands will probably just be a normal guy with a ferocious underbite.  It suggests that a delightful whimsical whatever-it-is-that-DandD-has-these-days-that-is-delightful-and-whimsical raised in a traditional orc community (and somehow not eaten) will end up with the values and behaviors of that particular culture.
 
No; I'm not "woke;" I'm not even particularly liberal.  However, I have lived, at this point, over half my life in neighborhoods and communities where white is the minority; about half the jobs I have ever had-- white was not just a minority, but a _clear_ minority.  I have had allegedly well-intentioned people ask me if this is because my first wife was black-- if I just "preferred" the company of black people.  The fact is my first wife was _Irish_.  Yes; she was very obviously not white, but she was _Irish_.  With regards to the rest of the claptrap, I prefer the company of _good neighbors_, and I like to work with _good people_.  i give a crap about their race, because I know first hand that their race is _not_ who they are; the cultures and subcultures that each individual grabs onto-- _that_ is much more accurately who they are, and every time the subject comes up in a gaming conversation about "who the bad guys are" or who is the "evil race," I either excuse myself or get really nasty.  I prefer to excuse myself.
 
When did this start?  Honestly?  When I was a kid.  I know: it's weird, but Star Trek was a new thing when I was a kid, and I remember all the episodes with Klingons are bad; Klingons are evil, and when we finally saw Klingons, I straight up couldn't figure out what was evil about them.  They had a more military air about them, and for a long time, I thought _that_ was the mark of evil.     But they _looked_ (back then, but I suppose I could get in trouble, because I have been given to understand that "we do not speak of it."    :rofl:   )
 
At any rate: yes; I get you're point: most people know that this means that, the other thing means that other thing, and have a vague idea of how they interact, what their societies are like, etc, which makes a significant reduction in the amount of work someone would have to do when presenting his setting.   But if he is going to play to the same exact bunch of tropes and stereotypes that so many hundreds of others have done before, why has he bothered?
 
 
Now _here's_ a weird thing:
 
I like dwarves.  Not because they are super-cool and better than everyone at everything, etc, etc, but because by the stereotype, they want to be left alone, and prefer to be by themselves with a job to do.
 
 
I can totally get into that!
 
But again-- is it culture?  Are hill dwarves and cave dwarves all like this because they are dwarves?  Or is it just the way that this particular clan of dwarves has been raised to think?
 
 

I've been playing in a Monster Hunter game for a few months now.
 
After each game, I mock up a book cover to commemorate each of our adventures.
 

 


 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 
 

 
 
And, for the holidays, I figured we'd send Christmas cards to our clients.
 

 
 
 
 

I use a Perception roll to notice and give general information. 'She is wearing a big diamond ring on her ring finger', and a Deduction roll to give additional information. i.e. She must be married, (+4) She must be married to a rich guy., (Crit or +10)She must be married to a multi-millionare or be that rich herself, that is a rare type Ib diamond."
 
Using another example I would use PER to inform the player, "You hear footsteps on the stairs" and Deduction for, "They are coming down the stairs trying to be careful", (+4) "They are too heavy to be your little sister's", (Crit or +10) "A heavy set person is trying to creep down the stairs, they are wearing work boots or some other heavy shoes."
 
I prefer using Deduction to interpret and PER just to notify the player and let them come to their own conclusions. I heavily use complementary skills as above including Science and Background skills to supplement Deduction.

That sounds a lot like what Steve Jackson Games did when they released the Dungeon Fantasy Role-Playing Game. It's "Powered by GURPS" but it's its own thing. No GURPS manuals needed or even encouraged. Just an option if you want it.
 
They ran a Kickstarter for the initial boxed set. It was successful, but not successful enough for them to reprint it after the initial print run. They actually cut their planned initial print run based on expected sales. They offered the PDFs in their company store, but otherwise planned to let it lie dormant.
 
Then a funny thing happened. Demand picked up, a GURPS licensee decided to support it with supplements, SJGames started producing supplements, etc.
 
I'm not saying it was a huge hit, but I think in the long run it's done reasonably well for a mechanically heavy dungeon delving RPG.
 
DFRPG (as it's known) plays to GURPS' strengths (namely, its granularity at the low end, and its melee combat system).
 
At the time, I thought it was an excellent sign that a new Champions boxed set could be even more of a hit, if done right. I still think that could work, with a simplified ruleset and the right supporting supplements. DFRPG consists of 430 pages in 5 books: character creation, game rules, spells, monsters, and an adventure. Champions could have the first two, plus an enemies book, a setting book, and a first adventure. Hopefully keeping the rules stuff as minimal as possible, using most of whatever the page count would be toward enemies, setting, and adventure material.
 
I know; mere pipe dreams. But still, since we're discussing the idea, it looks like a viable concept, even if DOJ's not ready to do that at the moment.
 

1st off the Hero Boards have always been fairly civil and friendly, but it really became my favorite place for discussions when I discovered the ignore function.  There are not very many toxic individuals here and they are eliminated easily.  For me anyone that feels the need to inject snide political comments in their
non-NGD posts goes straight to toxic land.  I don't really spend any time on the NGD so I rally don't care about that.  But taking a dump in the RPG forums is out.
 
2nd.  While I do agree in general with most of your comments here.  There is one major concept I completely disagree with.
Hero System 6th Edition, Champions Complete, Fantasy Hero Complete, Hero System 5th Edition Revised and so on are NOT role playing games. 
 
Spence: Yes Igor, please raise the drawbridge and bar the gates....
Igor: But we should flee!
Spence: It is too late Igor, I can already see the torches and pitchforks...
 
Then what are they, you may ask?
 
It is simple, they are a system that a gamer can use to build a role playing game. 
 
A role playing game can be picked up and played.  Hero, in pretty much all its incarnations cannot.  Instead it can be used by a gamer to put together something that then can be used to be played. 
 
I am currently in the middle of prepping a Fantasy Hero game. 
 
I am STILL in the middle of prepping a Fantasy Hero game.
 
But I was able to discover, buy, read, design scenarios and run them for actual playable RPG's in just a few days. 
 
Even most Hero supplements are not actually RPG's.  The Champions universe has a lots of stuff, but lacks a coherent playable setting of campaign. 
I fully understand that the primary overwhelming ideology was the belief that potential customers would suffer massive catastrophic death if anyone even hinted at a pre-designed campaign or anything that could even distantly be construed as establishing a concise character creation guide.  
 
So while Hero is my favorite RPG related system hands down.  
It is not an actual RPG that can actually be played "out of the box". 
 
No I do not have a solution, but I do not have to have one to see the problem. Just like I do not have to be a Chef to identify the cause of food poisoning.
 
 
 
 
 

The reason you should care about this is that it's hard to find players that will shift from D&D to other game systems. They aren't 'stupid', we should just be looking for ways to make the transition from D&D to Hero as easy as possible.

I would love to do this, and Have done this with a branch of the game's rules AKA Fuzion. IF you are going to flip it and want to keep the same spread, it should be OCV + 3d6 vs DCV +10. You would have to change stuff like being stunned (aka 1/2 DCV), and other things that half DCV. Which wouldn't be bad, doing division during combat can be rough for newbies.

Most arguments against it tend to boil down to "I am used to how it is, don't really want to change. So I don't see the point"

I was doing some searching on the internet and somehow I came across these two items that I never knew existed.
It's probably old news to some of you (since it is technically old news).
But I found the information quite interesting.
The first link is an article articulating highlights/lowlights of the history of the Hero System.
The second link is a thread dedicated to discussing the Hero 4th Edition (BBB).
 
The Age Of Hero
 
Hero Lets Read The Big Blue Book
 

Reminds me, in one game I was in, one of the PCs was Deliverance, a brick with an inbred mystical bent which came from a hidden village called Mystic Mountain  somewhere in the Aplucation mountain range. It is deep in the mountains and guards gateways to other realms. Men are mostly bricks, women are mostly mystical energy blasters, othoe variations are not unheard of.
 
Also, othoe they seem like sterotypical hillbillies, they predate the founding of the United States and may even predate the Native Americans/First Nation people. My favorite member was Granny Whamie, Deliverance's great grandmother who is an extremely powerful spell caster and made Deliverance's Granny Whamie's Whamie Bag (an excuse for Deliverance to have a 15 or 30 point Variable Power Pool, used mostly to augment his existing powers or give him some new protection when he needed it).

I never wanted a bad guy dead, more than that character in that show...  You are right; David Tennant did an awesome job...  So much more so than any other mentalist type villain from any other fiction I've seen or read - super dark, and (SPOILER ALERT) I actually whooped and hollered when she snapped his neck!
 

Something I don’t think anyone else has mentioned is how much easier it is to build a real monster of a one trick pony.  When your not spending points on anything else but Mental Domination, you get REALLY good at it.  Especially when as a villain the GM can spend as many points as needed to do it up right. 
   This is not a slam, it’s just an acknowledgment of the fact that some villains are just going to be Hella good at their job.  It’s for the PC’s/Heroes to think and roleplay their way around the problem instead of relying on lots of points in Smash Stuff and metagaming their way around the write-ups.
  A character like Purple Man makes my flesh crawl, especially when portrayed as well and as creepily as David Tennant did on the Netflicks series Jessica Jones. But he would be a great recurring character type in a campaign.

Does anyone know how to get hold of these two?
 
 
https://i.imgur.com/NrErzo4.mp4
 
 

Apropos to a conversation someplace else, I would love to see a Disney+ series with Colleen Wing and Misty Knight. If we can include a crossover with Kate Bishop in it, so much the better.

Well the Macguffin was in the jungle, but thanks to the nature of the adventure the PCs could sense where it was. They flew right there. My monster was all about hit and run tactics, it was never gonna stand up to the PCs in a fair fight. Ce le Guerre.

Sort of....
 
In as much as everyone got mad, the mood dropped and stayed that way, and the game petered out within an hour.   While we met for other games, it was in the neighborhood of a year before anyone wanted to pick that one back up.  The entire time with that "well how were we supposed to know...?"  Nonsense.
 
How were you supposed to know what?  That the ship was likely in danger?  That you were hired to guard it and _walked off the job_?  That Lt. Sandbag stressed several times that the job wasn't over?  That there was a war going on, and the company you were working for was one entire side of the war?  What was it, exactly, that you needed to know that would have properly stressed "hey, you know, some really bad stuff could go down any minute?"  Or perhaps this is Ghost Rider 2, and we're playing the world's first inaction game....
 
 
 
 
Excellent catch, Sir!     Yes; this is my long-running Traveller-on-Champions wheels game.
 
 
 
 
Yeah, but usually "hey, that ship is our honest-to-God only ride home" had worked in the past as a motivator to at least post a guard. 
 
Didn't that time, though. 
 
 
 
 
 
I just wanted to say thank you for that.  The way, in my head, that this comment was stated was hilarious.   
 
I have had very, _very_ few TPKs, but I would like to share my favorite (though I really think that I have shared this before, many years ago).
 
It's a space opera game (Yes; Sci-Fi is my genre of preference.   Specifically, not Star Wars sci-fi).  One of the party members had managed several sessions ago to get his hands on a Phase Field generator.  This experimental Force Field generator is a body-worn protective device that, when activated, creates a phase field "bubble" of protection.  Anything-- physical or energy-- is phased and randomly expelled from some other part of the surface.  To skip the rubber science, it's essentially Missile Deflection, Area of Effect (could be cranked to a 10 meter radius) costs END, and a couple of other things that are not important for this story.
 
We had two Johns in this group with the unique distinction of being identical cousins.  That is their fathers were identical twins who, against the odds, married identical twins.   I won't pretend to be a scientist, but given what I did learn while going through my medical education, they are, genetically speaking, siblings. (purely genetic, mind you).  They are both named for their grandfather  (and they were just almost two years apart, and because of that, I find it a bit hard to forgive doing that to your kid, but that's neither here nor there).  They were strikingly similar in appearance, though technically there was no reason for that, as neither favored one parent more than the other.  Conversationally, we referred to them as "Old John" and "Young John" (or Little John), mostly because Straight John hated being called Straight John (Gay John did not mind being called Gay John, but Straight John was something of a spoilsport  >:-/  )
 
Anyway, the party is making their way though the prison (they are tasked with questioning and possibly having to exterminate a prisoner.  They have opted to spring him and help him get off world, because that's who they are: they are the good guys).
 
So we have the five players and two NPCs sneaking their way toward the auxiliary command to do a couple of quick overrides and create an express exit, as their presence (but not their whereabouts) has been discovered.    As they  step out into a _wide_ and empty corridor, they see nothing, and the group pushes ahead.  As the bulkhead seals behind them, they make their way to the intersection fifty feet ahead.
 
A lone staffer from the prison pops around the corner, sees them, and stops dead in his tracks, shocked.
 
Brent announced "I shoot him before he can raise the alarm!" and fires off his hand cannon-- his straight-from-Johhny-Dangerously 88 magnum (recoilless, as Jim DiGriz would have wanted) slug thrower.  BOOM!
 
The..  uh.....  the alarm...  has been raised.....
 
The security systems guy turns to see if he can open the bulkhead for a quick retreat; Old John wants to sprint dead-ahead beyond the intersection in the hopes of getting through it before any guards appear.  
 
Sixty seconds of indecision and guards arrive-- eight of them, with full riot armor and armed with stun cannons (before there were real-world shoots-a-wire-at-you Tasers, there weren't, so we had to guess.  These were basically weapons that fired arcs of electricity at incredible voltage and very low amperage: they were non-lethal, usually, sort of).
 
Right away Amy says "I activate my force field and crank it up enough to cover everyone!  John's right; we've got to make a run for it!"
 
Young John, who has been letting his mind wander to who-knows-what hears "John" and snaps to attention-- sort of.  "Full auto, Baby!"
 
Young John's character has a plasma weapon that can be toggled to single shot, burst fire, and what he calls "Full auto."  This is a setting that, with a single button press, will set the weapon firing full auto (5 shot autofire) repeatedly, until the setting is changed again or the energy clip is spent.   "Full Auto" was something he liked to do as he seemed to think it was allowing him to take "extra attacks," no matter how many times it was explained to him that it in fact did not do that, as he couldn't really aim save on his Phase-- it was just firing.
 
 
So the Plasma rifle begins to fire, unceasingly--
 
into the inner surface of the Bubble of Missile Deflection.
 
Roll Activation.
 
Neat!  Rolled a 4!
 
Oh!  Time to roll again...
 
Neat!  Rolled a 5!
 
Wow!  A 3!
 
It was grim, and it was hilarious.
 
Many dice where thrown that evening, most of them at Young John.
 
 
 

I've committed many over the years.
 
The most recent one was a couple of years ago, running a Pathfinder game, a Paizo AP. It's pretty high level by this point in the game. I modified one of the scenarios from whatever it was to a "hell in the jungle" type situation where the PCs would be hunted through a jungle by a high level, hit and run monster. I was going for a Predator vibe. Being high level Pathfinder it takes a lot of work: going over abilities to make sure I understand them, and then creating scenarios the monster could leverage for greater effect.
 
The PCs take one look at the dense, hot, sweaty jungle and say "We'll fly over that." Because, being high level Pathfinder, everyone had access to flight. Wings, brooms, spells, Baba Yaga's magic mortar. My face must have fallen because the players were all "Oh. Well, we can walk through it, if you like." I said "No, no. This is on me. I'm an idiot."

I've committed many over the years.
 
The most recent one was a couple of years ago, running a Pathfinder game, a Paizo AP. It's pretty high level by this point in the game. I modified one of the scenarios from whatever it was to a "hell in the jungle" type situation where the PCs would be hunted through a jungle by a high level, hit and run monster. I was going for a Predator vibe. Being high level Pathfinder it takes a lot of work: going over abilities to make sure I understand them, and then creating scenarios the monster could leverage for greater effect.
 
The PCs take one look at the dense, hot, sweaty jungle and say "We'll fly over that." Because, being high level Pathfinder, everyone had access to flight. Wings, brooms, spells, Baba Yaga's magic mortar. My face must have fallen because the players were all "Oh. Well, we can walk through it, if you like." I said "No, no. This is on me. I'm an idiot."

I've committed many over the years.
 
The most recent one was a couple of years ago, running a Pathfinder game, a Paizo AP. It's pretty high level by this point in the game. I modified one of the scenarios from whatever it was to a "hell in the jungle" type situation where the PCs would be hunted through a jungle by a high level, hit and run monster. I was going for a Predator vibe. Being high level Pathfinder it takes a lot of work: going over abilities to make sure I understand them, and then creating scenarios the monster could leverage for greater effect.
 
The PCs take one look at the dense, hot, sweaty jungle and say "We'll fly over that." Because, being high level Pathfinder, everyone had access to flight. Wings, brooms, spells, Baba Yaga's magic mortar. My face must have fallen because the players were all "Oh. Well, we can walk through it, if you like." I said "No, no. This is on me. I'm an idiot."

I've committed many over the years.
 
The most recent one was a couple of years ago, running a Pathfinder game, a Paizo AP. It's pretty high level by this point in the game. I modified one of the scenarios from whatever it was to a "hell in the jungle" type situation where the PCs would be hunted through a jungle by a high level, hit and run monster. I was going for a Predator vibe. Being high level Pathfinder it takes a lot of work: going over abilities to make sure I understand them, and then creating scenarios the monster could leverage for greater effect.
 
The PCs take one look at the dense, hot, sweaty jungle and say "We'll fly over that." Because, being high level Pathfinder, everyone had access to flight. Wings, brooms, spells, Baba Yaga's magic mortar. My face must have fallen because the players were all "Oh. Well, we can walk through it, if you like." I said "No, no. This is on me. I'm an idiot."

I appreciate the convenience of the auto dice roller, but I love the idea of rolling buckets full of dice. Glad everyone is having such a blast.
 
Looking forward to the future exciting installments. 👍
 
 

Glad you're enjoying it!  I'm actually using this to chronical our game - because a couple to several weeks pass between games, we actually read these at the beginning of each game, to remind us all where we left off.
 
Your questions:
No, I made that clear to the team - so they have taken Silvercloud to Somewhere, to copy other alien tech, to at least give the sector a fighting chance. My buddy, who is remote most the time and on Zoom uses a dice rolling app.  My wife, who is sitting in the living room with me, in front of our trusty folding gaming table, is seriously rolling huge hands full of dice into a nice wood and felt dice rolling tray-thing and counting them out!  They both get a thrill out of it. It's been great fun.  We have started talking about our next game, since we're likely only a few games from the end now...  Doesn't sound like it's going to be Champions; more likely Shadowrun or something like that.
 
Anywho, glad you're liking it, and I'll post them all here until we're done.
 

Performances for me. The plot was actually pretty stupid but all the actors were outstanding.