Beetle

I just noticed that first season (aka "the last season") of Black Scorpion is now available on DVD. Nice to know that this cultural gem will now be preserved for posterity. I wonder if the guy who played the cop walked around the set muttering "I used to be on Family Ties! Where did it all go wrong?"

Kay's Fionavar and Tigana are high on my list of favorites. For some odd reason, though, I've never read anything else by him. I'll have to remedy that. I just finished the Book of Words trilogy by J.V. Jones (The Baker's Boy, A Man Betrayed, and Master and Fool) A very enjoyable fantasy series. The characters are very well done, and the action moves along at a good clip. Some characters get more air time than their importance to the plot justifies, but it's not too big a sin because they're so entertaining. This has motivated me to move on to more stuff written by her.

How can you forget his incredible stint as the host of Solid Gold?

I know, but I figured it was the least I can do. (and I'm all about doing the least I can do)

As a long-time lurker of this thread, I just rated it 5-star. I never really paid attention to the option before.

Just remember that this player is only one member of the group. Before doing anything drastic or campaign altering, ask yourself what effect will it have on the rest of the players.

I'm no art critic, but I think you're definately right about putting personality in the drawings. I think that's part of what made NU so darn easy to use. There was a good combination between the excellent text descriptions of the characters, and your art for them. It made it very easy for me to get a handle on what the character was about. Maybe we should demand that artists always get full write-ups for characters before beginning their work.

NU is easily my favorite supplement for Champions. The characters were three dimensional, and came with great story hooks. They art was very good (don't be so self-critical, Storn!). It still is the supplement I get the most use out of. Many of the characters have shown up in multiple campaigns, and some have even been DNPCs of characters. Also, the section in the beginning on how to make NPCs interesting was (and is) a very good thing for GMs to read. It opened my eyes to the importance of making NPCs "real".

It's too bad that the players weren't more honest or mature about things. It's not nice to burn people like that. Kudos to you for not beating a dead horse, and realizing it'd be better to move on to something that would actually be fun.

Re: Re: My players have become villians Bingo! It may be time for you to sit down with your players and have a "state of the campaign" discussion. In my experience, most times when players start doing really whacky things that turn a campaign upside down, it's because of unhappiness with the campaign. That will eventually kill any game. Were there any warning signs that people were unhappy? In one fantasy campaign I was in, evil was so powerful that nothing we players did made any difference. This led to jokes about how we should start working for the evil queen, and cracks like "do you think she offers dental coverage" became commonplace. Sure it the comments were funny, but they were coming from deep frustration with the campaign (which didn't survive). If it turns out that your players have some legitimate gripes, and they can be worked out, I would encourage you to wave the magic GM wand and declare that the session where they went bad never happened. Give the whole group a mulligan for that night ... it will be easier for everybody. Remember, the whole point of getting together and gaming is to have a good time. If that's not happening, then changes need to be made.

For the record, I would allow what phydaux wants to do, but I figure it's always best to ask the GM about these things before putting too much effort into it. The GM might say, "love the mystic, but I hate mentalists."

But of course! Have you run either of the two concepts past your GM yet to see if they'll be allowed? Both these concepts are near the front of the line on GMs "Yeesh, like I need this headache ... can't you just clone Wolverine?" list, as they can require much extra work for the poor GM.

One of the things I've always liked about Watt-Evans is how he writes "real" people. The characters in his stories take actions for perfectly understandable reasons. Guards don't fight to the death, Garth has a mid-life crisis, Valder doesn't give up his wish to be an innkeeper simply because he gains possession of the most powerful weapon in the world (he just becomes an innkeeper with a nasty sword ... that he keeps on the wall). And nobody swears that their swords will not be sheathed until they have vanquished the evil lord.

Great, now people are going to start arguing over whether this thread should have Normal Characteristic Maxima or not. It will never die!

If you're interested in the mindset of Ancient Rome, an interesting resource would be Harry Turtledove's fictional "Misplaced Legion" series. It's about a group of Roman soldiers who get magically transported to another world ("Videssos"). An added bonus is that Videssos is a thinly painted over Byzantine Empire (with magic added) so it's an interesting look at that society as well.

I haven't read enough of the old stuff to call anything "best", but it would be hard to beat Fafhrd and Grey Mouser for the reasons LL said earlier (plus the exciting guessing game of "How many drugs was Fritz on when he wrote this story?") I have just started Vance's Dying Earth Chronicles and that's very good so far. (been meaning to read it for years, and Steve's plug in FH was the final straw to get me to do it)

Of course, Forgotten Realms itself is just a "name brand" duplicate of Greyhawk.

I can't believe that I went away for a week, and this thread is still on the first page.

Beware of HERO fundamentalists!

Fie! There is nothing more complicated than HERO! Do you think the word "logrithmic" pops up in discussions of D20?

You know what? Actually re-reading the entire Focus limitation description in FREd actually seems to have solved this. Based on what it says on page 190, it seems the hand attack should be OIF (because there are two) and all the powers that need both clubs to work can be OAF. When all else fails, read the directions...

So you wouldn't put them in a multipower? They do pretty much share the same focus.

Thanks for the interesting ideas. I like the idea of a -1/4 limitation on the slots that need both clubs. But I think if I do the hand attack as an autofire, I'd need to buy autofire on the entire strength. I think my problem is that I'm aiming for an OAF hand attack when there is a second focus (second club) that works if the first is taken. Do I need to buy the attack a second time? Would that solve the problem with other slots?

Well, two actually, and I'm wondering what the best way to do them is. I'm working on a new martial artist character and had the idea of giving him a billy club/battle staff weapon akin to what Mockingbird used to use. Namely, two billy clubs that can be joined together to form a longer staff. Also the individual clubs can be thrown. So, what I have now is a multipower with a hand-to-hand slot (seperate clubs-OAF), energy blast (serperate clubs-OAF & two recoverable charges). The issue is that other powers I'm thinking of (extra leap, stretching on the hth attack) require the clubs to be joined into the staff. This can't be done if he's thrown one of the clubs and not yet retrieved it. Should that be represented in the write-up some way? Is it an additional limitation (must have both clubs, -1/4)? Or should I just take the OAF limitation and call it a day?

I dream of a day when this thread is even larger and more irrelevant than the mighty "Word Association Game"