Beetle

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now?

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? I heard that on the Angel soundtrack and really liked the song. I'm going to have to check out more of their stuff. Any albums you'd like to suggest? Oh, and "Rain" by the Blake Babies

Re: Build your own "New Avengers"! Here's my choice for an Avengers team. I'm more interested in some of the "second tier" characters than the big heavyweights that have their own books. (I stopped collecting Marvel after Heroes Reborn so forgive me if some of these folks have disappeared) Wasp (team leader) Photon Black Panther Spider Woman II (sorry, Jessica Drew fans) Quicksilver Nova (aren't the New Warriors the official triple-A team of the Avengers?) Rick Jones (do I really have to take him?) I think that would be a fun team to follow. Oh, and I'd reserve slots for the most important Avengers ever: Roy Thomas, John Buscema (RIP) and Tom Palmer.

Re: Announcing — DIME HERO ADVENTURES! This is a really great idea! The only drawback for me is that I have to go to a friend's house to download stuff and burn it on a cd (no home internet). So I may wait until a few have been released and buy them in bunches.

Re: What Other Pulp Hero Books Would You Like To See? I'll go along with the requests for prehistoric/hollow earth type stuff, but I can sum it up in two words: Sleestak Hero!

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Our ongoing GURPS: Firefly campaign got a new character a couple of weeks ago - a merc/negotiator named "Star." The following exchange happened at the first business deal Star set up. contact: Which one of you is Star? the captain: The one playing continuous soft-rock throughout the work day. (this may be a "Boston only" joke, but I'm guessing there are other "Star FM" stations throughout america)

Re: Everyman - What Do *You* Want To See? An excellent introduction on the creation and use of NPCs (including good advice on how to individualize them and make them a presence in the campaign). This was followed by scads of fully written up NPCs from all walks of life with detailed information on their backgrounds, how they might relate to each other and how they might relate to the heroes. It sounds really simple when it's written down, but it was executed very well. It ranks up their with the original Dark Champions as best 4th edition supplement

Re: Everyman - What Do *You* Want To See? I think Normals Unbound pretty much covered everything about normals. I'm very curious to see if this supplement brings anything to the table that we haven't already seen before. If it doesn't then it's a waste of HERO's resources and our time (as MitchellS and Hawksmoor already pointed out)

Re: Campaign Idea - Suggestions Gratefully Welcome First off - welcome back! Secondly - I really like your set up. I especially love the note about the supreme court and eminent domain. Heck, I wish I was playing in the campaign! There's just one little nitpick I have: Cuba Sweden and South Africa as a trio? Anybody else feel like singing a chorus of One of These Things Is Not Like the Others? We'll be long past 2030 before Cuba is on the cutting edge of anything other than backwardness and poverty (unless there's been a massively radical change in the island and in your campaign.)

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Here's a horrible joke that one player shared a couple of sessions ago. Person 1: "Knock, knock" Person 2: "Who's there?" P1: "Interrupting cow." P2: "Interrupting c-" P1: "Mooooo!"

Re: Real world Pulp characters I think Sidney Reilly (born Sigmund Rosenblum) would be a great pulp character. He's the spy who's life was dramatized in Reilly: Ace of Spies (with Sam Neil as Reilly) Here's a brief bio courtesy of Amazon.com:

Re: Anyone get DC: TAS yet? I wonder how much of a problem this has been to DoJ? Not that we all have playtest versions, but many of the supplements that are coming out cover the same ground as the 4th edition ones many of us already have. Heck, they often have the same names. There are probably people on this board who have three versions of Fantasy Hero by this point. The content of the 5th versions tend to be much higher, but you have to have the book in your hand to realize that. There's probably not much that can be done about this (how many areas hadn't already been covered?), but I could see where it might be hurting them. Ironically, the only time it's bothered me was with Dark Champions, but because it was so different from the 4th edition not because it's the same. I'm a bit torn about Everyman because Normals Unbound is one of my favorite Hero supplements ever (it changed the way I GM). Hey - you forgot Pulp Hero!

Re: Lets cut the crap... I give FREd a B+/A- (I don't have 5er yet). The level of minute details is a bit offputting, as is the tendency to give powers names and then use them in ways that the name is all wrong for. For example, using Clairsentience to define a spy network when "clairsentience" is a mental ability ... arrgh! Words mean things and shouldn't be arbitrarily tossed around. Granted, this is my own irrational issue. Still it is a great system that I've had success using for supers, fantasy and other genres. Every time I think it's too detailed, I think of GURPS, and then I don't mind the detail so much (HERO is bridge, GURPS is euchre). On a related note - let's not be so quick to bash first edition AD&D. Yeah, we all know the tremendous flaws in the system, but didn't we all have many hours of fun with that game (even if it was because there wasn't anything else easily available at the time)? For all its flaws, it was the gateway game that got most people into gaming in the first place, so it deserves some respect for its historical position if for no other reason.

Re: Adult themes in gaming, a rant of sorts Nicely done! How did you do that without coming off as the typical guy gamer hitting on the girl in the group? Not that I expect any advice to be relevant in my own life, or course...

Re: Anyone get DC: TAS yet? Mine showed up on the UPS truck the other day, and I pretty much have to echo the sentiments others have expressed. The content is excellent, but some of the art is just bad. On a general note, I'm getting a little weary of the recycling of 4th edition characters, even ones I liked such as Dark Angel. But so I don't end the post on a negative note, let me stress that the content is superb, and the book is well worth getting.

Re: Anyone get DC: TAS yet? My DC:TAS is currently enjoying a plane ride (or possibly a truck ride) across the country. I'm really looking forward to this book, and the comments on this thread have just peaked my interest more. I don't usually pay much attention to the art or the layout (as long as I can find everything), but do think that each piece of art should only be used once in any given book (and should only be used as a last resort in other books).

Re: David C. Sutherland III: RIP As somebody who got AD&D when it first came out, I'm sorry to hear this. But I'm glad he got to experience how much he meant to people before he passed. That's a too rare gift.

Re: Moon Knight........ I liked the original series enough to go and hunt for all the back issues. I didn't even mind the start of the "fist of Khonshu" phase. He was a Batman ripoff, but he was cool in his own way (he had four personalities kicking around in his skull). But it all started to go wrong when he joined the terminally sunny West Coast Avengers. I liked Moon Knight, and I liked the Whackos, but that was just a really bad fit. You can add me to the list of people who based characters off him (Dark Shadow)

Re: Introducing player to the HERO System If you don't mind doing alot of work yourself, you could try this method. Have your players tell you what they want, and you do the actual stating out of the characters. That's how my first Champions character was created. This method works best if you can take time outside of the regular gaming session to do it, otherwise you'll chew up a whole evening doing characters.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Our Firefly crew needed to steal metal from a space transport ship with a crew of five and was kicking around plans and debating how much violence we were willing to use. Engineer: "I'd prefer the plan that doesn't include mass murder." Pilot: "Is five really 'mass'?"

Re: Dark Champions: The Animated Series Yes. If you like low-powered games but opened 5E Dark Champions and went "Yikes! When did things get NC-17?" then this book is for you.

Re: Need help with an acronym If the campaign is usually serious, this might not be a bad place to throw a little levity in with a slightly silly nickname. Bill Willingham's Elementals was normally a very serious comic, so it had even greater impact when the new federal agency created to handle supers was named "Federal Intelligence and Security Headquarters" or "FISH" for short. It was funny without totally undercutting the usual tone of the book.

Re: Campaign/World Building Help I found this useful in creating my fantasy campaign, so it may prove marginally useful to others... Go the your local librarty and get ahold of an atlas, preferably an atlas of the middle ages or classical greece. Open it up and start going through it. You can clearly see how civilizations/nations expanded and contracted over time and most good atlases provide plenty of interesting sidebar information on what went on and why without having to take a college course. Why do certain areas get abandoned? Why does the population rise or fall? What sort of religious practices are there likely to be? How do the place-names change over time and why? You can absorb that information and steal... er, reinterpret it for your campaign world. Or just rip off Greyhawk like the rest of us... (Warning - this method may result in radical changes to your campaign world. It changed my setting from polytheism to monotheism.)

Re: Marvel's Exiles: Hyperion Challenge--build a team to beat him! I think this is a situation where a group that can function as a team will be more effective than a (perhaps more powerful) group of all stars. Fortunately, Marvel has a team that fills all the needs... Captain America Hank Pym (for the same reason as JimOz picked him) Photon (the former Captain Marvel) Hercules Quasar ("I'm not a Green Lantern clone! I'm not! I'm not! I'm not!!!!") Thor Scarlet Witch Hawkeye (for the dialogue if nothing else) Quasar protects the Scarlet Witch. Everybody else keeps Hyperion entertained until Wanda cooks up a suitable hex. (there's a reason why Ultron tries to take her out first)

Re: Could your Champions character beat... Using Treb's Cap: Darkshadow - He'd lose quickly and decisively. At least Cap's too nice a guy to make a crack about DS being a second-rate Moon Knight clone. Bolt - This would be a short combat. Bolt (impatient, overconfident speedster) would move-by Cap and either miss or do no damage. That would irk him, so he'd do a move through and knock himself out on Cap's shield. Kestrel - Cap's mental defense would make it hard for her to control him. The shield and armor would make her limited martial arts and her pistols useless. She'd probably just go invisible (i.e. "cloud his mind so he cannot see her") and slink away. Captain Atlas - This "Cap vs. Cap" fight would most likely be a draw. Captain America couldn't really hurt Atlas (he's based on Captain "Shazam" Marvel) and there's little chance that Atlas could even touch Captain America without lobbing a building at him (which he wouldn't do). Black Arrow - This would probably be the most interesting combat, which is fitting since BA (teleporting energy projector/martial artist) is my oldest and favorite character. She's slightly faster than Cap, but has lower defenses and does less damage. She'd have to be both smart and lucky to win, as she'd have a hard time getting past Cap's defenses. If BA threw up her force field and tried going toe-to-toe, she'd eventually get worn down unless she got a lucky find weakness role in. (Cap's lack of weakness roll is especially appropriate here because of his experience against savate). Karen's best chance would be to envelope Cap in a darkness field (though this requires weakening her force field). Then she'd rely on quick combat teleports to try and get inside his shield while not getting hit. If that works then she's got a decent shot at prevailing.