Beetle

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? True, it just means it's not worth being concerned with until it is proven (or at least shown to be likely). Right now, the main assertion of this thread is on the same level as a claim that an invisible, intangible and inaudible dragon lives in my garage. There has not been a shred of evidence to support the idea that the use of ficitional, non-human monsters as stock villains in fantasy games has any relation whatsoever to real-world racism. As Worldmaker said earlier, the only logical result of anti-orc games would be anti-orc racism, but orcs don't really exist. There's been no evidence presented that a person having a fantasy character that fights made-up creatures results in increased real-world racism, sexism or anti-semitism. I’d ask him to support his assertion with facts. Good luck to him' date=' because it hasn't been proven yet. See snopes.

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? This would only be the case if one accepts the extremely dubious (and as yet unproved) idea that fighting orcs (for example) in an RPG because they are inherently evil is analagous to racism in the real world. I don't think there's a real connection there. I haven't seen this connection proved either on this thread or in any of my personal experiences in 26 years of gaming. Also, I think people are missing that the term "race" usually has a very different meaning in RPGs than it does in real life. What we're talking about with orcs (for example) isn't a different "race" in the manner of white/black/indian/chinese, but an entirely different type of creature that is not human.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings At the end of a long, stressful day, there's nothing better than dropping into a comfy chair and listening to some Louis Armstrong.

Re: Leagacy of Iron: Power Suit characters... That is a very cool idea that I shall steal... er, be inspired by the next chance I get to make a Champions character.

Re: Hunted: Hekate Very interesting idea. A note of caution for you, though: does your wife realize how many "Zorba" jokes she'll get with a character named "The Greek"? How about "The Achean" or the name of someone from mythology like Lysistra or Electra? (well, maybe not Electra...) I'm jealous of you and Supreme. I've wanted to do a character based in Greek mythology for some time, but the Champions campaigns that I'm in all have a unified origin of all supers (usually "everybody's a mutant") which can be very limiting.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings Why is it that if I say "things can't get worse" they invariably do become worse. But if I say "things just couldn't get better", they don't get better?

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it...

Re: Why play Fantasy Hero over other fantasy games? I think it's a good idea for you to put the characters together yourself, especially if you have an idea of what they want. The times I've fun FH with people unfamiliar with the system, the first night was always straight character creation (make sure there's something entertaining for others to do while you're working with one player on a character ... it's easy if the players also like Magic, or whatever kids are doing these days). Basically, I would sit with the player and ask him to describe what he wants. As he did, I'd start jotting down numbers and skills. Then I'd explain what they mean (or show him the skill def) and say "Is that what you were thinking?" That way the player "owned" the character even though I actually "picked" everything for it. Also, it gave the player the beginnings of an understanding of how HERO operates. (and, hey, it's how my first character was done ... I never even touched the pencil).

Re: This is Too Cool, and I Must Tell You About It

Re: This is Too Cool, and I Must Tell You About It This sounds like a really cool plot. But there's one nit that I have to pick: So you can still have your evil fun!

Re: Marvel Comic's "Secret Wars 2" Does it give Dazzler a starring role?

Re: US civil awards? I don't know that they would actually get any medals. We don't have too many of those (short of the Medal of Freedom which is usually a "lifetime achievement" sort of award). They'd probably have a day declared " day" and maybe the key to the city and a nice city council proclamation (and maybe an additional one from the state legislature). If it's a small town, they might get a parade, but probably not if they're in New York City.

Re: The Harbinger of Justice Thread I made some comments along those lines (which I suspect annoyed Steve) in an old thread. But it wasn't so much the point total that threw me with Harbinger, but the fact that after many pages of "realistic" and "street-level" talk we got a flagship character who teleported guns to his hands from his own personal pocket dimension. It was a jarring leap from the established tone. Sounds like he'll fit the remainder of the material much better. Of course, if the changes lead to fifty "The Harbinger of Justice is/is not a normal" threads, we'll all be sorry...

Re: Should this be called Dark Champions? I like that one, but it might make people think it's "Homeless HERO"

Re: Should this be called Dark Champions? [Mike Myers-Linda Richmond] Welcome to "Coffee Talk." Here's a topic. The new Dark Champions is neither "Dark" nor "Champions." Discuss. [/Mike Myers-Linda Richmond]

Re: Campaigns that you miss... I some of the great campaigns we had in college. There was the first Champs campaign I was ever in ("I'm thinking a cross between Nightcrawler and Darkstar ... can I do that?"). Also, we had a great D&D campaign that ran for about three and a half-years and produced my favorite character ever - Ian the CN elven fighter/thief. Never make the chaotic neutral charcter the group leader. Many of the games I've been in recently have been too short for me to really miss them. I am sad they never reached their full potential, but either the time wasn't right, or the GM decided he wasn't happy with it and pulled the plug (yes, Elias, I'm talking about you...) I'm not much for GMing normally, but I do sort of miss gaming in my regular fantasy world (it's been kicking in one form or another since 1986)

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... In the GURPS "Firefly" (sci-fi) campaign that I'm in, our ship landed on our doctor's home planet. He was immeadiately kidnapped by the locals and moved to a secret location. The rest of the crew did some digging and discovered that our seemingly poor doctor was the son of the richest family on the planet. He had inherited everything, but had been declared dead by the trustee so he could keep everything (the doctor hadn't been on the planet for 7 years, he ran off to fight for the losers of the browncoat/alliance war and was thought to be dead). So the group assaults the place he's being held, frees him and rushes towards the hospital (while being pursued) so he can be genetically scanned and have his identity confirmed when this thoughtful, sensitive exchange took place: Doctor: Where are we going? Why did those men kidnap me? What's going on?!? Engineer: Your old buddy planned on killing you to keep you from inheriting your family's empire and taking it from him. You're rich! You own half this planet! Isn't that shiny? Doctor: Wait ... my parents are dead? Engineer: Um, yeah. Sorry about that. I guess I kinda skipped past that part.

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing? I'm another one who's tired of the whole "mutants" thing. I don't know if it's because it's been done to death or if it's because I watched with horror as the "kewl" mutant titles devoured everything in the 1990s (and shunted the classics to an alternate universe where they were botched by kewl writers)

Re: What character concepts make you cringe? I don't think there's any particular combination of powers that especially annoys me (except when somebody wants density increase and desolid to work at the same time...) The only thing that gets me is when the entire character is lifted from the comics. For example, I loathe wolverine clones, but for my last character I had the yen to do something animal based, and he ended up with some of the stock powers (including claws and regen). Now, if I was accused of doing a wolvie clone, I'd say "It's similar to that, but it's equally influenced by DCs Wildcat and !mpulse's Jaguar." But mostly I'd let the fact the character's personality is nothing like Logan's speak for itself. Edited because my spelling is less reliable than the Scarlet Witch's hex power

Re: A Thread for Random Musings It's not right that the NCAA basketball tournament is monopolizing the airwaves, but I can't find out if Michigan beat BC for the last spot in the Frozen Four. What, the NCAA will do live scoring for basketball but not hockey? It's just not right.

Re: Desolid question I don't have my books with me at the moment, but would it make sense to put continuing charges on the gun? So it would be Desolid, usable against others, x number of charges that each last one turn (or one minute)? That way the gun remains 0 end.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings There has been a staggering amount of change in the past couple of weeks. It's been disconcerting to me as well, and while it's not necessarily bad it's going to take a long time to get used to. I'm still having a hard time visually figuring out who everybody is with the new avatars (that's one reason I kept Blue Beetle, even if it's a different picture)

You folks have done a good job discussing many of the disturbing things about this scenario, so I won't rehash any of that. I do have two thoughts, though. There's no just when it comes to the rule of law. The principle that no person is above the law comprises a large part of the basis of western civilization. I'd expect nation-states to go pretty darn far in their efforts to maintain the rule of law. What your team of people are advocating is nothing less then rule by the strongest. That wouldn't be acceptable to anybody who's not a sheep. Second, there seems to be general assumption that all the members of this team will be in complete agreement on all subjects. I've never met any group of more than one person who agreed on all matters of importance. What happens when one team member dares to disagree with the others? Does he get an icepick in the head like Trotsky?

The Frying Nun?

One way to make the power cheaper would be with a skill roll plus side effect. Maybe 2 1/2 or 3d6 killing attack. Blow the roll and Ash (aka Bruce Campbell) shows up, says "Swallow this!" and shoots you with his shotgun.