Hasbro does Stranger Things merchandise, but they could also charge the show for using their trademarked stuff like Vecna. There is some sort of contractual arrangement going on between them, so it seems much more complicated than just product placement.
The player does intend Princess Moonray to be a temporary character for this particular campaign, so final victory coming from giving up the Magical Girl powers and identity is not out of the question. We'll see how the campaign goes.
I Dream of Jeanie and Bewitched in the family tree of Magical Girls? O-kay! Yes, I do know them; watched them growing up.
I don't intend to do a great deal of research for this, but I might look for a Sailor Moon movie or two, or one DVD's worth of episodes at the library. I might look for She-Ra to watch a few eps (probably not a full season, uff da) because IIRC J. Michael Straczinski was the executive producer. That probably makes it better than He-Man, and She-Ra is a girl who's magic (don't know if she's really a Magical Girl, though).
This concept begs for a storyline in which Nocturna &c conquer the world, and all is lost...
...but the hero can fix everything by giving up her powers and just being her ordinary person ID again.
This concept begs for a storyline in which Nocturna &c conquer the world, and all is lost...
...but the hero can fix everything by giving up her powers and just being her ordinary person ID again.
One of my players has a fun idea for a character, but it involves genres I'm really not up on. Specifically, the character's backstory is that when she was a lonely 13-year-old, she imagined a fairly elaborate fantasy world in which she was Princess Moonray, heroine of the magical Moon Kingdom -- sort of an unholy mash-up of Masters of the Universe and Sailor Moon. When she was grown up, she somehow managed to help a supernatural creature that rewarded her by granting the deepest wish of her heart. Not what she wanted right now, but what she had wanted most strongly in all her life: to be Princess Moonray. And so that's her Hero ID.
The thing is, this wish also seems to have created the entire Magical Moon Kingdom, too! Princess Moonray's friends/allies live there, like the magical hummingbird MoonBlossom and the hunky Dorian Silversword. And her arch-enemy Queen Nocturna, ruler of the Dark Side of the Moon.
There's no way I'm leaving this undeveloped. There *must* be visits to the Magical Moon Kingdom, and her friends and enemies must visit Earth to make her life interesting.
Only... I never watched Sailor Moon or any iteration of He-Man and She-Ra. So far, all I know is that Queen Nocturna needs to have a cadre of lieutenants who can implement her evil schemes to conquer the Moon Kingdom. (Or Earth, as they follow Princess Moonray.) Maybe her son, Prince Balthazar Blackheart, who looks suspiciously like Leader Desslok from StarBlazers (but more "bishi'?), and a daughter Princess Shadira, who is totally an Azula expy from Avatar: the Last Airbender. But that's all I got.
I appeal to the wisdom of the Forum. What are the tropes? What powers are standard for someone like Queen Nocturna, and what minions should she have? Are there any must-have locations? Standard story elements?
(At least I already have the character sheet for Princess Moonray. So I know that the way magical attacks work is that she points at her target and shouts, say, "Staggering Moon Strike!" for a Mental Blast or ""Moon Mind Invasion!" for Telepathy. This is, hm, a new magical tradition for me to learn, but I'm not sure I'll ever want to write a new chapter for Ultimate Mystic.)
Well, I went into detail with "mutation syndromes" and super-tech and super soldier serums so a player who wanted to be a mutant could see what kind and levels of powers were appropriate and how scientists and reporters would describe those. Like a hairy beastman would be "retro-volved"
And there was a timeline with a lot of dead supers populating it, both lifted from the golden & silver age and original.
In a sense it's like presenting a menu of half-built powers & special effects.
I had a lot of fun with it, but I also just let players build outside of it, because nothing keeps a new mad science from being invented or mutant syndrome being described.
Dean Shomshak wrote the Cabal of Flamboyant Justice, a Mage the Ascension chantry whose purpose was to perform magic openly by pretending to be superheroes. It was awesome!
Good luck is when it rains soup and you have a truckload of buckets.
It's possible Ryan Dancey had some idea of how wild the ecosystems around the various games would get, but maybe even he didn't.
But seriously... we've asked the Hero Games guys why they never published adventures, and they answered: adventures do not sell. Not to the extent Hero Games would need them to. And -- as I may or may have not said in this thread, again I don't remember and am not really feeling like going back and looking -- while Jason Walters has made it as easy as pie to publish third party products for the HERO System, you still have to ask first, and asking is a barrier, however small that barrier is.
You have excellent points, Hugh, and were I able to log in here on my compuet instead of my phone, I would love to discuss them, but I think the outarge here can be specifically pointed out; the rest is pile-on or tangentially related, but the crux of the outrage comes first from the attempt to backpeddle on a legal agreement. Yes: no company has _any_ interest in _any_ human being, customer, contributor, or even employee-- beyond where the wallet they carry fits into their cost-versus-profit plans lie. (One thing I would like to discuss- but won't, because the phone screen /touchpas interface is the absolute $I:1tt125t means of communication ever devised-- is just how many citizens of a capitalist society in my age group are just now figuring that out, and they are absolutely freaking out).
This is-not to younger folks who watched their parents work three jobs between them and celebrate victories like buying a car under ten years old or completing otherwise-unaffordable home repairs on their own while they simultaneously watched their grandparents retire at 50 and travel the country in tri-colored busses with chandeliers in them after spendinf their lives twaching their kids to believe that it is almost their turn to be rich--
Those younger folks learned early on that the monied people are not to be trusted, while my the largest part of my generation is only on the edge of figuring out that they have been lied to so as to keep them complacent and spending, and that there is no path to great wealth that is all three of legal, ethical, and moral. If you are very lucky, you can hit two, and once you have the money, you onky need to hit one to increase it.
Lots odbthe outrage comes from people who are seeing their first real-world example of real-world business practice. Think of former presidenr Richard Nixon: he was _not_ the first high-level politician to do absolutely despicable things. He was, though the first _to get caught_, and,in a spectacular high-profile manner.
I believe that a lot of the outrage comes from people who just notice that wealth is made imorrally and unethically every day. It hits harder when it comes from a company for whom you have committed the cardinal sin of believing that they give even a single squirrel turd about any human being anywhere when the other choice is making money. We should all know that no company has ever been founded to form tight-knit commmunity bonds. All companies were formed,for the single purpose of making money, and any food or wondrous things that they develop on the way, such as tight-knit community bonds or a Twitter profile of spectacular comebacks and sarcastic patter are _incidental_, having grown from the desire to make money, and ultimately will disappear the moment it stops making them money.
There are people that are horridied that this might go in Wizard's favor. This isnt an old antiquated contract: everyone incolved in the contract is still alive, and still mentally fit, and many have come forward to state that why is going on- the claims that are being made- are blatantly untrue, and what the original intent of the document were is counter to what is being attempted right now. People are concerned that a court might read the language of the contract and state that what it says is something other than its verified intentions, and that scares them, too. We live under contracts of one kind or other our entire lives, from wedding vows to bills of sale to business dealings of our own, and it is scary to the vast majority of us to think that it does not matter what sort of garauntees we believe we have for ourselves-- no mstter what personal investment we made or what protections we carvwd out for ourselves, a courtroom can simply declare "screw you; because of this particular word instead of that one, we have interpreted this to mean that must surrender twice as much as you promised, and are only entitled to one tenth of the agreed compensations.
And frankly, they shouldnt worry. It should be taken as a dorefone conclusion that it _will_ go in Wizard's favor, simply because the entire process turns on money, and Wizards has more of it. Remember that there are people who make their living by redifining intent based on nothing more than word selection, and doing so "legally." These professional pendants are called lawyers, and if you have enough of them, working diligently enough, you can, owing the fact that almost every word in our language has more than one meaning, making it possible to prove that the sentence "I went fishing" means both "I spent time extracting fish from a body of water" to "I spent a considerable amount of time questioning witnesses while takinf great care to include only results that supported my desired outcome" to "I was goofing off near a boat," and it is quite likely that with enough lawyers out there fishing, that in spite of the claims of those involved in the original contract a court will rule that it says something entirely different.
Why would lawyers do this?
Money. Wizarda has lots of it.
Why would a judge allow this?
Money. They need it for their own political campaigns to get relected (in states where they are elected), or for the campaigns of the politicians that install them. Again: Wizards has lots of it.
So do not fear how this will come out; accept that it already has. Still, the vast majority of us do not have money to buy the results we want, and the frustration has to go somewhere, and I expect that it is going into that road of outrage in the tiny, desperate hope that the noise will somehow make a difference, and with this they fight off the terror that it ultimately will do nothing.
Even the piles of lies and nonsense oouring out of Wizards right now isn't what many hope it will be. It is a series of efforts (and they will continue) to create an illusion of concern to lull the complainers back to being consumers. Notice that there were a few days of silence- an ignoring of the problem? There were even momenrs if "so what?!" And really, why not? They already know they will win; it is a matter how much money they are willing to spend to get the outcome they want.
I cant remeber the name of the 80's movie this is from, but a kid from a group of kids is grabbed by the wolfman, and one of his friends yells "kick him in the nards!" The child does so, and is immediately dropped by a groaning wolfman, who then rolled around on the ground, cupping his groin, while the child wide-eyed marvels "wolfman's got _nards_!"
Notice how Wizards did very little damage control until so many people stopped spending money that Wizards got scared enough to go into major damage control?
Why the sudden change? They got kicked in the nards. As a guy who, when much younger, was very physical and athletic in pastimes,ranfing from ream sports to fighting the other drunks, I do not think it is possible for me to ever fully complete a list ofnthings that I would do to avoid being kicked in the nards. Seriously; I cannot with one-hundred-percent certainty that "well, I would _never_ do _X_-!" If the oenalty for not doing it was getting kicked in the nards. When tens of thousands of people are lined up for the world's most brutal game of hackey sack _ever_, I _know_ I cannot draw a line I wont cross.
If corporate personhood is real- heck, even if it _isn't_, the one universal truth is that the dollar is the corporate scrotum, and they will do anything to stop being kicked in it. Hence the damage control and the blatant lies, unceasing since the servers were crashed by thosands of people taking their turn at a (from the outside) very brutal kickball game.
(You didnt think any apology or claims of,accident were sincere, sis you? You didn't fall back into thinking this company gave a single bloody booger about you, did you? You do not matter, not to Wizards, not to Hasbro, not to- and this might hurt- not even to DOJ. Neck, they wont even tell you who they are, because when something goes a way you don't like, they dont want to have to be bothered listening to you and your thoughts. These are all companies, and were all formed for one purpose, and that purpose,is ont your nostalgia, your games, or your fun with friends. They were founded for one purpose, and that is profit. Your personal satisfaction is the monetized bait to start pumping oil from a known reservoir, period. They are a company. They want your scrotum dollars; they need them to keep going on and hopefully making more money.
Lots od people making rhe noise are making it for this reason. For too many, it id the first time they have figured it out, and there is rage, disapointment, and possibly for some truly devoted fanboys, actual humiliation, and the realization that there is nothing that can be done to stop it (unless you commit to kicking those nards _forever_, in a unified front (which we already know wont happen: attention spans are too short, and there are too many who find believing the lies that a company cares about you to be gar more comforting than the truth, and they will have much lower forgiveness points, and eventually the majority of them,will again be happy customers- not today; not tomorrow, but eventually,most will be back, and will even return to evangelizing the company all over again.)
Perhaps some,small portion od the uproar is disappointment in self on behalf of those who are disappointed in what they know of themselves, and are mad at Wizards for making them aware of it.
For me (if any poor sod has waded this far into the pool), it is the extortion. I have spent many evenings here over the years of my membership claiming to and,retelling tales of how being an anti-bully got me into trouble throughout my life, so I dont feel obkiged to do that again. But for me- and I would like to believe for many others, but my own life experience has demonstrated that- at least among my generation, that while being against bullying as a general rule is quite common, being an active anti-bully is nowhere near as common as my idealized version of society would have it to be.
while I have no doubt that the lmoney and the lawyers that money can summon can (and will) make AP of this nice and legal (remember; when you already _have_ the money, you only have to check _one_,box, and for whatever reason, while money cannot make something ethical,or moral, it has almost _zero- trouble making things _legal_. I suspect it is because lawyers are strongly motivated it, but never hwving been one, I cannot say. I have seen that corporate lawyers don't seem horribly concerned about moral, and there is a rsther unique sense of what is ethical, but that is just observation; like many others, I shant live long enough to conduct meaningful research.)
Anyway, I cannot help but look at "surrender your legally-created smstuff any time we want it or we wont let you make more stuff we agreed to let you make" as extortion. I am,certain that a lawyer can explain to me why it isn't, but it is still "give us your stuff or we will force unoleasqnt consequences onto you" _is_ extortion: I cant see it as different from "give us your a jolly Ranchers or we will hit you in the face," which I am pretty sure _is_ extortion. All Wizards is doing is working on spending the money to make this instance of it legal.
The short version:
A core audience of people whose greatest escapism pleasure is getting together with their friends and liberating the oppressed and toppling unjust tyrants and rescuing the townsfolk have just realized that that someone they loved is the bad guy.
It's going to be very ugly, and it saddens me that in the end, it is is going to spend it's way into perfect legality.
Remember kids: business are not,and never will be your friends. You exisit to satisfy human,needs and,desires; they exist because you hwve a dollar that they do not. Anything that seems like goodwill or outreach or friendship from a business is absolutely,_never_ anything more an attempt,to get that dollar deom you. This is how it has always been, and will always be. No business does,anything that isn't one-hundred-percent about getting that dollar, no matter how long-rangedbor tangential it may seem. I am saying this is a fact, period. I am not saying it is evil; I am saying it is thenature of things. Even Piazo (or however you spell,it) isnt offering the ORC lisence out of the goodness of their heart: people will blindly throw goodwill at them for it, and many new dollars will,come,from,that goodwill, swelling their corporate nards to unheard of proportions.
If we could as a planet of human beings, stop forgetring rhat every few minutes, life on earth could,be absolutely amazing.
Something on the order of the original Champions, Hero 5th Sidekick, or the current basic book...
...or, y'know, Fuzion?
(Oh, and you know what would really help? Ditch all those 3pt skills and open-ended skills and just use characteristic rolls. Science Stuff? INT roll. Want to be a great scientist? Levels with science INT rolls plus Reputation: Great Scientist)
HERO's granularity at low levels is a known characteristic, and we put up with it in the name of having a system that can scale from normals to demigods.
Hit locations rarely model the full range of things that can happen with gunfire, but that's mainly because we don't want them to. Didn't we just finish complaining about stun lotto? I've played Danger Int campaigns that lasted two phases using hit locations. That's not going to fly with most game groups. If it were then Living Steel would be a much more popular ruleset.
Hit locations, impairment/disablement, and bleeding is how I like to play, but I'm also aware that this is a much more lethal game mode than most of RPGdom is used to, and even I am used to attenuating that with the existence of magical healing in the campaign.
Opal got a reaction from Lawnmower Boy in Is Hero still your "go-to" rpg system?
Opal got a reaction from Chris Goodwin in Is Hero still your "go-to" rpg system?
Opal got a reaction from IndianaJoe3 in Is Hero still your "go-to" rpg system?
Opal reacted to Steve in Wizards of the Coast Announces One D&D
Opal got a reaction from assault in Tropes for Magical Girls and Masters of the Universe
Opal got a reaction from steriaca in Tropes for Magical Girls and Masters of the Universe
Opal got a reaction from Cloppy Clip in How would you adjudicate attacks damaging the Soul instead of the Body - mods state there is no rule so it has to be a house rule
Opal got a reaction from Duke Bushido in Wizards of the Coast Announces One D&D
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Opal got a reaction from Old Man in Wizards of the Coast Announces One D&D
Opal got a reaction from Scott Ruggels in A Thread For Random RPG Musings
