Mephron

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... From Balabanto's game. We're fighting guys who are wearing frog masks. Plastron (the brick) knocks one out, then looks at where a group of them are standing, trying to get some kind of device to work. Plastron's player: "I think I should charge them." Me: "No, throw the guy you just knocked out at them!" Plastron's player, warily, knowing my reputation: paranomasiac (14-): "Why?" Me: "This is the only time you'll get to throw a frog-man-tation grenade!"

Re: Cassandra's Corner Then I find myself asking: what do you consider 'co-operative storytelling' in this context? The GM gives you things to work through, be it a fight with a supervillian, an investigation, or 'crap my powers did something unexpected, what now'. You now have something to do to resolve it. Sometimes you don't get to choose what gets handed to you, which would seem to be your interpretation of "GM'S Word Is LAW!". And frankly, any good GM would take a 'I'm not comfortable with how this is going' and work out a solution - but then, just saying 'this never happened' from that side of the screen is also 'GM'S Word Is Law', yes?

Re: Cassandra's Corner Full disclosure: I am a former player in Balabanto's campaign and had a character get a huge change in a situation totally out of either my control or the character's. I rolled with it and it really revitalized the character. He consulted with me on the current issue being discussed, and in my opinion, since it was PC action that caused it, it needs to be PC action to resolve it. (character using an attack rolls an 18 and blows open a mutagen container that sprays a bunch of people instead of kicking an NPC? When the PCs did not take reasonable recon actions like 'hey, what do those containers say"? The PCs kind of brought it on themselves.) (I did not leave his games because of any disagreement with him; I left because I moved across the country, in case that was a question.) But I think my original idea stands: when you put yourself into a campaign, you have a certain amount of control of the character given up, some to the GM and some to the dice. In return, you get an unpredictable play environment where things can happen. That's the nature of the games, in general. You also need to have trust that the GM will not deliberately screw you over so badly you want to cry or hit someone (so never play with John Wick, for example) and that there is a resolution to your challenge if you think it through and work for it. If that trust is violated, you have the right to walk away.

Re: Cassandra's Corner Just my two cents: "beating the villians" and "oh god I've got six arms what do I do" are both character challenges, just expressed differently. The issue should be 'how does the player deal with the challenge dealt him'?

Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread. I just had to wipe water off my monitor, dammit.

Re: Who is an Empyrean? Fate can do strange things when It's in a whimsical mood. For example, toss an Empyrian into a cave in Tibet with a young man. The Empyrian, in the blizzard, a mile up, would be hard-pressed to survive. The young man? He has no chance at all. He spends his time, as he freezes and dies, ranting at the world, the injustice. The injustice he'd come to Tibet to learn the skills he would need to fight it. As the young man dies, the delirious Empyrian finds himself with a psychic flash, the rage of the young man at the dying of the light overwhelming him. His own personality submerges within the mind of this unlucky young man. And thus, when he comes down from the mountains, this Empyrian, when asked who he is, answers: "Bruce Wayne." (Tell me it doesn't make sense with how they've amped Batman over the years that he could be an amnesiac Empyrian who uses all his abilities subconciously to do what he does.)

Re: The best Superpet? It was inspired by Choo Choo Bear, yes. We converted from 4th to 5th. My character had lots of points left over, and I wasn't allowed to boost the VPP or the number of sciences. so I built the cat as a follower. Uses the basic housecat from Hero System Bestiary, with some desolid (cannot pass through totally solid objects) and some damage reduction and an INT of 13. It does have the One True Cat Psych Lim, though: "Believes it rules the world".

Re: Waking up with not-so-super powers many years ago I was in a game of people with relatively useless mutant powers in the Marvel universe. I was Mallcrawler, who had the power to be intangible.... but only if within twenty feet of ten or more people.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... No, it's going to be, on the surface, a reunion for graduates of Tlamat Acadamy. (They Laughed At Me At The...) I think I made Bala rupture something when I dropped this on him.

Re: Transgendered Superperson You didn't need to roll randomly for the bust size, with a 3 being an A cup and going up from there. Worst roll of a 14 ever.

Re: Balancing Mental Powers I was in one of Balabanto's combats - the one mentioned with lots of mental illusions and mind control. The problem is that the villian mentalist controlled my character with a VERY good control condition: 'attack the person who looks like x'. Admittedly, once the other PCs realized that, they hit me with a mental illusion to swap the appearances of the target and the mentalist. (Yeah. My PC was hit by mental effect by BOTH sides. Sad, isn't it, when your friends do that to you...)

Re: Superhuman women and normal women

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... From our Rifts game, run by Balabanto: My character, the cheerfully batshitinsane dragon juicer Mindy (for those that don't know Rifts, a juicer uses immense amounts of superdrugs to boost their physical abilities past human max to ridiculous; Mindy's version also has dragon blood mixed in, which just makes it worse) is standing behind a barrier. A bunch of guys with brain implants that boost their abilities (and drive them crazy) are charging into town. Mindy has shown to be a huge fan of pre-Rifts rock music. She also has a chainsaw that can cut through tanks. When it comes her time to enter the fray, when most of them have gone past and she can attack from behind, she does so singing: "Ever since I was a young girl I heard the weapons call From Chi-town down to Kingsdale I must have learned them all But there's one kind of weapon I love above them all This dragon-juicer chick Sure wields a mean chainsaw!" ...death was painful, bloody, spurty and Mindy was laughing and singing the whole time. "In a game that tends to be run as grim, gritty, and relentless, Mindy's cheerful lunacy is a bright spot." "....of blood on a whitewashed wall."

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... In Balabanton's Champions game, are fighting frog-men from Toorg (really genetically-modified people). Mesa, our team brick, is trying to decide what to do. Me (OOC): "grab one and throw him at the others!" Mesa (OOC): "Why?" Me (OOC): "This may be the only time in your life you can throw a frogmentation grenade!"

This is the original idea as it popped into my head, being in a Gestalt game, but I'm sure evil GMs everywhere can figure out a way to have it work. The Blood Red King (gestalt of Suffering) has decided that he needs something big. Most Gestalts, except his own chains, pretty much refuse to have anything to do with him. But that's OK... he can make his own chains. He has minons capture Armageddo (Gestalt of Stereotype Villians) and unleashes his transformation powers! And something goes terribly wrong. Armageddo escapes unharmed; the Blood Red King is... still the Blood Red King, but with Armageddo's mindset. Flashforwards to Christmas, and every hero team sees, on television, the Blood Red King on (say) The Tonight Show, singing... "Up on the rooftop reindeer pause Bringing good old Santa Clause And in the chimney, tick tick tick A nasty bomb for old Saint Nick! Ho ho ho! Up he'll go! Ho ho ho! My bomb will blow! If you haven't guessed I'll make it quick: I'm going to murder Old Saint Nick!" Now the heroes need to figure out where the bomb is before some poor family dies... and if, in your world, Santa exists, Santa dies too! This wouldn't EVER be a Foxbat plot, but it might be a Black Harlequin plot in the mainline CU.