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.

Skip is the bomb!

The bard looks pretty good, but kind of understated.

 

(Skip "sings" in a telepathic barber shop quartet known as "My Tentacle Romance.")

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?

The pink cat sounds like Choo Choo from something positive. The best moment in the strip is when he hired a hitman to take out another cat trying to kill Davan.

CES

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...

Just as long as you don't make like Sandman and have a serial killers convention....

(They Laughed At Me At The...)

I think I made Bala rupture something when I dropped this on him.

Re: Transgendered Superperson

I rolled randomly for all of it.

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

Vaguely possible scenario: lawsuits over using superhumans in bra advertising. Implying' date=' or outright stating, that its your brand of bras that keep her 'assets' up and in place, when they actually stay in place just as well wearing nothing at all? It'd be like using somebody with gastric bypass to promote an exercise center.[/quote']

One of my characters had a massive 'radiation accident' that changed his gender and gave the newly-female character an insanely busty physique. (How busty? When I had the chance, I had a picture of her drawn by Fred Perry.)

 

Said character, a gadgeteer, was asked what the first thing she built after the accident was.

 

"I'm currently going through the patent process of gravitation-reducing bras," she said.

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.

Re: How Do I Build It Question

That's not true. Lots of things stop the Juggernaut. X-Force stopped the Juggernaut, X-Men stop the Juggernaut. Spider-Man stopped the Juggernaut!

 

TWICE!

But they got him to cease his forward movement first.

That's key.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

I APPROVE OF THAT PUN!

But then, I'm a paranomasiac.

Re: WWYCD: Once bitten . . .

Confessions is good. Astro City is good. Read more Astro City.

Now, to the question.

Msgr. Jean-Claude des Champs is hard for vampires to look at straight on. If this did happen, he'd consult with the Brothers of St. Ignatius the Defender (the monster hunters) and follow their lead, which probably would be that they'll finish him off properly.

Eiko Takashima, the Gadget Queen, would proceed to set up the microcloner to make blood, then start doing tests. Eventually, it would probably undo it self, as it's a genetic change and her body resists those and reverts back to the 'current' state.

Outback (the wandering Australian mage) would go talk to a contact of his, a vampire who's a deputy sheriff of a town in Iowa... and has been for one hundred fifteen years. Everyone in town knows, and they dont mind having a deputy sherriff who's super-strong, can fly his patrols, and doesn't have to worry about bullets. Outback saved him from a wandering loonie a few years ago, and if he needed help dealing, and his powers couldn't purge it from him, he's got someone to talk to.

Steel Thunder would kill herself. It would mean she would fail her honor to be a vampire, because a vampire cannot bear a child to carry on the family name.

The Night... would arrange for herself to be declared dead, practice until she had control of the vampiric abilities, and add them to her crimefighting techniques. She'd also have to use her grandmother's old-money-and-people contacts to get the blood she needed, because she's got a 20 point CVK.

Re: 'Divine' Characters

I have a vice-versa character - an archer who secretly worships Artemis.

It has to be secret - about fifteen years ago, beings claiming to be incarnations of Ares and Gaia went to war. causing massive damage to New York City and creating an island off the US Coast. That island, now called Druidia, is just far enough out to be in international waters and is its own nation, a nation which has been known to sponsor eco-terrorists. As a result of this, the modern paganism revival has taken an immense blow in the press and is looked down on, to the point that in that world, paganism can lose you your job.

(I pointed the fact of the Ares/Gaia battle and the Druidia sponsoring of eco-terrorists to the GM and he admitted that yes, that would be bad. As I'm the pagan in the group, I was actually screwing myself over more...)

So in that world, you might give thanks or worship, but you'd do it quietly and privately.

Re: Gun multipower?

Buy the two slots with the same number of charges and a -0 limitation of 'charges the same pool for slots 1 and 2'. That's a perfectly acceptable construct, simple and clean, and give you the effect you need.

Re: Susano's Song-Based DC NPCs

....do you want me to try? I once wrote a song parody that annoyed a lot of White Wolf players using a Village People song. I think I could do the Village People as a superteam with a few really not-good ideas...

Re: WWYCD "super" registration

We had this in Balabanto's campaign.

One of my PCs, the martial artist Steel Thunder, informed her team that all such acts should be considered illegal under the constitution, and then told them about her great-uncle, who moved to the United States in 1935... and died in an internment camp. The team went on the run, trying to track down who was behind it.

Outback, the Aussie sorcerer, was doing an illegal walkabout in middle America at the time (illegal because he had no legal right to be in the US at the time), and ignored it, as he was dealing with what it means to be a wandering sorcerer with 15 points of Physical Limitation: Weirdness Magnet.

Gomi-no-Sensei was quietly bringing economic factors to bear when it all reached a head.

Warpage, who has powers because of a super-fight gone wrong, shrugged and kept on going on with his schooling. His argument was that he had to register for the draft at 18 like everybody else, so they could use that. Not like someone who's twelve feet tall, has cybernetic implants as a voluntary nervous system, and is deep blue can't be found easily...

Monsegneur Jean-Claude des Champes is a French citizen, and an envoy for His Eminence, The Bishop Of Rome, The Holy Pontiff, to the religious superhumans of the world. Please, sir, to ask me what this means to me?

Re: Susano's Song-Based DC NPCs

Hopefully this will work....

Mariel Torres "Sister Havana"

Val  	Char   	Cost
15  	STR	5
18  	DEX	24
13  	CON	6
10  	BODY	0
13  	INT	3
10  	EGO	0
15  	PRE	5
16  	COM	3
3  	PD	0
3  	ED	0
3  	SPD	2
12  	REC	0
26  	END	0
25  	STUN	0

6"  	RUN	 0
4"  	SWIM	2
4"  	LEAP	1
Characteristics Cost: 59

Cost  	Power	END
8       "You Got To Roll": +4" Running
7  	"There's No Time To Lose": +6 REC (12 Active Points); 4 Boostable Charges (-3/4) 	
Powers Cost: 7

Cost  	Martial Arts Maneuver
1  	Weapon Element: Knives 
4  	Choke: 1/2 Phase, -2 OCV, +0 DCV, Grab One Limb; 2d6 NND 
4  	Escape: 1/2 Phase, +0 OCV, +0 DCV, 30 STR vs. Grabs 
4  	Karate "Chop": 1/2 Phase, -2 OCV, +0 DCV, HKA 1d6 +1 
Martial Arts Cost: 13

Cost  	Skill
8  	+1 with All Combat 
5  	Demolitions 13- 
4  	TF: Common Motorized Ground Vehicles, Agricultural & Construction Vehicles, 
       Small Motorized Boats 
6  	Language: Spanish (imitate dialects; literate) 
3  	KS: The Espionage World 12- 
3  	KS: The Military/Mercenary/Terrorist World 12- 
3  	Stealth 13- 
3  	Streetwise 12- ("Don't you want to, want to get along?")
4  	WF: Small Arms, Blades, Garrote 
3  	Breakfall 13- 
5  	Seduction 13-  ("Come around to my way of thinking") 
5  	Persuasion 13-  ("Come around to my way of thinking")
3  	SS: Pharmacology/Toxicology 12- 
Skills Cost: 55

Cost  	Perk
1  	False Identity 
15  	Contact: "The Bay Of Pigs Society" (Contact has access to major institutions, 
       Contact has significant Contacts of his own, Contact has very useful Skills 
       or resources), Organization Contact (x3) (15 Active Points) 8- 
Perks Cost: 16 Total Character Cost: 150

Val  	Disadvantages
15  	Hunted: Cuban Police 11- (Mo Pow, Limited Geographical Area, Harshly Punish) 
15  	Psychological Limitation: Must carry on family duty to kill Castro and free Cuba 
       (Common, Strong) 
10  	Psychological Limitation: Willing to kill anyone who even seems
        to support Castro, in US or Cuba (Uncommon, Strong) 
10  	Social Limitation: Subject to Orders: Anti-Castro organization
        she works for (Occasionally, Major) 
10  	Dependent NPC: Esteban Torres, interfering grandfather 14- (Slightly 
       Less Powerful than the PC; Useful Noncombat Position or Skills) 
10  	Reputation: Crazy Anti-Castro Girl, 11- (Extreme, Limited area: Miami, FL)
5  	Enraged: People talk about how great Fidel Castro is in her presence. 
       (Uncommon), go 8-, recover 14- 
Disadvantage Points: 75 Base Points: 75 Experience Required: 0 Total Experience Available: 0 Experience Unspent: 0

Mariel Torres is the granddaughter of a minor official of the Batista regime that 
Castro overthrew.  Many of them, after the revolution, settled in Miami, 
passing down their anger to their children.  Mariel is one of the less-lucky ones.

Her parents were killed when she was young, and her grandfather became her guardian.
Seeing her clear eyes, ready smile, and excellent physical condition, he worked
with a group of associates who called themselves 'the Bay of Pigs Society' 
(remembering always how the Americans failed to help them!) to train her to 
take down Fidel Castro.  Giving her the codename of 'Sister Havana', they set up 
an identity for her with local anti-Castro rebels in Cuba.

She has no sympathy nor desire for same for anyone who supports the government 
of Fidel Castro.  Unfortunately, her idea of 'support' is more akin to 'does not adequately 
protest', and she's been raised to think that any support of Castro is evil, so sometimes 
she gets a little out of control...

She usually has equipment of some kind - drugs, weapons, et cetera, but as she was 
being built as a 'talented normal', and the gear should be tailored to her situation, I left 
it off so that the GM using can fit to need.

Inspired by the song 'Sister Havana' by the band Urge Overkill.

Re: Susano's Song-Based DC NPCs

I'm currently working on a Miami-born girl being trained to do the job her grandfather failed years ago.

Yeah. You got to go, Sister Havana.

Re: Highlander theme

In truth there was a game made along the concept of Highlander Legacy: war of the ages. I actually have a copy' date=' i bought rescued from the discount bit, squirreled away somewhere.[/quote']

 

I remember when that came out, even if my copy of it has vanished. It was originally supposed to be 'Highlander: The RPG', but then the company raised the cost of the license and the people told them to go hang.