NestorDRod

Re: Dr. Silverback is up. Dunno. The face doesn't look... gorilla-y enough. He looks more like an escapee from one of the Planet of the Apes sequels.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Our GM considers it a point of honor if, at some point during the game, he can make one of the players turn to him and call him a Rat Bastard. It's a title he wears with pride.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... In our Star Trek game, we start the run en media res in the midst of combat with hostile aliens. Background note: we are equipped with pulse pistols instead of phasers. Hot-shot Pilot: Is my pistol working? GM: Well, it isn't showing you the "sad pulse pistol" image. Scientist (who is not combat-proficient): What do I do? Hot-shot Pilot: Just shoot randomly in that direction! Scientist: Does that really work? GM (as NPC): It seems to be working fine for him! GM (to Klingon PC): You have a target-rich environment. Klingon: I endeavor to impoverish it.

Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread. Or if it's on a Catholic School girl outfit. What?

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... "Look! It's the..." Oh never mind.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Y'know, the problem with a thread this long is that you start being afraid you're repeating yourself, mentioning old game quotes that you've already posted, but don't have the search-fu to track down to see if you have. In our group, we've had the tradition of the Winged Victory of Samothrace. For those who don't recognize the name, it's a statue, similar to the Venus De Milo in that it is missing some parts but is still considered a valuable work of art. The origin of the tradition harks back a an old D&D game, where a combat with orcs was dragging on way too long. Y'know, the old "I hit, he hits, I miss, he hits, I hit, he misses" routine. To try to break the monotony, the player declared, "I try to trick the orc by calling out, 'Look! Kohoutek!'" (And for those who don't recognize that reference, that's 'cause you're young. ). The GM rolled his eyes but decided to allow a saving throw, which the orc made. More senseless combat ensued. Desperate, the player tried again. "Look, it's the Winged Victory of Samothrace!" The GM goggled at that, but after some persuasion (aka whining), he rolled the saving throw again, which the orc disastrously failed. WHAM! Combat over. Years later, I told Susano that story, not realizing what I was unleashing. Sure enough, in a later game, his character, Mr. America, was laid low by an ambush from a VIPER agent. With his hero looking at the barrel of a VIPER blaster inches from his face, Susano looks to me and says, "Mr. America points to the sky behind the agent and calls out," (you guessed it) "'Look! It's the Winged Victory of Samothrace!'" Humoring him, I picked up my dice and rolled. An 18. The agent turns to look behind him with a "WTF?!?" Mr. America socks him for a godawful amount of damage, sending the gullible goon to his well-deserved oblivion. So now you know the power of The Winged Victory of Samothrace. Use it wisely and it may pull your hero from certain doom.

Re: eliminating the SPEED chart OK, found it. It was part of an article I'd written eons ago about cinematic gaming using Hero. The section in question involved speeding up (sorry for the punnage) tracking speed in combat. I've extracted the section into its own doc and attached it. Hope it helps!

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Thanks, bunneh. Just watched that the other day with my wife and I immediately recalled the scene when the topic came up, but I was too embarrassed to mention it.

Re: Humor: Instruction manuals for the Starship Enterprise Meh. No matter how originally funny, the same old jokes get kinda stale after a while.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... I know I've told this one before, but this reminds me too much of a similar scene we had in our campaign, where the GM borrowed liberally from both the DC and Marvel universes. The catch was that aging occurred normally, so Batman was now old and retired, and a young budding engineer had been chosen to put on the mantle (think Batman Beyond down to the power suit and flying Batmobile). The new Batman was a NPC in the game that the group interacted with in his secret ID. The psychic in our group (Seer, played by my wife) was dating him and decided she needed to come clean before things got too serious. Unbeknowest to her, he was thinking the same thing. So, on an evening walk out in the park, Seer says to him, "Before we go any further, there's something I need to tell you." B-boy interrupts, "So do I." He presses a catch on his belt and the Batmobile comes floating down next to them. One of the other players, OOC: "You stole Batman's plane?" It stopped the game for about a minute.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... I'm doing these mostly from memory so hopefully I won't screw them up... We're currently playing a Star Trek game set about 20 years after the end of DS9. The valiant crew has been trapped in a causality loop in the middle of a war with a ultra-xenophobic race who views humans as tasty treats. The reason they are at war is because another race has mind-controlled highly-placed members of Starfleet and are using the Federation as their stalking horse. Business as usual, in other words. The loop triggers yet again and the heroes find ourselves back two weeks from the orginal campaign start but with their memories intact. The fighter pilot immediately reports to his superior that he needs to be reassigned to the next post earlier than planned because he's gone back in time. Me (OOC): Great. Our first order of business will be breaking him out of the psych ward. The fighter pilot then mentions that Starfleet might want to arrest a few admirals. Me (OOC): I stand corrected. The psych ward AND the stockade. Even later, my character, the engineer, tries to recall a vital clue and rolls a critical success. Fighter Pilot: Wow, even I'm impressed. Engineer: Good. I'll expect you in my room at 8 o'clock tonight. Yes, the two characters involved are male, and the engineer is a practicing bisexual.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Another Carlos / Ian interaction. For purposes of the campaign, we've established that Carlos is/was married (investigating her murder is the McGuffin for the game). So the question of how he got hitched comes up: Ian: "She's not a hooker is she?" Carlos: "NO! She's an engineer. She works for the city." Ian: "Sounds like something you'd have to have some smarts for." Carlos: "It is. She's really smart." Ian: "Really? Then how come she married you?" Carlos: "There was a lot of rum involved, I recall that."

Re: What would your sidekick be named? Hmm... An interesting question. Looking at my account name and keeping in my mind a sidekick would serve as mostly the person in charge of taking care of stuff for me, I suppose a good name would be NestorDStaff, but that has as many troublesome implications as Karma's naming choice.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... A few of us are getting together to do a street-level action PBeM game. My buddy and I are playing Carlos and Ian, adopted brothers; Carlos is Latino, Ian is Irish. We weren't letting a simple fact as the game not having started stop us from doing some roleplaying. On the fact that Carlos and Ian are family... Ian: "We are brothers." Carlos: "Can't you see the family resemblance?" Ian: "I have our mother's teeth." Carlos: "In a jar!" Ian: "I still have them." We discussed the potential to have to feed the fishes with any uncooperative informants. The GM warned us that the campaign city was landlocked. That didn't stop our intrepid brothers... Carlos: "Roadtrip?" Ian: "Roadtrip." Carlos: "Hey, you in there! Buckle up, we're going for a ride!"

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Not by me. Worthy of rep but "must spread yadda yadda".

Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread. Damn, I just got this image of a large anthropomorphic mammoth wearing a polka-dot dress and apron, wielding a large rolling pin and yelling, "You get in the house this instant, young man! Just wait 'til your father gets home!" Must be Monday.

Re: Shadow Angelus If I may interject... Maybe you're overthinking this. It's sort of how you don't question the technological advances in K5 even though we're only talking about 20-30 years into the future. They're there because the genre expects them to be there. Provide a passable explanation for it to happen then move on. Spend too much time looking behind the curtain and the whole illusion falls apart.

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool There were two elements unique to Champions that sold me to the game when it first came out (the fact that it was a point-buy system did appeal to me, but it was not unique to the system): The Speed Chart - All that can be said about this concept has been said already. To this day, I have not seen a more elegant way of handling the ability for some characters to do more things than others during a turn in combat. Separating BODY and STUN - I can knock somebody out without automatically killing them? Sign me up. The symmetry of the bell curve was not immediately apparent, but as soon as I recognized its beauty, it became another selling point for me. The times I have been forced to go back to some flat percentile system (such as the dreaded d20) I have cursed its ability to give high or low rolls as often as average ones. The other elements mentioned are icing on the cake, but those two (three) are on the top of my list.

Re: Book or PDF I heard a rumor that Hero Games is planning to pul all their PDFs off the market and make it a requirement for purchasing one to sign a contract swearing eternal loyalty and obedience to Steve "I am the Dragon" Long. It's just a rumor, though...

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... SPITTAKE! Oh great. Now I have to go clean my monitor. Beauty, sir. I so have to steal that for a game.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Nice. Really nice. "Somebody hand Strake a napkin to wipe the blood off his nose. That boy's just been b**ch-slapped."

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Because sometimes R&D gives you nuclear weapons. I repeat... OK, small quote: Our group is playing a Star Trek game using modified M&M rules. GM: OK, make a Pilot roll to keep the ship from entering atmosphere. Player: I rolled a 2. My wife (OOC): He said make it. OK, they can't all be gems. It was funny when it happened.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Great. So why would I want to play in something that's just like my everyday world?

Re: Shadow Angelus Actually, that became a running thing in the campaign. My original perception of the campaign's name was "Shadows of Angelus" but it got shortened to "Shadows Angelus" or just "SA" as we went on. Hey, maybe you could show the players the trailer. My original version used fonts and color to enhance the look. I'll see if I can find the document in my archives.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Ok, this one was not witnessed by me, but was told to me afterwards, so my apologies if I don't carry it off right. A GM was planning to get a Forgotten Realms campaign going and, out of curiosity, tried to work out the planetary physiscs that would allow a world that large to exist. His conclusion? The core of the world was made of marshmallow fluff. This became his warning to the players when he started the game. "Just keep in mind as you play, the core of the world is made of marshmallow fluff, and you'll be fine." At one point, rumors began to spread that the Drow in the Underdark were amassing to attack the surface world. In response, a number of the nations formed a coalition and gathered an army of exiled Drow to make a preemptive strike. Someone finally wondered how they could get so many exiled Drow and sent the PCs in an expedition to the Underdark to find out. There, the PCs found one single Drow, dutifully turning the lights on and off to make everyone believe the Drow were still there. They later discovered the whole thing had been a hoax perpetrated by the Kobolds to push up arms sales. Remember, the core of the world is made of marshmallow fluff.