BlackSword

Re: Range Combat: Gun Fu & rule changes There was discussion on autofire rules for burst in the Hero Rules Discussion section a month or so ago. My suggestion was as follows, for every shot sacrificed you can get a bonus to hit. So for a 3-round burst, you can sacrifice a single shot and get say +1 OCV, so your chances to hit change from 0, -2, -4, to +1, -1. You would still expend 3 rounds for the burst.

Re: Your Dark Champions Campaigns I am thinking about throwing together a one shot (which may lead further). Six people from a special ops groups have since split up and gone their separate ways. Now a series of events has caused them to get together and solve the mystery. Various events in life have changed them, some have caused resentment between various members. Putting aside their differences and dusting off their skills they have to come together and find out who or what has forced them back together. Currently working on the backgrounds and will probably post the characters for input if/when I get the chance to work on it. Being a one shot I will put together the chars for the group.

Re: Codename: Kids Next Door True, but how many kids would get the God-Emporer of Dune reference in one of the eps?

Re: Campaigns that you miss... Its not so much a campaign I miss, as a campaign idea. It only lasted one session, but the game was more the brighter 4-color feel. Unforuntaly some difficulties caused the game to go under and we started another campaign with a much darker feel. I don't really like the current campaign, but stick with it because I enjoy the group. I'll see how the campaign shapes up and if it still doesn't capture my interest then maybe push for a switch to a more 4-color campaign. Another person in the group has been catching up on JSA trades and getting some inspiration from there so perhaps we can get into that a bit more.

Re: The cranky thread Yeah, and I just had a 26* hour trip coming back east. *26 hours of flight and layover time, only 20 hours actually on the plane.

Re: The cranky thread I hate jet lag.

Re: DARK CHAMPIONS: What Do *You* Want To See? A few comments from thoughts developed by previous posts. One relates to the gun thread; I agree with the opinion that not too many guns are needed. Mainly differences in rounds with a few gun examples. The differences between a .45 and a 9mm are going to be greater then the differences between a Beratta M9 and a Glock 17. A good section on the various shotgun rounds. Anything from flechettes, birdshot, buckshot, beanbags etc. What differences in penetration, damage, and area effect each round may have, and what the effect of adding a choke to the barrel can do, shortening the barrel, etc. As mentioned before a good discussion on the differences between realistic and cinematic. For example in cinematic almost all heroes will have PSLs vs range with pistols. A cinematic hero can shoot a villain 100 ft away with a derringer, something most realistic heroes would even try. Definitaly lots on conspiracies and various corporations. Maybe discussion on groups that do work similar to the the Company from the Pretender TV series. The title doesn't bother me, but shortening to DC is going to require me to rewire my brain or continue to wonder why there is an entire thread on DC, but not on Marvel.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings Heading out for a biz trip, back in 10 days.

Re: A troubling Ambrethel issue. Got it! A surprising discovery yesterday. Since I have a comic pull and hold, they never call me to tell me when my special orders come in (they know I will be in to pick up my comics). So yesterday I ask them for my pull and hold and out comes a nice selection of DCs finest as well as the tome. Woohoo. I haven't had the chance to look through it yet, but I have a trip this week and I am taking it with me to read on the plane and while stuck in the hotel room. The cover looks great.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings Yesterday evening I was in the comic shop picking up this week's batch and (gasp) the store had gotten my copy of Turakian Age within a week of ordering it (as opposed to the usual month long wait). The guy working the counter gets annoyed at the talk radio currently on and switches channels. As I am checking out, the DJ says something to the effect, "we're here talking with Joe Satriani..." By ears perk up. I finish paying, get to my car and turn on the radio, sure enough, they are intervieiwing Satch about his latest amp and album. He plays four songs live on air (the sound was just incredible, Always With You, Always With Me is unbelievable when he plays it live). And they announce he will be at a music store meeting fans and signing autographs. Of all the days. I have at trip today, so last night was spent cleaning out my house and packing so I couldn't make it over to get an album or four signed. The good news is, it sounded like he is planning a tour this fall with Deep Purple. And the guitarist for Deep Purple will be Steve Morse. Hope the tour comes to St. Louis.

Re: Block Maneuver Silliness... Yes! Kill Bill vol 2 has an excellent bad block, they hit their swords edge to edge, just ruined two swords. Lord Liaden has it pretty well and lemming provided a good real life reason. Think of the difference as what is the goal(in Hero-speak, what is the effect) of this manuvuer. A block could be physically interacting with a manuever in order to put your opponent off balance. Either physically stopping a punch to leave an opponents midsection open. Moving under a round kick to get behind the oponent. The goal of a block is to get a tactical advantage. A dodge would be stepping slightly back so the PC is out of range or otherwise concentrating on defending. Wildly flailing so that the person doesn't know where to hit you increases your defense but does not improve your ability to hit the opponent. The goal of a dodge is to maximize your defense.

Re: Your Gaming Group's Jargon "Take it like a man" - Deciding not to abort to a defensive action so you can attack next round.

Re: GMs, which character concepts did not make the cut in your game? And even not so direct, but still shameless ripoffs. My problem with this isn't the lack of imagination its last half of your quote and the inevitable, "but so-and-so does it in his comic." Yeah, well welcome to a role-playing game. Comics don't necessarily translate to roleplaying. The difference between know what the plot is and how the hero will achieve as opposed to being the hero and trying to achieve the goal are two completely different approaches to telling a story. The next time the char tries to beat a confession out of someone, that someone is gonna mutate on him into a 1000 pt supervillain, and he's gonna be pissed.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings An incident at work just reminded me of Sunday. I was out getting groceries and walked past two teens shopping as well. One of them had a tank top on with the arm holes cut so low that it was barely shirt. The kid also had the waist of his pants low enough to advertise his underwear. I almost wanted to ask him if Hanes was paying him Michael Jordan bucks to advertise for them. If not then pull up your damn pants. On a related note. Where I went to college there was a small bookstore that sold all fantasy/sf novels and the lady that ran the store also ordered comics for us fanboys. Some kid walked in with his pants hanging down. She said in no uncertain terms, "Pull up your pants or get out and don't come back til you learn how to dress yourself." She was a neat lady.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings I have completed my registration for GenCon Indy. Now I just have to wait a little more than three months for the games to begin. Even though I tried to try other games systems I found that most of the games I registered were Hero system. Oh well, can't fault a guy for going with the best. Actually some of the games for Hero look pretty spiffy, and many of the other systems I was going to try were already sold out. So four Hero, one tri-stat and one unisystem (Buffy). Come along way since playing mostly TSR and White Wolf.

Re: Ninja Hero Review At ENWorld Noooooooooooo! Well, a few errors but overall it was a pretty good review. Glad to see the products getting exposure on multiple game sites.

Re: Autofire for OCV bonuses I see autofire as working the exact opposite. Your OCV is modified 0, -2, -4. If you miss one, you miss all the others. You take the chance to hit more times, not increase your chance to hit (unless you take PSLs or Autofire skills). I could see shifting it to the left. On autofire 3, you could get +2, 0, but pay END for 3 shots. Or do it as an Autofire skill. You sacrifice one or more autofire shots (and spend END or charges) to get +2 OCV (or +1 if don't want it to be too large a bonus) for each sacrificed shot. So you reduce the number of times you can hit, but increase the chance of hitting.

Re: Ambrethel Map in Free Stuff Very nice. Some people have pics of children on their work computer backgrounds, some have movies, I have a map of Ambrethel.

Re: Evil Businessmen. Larry Ellison (Oracle). He puts a lot of money into researching life lenghtening drugs and such IRL. In a fiction world he may decide to find other ways to lenghten his life.

Re: Glad to be back ... Reading Haerandir's post got me thinking, I don't know if you need Sniper Blast at all. Hero allows your character to 'set' or take an extra phase to get ready to shoot at range with a bonus to hit. I think this would model the the Sniper shot in taking a few extra seconds to get better aim with your main attack. Or even buy a couple of Penalty Skill Levels against range with a time limitation (if you can take an extra time limitation on PSLs).

Re: Classes in Star Hero I would base it off of Bob Greenwade's list: Pilot Doctor Soldier (security) Engineer/Tech/Scienctist (they will all be slightly different but fall close to fit in one broad category) Diplomat Specialist (Other that doesn't fit into a category) I was tempted to add Command, but figure a command figure will be one of the other archetypes with a more diverse skill set. If you want to add another archetype, I would break out the Tech similar to the Fringer found in Star Wars d20. edit More thoughts on the Fringer. A common archetype in SF (not necessarily Star Trek) is the Jack of all Trades. Almost the anti-specialist. The lone-wolf grizzled explorer that has seen and done everything. Can fix a warp drive with a cast iron skillet, duct tape, chewing gum and a liberal amount of string.

Re: Classes in Star Hero Might want to throw solider in as well. Someone used to armored combat as opposed to security specialist. May have to pull out some D20 sf books and see their suggestions for classes. Though I agree with Bob Greenwade, mainly archetypes as opposed to specific classes.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings Read an article for the coolest thread this century, unfortunataly the article is on Chicago Tribune which requires (free) subscription, and I know quite a few people like to avoid subscriptions. Anyhow, given the chance, search for Walrus airship. The military is looking at a possible 500 ton lift capability airship. Pulp come to life with this huge zeppelin. If the Department of Defense builds this I may have to join a service just to capatin this huge thing. Just hope they will make the uniforms with the pulp fiction look in mind.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings I would like to thank MS for provided an integrated office suite. It has made my work much easier in the fact that it means I have to do everything twice, therefore by the second (or third, or forth...) time I have to type something I can type it much quicker. Yes, MS, thank you for your functionality. I never want to take something from a Word document and put it into a presentation describing the outline of that document. I never want to move data from an Excel spreadsheet into a document. I want to retype it everytime I want the data in a new document. Thank you for making an office suite that is so integrated. (Yes, I am trying to do work and I am very frustrated that I now get to retype an entire table because MS will not cut and paste from Word to PP, Hulk mad, Hulk smash)

Re: Looking For Resources: Urban Caverns Chicago has some abadoned freight tunnels. http://www.ameritech.net/users/scalemodel/tunnel6.html I believe this site also has some pictures of the tunnels.