BlackSword

In the comics Martian Manhunter and Darkseid had a history as well. I doubt they will bring that into the cartoon as Darkseid is more of a Superman adversary. The entire fight between Superman and Darkseid in Legacy was great. Apokalypse Now was also one of my favorite Superman episodes, especially Dan Turpin throwing a rock at Darkseid. Definitaly looking forward to a new Justice League cartoon. Too bad the wait for anymore episodes will be until October.

I still haven't heard from my FLGS on the copy I ordered from them . I am looking forward to going through it though once it does arrive.

I voted for Dr Destroyer. I think the team-up option is due to the Reality Storm cross-over. The SAS press release had:

I was thinking about a GI Joe game recently as well. With the Viper source book coming out that would have plenty of ideas for an international organization. The Secret(Battle?) Files for the current comic series had a pretty good break down of the main characters and the command structure. Just don't let anyone play Snakeeyes. "Snake-eyes sneak into the base and unlock the door from the inside, then we'll come in a attack anyone we need to." 12 second later the door opens. "Hey, why is everyone unconcious or dead already?"

I was going to suggest the Dorsai series as well, but my computer at work dislikes posting (perhaps work dislikes me posting, hmm). I enjoyed the series. One of the other good books in the series is _Soldier, Ask Not_ as instead of dealing with a planet that exports well trained military experts, another planet ships out fanatics willing to die. More foot-soldiers as opposed to the military command or commando experience of the Dorsai.

Since it had been a while since the last game, we decided to do a quick pick up game that only two of us and the GM could make. It was a Jadeclaw game and my character was trying to learn one of the secret schools of martial arts. We found a master and he sent us to deal with someone who was bothering him. The person bothering the master was one of the more powerful and supposedly evil races. After some roleplay discussion me and the other player had a little pow-wow. "should we attack him?" "I don't know, he's supposed to be evil" "hmm, he doesn't seem evil, but we are supposed to 'deal' with him." "Paper, rock scissors to decide?" "Right, on three." "Okay, you won so we attack him." We turn to the GM, "We're ready." "You decided by paper rock scissors?!?!" "Yeah" "Okay, he throws his sword at you."

I read his book _Primal Shadows_ based in Papua New Guinea. It was a bit of a slow start, but once it going it was fairly interesting. He did several novelizations of moves in the 80's. I am pretty sure about the Last Star Fighter and I think the also did Krull, and maybe a few of the other genre movies of that period.

A year or two ago Cartoon Network had a series of pilot shows on and the viewers choose the next cartoon they would produce. The end product was they choose the Grim&Evil show. One of the cartoons though was about a superhero organization, and one of the heroes was the old guy from the previous age, he was pretty much a superman clone, except at age 70 or so. Needless to say the end of the show was this old guy going down and showing the young pups how to do it. It was a fairly humourous concept, but I don't know how well it would fit in the Champions Universe if you knew that if you lost some powerful older superhero would swoop in and save the day. Depending on the genre an elder powerful superhero who has retired to a life of politics, debating, activism, philantropy, etc, can act as a way to ease people's minds to metahumans. On the other hand, Superman has done several things (the robots in the comics, and Legacy in the animated series) to hurt people's trust in him and hence problaby the superhero community in general.

To second Trebuchet's comment, dealing with phases is 'in combat time' so the only concern is if you have to change while engaged in combat. At all other times its role-playing and maybe a dice roll or two for pressured situations. If you go garment by garment, then a failure could be taking a little more time, a success means you managed to dress yourself, a critical success means you saved some time and critical failure means your shirt is on backwards. Otherwise you can find a Society of Creative Anachronisms(or your favorite medieval recreation society) friend and borrow a doublet for them. When they say they change in 6 seconds throw them the clothes and say, "go for it." For Power Armor, Iron Man is able to press a button and leap off a building and the armor assembles itself around him in a short enough time he doesn't become street pizza. In the previous post I was thinking more of sci fi armor/power armor which may not be self assembling around a person, just an updated titanium carbon composite update to medieval armor.

In the D&D players guide there is a chart for how long it takes to change into different armors depending on the complexity of the armor. I am sure it would be the same for power armor, or whatever being used in a scifi game. But donning armor is also different then changing clothes. Worrying about changing clothes is Champions issue since it is the one that deals most with secret identities. If it does become an issue in another genre(a thief quickly changing from black rogue type garments to a fancy noble's tunic) then it would be based upon speed and dex I am sure. But we've seen this done in superspy movie "True Lies" when at the beginning Arnie changes from a wetsuit (actually apparently a dry suit) to a full tux.

I was thinking of this recently too. Like posted before, its more of a convention for changing into a uniform which presumably is beneath one's clothes (how many times have you seen Clark Kent or Bruce Wayne not wearing a white undershit, but something more practical). I don't believe its meant to reflect changing from a three piece suit down to skivvies and putting and then putting on form fitting spandex. It really would be unheroic to watch someone dancing around on one foot trying to get their slacks over their shoes, but that is why they have Dex checks in game.

The chinese weapon is the kwan do, though a quick search also called something similar a chinese two handed sword. The weapon is about five to six feet long and half is a large nasty looking blade, and the other half is a long handle ending a ring. http://www.takwah.com/weapons/ Guess its similar to a bastard sword as far as strength, but not something that could probably be used a single handed weapon.

That link was very cool. I never realized how many stars were within 250 light yerars. A quarter million stars within spitting distance of earth. It is also amazing that at a distance even galaxies and galaxy cluster look like nebulae and star clusters of the milky way. It would be way too much of a headache to make a universe hero, but wow is there a lot of material to work with. Yesterday there was an interview (posted in the papers today) with four of the astronauts who had walked upon the moon. They all gave their opnions about space flight and all agreed that we should return to the moon and continue to reach for the stars, however at least one thought that we should worry about the terrrestrial problems before we try to continue too much in space. While I agree that we have enough problems here on earth to deal about now, and our resources are best spent trying to help the rest of the world part of me can't help but to whine, I want to go into space now.

Not to be too picky, but the system for greater than ten looks like add 20 (subtract 10 add 30). Am I missing something?

Not sure if this fits for Star Hero, but todays Astronomy Picture of the Day shows the map of 2 million galaxies. http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html Viewing the picture, its pretty amazing how complex the galaxies look, as a non-sf look it looks like there is a pretty good chance that there is life, maybe even intelligent, elsewhere in the universe. From a sf/game perspective, looks like the possibilities are endless, at least if you can make it to the next closest galaxy.

Good idea: Playing a Wolverine clone Bad Idea: Playing with a wolverine

This is a very interesting idea and quite a bit of thought has gone into it. Also don't forget the late-bloomers, those who have weak powers which end up developing slowly, or later, like the skinny kid that ends up turning into a brick in the summer between junior and senior year. How do people see him and how does he see himself, is he cocky now that he's big or does he still see himself as the skinny kid everyone picked on.

I bought the Farscape RPG from AEG, then sat and watching the first season to remind myself of the series, and thought how easy it would be translate the races to Star Hero. The only thing I haven't seen explained is how fast and how the ships move between planets normally. I know the Leviathan has Starburst which allows it to move instantly between points, but the destination is not known, but how do Command Carriers and Leviathans move normally. Reading the list I thought you should at least have a classic horror campaign based upon Saved by the Bell. I really liked the Slave to the Volcano God idea. I don't think I have the movie knowledge to pull it off, but it sounds like a great and really fun idea for a campaign. Especially the taciturn character caught in Broadway Musical, makes me think of Pinky and the Brain the times Brain was forced to do something terribly embarassing and he would just have that glower on his face while he sung a song or something.

Play the semantics. You *kill* him and he comes back. But maybe by killing him once you break his hold on the spell, he respawns, but the spell has lost its power in the fraction of the second he was actually dead. I guess it needs to be clarified if he needs to stay dead or just killed once. If that isn't the proper way to go about it, then I would guess the GM has some master plan of a quest to find out how to destroy him from gathering other mystic items. Of course you could have a GM like one of the ones I play with who makes a seemingly impossible task and didn't have any plan(GM made weakness) for the characters to suceed and just wanted to see how we would solve that problem.

BlackJack Our GM had us write short stories to introduce our characters to the rest of the group and help give a concept on the character. Here's my short story, forgive poorly written phrases, I did go into engineering for a reason . Sorry for the length. The Hero is a former con-artist, volunteered to be a hero by an organization. His realm of control is darkness and he creates dark tendrils for grappling and throwing, his power is cut in half in the daylight. Some people call me a con man, others call me a crook, I like to think of myself as an entrepreneur. So I stack the odds in my favor, that's against the law? I mean really if you don't know the rules to three card monty then don't play the game. Its not hard to learn, three card monty has only one rule, "The house always wins." Sure, I pay out, I let them win, but it's when they get greedy that the odds start to turn. Hey in pool I play a fair game, I just happen to have a better game then anyone else. Can you blame a guy for having skill with the stick? Occasionally I like to give myself some incentive to try so I put a bit of money on the table. Usually I win that money back. Someone trained on computers makes his money selling his skills to a company; I make my money using my skills. I am a hustler? No, I never lose a game before I put money up, people know what to expect. The problem is when people lose they tend to angry, and when the get angry they like to speak with their fists first. I don't like to talk with my fists. Sure I know how to rumble some, but I also know how to run. More importantly I know how to hide. Miyomato Musashi (and here you thought I was shiftless grifter with no reading or philosophy) said that in any fight there are three possible outcomes, we're equal and we both get hurt, you're better and I'll get hurt, or I'm better and you get hurt. That's two to one odds on me being injured, I don't play those odds. Every since I can remember the shadows have been my friend. So when the people get upset I just find myself a nice dark corner and sit there until it all cools off. I can pull the shadows around me and manipulate the darkness. Even if they don't see where I go for the rest of the evening, they see me the next day. I tend to get run out of a lot of places. I started in Las Vegas, all the lights bother me though, not enough shadows. So I make my way across the US and find myself here in the windy city. Sure, why not, there are a lot people in this city, a lot of people means a lot of money. I am betting people on three card monty and this guy tries to jack me for stealing his money. So I make like a tree and leave. I'm good at moving through crowds and using crowds to slow down anyone who wants to give chase. I see what I'm looking for, a nice dark alley. I duck into the alley and press into the shadows, thing is, there's somebody there already. "Mr. Schatten, glad you could make it." This greatly disturbs me. See the thing is I'm a big fan of anonymity. I don't need a fancy car, I don't need a fancy lifestyle, I just need money to keep food in stomach and roof over my head. I tend to pay for everything in cash. I like it that way. People keep claiming the wonders of a cashless society but they don't understand that they'll track your every move. Me, I don't take checks and I don't accept credit cards. If you want to play my games, you pay with the green. Needless to say for someone I don't know to use my real name puts the fear of god into me. In my line of work I find its best not give out my real name. I've gone through a dozen different names for every town I've been to. I don't know half of them, and sometimes I almost forget my real name. Snap back to the present predicament though and I find myself wondering who this guy is and what he wants. I'm also looking for a way out. When cornered one person compared me to a rat. Not very flattering I suppose, but at this instant it felt pretty accurate. I was scopeing out the alley when suddenly he pushes me back into daylight. There goes the idea of jumping into the shadows. A car pulls up and the door opens and I am guided into a rather fine luxury automobile. At least its not the cops, they don't do leather interiors and black Lincoln towncars. A chill passes through me as I realize it's not the cops. At least with cops I just spend a day or two in jail and I'm back on the streets, felonies don't keep me from getting a job. The alternative is that I may find myself at the bottom of the lake. Well after a rather rude escort I find myself in a brightly lit room. They even have a light under the desk and chairs. They know who I am. I pull out my deck of cards and start fidget with them. I flip through all my sleight of hands tricks figuring I might as well keep myself busy. A door opens and a well dressed gentlemen walks in. I must look like quite the sight to such a well-manicured man. Never saw much value in getting my trench coat dry cleaned and pressed. I don't bother much with suits, not like I'm going on any interviews. Not that I dress poor, its hard to bring people to a table when you look and smell like you're off the street, but at the same time people are wary if you're betting and you wear an Armani. Dress shirt, casual slacks and scuffed shoes tend to be my uniform when I hit the streets. He puts a large folder on the desk and looks at me. "These are just your aliases Mr. Schatten, I don't believe I'm strong enough to carry the folder that lists all your crimes." This guy's a riot, a real comedian. "So you know all about me, what do you want?" " I simply want to show you that you can't hide from us Arthur, we'll always be able to find you." He paused and looked up, "So now that we understand each other I'd like to offer you a job." What choice did I have, so here I am, you can call me Black Jack.

I believe this is also the case in the comic book series. If I remember right in the first or second story arc of the current JLA, all of the metahumans were captured and the enemies gloated over taking down Earth's greatest heroes when someone asked where Batman was. The enemies said, "He's only human." Cue butt kicking by human. I think its mainly done to show that even though there are people with exceptional strength, flight, etc, a 'normal' man with discipline and hard work can keep up with anyone else. In this way JLA isn't dehumanized by threats that are so big that humans don't stand a chance and need superhumans, but instead the superhumans rely on a normal human to save the day. In Gorilla City, wonder woman's strength can't break the handcuffs, but Batman can pick the locks, a perfectly mundane solution to a problem, and the one that works.

See title: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/9/9351.phtml Pretty complete review of the book with all its merits and flaws. Great, now I have to go buy another book. -- Dan

I am a bit frightened by the idea that heroes are weak-willed because they choose not to kill. Any of the superheroes could kill anyone anytime they wanted. That is granted, but does that give them the right? What is the now tired phrase from spiderman, "With great power comes great responsibility." What is heroic about killing someone when you are more powerful then them? There was another thread discussing using of lethal force in protecting ones private property in the NGD forums. Someone posted the WA law for use of lethal force by police officers and by citizens. The use of lethal force by police officers is much more limited. Its been mentioned before, for the most part the escape of supervillains is contrived. Joker has been killed, and now he is back. Joker can break out of prisons and has killed hundreds he has never been put on death row. Do I see blood on Batman's hands because he's been 'weak-willed,' no; does he see blood on his hands, yes. The superheroes are extremely strong willed when it comes to not killing.

Hope that he slips on the puddle that just formed at your feet when he does his appear out of the night stunt? The best bet is to get him out of 'Gotham' where he knows the area and has at least a modicum of support from the police and trust from the people. Lay clues to some other city get him off his home turf and surprise someplace where he doesn't have the home field advantage. The problem with the excuse 'the law said I killing those drug dealers was okay so Batman has to leave me alone' is the wrong mentaility. Batman expects heroes to act to a much stricter code then non-superheroes. At the very least Batman would want any vigilante who kills out of his city, since destroying undead isn't against his code of conduct I don't imagine he would mind the world a better place without an undead killer. On the other hand there are examples of Batman taking not so good heroes into his fold and trying to reform them (Azrael after letting someone die as Az-bat, Huntress). The other PC should be reminded of this and the undead PC should make some way of trying to reform (ie stop torching drug adicts). In addition if psuedo-Bats has the same aversion to guns as real-Bats then there is that little hurdle to jump over. This is assuming that you are supposed to form some super-team at some point. I believe someone has already metioned Bane, and he is the only villain to beat Batman. He fatigued Batman until he could hardly walk, Batman is only human, by releasing villains and then confronted Batman at the very end. The problem is that only real way to defeat Batman is to be a villain. Reading through the backstory I think the Batman PC is playing him a little too much to the hilt, but really never breaks with what Batman would do. If someone is shooting guns he would beat them to unconciousness then ask questions like, are the bullets plastic. 'Hero' burns down a crack house and kills people, its time to put the smack down.

Posters on rpg.net take things the wrong way? I don't believe you. Actually, that is one reason I post here as opposed to rpg.net. I read some of the forums there and the people who post the most seem to be jerks who end up ruining threads after page 2. The forums here are much better for civil discussions.