Vulcan

Re: Famous People Super Heros I would think The Rock would be more of a brick as well.

Re: Group Designed Anime HERO WARNING: REALLY LONG POST Let's see here. Akira: Really high-tech future world. Based on Tokyo, with a significant population of hooligans and street punks. Parts of town are well maintained (read wealthy) and others wrecked, poor, or even practically abandoned. Very powerful military-indutrial complex, that very nearly overshadows the civilian government. Only a very few supers of any types - 6 psions total in the world (Akira, the three green kids, Tetsuo, and the girl, whose name I forget), no cyborgs, magic, mutants, power armor, mecha, or other super archetypes. Even the soldiers are just guys with high-tech weapons. Bible Black: Don't know anything about this one. Dragonball Z: Don't know very much, because I don't care much for it. But from what I do know... High-power martial artist/energy projectors running around a largely rural country looking for 'Dragonballs' which, I presume, are some sort of magical artifacts. That pretty much exhausts my knowledge. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: This one I'm sorta familiar with, seen a fair number of the episodes plus the original movie (which I presume takes place after the series). Set in Japan, primarily urban setting, with a wide variety of locales, ranging from highly urban/wealthy, ghetto, suburban, slums, etc. Some wilderness settings, some in abandoned high-tech ruins. Characters are all cyborgs, to a greater or lesser extent. Computer programming/hacking skills very common. AIs are common, from the big mainframes to the little AI tanks (Tatskomas?). Other super archetypes don't exist. Hajime No Ippo (aka "Fighting Spirit"): Don't know anything about this one. Judging by the name, it's 'Street Figher with a plot' (probably doing it a great disservice, though). Hellsing: I have this series on DVD, it's a blast. Takes place in modern England, which defines the range of settings. Premis is that von Helsing, the famous vampire hunter, set up an organization dedicated to the destruction of all vampires. In the series, this organization discovers that someone has developed a way to technologically create vampires using some sorta implanted 'freak' chip (kinda vague, but it's a cartoon. Go with it). Real vamipres exists, generally vastly outclassing their artifical counterparts. Magic exists, as demonstrated several times by the vampires. Presumably humans can use it too, otherwise how did Alucard get bound to serve the von Helsings? Slightly more advanced weaponry exists, and the potential for cyborgs exists (the 'freak' chip is the giveaway). Theoretically power armor could be done as well. No mutant/altered human-type-superhumans, though. Naruto: From what little I know, a lot like Dragonball. Kid running around getting into duels to hone his ninja skills. I'll leave my opinions of it out of this. All right. Given the three I know pretty well, there is enough commonality that you could mix them, carefully. First, the setting. You'll want a place that can combine the urban extremes of Akira/Ghost in the Shell with the European influences of Hellsing. Germany and the eastern European nations come to mind... Build up the big cities a lot, and let the countyside take care of itself, especially down around Hungary/Bulgaria... That also allows the Dragonball/Naruto infuences come into play, (I've never seen characters in either in any sort of even remotely urbanized area - in the comercials I've seen, anyway) you'll just have to come up with a rational reason for the 'dueling fighters' to be tolerated or ignored. While I hate to suggest any Palladium products, perhaps RIFTS material about the New German Republic might be of use. Heck, go whole hog, use the whole 'post-apocolyptic' plotline. That way roaming bands of goons in the contryside are commonplace, and the government just has too much else on it's plate. I would go with a fairly high tech level, like Akira/Ghost in the Shell. Add the 'freaks', cyborgs, power armor, high-tech weapons. Magic and monsters fit well into the European setting. Exotic martial artists... Well, I'm sure someone will come up with a good reason. The best one I have is that this is the last 'civilized' area, everything else is chaos. Or perhaps there is a magical-kung-fu reason... Eh. That's as far as I can take it. Hope it helps!

Re: Stopping Natural Disasters in Champions? Ahh.... dersision wasn't my intent there. I apologize if it sounded that way. No insult was intended, sorry. But while you make a valid point about this being the HERO System Discussion, the thread title is 'Stopping Natural Disasters in Champions?'

Re: Stopping Natural Disasters in Champions? Long and short, it's physically impossible for a person to lift 100 tons. But in the genre we see it all the time. Don't diss the genre just because the math doesn't work in real life. If the characters come up with something and it sounds plausible, go for it. It's a comic book, after all! Realism is optional.

Re: A person and an AI Don't forget mental defense - or mental damage reduction - or maybe just a high EDCV. "There's two minds in there. Which one should I try and control?"

Re: pigeons associate with hero Can only Summon 4 pigeons? If ever there was a creature meant to be Summoned in extremely large numbers, the pigeon is it. 16 minimum. 200+ a good idea. Or just use 'a s***load of pigeons' as the special effect for FF (pigeon interception:eg:), Flash (pigeon in your face:ugly:), Darkness (Pigeon swarm:confused:), Flight (On pigeon's wings:doi:) AEH Radius EB (when pigeons attack!)... But LS vs. disease would be a must. Or a environmantal suit. Great. Now it's in my head, I've gotta work this one out...

Re: Stopping Natural Disasters in Champions? On the other hand, the 'shot' is likely a lot easier to manage on an indvidual basis. It's just dealing with enough of them quickly enough to make a difference. And just the big pieces need to be dealt with, ones small enough to burn up in reentry - or even ones just a little larger, that won't do too much damage on impact - can be ignored. I wouldn't recommend NASA trying it in real life, mind you, but we are discussing a comic-book scenario...

Re: Stopping Natural Disasters in Champions? Excellent! While I was wrong by several orders of magnitude, it can still be done with reasonable level power, given enough time or if the asteroid is spotted early enough. After all, 1m/s velocity means you travel 1 km over 1000 seconds (or around 17 minutes); 10 km in 3 hours; a month of travel generates 2400 km. And this is after the PC in the above example stopped actually pushing on it... And upping the AP of the power to 80 (not all that high, either - 70 AP + pushing, used once/turn would do) applies four times the energy, which will make for a profound increase in the deflection of the asteroid's course (would it actually be a 4x increase, or have I just completly forgotten my physics?). Or just having 4 heroes with 60 AP powers that would work in space...

Re: Stopping Natural Disasters in Champions? Okay, it's not easy. But if it was easy, why would you need superheroes to deal with it?

Re: Stopping Natural Disasters in Champions? In real life, yeah, you're absolutely right. However, in real life, there are no bricks that can lift 1600 tons, either. This is a prime example of comic book physics, which is closely related to Star Trek physics. It doesn't have to really work, it just has to sound plausible. In general, a GM shouldn't shoot down a plausible-sounding idea to stop a disaster unless the players are masochistic (did I spell that right?) enough to enjoy failing. Besides, in the Champions book p.160 has suggestions on 'Stopping Things' and suggestions in the sidebar for the STR and velocity of both tidal waves and meteors... Asteroid/meteor, small: STR 40-60, movement 500” Asteroid/meteor, medium: STR 60-100, movement 500” Asteroid/meteor, large: STR 100-150, movement 500" Tidal wave, small: STR 30-40, movement 80-120” Tidal wave, medium: STR 40-50, movement 80-120” Tidal wave, large: STR 50-60, movement 80-120” It also suggests using a force wall or a large flat object to catch these things.... Not as impossible as it seemed, is it? (At least in a comic book world.)

Re: Super Transportation Dumpster of Justice! Priceless!

Re: Stopping Natural Disasters in Champions? Of the three, the Earthquake is the truly unpreventable one. By the time you know it's going to happen, it's already happening. All you can do at that point is damage control. On the tsunami, you (presumably) have at least a little forwarning. If the party has a really, really strong brick (80 STR or more) perhaps the GM will let him go to the beach and start counterwaves that would weaken the tsunaimi (no idea if it's realistic, but this is a comic-book scenario, after all). Maybe the wizard can open a long horizontal gate at sea level and shunt the extra water to another dimension - it's amazing how cheap a power gets with 'one charge, never recovers' and some other misc. limitations. A meteor is the easy one, if the party either a) is informed early enough to borrow a Shuttle, or has someone on the team with a lot of flight and full LS (or access to a spacesuit through contacts). Once there, options range from blowing it up to towing it off it's course. If there is anyone out there with a degree in astronomy, calculate how much the course of a mile-diameter asteroid (your choice of types) would change if hit with a 60 AP power (force equivalent to 100 tons) once every 12 seconds for an eight-hour period. I suspect most people will be surprised by the answer. (Personally, I think the course change will be signifigant, but I lack the knowledge and math skills to figure it out.

Re: pigeons associate with hero If I'm controlling them, then I get to decide if they're 'selfless enough.' :sneaky:Since they're not smart enough to figure it out for themselves.

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs Yeah, I've noticed it's very hard to mix a group of traditional races and unusual/unique ones. The two types of races tend to clash pretty badly. In general, either go with the standards, or go with the new races. One notable exception: Michael Stackpole wrote an exceptional fantasy series set in a world with humans and elves, but instead of dwarves had an entirely different race living in the mountains. I reccomend it if anyone really wants to try running a 'mixed' campaign. So, perhaps pulling one standard race and adding one well-thought-out substitute is a possibility?

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

Re: Middleman Costume Generator The show is a (VERY) little bit like the X-Files, in that there is a lot of oddness going on but nobody notices. Well, perhaps more like MIB. At any rate, it's played for humor, with only marginal seriousness. Even less than MIB, if you can believe it. Now if only they could put a couple of masculine lips on the face generator, as opposed to all the feminine ones. (Not that I'm opposed to feminine lips, mind you, but not on my generally male characters!)

Re: OSS Simple Sabotage Field Manual So that's where the modern business schools got their curriculum from.

Re: pigeons associate with hero Yeah, but there's a lot of other things the pigeons could do if they were trained. Carrying messages, creating distractions, and dropping small items off are just a small sampling. And if he can actually learn to actively control them, they can be used for recon, listening into distant conversations, low-damage area-affect attacks (200 pigeons all atacking at once, dodge that!), the possibilties are endless. Especially if the pigeons are 'selfless enough to sacrifice themselves' for the character. On the other hand, they are kinda nasty...

Re: Superhero-Crimefighter Civil War Ah. My bad. This was a story, not a campaign. Sorry.

Re: The Spirit of Superheroing Even paldins need a nice, shiny new magic sword once in a while. Seriously, while always rewarding PC's just for playing to the hero genre is probably not a good idea (it can become, as was said, a translation of the hack 'n' slash genre), never rewarding your players for playing to the hero genre is... intensely frustrating. In our current game (which has gotten intensely focused on the 'anti-mutant' plotline), it seems that no matter what we do, no matter how hard we try, things just keep getting worse. We just had to break into a bonafide military post to keep the bad guys from launching NUKES at the areas where the mutants have gathered to get away from the normals. So now PRIMUS is more than half convinced we're the renegades wh tried to launch the nukes... It'll take some fast talking to get us (those who survived, anyway, it was a military base )out of this one. That, and a change of heart from the GM...

Re: What would happen if Los Angeles County vanished? Agreed. I'd be missing a sister. And very uspet about it.

Re: The Spirit of Superheroing If the PC's are used to 'hack, slash, loot' then perhaps the city could give them stuff as they defeat threats (and stay in 'genre' while doing so). A base, a PR consultant, contacts with PRIMUS or other useful organizations, a vehicle, favors (especially favors) all sorts of things make good rewards for players who do well. Just as bad things happen to heros who do bad things (I know, I've had a character wind up in Stronghold for his - granted, pre-game - actions); good things should occasionally happen to the heroes who really try.

Re: The Spirit of Superheroing I think he's trying to encourage his players to play superheroes, not drive them to play another game entirely.

Re: Superhero-Crimefighter Civil War Someone needs to tell ALL these goofballs that when heroes fight - and especially when they fight a major WAR - the only ones who win are the VILLIANS. I wouldn't be at all surprised if, as all this is brewing, the number of supervillian actions drop off pretty much entirely. After all, why should the villians do anything, when it looks like the 'heroes' are setting up to off each other in job-lots (and sooner or later they will, CvK notwithstanding)? Besides, the last thing the villians want to do is derail this train-wreck by calling attention to themselves, and reminding the heroes that they're still out there. Now, once the war is over and the ranks of heroes have been decimated - and the ranks of the villians are pretty much the same as before... I would expect a major shift in the power structure of the world i.e. the villians will quickly be in control. And then the heroes can get to experience the ol' "hunted by the entire world' feeling normally reserved for villians. It'll be interesting to hear if the PC's figure this out in time to head this war off, or if they were too busy picking sides to try and save the world.

Re: Comic Book (genre) Conventions that don't work in Champions