aarontring

Re: Set the WayBack Machine for: I've had a lot of that kind of stuff "turn up" in the last few years, including all of my 3E Champions stuff (really only the rules, Stronghold and CLOWN) after I'd gotten another copy of the rules, Stronghold, and a couple of other things from eBay. We never really had "vehicle combat." Our GM just kind of winged it, on the rare occasions one of us tried to, say, run somebody over. Although, I did have to take some form of auto mechanic's skill with every character after essentially losing an argument wherein I insisted that I could change my oil in-character without said skill. (It was a non-plot point that derailed about half of the evening's gaming. I still feel like an @$$.)

Autoduel Champions! Accidently stumbled across someone selling a copy on eBay! I know our group had it, 'cause I recognized the cover, but I can't for the life of me remember ever actually using it. I know we were playing both games, but never together. It seems like it always was there for use during Champs character creation, though. Ah, the memories of whole sessions spent on character (or car) creation...

Re: Odd Champions campaigns This was from before HERO was a unified system, but it could easily be used: a few sessions (far too few, actually), we had a guest GM whose concept was far future. The Galactic Earth Empire had collapsed into isolated warlords and small "kingdoms" of systems. Our job (the "party") was to go to these worlds, make contact with any kind of resistance or underground, and set up contacts to whom we, secretly representing the New Earth Empire, could funnel money and weapons in hopes of overthrowing the current government for one more -- agreeable to rejoining the Empire. Very Iran-Contra meets Star Wars, sort of. It may have had more to do with how smart and good a GM this guy was. He threw in a lot of little things, like our ship's computer calling anyone it spoke to "Dave," and the repairbots speaking in a Scots accent (to this day, I watch Farscape reruns expecting the DRDs to do the same). He was savvy enough to allow this one idiot to play a mage in space. (I'm not saying a mage in space is a bad idea; this guy was a certified, negotiate-with-the-basilisk idiot!) And that wasn't half as fun as Crypts and Creepies, which was a completely homemade game this one guy came up with. I only played once before he went off to college, never to be heard from again, but a few snippets of "setting" have managed to stay with me. One race was called Warfs, who had a pathological hatred for all magic and anyone who would use it. Originally, they had been normal humans in service to a mage, until a magical accident left them completely without torsos. Their shoulders were right on top of their hips. Also, two of the "pieces" of money were Carbon Pieces (coals or wood chips) and Mercury Pieces, which changed size depending on temperature (I know mercury is naturally a liquid, but suspend a little disbelief with me). That last one was a particular problem in a very warm area of the dungeon we were crawling.

Re: I figured out a perfect supervillain. Too many that this relates to for me to objectively quote one, but all the best "villians" are the ones who think what they are doing is for the greater good. That goateed, powermonger thing got old around 1964. The Oprah or Tom Cruise archetype would actually be pretty cool, but far beyond my ability to write for or roleplay.

Re: Justiciar is up Not to derail the thread, here, but any "boss" who is as much of a geek as his employees/customer base RULES! And, apparently the "Alfalfa Flight" edition came out during that brief few years where I thought I "had a life."

Re: New Screenshots (4/29/2008) My $.02: Middle one for 4/29 looks a little too much like Lara Croft had Tony Stark build her a suit of armor. Not necessarily a bad thing...

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... OK, this is VERY loosely relevant, and I swear I'll stop for the week. Watching a thing on PBS about the S.S. United States, I was getting all carried up in the moving-ness that the directors had intended, but there was this little voice that piped up in the back of my head that said, "Didn't I throw that at Mechanon, once?" I think it was actually a military vessel, but still, the inappropriateness... The clincher that made me decide to post was that both the CEO of Norwegian Cruise Lines, who incidentally has purchased the ship, and the maritime engineer supervising her assessment for refit were Scots. Let the Star Trek jokes fly!

Ooc I feel I have to redeem myself, but all of my quotes are 15 to 20 years old, so they're slow in coming. First the setup: We would do the majority of our gaming in my friend Terry's bedroom (the "bard" was his character) because he conveniently had an Olympic-sized, regulation ping pong table in it. Oddly, we never asked... Regardless, he had, where most kids our age would have model cars, a model skull, complete with cardboard stand and, of all things, a fez. Since the fez had AMU embroidered on it, we called the skull The Great AMU. It was something of an oracle/charm. That is, until one fateful game night. We were about to engage a vastly superior force (again, probably not HERO system, but we were well "past" AD&D by this point), when Dan decides to announce that he will consult with The Great AMU, sort of our code for not having a clue what to do. Terry rather sheepishly says, "Oh, his name is Yorick, now." We all look around the table, except for Ryan, who throws his hands up in disgust. "Just once I'd like to see someone take a Shakespeare class and not name their skull 'Yorick!'" Wasn't funny at the time, but the rest of us got it, later.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... OK, I read 42 pages before I couldn't resist anymore, and I apologize for how long this'll be. I'll do my best to be concise, but I have to set up what kind of people we, as a group, were. The actual event in question isn't Champions, happened before I joined the group (only JUST before), and is more a situation than a quote. This is the kind of group, particularly while playing Champions, who would be trying to sneak into an enemy lair and break out into a fire-fight amongst each other in an argument gotten out of hand, usually over something stupid. The incident in question centered around one of the less-respected of the group's members coming up with an epic, multi-session AD&D campaign that launched from a wayside inn. Nothing at all cliche, right? I think his mistake was, during the (literally) months he spent working on it, he couldn't stop building it up to the rest of the guys, how awesome it was gonna be! (This was the '80s, after all.) When he finally got his chance to run it, the tavern/inn scenes went off without a hitch. What he had failed to notice was that, without any prior planning, the entire group had made evil characters of one flavor or another. During the night, while everyone else slept, ostensibly resting up for the next days' adventure, the thief and the ranger snuck through the entire inn and slaughtered every NPC in their sleep, butchered them, and put them in the pantry. The next morning, the party set themselves up in the inn and waited for the next caravan. The DM, not sure how things were going to proceed, gave them the benefit of the doubt and went along with it, sending them a caravan. The party welcomed them with open arms, ran the inn as though nothing were amiss, and the bard in the group even entertained the guests, culminating in a "special song written just for the evening," which detailed the party's "adventures," how they'd "retired" to service other adventures, and finally a verse about the visitors, which ended with "And then we killed them!" This was the signal for the entire party to massacre the caravan, who was then added to the pantry. This was allowed to continue for a few caravans before the DM stopped playing along, but everyone had fun completely derailing his game. For 20 years, the bard player has been trying to find that song, because he actually wrote it down. No luck, so far. They also wondered why I never wanted to run a game...