arcady

Re: Possession

Is that ungodly expensive? Yeah. It's a powerful effect' date=' it should be expensive.[/quote']Interesting. In MnM it's a near base cost power (2 or 3 per rank, book not on hand right now - ave power is 2) to leave your body behind and enter the mind of another as the controlling entity if they fail a Will save against the ranks of your power. As long as you're conscious, you can stay there unless forcibly ejected through some other power.

 

Why should it be any more expensive than Energy Blast or Mind Control?

Re: Romantic Fantasy

Fantasy has no need for action.

I've written a 'post romance' story:

http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/libr/b/r/brianfw2/arcady_moving_on_forelfwood.html.html

Which has been decently recieved, and put me in contact with two publishers - though I haven't bothered to pursue either of them yet.

But anyway...

Fantasy Romance can be anything which mixes themes of romance and fantasy in one degree or another. I personally am not a fan of the action genre - and find such fiction boring. I write in terms of characterization, and romances work a lot better for that. There's a criticism that fantasy cannot handle character depth, and I've been trying to challenge that in my writing - that of it which is 'genre fiction' at least.

Re: Standard FH5 Magic System?

I suppose you could say one of the options presented is very much like the old edition version.

split into 'colleges', needing a skill roll, pay points per spell, that sort of thing. The biggest difference is that you divide the real cost by three, and only pay that amount on the actual character. Thus a character is likely to have three times more spells than in past editions.

The book also provides a number of other systems. I'm fond of The Gift where you get a VPP equal to five times the points put in, but then have a list of actual spells you know with it, and must learn new ones - but without needing points to do so. An oversimplification, but that is the gist of it.

Several other options between those two extremes exist.

Re: Evolution of the races?

The problem with using genetic manipulation as the method by which the different species originated is that it is basically no different than having them originate via magic or divine intervention. The races didnt evolve... they were made.

This is a setting dependant statement.

It does have a difference though. If they evolved they will likely have certain similarities and if they were designed they would likely have different similarities.

In my own setting two races evolved - dragons and humans. Faerie are other worldly and just what they are is unknown - they are more like ghosts that never lived than anything else.

The other races were made by dragons or humans through accident or intent - but this was done by using magic to mix races that cannot do so naturally, like cats and humans, with the aim of a specific result - a humanoid cat - rather than what would logically happen if you spliced cat DNA into human - something that probably would not live much beyond birth, if it even made it that far. Or in the case of accidents, magic simply grabbed up what was nearby and changed it to 'correct' for the arrogance of mages.

There is in inherrant flavor difference in an evolved origin from a magical one. Once you use an evolved origin you are also postulating that your world fits scientific norms enough to allow for that eviolution. Evolution into humans will not happen on the back of a giant elephant - the physics to get the right atmosphere won't be there - but magical origins might work there, where you can push past the laws of physics or even declare them completely moot.

That flavor difference will seep out intoother aspects of the world - creating very different end results.

Re: Turakian Age: Why should I buy it?

If you want more illustrations shift the typeface down by two points and thus free up a hundred pages or so...

All a setting book needs though is perhaps a generic male and female of each culture illustrated somewhere and a pic for each major highly unusual something.

Take those and pose them for mood.

Re: Master Lists Prefab Question

Honestly don't care how its delivered, just that it is - in whatever means makes it sooner.

I can then work it to my own tastes.

Re: What's the best way to learn Hero?

Champions was one of the smaller and rules light systems back when I learned it.

I learned the basics in play, and found I could teach the system in five minutes or less.

All you had to do then was show somebody how to count body and stun, and roll a given number or less on 3d6 for everything else.

You can start with that, and let the details filter in over time.

Let somebody else manage the speed chart, what this or that can do, and so on. Just do whatever you think you ought to be able to do given the genre you play in and what your character has been described as able to do.

As you play, pay attention to the mechanics that pop up as a result of your choices in actions.

Re: DnD's Spiked Chain

Just to dig up something old...

Because I'm going through my Hero designer prefabs for my players, and wanted to check this thread for notes...

The penalty skill levels stop the penalty you face when a shoter length weapon gets inside your reach. See page 186 of Fantasy Hero.

That was done to reflect that once you get in, the chain user only has to pull back and use less chain - which is no harder than using the longer length of chain due to the flexibility.

Oh, and stretching includes indirect for free, but has a limitation to remove that. So the weapon already has what it needs for the flail manuever.

As for countering the weapon in DnD - it takes a team of opponants to do that, and that in itself makes the weapin very effective. You become a disporportionate drain on the opposition resources - freeing up the rest of your own team for other actions.

And if you can be mobbed, you probably didn't take the right feats...

Anything that can get you without mobbing you can do the same to any other tactic (such as the magic missile comment), but again you force the hand of this - forcing those missile to go against you and not the others on your team, who are then freed up to focus elsewhere.

Put a spiked chain on -one- side of a DnD 3.x battle and it limits the other side's tactical choices more than other melee weapons do.

Re: Master Lists Prefab Question

Any news on this front?

Re: Turakian Age: Why should I buy it?

It does DnD better than DnD.

You could read my review of it for why I say that and more:

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10598.phtml

I just did up the religion section for the Western Kingdoms, the part of Fahla in which Lomyr rests.

I'm still working on details for some of the gods in the pantheon.

Thoughts?

Ideas for the spots that are empty among the Pantheon?

Re: Evolution of the races?

I see more variations between the different cultures of humans than I do between elves and humans.

In our own world there are plenty of species that compete with each other over the same niche.

With humans, we have managed to remove our competitors before the rise of civilization--so we no longer know exactly what they were like. But this did indeed used to be a multiple intelligent primate world, particularly in light of modern DNA finally ending the debate about Neandertals, which were indeed a different species that likely never intermixed with us.

http://www.archaeology.org/9709/newsbriefs/dna.html

Throughout most of our history though there was more than one intelligent ape walking around.

So the people who say in so many of these kinds of threads that multiple intelligent species make no sense need to relook at Earth's own past.

If the two groups had found seperate geography long enough, they might both have risen into civilization. We don't really know why the Neandertals went away, we can only guess we killed them.

All it takes for one species to become two is seperation for a time. This can give minor variation such as with different shades of field mice, or something major like the different between African monkeys and New World monkeys - both of which rose up out of proto-simians (similar to Lemurs) who themselves crossed the Atlantic.

If it had been Homo Erectus 400,000 years ago that left Africa for Asia, Europe, and the Americas and not Homo Sapien Sapiens who did it 40,000 years ago we might have four seperate species today.

(And it is interesting to note there that humans have been in Europe and Asia about as long as they have been in the Americas - the same population settled all three regions after splitting in Central Asia.)

------------------------------------------------------------

In Fahla, most of the races are offshoots of humanity made through magical intervetion. The Dragons engineered the Naga by abducting populations of Cro-Magnon (Which is a Homo Sapien Sapien lacking a BMW and Latte Frappuccino).

The Faerir world has bled into the mortal world in places, and where it did Faerie has taken people and left them changed - producing the Fey races such as Centaur, Pixies, and so on.

The other non humans came about from the work of men upon their own people - crafting 'beastlings' by magically mixing them with animals.

Re: No progression in Champions

"Theatrix" is a diceless RPG that has progression which amounts to doing an updated rewrite based on an essay every so often. The character thus gains some things and loses some things with no conrete methods to it.

You really need the right tone for this sort of thing though - without development of some kind a character will begin to feel stagnant and the game will thus start to drag for the player - which can then spread out to other players.

Re: Fantasy Hero PBEM

I'll be -home- sometime after 5pm PST, and able to type it in and send it back to you then.

Did you send it to the GM as well?

Re: Fantasy Hero PBEM

Once you apply, you have to wait for shadowpup to approve you.

If somebody sent me something, I didn't get it. I would send it to shadowpup as well, so he can decide on it. All I've offered to do is play typist if you don't have the app and shadowpup doesn't have the time.

Re: Growing love for Star Hero and Sci-Fi games.

Hot naked space chix.

 

If you have female or gay players, hot naked space dudes.

And look at Cosmo - cheesecake sells better to women than it does to men. Men have been trained to feel guilty over their natural attraction to the female form, but women have been trained to obsess over it.

By contrast, as children boys only want art with boys in it, and girls only want art with boys in it...

Psycho-analyze that if you want.

I'm not sure how you could get Star Hero to appeal more. Honestly not too many people do science fiction gaming. I suppose you could try to capture a license, but Hero has never done licenses.

A new setting book of some kind perhaps? One with a good dose of justified cheesecake in the art and text (trust me - put in holographic clothing as a fashion accessory in your setting and it will boost sales of the game add pleasure bots for even more. I'd bet you Neuromancer didn't become a hit because of the cyberspace, but because of the scene with the female assassin in the coffin-hotel. Likewise one of the sequel novels were he has a conversation with a naked teenager in orbit... fan service sells in the text).

Somehow, for Star Hero to do better, you have to convince people it's a better game system than something like d20 Future. Unfortunately d20 Future has a lot of well done unoffensive cheesecake art, as does d20 Modern - thus by default it will always be preferable in the market even if the actual game engine makes first edition Star Hero look like a masterpiece.

Re: Looking for random-roll HERO

Of course' date=' nyakki's Random Character Generator is probably the most sophisticated one around for HERO characters.

WoW

I'd love to see the code for that thing.

There's a Champions one here:

http://www.trimira.com/hero_stuff/champions_random.html

Unfortunately it doesn't have the background generator part of the Fantasy Hero one (which looks like it is based on Heroes of Legend - they put out a Heroes of the Modern day (and supers and science fitction) as well. I've got both books and I recognize the table entries).

Re: What is it about Champions?

Same can't be said for D&D 3.5. It is so different than the older versions that you are going to have to spend hours subbing monster stats' date=' redoing the npcs to have feats and crap. Forget it.[/quote']I know plenty of people who use old AD&D material in their 3.x games. It takes very little work to do it. Often you can do it on the fly 'real time' in play.

 

After 3.x came out, I along with many other people started buying up older material so we could use it in 3.x games - the conversion is so easy that you can quickly bring a fresh new light to all those books sitting in the local half priced bookstore.

 

 

 

As for Champions; I've been on both sides of this fence, so here's what I have to offer from my understand of the detractors. Take it that way, as me trying to show how they think, and try not to take offense.

 

 

For a long time it was the only industry option for supers - but it did not meet the tastes of many people who got stuck playing it anyway.

 

After all, you can't really call Heroes [un]limited a playable option... and Marvel FASERIP had serious issues as well for many of us...

 

That gave you a crowd of people who not only did not like the system, but could tell you in educated terms why.

 

The slow play and complex character generation turned off a lot of other people as well - and from those two they began looking for more faults. I will admit to being in this camp myself - though I do like Hero it took me a while to realize I could be comfortable liking Hero and still not really like Champions.

 

I want to like Champions, but in 20 years of running it it has always had the same exact problems for me - and I keep hearing those same problems from other people thus leading me to feel the issue is neither me nor the players I've had over the years.

 

There is also, frankly, still a crowd of people out there PO'd over Fuzion. Largely because the Hero people who did that manuever were very flippant and dismissive of those in the community who questioned it. VERY BAD customer service will win you near permanent enemies. Such people will then start looking for faults elsewhere in order to gain ammunition against you.

 

Hero is no longer the same people, but a bitter taste takes time to wash out of the mouth. In time more of those people will end over like myself - able to seperate Fuzion from Hero in their minds and thus only be bitter about Fuzion and not about Steve Long, Hero system, or Hero games.

 

Finally you get people who get sort of curmudgeony over their distaste. One of my players for example, everytime social skills comes up in either the MnM game, the DnD game, or our Fantasy Hero preparation talk... she flies off the handle attacking the number of social skills in Hero - saying there are so many that it gets too diluted and you cannot make a viable social character on Heroic power level. Now I've sat down and counted out the number of social skills in d20/OGL v Hero - and it comes up about the same save that in d20 you have to rely on some knowledge skills to assist you in some of the carry-over. I should do that comparrision for tri-stat or GURPS as well - I suspect it would be the same.

 

Her real issue is that RPGs in general have more skills than they should (to her). I suspect she wants one of those lighter systems were you just have something like 'intimidate' and 'befriend' - Good cop, bad cop as the entire gamut of interaction skills...

 

But she focuses the hostility at Hero, even though I point out my comparrison to her every time and she admits my point. The next time it comes up we're back at it.

 

She has a bone to pick with Hero somewhere, but probably hasn't articulated it out yet, so she links it to this other issue she has that really fits many different RPGs...

 

Honestly, that kind of logic gap works both ways - I see fanboyz do the same thing in reverse all the time. Not just for Hero - every system gets its fanboyz.

 

 

So there you have my thoughts on it. I'm one of those people who believe a short reply is rude, so I've tried to break it down and explain it fully.

Re: Gladiator's Net - what stats should it have?

These grab, bind, disarm options sound good. Is +3 too high though? Or maybe even too low (probably not - +3 has a massive impact in Hero, especially on the Heroic scale). I suspect Nets are very good at this, but just how good?

The character I was giving this too was armed with a long spear as her other weapon, but I may down shift that to a 1 handed weapon so she can use them together gladiator style.

http://home.pacbell.net/arcady0/Hero/Iola.pdf

(that has an older entangle net still - a correction will have to wait until I get home - but it just shows you what made me start this thread).

Re: When I Am the Benevolent Ruler....

The Evil Overlord kills for fun and profit. The Good Overlord kills for the good of his nation. The "Pacifist Overlord" is more accurately described as "The Former-Overlord."

Teddy was a hunter, and a bit of an adventurer, the real villain in his era though might better be William McKinley - who put us into the Spanish American war in order to sieze Spanish territory. We could say the same of presidents like Andrew Jackson and Lincoln who fought in Indian wars in order to sieze land...

Hitler however, rebuilt a plundered economy, gave his people pride and took them from massive depression and the bottom of Europe to an industrial powerhouse with a strong sense of civic and national pride - and he did it all out of patriotism and protecting the nation in a pre-emptive strike against those who might attack it if they weren't stopped first - namely Jews, Gypsies, Communists, and the other European powers that had so devastated his nation in the Great War.

Yeah... got to be careful about one-liners, they really let you put the wrong spin on things.

The reall issue here is not good, evil, or neutral, but 'overlord.' Once you've got an overlord somebody's gonna get stepped on. So give me any evil overlord I will paint them as heroic, or any good overlord and I will show their villainy.

So what would I do? Put in a document and a tradition of law that limits myself and all future people in my position.

Re: Gladiator's Net - what stats should it have?

Ok, well given that a long spear does 2d6, and a broadsword 1d6+1, how effective of a hold should a net have?

Re: Master List of Distinctive Features

What does a Rogue look like?

Re: Gladiator's Net - what stats should it have?

Um...

I want it to make sense for what a net ought to be able to do.

I figure it's an entangle with OAF, Strength Minimum, and Real Weapon, but how much entangle, and what strength minimum?

Re: Master List of Distinctive Features

Birthmark

Branded

Third Eye

Vitiligo (the skin tone disease Michael Jackson has)