Sociotard

Re: Firefly: The Reavers Y'know, everytime I watch that ep of the firefly I wonder, how is it that after a few days or maybe weeks of just hanging in that net, all those cadavers didn't make a bad enough stink to let the serenity crew know EXACTLY where all those people went to? Dead human stinks baaaaaaaad.

Re: PREDATORS -- What Do *You* Want To See? hmm, Dark Champions games frequently involve difficult morality questions, so a few morality question inducing villians are in order. A 14-year old kid. Make him do very bad things. Dark champions players will want to walk into the situation wanting to blow away the rapist, but what if the rapist is a minor? A mentally challenged man. I'm seeing a low level drug dealer. When the PC's come, he pulls a gun. Do the PC's just back off or do they kill a man who can't understand what he's doing? A woman who kills her boyfriend for beating her one too many times (or maybe she cuts off his who-ha instead). Some PC's will want to side with her, cuz he got what he deserved. Some PC's will want to bring her in, because they believe in letting courts decide who gets punished how. Some will try to compromise by stealing back the Who-Ha so the poor man can get it sewn back on, and still let the girl go. Oh, does the champs universe have any really annoying lobby groups? I'm seeing a PETA varient. Those don't create any moral ambiguity, just "who gets to shoot first" *kidding*

Re: Feedback wanted on this background idea Since the world economies are so interlinked now, don't forget to comment on how this depression affected other nations.

Re: Tentative 2006 Schedule Ultimate Skill made the list! Whoop!

Re: Multiple Special Effects I'd ask you how you wanted this power to react to related drains and suppresses. I'll take your Arcane Blast example. I take it it's a magic iceball spell? Well, say a character with heat powers suppresses all cold powers. Does the spell go away entirely? Could a necromancer with drain magic take away the whole power?

Re: Firefly: The Reavers They're the british punk rockers of the future. Look just like 'em. Okay, kidding aside. We've only seen one reaver first hand, and he was just a recent convert. Mal said that the first thing the man would do upon converting would be to try to look like the reavers, so I'd guess the real deals look something like what we saw. That means desecrating their own flesh with brands, scarification, tatoos and piercings with foreign matter. So we have what they look like, now why do they rape us to death, eat our meat, and make clothing from our skin (hopefully in that order)? Once again, we only have one first hand look at a "scene of the crime". It looks odd to me, because the reavers left things we'd expect them to take. Most of the cadavers still had their skins, where I would've thought they'd all be taken to the ships tannery. Most of them still had meat, where I'd have thought it would all be skillfully butchered and preserved, so they could go longer between kills. Perhaps there were simply too many people on board and the reavers store's were quickly filled to capacity. Perhaps (and this is my pet theory), the man left was left there to become a reaver, and he needed to be left with partial cadavers to help drive him mad. Gotta replenish the ranks somehow. They propably were going to come back and get 'im after he'd basted in his buddies jucies, but they saw the alliance ship. Now, I personally think the most driving force in reaver society is their hatred for their own flesh. It's as if, on the edge of nothing, they realised their bodies were worthless in the great scheme of things. not only do they practice self mutilation, but they opperate their ships without shielding. You don't expose yourself to that many Rad's if you care about living. I think their cannibalism may be a missionary effort, if you will, to the rest of the galaxy. "This is all meat is good for: eating. This is all skin is good for: clothing. All your humanity, all your civilization, means nothing. Everything exists in the nothing, and eventually the nothing will claim everything you thought you built." As such, the galaxy at large no longer sees them as human. They are animals, or demons made flesh. An unstoppable force. It's helpful to remember that they serve an artistic statement. The alliance represents civilization (their 'ships' look like blocks of skyscrapers, for petes sake) with all its constriction, bureaucracy, and unfairness. They stay in the Core. The reavers represent the complete abandonment of civilization, and all the savagry, hate, and cruelty that entails. They stay on the fringe. Mal and his crew have to dance a fine line between the two. Oh, and I wouldn't try fighting reavers. Mal took down one, but he was a noob, and even he killed a half dozen trained marines before he died.

Re: Magic System for Critical Review Under "compas", you require KS: Navigation. How does the KS differ from the skill Navigation?

Re: Naming Help Leoht Brand (I think they can be combined Leohtbrand.) Or so says the Old-English dictinary, anyway. It should mean Blade of light, though I probably put the words in the wrong order or something. I could also meantion that "Brenda" is a real name, scandavian in origen, that means sword or bladed weapon. Hmmm, maybe Brendelin? both scandanavian names (brenda and Elin for light)?

If a character can mitigate damage from a fall using his inches in jumping, does it follow that he could use inches in tunneling as well (provided he could meet the DEF of the ground)? Or, if he landed in water, his inches in swimming?

Re: Arms Fall Off Lad For more inspriation, go watch "Labrynth". One of it's muppets had this power.

Re: Arms Fall Off Lad Oh, yeah, it could have interesting effects on some attacks, especially poisons and the like. GM: The rattlesnake rolls to strike and . . . it gets you in the ankle. Player: I detach my leg immediatly, so the poison cant spread through my system. You might even be able to use a trigger with this, so any attack that could me communicated to the entire body through one limb could be negated using instant amputation.

Re: Arms Fall Off Lad Ever fly coach? I really, really wished I could put my legs in overhead storage.

Re: Chomp! Hey, let me out! The Bestiary Mentions this, and explains how it works. I don't have the book handy, but iirc, the monster had to be at least 4 times as large as the hero. The book mentions how much damage the assorted digestive fluids and muscle contractions in the monster aught to do, though these vary greatly from monster to monster. The swallowing isn't bought as a power, it's just a side benefit of being huge.

Re: Queer Eye for the Superhero Guy In a recent spiderman, he helps out a tailor who specializes in the repair of super-suits, for both heroes and villians. In gratitude, he offers spiderman a really nice suit, with this cool leather jacket. He didn't take it, but I kind of wish he had. I liked the "Steel Spider" outfit he wore for one of the giant sized issues back in the early 90's. Very cool looking. I'd say the dumbest outfit is the one Hawkeye wore. Some guy's just can't wear letters on their foreheads like Cap can. Ultimate Hawkeye is much cooler looking, but I guess it doesn't really qualify as a super suit.

Re: Weak/Fast tunneling? Yeah, steve has been asked about this. He says there's no game mechanic for that. I just found the difference in the cost and used that as a house rule. Without that GM ruling, however, no, it can't be done.

Re: Flash: Inner ear/ Sense of Gravity/ Sense of Balence My only problem with building this power as a flash is the rarity of the defense. You see, normally a flash against a sense not included in the big 5 is fine, because while few people will bother with flash defense for that sense, few people will have that sense to begin with. With this power, everyone has a sense of equilibrium, but few characters I've seen buy defense against this. If I were presented with this character, I would insist a suitably common defense be determined. (hearing group for balance maybe, and touch group for the kinesthetic (sp?) sense, etc) On that topic though, you can do some fun things with Flash. Flash memory, flash hunger, flash sense of passing time, flash color (character can still see, but is color blind), flash sense your bladder is freaking full, flash sense difference between right and left, Flash sense difference between similar letters (temporary dyslexia), maybe even flash certain emotions. I read an article by some doctors who were studying the brains ability to discern "gross". They found this guy with a little damage up there, who'd lost that ability. He'd touch or eat anything, and while he'd intellectually know "this could give me a disease" he wouldn't have that queasy feeling. Now that would be an interesting sense to flash!

Re: Need ideas for Excalibur IIRC, the sword had a side effect, in that it brought fortune on the battlefield and misfortune off it. IE, Luck, only in combat, side effect (same amount of luck rolled in combat becomes unluck later)

Re: Robotic Warfare...Today I don't know, it could be useful for some cases of urban warfare. I'd hate the idea of walking into a building, not knowing if there were armed opponents in there or not. With the drone, you send it in, and any possible ambushes are far less catastrophic.

Re: Powerful Sonic Effects Wanted... Don't forget to add on the sound based targeting equipment, including Sonar, N-Ray vision (based on hypersonics) and Detect things hitting other things (footsteps, yadda yadda)

Re: Ultimate Thief/Scout I did "Detect being Detected" as a mystic ability. Sure, you may be invisible, but it just takes one unusual sense connected to a silent alarm, and you're in trouble. If you know you've been detected early enough, you have more time to extract yourself.

Re: tickle I might also say that making an ego roll would stop any "tickling" from happening. Can you see The Joker tickling Batman? I can't. Well, with some sort of drug, maybe, but you just can't tickle the bat. (unless you happen to be robin *ducks flung fruit*)

Re: Early "What do you want to see?" for Teen Champions This may have been suggested, but, considering how important sports are in high school, include a complete double elimination chart. Remember, some gamers, like me, don't know enough about sports to know what such a chart looks like, only that it determines who you play next, and if you can go to state. The nice thing is, it could be used for any of the major sports in high school. Also, you might fill out the bottom part with the names of all the area high schools that will be competing. you might even (just a thought) give each high school a 'skill' level with a given sport. Like this: Millenium High School has a 14- in Basket ball, whereas Vanguard High School has a 12-. Millenium expects to have a better chance of going to state than Vanguard does. However, Vanguard has a 13- in Baseball and a 14- in School Spirit, where Millenium has an 11- in each. Not only will Vanguard dominate the baseball season, but they'll have more students cheering in their stands in any given sporting event. Hmm, Skills for an organization. Interesting thought.

Re: "Impaling/Pinning" Your Oppenent There's always bugs and rats. Well, as long as they aren't captive bred rats that you buy in a pet store.

Re: "Impaling/Pinning" Your Oppenent No Short Weapons? I disagree. Oh, clearly you can't nail a man to a door with a buck knife if you go through his gut, but what about his hand or his forearm? Just to expand this idea, you could probably use this for some ranged weapons as well (I'm thinking crossbows or bows 'n arrows). Think of the fun of nailing someones feet to the inn floor as they try to run towards you.