Captain Obvious

Re: Master Villains in Champions that can survive a point blank Nuke I think the problem with nukes is that there's just so many ways that they can kill you, and each of those ways affects different things differently, to such a degree that you can't really account for them all. It's not a problem with the writeup, per se, but a problem with trying to model reality in a game-able fashion. Unless you want to get into some pretty detailed physics, chemistry, biology, etc at the game table, some things just need to be glossed over.

Re: Building a STL drive compound/power This page has some discussion of various systems of vector movement. They're basically all variations on the same theme, but differing explanations might make it easier to grasp. At least one of them should make some sense to you.

Re: Toolkitting: Relative versus Absolute I've considered running multiple campaigns in the same world, with a JLA type supergroup as one campaign and a bunch of street level types as another. If I ever did such a thing, I would have no problem with someone writing the same character up on two different point levels/stat caps so it could represent the same guy in two different comic titles. I've never put any real thought into making it a standard part of the game, just something to do on a case-by-case basis.

Re: Define [steam/diesel/whatever] - punk? The punk aspects were certainly a big part of the cyberpunk genre, and as I understand it they were also there in Gibson's The Difference Engine, which is the first thing I ever heard described as steampunk. Since then, the label's been applied to all varieties of Victorian style weird science stories, regardless of whether the violent, nihilistic downtrodden classes play any part (or even exist) in the world in question.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Machete Chitty Bang Bang

Re: Jokes Now that was laugh-out-loud funny, but I can't rep...

Re: (5e, might still apply to 6e) Ways to attack through Self-Only Force Walls?

Re: Basic Write Up For Ran-Tari From Turakian Age I think the 5th Ed version is in Monsters, Minions, and Marauders.

Re: (5e, might still apply to 6e) Ways to attack through Self-Only Force Walls? I would say Personal Immunity should work. It might be easier, though, to buy Force Field and put a Limitation on it that it drops when it's hit by more BODY than it can stop.

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine It's Buck Parsec, Star Marshal

Re: Foods for those that just don't care anymore Someone should make an mp3 of that guy's laugh to use in Call of Cthulhu games.

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods? How differently do the various religions see their sun god (or any other shared responsibility gods)? If they all have the same basic idea of how he operates, it's the same guy with a different name. On the other hand, if there are people who see the sun god as sinister or cruel, maybe there's a reason. If the sun rises or sets near their homeland, maybe it gets really hot there and parches the land, turning it into desert. Even if the sun god is a nice guy, if the higher order divinity compels him to drive the sun along this particular course, those people won't like him a whole lot. Or maybe the sun god is a generally nice guy, but kind of plays favorites, and the religions that portray him as cruel are just the ones on the outs. It's possible, too, that the gods have multiple personalities, and some metaphysical quality of a particular area brings out a particular aspect in a given god.

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods? Do your players know you're going to be sending them to Teletubby Land?

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods? Probably a dodge more than a real answer to your question, but I just don't have the gods play a direct role in mortal affairs. Priests may receive spells in response to their prayers, but there's never an opportunity to say "Hey, Helios, what's up with Apollo? Not to mention Ra or Tonatiuh..." No one really knows how all that stuff pans out...and I find it more interesting to come up with various dogmas or heresies to fill in the gaps than to really answer the question. There's not enough of an element of faith in most fantasy religions...everything is spoon-fed to the high priests by the gods directly and you don't get the conclaves of the religious hierarchy meeting together to figure out exactly what it is they officially believe.

Re: How to understand the SuperHero Genre When I first picked up Champions (back in 3rd Edition), I hadn't read comics in close to a decade. I was enthralled by the flexible character creation process, though, and really interested to see how these characters would do against each other in a fight. Once I got past the fight-of-the-week phase, I had a lot of trouble shifting from the standard fantasy plots (treasure hunt, old wizard sends you on a quest for some old magical junk, etc) and trying to figure out how to make a super campaign work. It's all about the characters. Rather than bringing in some new, random rich merchant who needs his daughter saved from the boglins (heh...this started as a typo, but I like the way it sounds), it's somebody they know or at least a friend of a friend that's been kidnapped by the villainous agents. It's not some new, random necromancer causing problems in the village, it's an old enemy. It's not some generic castle getting torn down by the dragon, it's the home team's stadium or the monument to the local war heroes being trashed by the giant alien. Make everything personal. And I know a lot of people do this these days, even in their D&D games or D&D inspired games, but it's doubly important to the super genre, IMO. There are a lot of characters in the official Champions universe, and a lot more from older editions that didn't make the cut, but I'd recommend you pick a small handful of useful allies and several recurring villains (whichever ones match or contrast most interestingly with the PCs), and use the rest of them sparingly.

Re: Jokes I'm coming to the end of my rope with these puns. We should string up the next guy who comes in here adding to the problem.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

Re: Foods for those that just don't care anymore That's a little more X-treme than I'm willing to go with my snack food.

Re: Foods for those that just don't care anymore

Re: Brainsorming: Golden Age Champions

Re: Stealth in Space It's conceivable a puppeteer kicked someone in more than one story. Louis Wu theorized in Ringworld that puppeteers were pretty well adapted for it, with one big kicking leg in the back and the wide angle, triangulating eyes.

Re: Fantasy locations that should be real

Re: Order of the Stick Who'd have guessed Elan and his dad would be so similar and yet so different?

Re: Fantasy locations that should be real Pellucidar. Also that place in France where the naked ladies dance.

Re: Building a STL drive compound/power You really only need to deal with 3D combat if there are at least four significant points of reference. Two ships dogfighting with nothing else around to run into might as well be represented with a line. If there is another ship in the fight, or some asteroid that might get in the way, you need 2D to represent everything's relation to everything else. If you add a third dimension at that point, all you're doing is altering your plane of interest from the simple tabletop to some weird, tilty plane, and then you open up the possibility that none of your ships are in the plane represented by the tabletop at all. That way lies madness. I'm with Xavier here. 3D is really cool for star maps, but the benefit to effort ratio of 3D combat is just too low to justify it in a roleplaying session.