zornwil

Re: Mentalist Conundrum

Re: Superhero Images All I can say is "ditto"!

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Hope this cuts it... (WARNING - ADULT WORD) Well, in the Cyber Ninja Pirates game, there are 4 monkey PCs (3 by 1 player, though). When a new PC, Denny, came aboard the space vehicle and saw this, he said to the commander, Krang (a PC), "Mmmm, monkeys, must be tough keeping the place cleaned up with all the sh*t." Commander Krang, "Welll, at least we got them to stop flinging it." (Actually they're quite civilized)

Re: Mental Powers But I think this only reinforces the suggestion that the whole construct is unnecessary, nobody's even considering it an issue in design, we don't see related SFX Limitations that are so specific and we don't see that CoM attracted attention as some great solution, except where I can see Machine.

Re: Mental Powers Yes, that WAS true until we broke Mental into Alien, Animal, Human...

Re: Mental Powers Yeah, totally. Personally, I'm too much obsessed and a blabbermouth not to so would in his position, but only probably in very structured forums, not in these board debates, bad bad place for a company rep to get mired in.

Re: The "real" Golden Age vs the "nostalgic" Golden Age Yeah, Fox1 did indeed say it right! I just want to add that I think generally as younger or simply less mature gamers we don't think about it and forge ahead, not realizing this metagame aspect, and we were the worse for it. As we get more mature we tend to realize it's important, I think, and gravitate towards people who "act" or "seem to feel" the same, still often unconscious about it, but becoming more so as we get more mature as gamers and really as people. It is linked largely to personal maturity as well, I think. You know, one cool thing about RPGing is how you can really enjoy it on different levels at different stages in life, btw.

Re: The "real" Golden Age vs the "nostalgic" Golden Age Very well said, and a big part of what I love about RPGing, particularly as I've come to realize that. It's also what I enjoy about many forms of music particularly purely free improvisation, but that's another matter. That's what people were interested in about Cyber Ninja Pirates, btw, was that a certain number of Ki Energy Gems (much like luck chips or what-have-you) allowed players a degree of plot control, as 3 such gems (a character gets 8 for a session) allows an auto-success (so long as there was at least a remote chance, GM permission pending).

Re: The "real" Golden Age vs the "nostalgic" Golden Age I agree with the 95% bar, but have a corollary - 95% of everything is "a" favorite thing to somebody! Somebody finds the charm or humor or drama or personal identification or noble effort or whatever in something that nobody else does.

Re: Who Came First the Superhero or the Supervillain? The early history: Super-heroes started appearing in early 1948 - the first being Superman, basically as found in the comic books. Nobody knew where he came from, though, or what, if any, secret identity he had. He first came to light in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, like Superman, he was also quite vulnerable to krypton, at least in large quantities, and particularly forms which manifested green, which was quickly manufactured by a villain not out of the comic books known as simply "The Mad Scientist" - self-proclaimed and usually followed by his mad cackling. After a crime spree in retrospect aimed at gathering enough cash to afford a stockpile of kryptonite, he killed Superman with green kryptonite bullets. His career was swiftly ended with capture by Spiderman, first appearing in 1948 in Phoenix*. The ball started rolling quickly, spreading primarily but not exclusively from the American southwest and radiating out across the country and beyond. The world did not take kindly, though, to these "mutants" as they became known (scientists argue over whether they're mutants or mutates, but that's another story). The destructive powers they embodied quickly earned them notoriety due to the few who abused it. It seemed the biggest issue arose with a series of psychotic killers using special powers in their murderous sprees. While most were caught by other mutants, the public became livid as the Evil Brotherhood of Mutants, a crazed group of serial killers and rapists with various superpowers, assaulted some 500 or more people, killing at least 400, in a short two months, all across America. Most troubling was their self-conscious and brazen defiance of society and moreover their organization. In fact, some social theorists argued it was the earlier creation of the Avengers, a group of mutants pledged to organize to do good, that inspired this same organization by their criminal counterparts. Quickly Congress responded by passing the Unnatural Humans Act, under the mutant witch hunt of Joe McCarthy. While McCarthy's career folded when he attacked the military and its use of supers such as Corporal Punishment, he succeeded in establishing the policy that mutants would be registered and their powers outlawed except for where they served the public as a governmental agent. Even unusual weaponry and "unusually applied capabilities" were banned except where given governmental approval and supervised or monitored. * - Spiderman is now semi-retired (although Peter Parker is not) and has been operating out of Chicago for some decades

Re: Found something today.... Never saw that, that's quite a find. I'm bumping to see if others have/had this. Re the powers, were they built on existing powers or were they entirely just unexplained (as to derivation, I mean, from the original rules) new powers? Not sure what domination is, sounds like mind control. Enragement, would be interesting to see, pretty well covered already but this might be a nice shortcut build, especially if it were written up on existing powers. Power healing? I assume that's entirely addressed by current rules unless it isn't what I think. Slipperiness I could see, again especially if it were written up on existing powers, but it would really have to be rewritten now I'm sure. Temporal fugue would be interesting to see but again seems wholly covered now. Transmutation should be wholly covered by current version of Transform. Vertigo would be really nice to see in terms of specifics and again more so if written off existing powers, but this sounds especially interesting since it could be a more elegant version for house rules for possible convenience.

Re: Mental Powers Just as a side note, I created a sort of rule in my primary supers campaign that most robots have human brains at least in terms of neural nets and cells as the basis for their fantastic AI, this simplifies a lot of issues as to SFX and game play. Any exceptions are quite rare, though do exist. As to how our game functions, any distinction in game rules/play for alien vs human would be extremely problematic, and so there is none. I've never envisioned mental SFX to work along these lines, anyway, seeming them more as some variations on biology, electro-chemical stimulus, pure energy projection, and magic.

Re: Mental Powers I'm sure Steve's thinking "No good deed goes unpunished" when exposed to various threads and arguments like this.

Re: Hero In Your Soul Excellent, Dust Raven!

Re: Could your Champions character beat... Not in my world, it's not excessive. Not for him, I'm considering him the world's greatest fighter and his DEX as part of it among the top. I really didn't concentrate on it from a Marvel world perspective, so it's a different context to consider.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... The game I was supposed to go to on Saturday was also cancelled.

Re: Mental Powers The difference is a known real-world analogue at least in appreciating the difference. Automotons have no brain and no EGO, that is the most compelling issue. PS - again, I would liken it to Phys/Ener distinction, well-understood and with clear differences. Probably requires a different treatment than P/E given comments I made above.

Re: Mental Powers No, and thankfully my version hasn't been enshrined in the rules as the defauilt like this has. I have supported it, you just don't accept the terms or definition or something. As stated, Phys and Ener are real-world SFX that we understand. Mental has no practical real-world analogue. All of our SFX and all the SFX in heroic fiction vary. The rulebook makes a gross assumption to address, beyond Machinery, a non-existing problem in an interesting but ultimately constraining assumption around the SFX of Mental powers.

Re: Mental Powers I believe any person who picks a rulebook up off the shelf and has no history in it and reads that there are 4 Classes of Mind, and they are Alien, Human, Machine, and Animal, would take that as a default, particularly as the GM "can" change it which suggests fluidity, yes, but does not nay-say this is the orthodox default and that any variation is a house rule. In fact I do not know how any other interpretation is possible unless someone has that prior experience with HERO and is grounded in its history, philosphical as well as literal, which, of course, is not the presumed reader even if it is frequently the actual reader.

Re: How much XP do you give and why? I don't really restrict much in terms of ongoing tweaks, people are good about keeping them in concept. Bigger changes we discuss.

Re: Exponential VS Linear ? Okay, thanks, but no need for special efforts.

Re: Mentalist Conundrum Yeah, good approach. And that's why I posted, curiousity.

Re: Mental Powers I'll try to over-simplify at least as an attempt at creating clarity: increased complexity for not enough gain and a too-restrictive non-toolkit build Elaboration: It's a new construct. It might be good for Machines. It might even be good for Machines, Humans, Plants break-out or for some as-written. But the real issue is that it exists without elaboration as a default that you can change but no real guidelines are given as to the basis of the current split, therefore limiting logical game-to-game reuse. It presumes fundamental differences that may not exist fundamentally in heroic fiction and certainly do not exist in reality. It presumes flavor and SFX, much more greatly than the Physical/Energy distinction. It adds something where there was not a clear need before except for the Machine one pointed out. If that is the target, then one would think it would have been simply Brains/Machine as Classes. The wearing thin of the construct is evident in its arbitrary "if your PC is an Alien, he doesn't get the benefit others do of being an Alien".

Re: Megascale Best Practices and Fun Examples

Re: Mentalist Conundrum BTW, to be clear, I was only speaking as a house rule to do much of what you did. Personally I just let the mentalists buy up their mental powers to compensate for MD commonality. They gain some leverage with me to do special constructs for costs savings, if it's in-concept and fair.