BarretWallace

True, but the Liberty Memorial, IMHO, does a wonderful job telling the story of that terrible conflict. I could spend several days in there just taking it all in. There really were no good guys/bad guys...well, the memorial does a way better job of telling the story than I ever will.

The Terminator (1984 movie) original soundtrack!

Windows 8.1: Millennium, The Next Generation

What Star Wars system? I prefer WEG's d6, but I'm an old curmudgeon that way.

Our own Steven S. Long wrote Spacedock back in the day. In that book, his shields had a Protection rating and a Threshold. Protection is the amount of damage shields can take before collapsing completely, and attacks above the Threshold are what bleed through to affect the ship directly. That's why you can have people being thrown around and system damage happening without the shields actually being down. How to model that in Hero terms, now that would take some more thinking. If I have any great flashes of insight I'll let you know.

So is this our future?

Hello all, It has been way too long since I've translated a character from concept to stats. I'm having some major gamer's block here, so I figured I'd turn to the most creative (and odd) group of people on the interwebz: Herogames.com forums! The game in question is Teen Champions. Guidelines are as follows (shamelessly copied from game forum): Teen Champions game using the Champions Universe, specifically set in Ravenswood Academy in Millennium City. PC's are incoming Freshmen, Class of 2019 Base 75 + 100 Disadvantages Characteristics 8-28 with only one over 12; Speed range 2-5. Powers are 15-45 active points, 5-15 real points with only one power over 15 active points Powers are supposed to be unreliable and without fine control hence lots of limitations or just really low powered or both. Skills are 5-25 points total with 8-12 or less rolls and only one skill higher than 11 or less Defenses are capped at 12PD/ED(r6). Disadvantages are capped at no more than 50 per category, and a clique disadvantage is required. Don't list Disadvantages that everyone (at least at this school) has. That includes both "Social Disadvantage: Minor & Social Disadvantage: Secret ID". Combat Values are capped at 7. EXCEPTIONS: If you buy higher characteristics as Powers with Limitations (Like an Only In Hero ID alien battle suit), you can exceed the Characteristic caps, but can't spend more than 15 real points per characteristic doing it. If your Skill is based on a Characteristic and the base roll exceeds the Skill cap, then you can exceed the Skill cap but cannot buy it up any higher. This includes a single high Characteristic of 28 pushing Skill rolls for skills based on that Characteristic up to 15- Characteristics and Skills can exceed the campaign caps to the extend of the positive modifiers in a Clique Package Deal; for example, Alterna-Teen gives +2 INT, so if you buy INT up to the campaign cap of "12", you can have a 14 if you buy the Alterna-Teen Package Deal. Similarly, if you buy skills up to the 25 point campaign cap, the skills that are part of your Clique Package Deal don't count towards the cap. If your Power is a STOPSIGN or EXCLAMATION POINT power, avoid taking it. I want to avoid them for now, probably for this game as a whole. My character concept is as follows: Jimmy Rostinov is a nondescript and thin lad of 13 going on 14 who many say is a bit of an odd duck. To give him a label, one might say he is a fairly typical nerd or geek. He does well in school and is a fan of various types of sci-fi. In "real life" (i.e. earthly life), he enjoys minor tinkering with electronics and is a ham radio operator. Jimmy has recently become fascinated with medicine as well, and has proclaimed (to all who will listen) that he wants to be a doctor one day. He's got a few good friends rather than a large group of quasi-friends, and prefers not to draw attention to himself most of the time. It is when people see Jimmy talking to himself that they consider him especially weird. What many people don't know (or struggle to accept) is that Jimmy is talking to a real person named Alex Petrovsky...who is dead, and currently exists only as a spirit. To call it a possession isn't quite accurate, because while Alex resides in or with Jimmy somehow, Jimmy retains his own mind and will through it all. As the two grew closer, Jimmy began manifesting various powers of healing. He can heal minor injuries with sufficient time and focus, and is making some headway against diseases. He gained these abilities by channeling power through Alex, and it is when he is focusing hardest on healing that Alex comes closest to "possessing" him. As their bond grows, Jimmy is starting to develop other supernatural abilities as well, though he doesn't have a very good handle on them yet. Jimmy's parents, somewhat fearful of his abilities but wanting to support him as best they can, enrolled him in Ravenswood Academy. There they hope that he can learn in an environment where his abilities are respected and nurtured rather than feared...and they hope he can find some good friends as well. That's what I've got for now.... Erik

To use a Star Wars example, Obi-Wan Kenobi certainly has the strength to totally bend someone to his will...yet all he chooses to do with that power is convince some stormtroopers that "These aren't the droids you're looking for". His apprentice, on the other hand, uses his power to work great evil--not so much mind control, perhaps, but still: it ain't the glove, it's the hand that wears it. In my GMing days, I would let characters gain positive traits (Advantages, Merits, etc., depending on game) and negative traits (Flaws, Disadvantages, Complications, again depending on game) depending on their roleplaying, and I usually wouldn't make them pay points for it if it was roleplayed well.

Re: Hero Central Down for?? Bummer, dude. Well, thank you for your efforts at any rate. The forums are also running a lot better for me, so thank you for that as well!

Re: Sci-Fi Melee Weapons: Bat'leth, Lirpas, Lightsabres, Rykk Blades, Koltari, Denn'B

Re: Star Fleet Battles Starships You might also consider Spacedock, crafted by our own Steve Long, no less. It is built to work with Last Unicorn's Star Trek game and not Hero, admittedly. However, it is a very detailed system for Star Trek ship construction, including suggestions on game balance, so that might give you better fodder for conversion to Hero. http://www.coldnorth.com/memoryicon/spacedock/spacedock.htm

Re: Why I prefer HERO System over Pathfinder/OGL/D&D for fantasy Amen, bro! In fact, one time during character design I didn't pay enough attention to character defenses. My guy could take blows that would fell less-resistant party members, but totally had a glass jaw. In any other system he might have died. In Hero, he was just embarrassed frequently, at least until I used XP to compensate for those deficiencies (mostly a too-low PD).

Re: Cooperative Timeline I read Ike Eisenhower's WW2 memoir (although I forget its exact title since it's been a while), and it contains one Ike-ism that I'll never forget: "We owe a lot of our success to Adolf Hitler."

Re: Star Wars: Technological Stagnation? Maybe a reason for technological "stagnation" is that there really isn't a need to develop the latest, hottest way to, say, kill someone. Sure, one can always develop a newer, deadlier blaster, but why? If the tried-and-true model does just as good a job--and does it cheaper, with well-established performance characteristics--then there's really no need to "upgrade".

Re: LOTR thoughts

Re: A Superhuman Registration World

Re: Kill the Dude with the Thing Problem is, if I kill The Dude and take The Thing, then I become The Dude with The Thing and therefore the target. Maybe I can hire a few decoys, so I can at least study The Thing long enough to determine why everyone wants it so badly.

Re: Kill the Dude with the Thing Dude...that's not the thing you're looking for.

Re: Kill the Dude with the Thing There can be no spilling of the beer, dude; that's alcohol abuse.

Re: Anti-matter weaponry Well, my favorite explanation for force shields is more space opera: it works because it works, and even more importantly, it looks cool. We really can't explain technology real far in advance of our own without a lot of handwavium anyway. The way I figure it, if a gadget (be it antimatter weapons, force fields, blasters, or what have you) is important to your setting, then no further explanation is needed. Antimatter weaponry...that is the WMD of the future, hopefully the very very distant future. I doubt it would look as cool as Star Trek's photon torpedoes.

Re: Space fightercraft in RPGs. Yeah, and if the game ceases being fun, then it's more like work (which at least comes with a paycheck to counterbalance the lack of fun).

Re: Well, hello there, HERO System! (New Guy) Welcome aboard, Strongbow! While I am not the most frequent poster on these boards, it's the coolest gamers' community I've ever seen. I've seen discussions and even disputes fly back and forth, but in no other community have I seen its members keep on such an even keel. You'll find plenty of quirk, and also plenty of civility.

Re: Fantasy game props Have you ever used the Campaign Cartographer suite of programs (www.profantasy.com)? You could use that to make and print battle maps to any scale desired. The Dioramas add-on lets you map out a building (or whatever) and then print a foldable version, and Character Artist can be used to generate markers for monsters, characters, treasure, etc. 'Tis a thought. I have barely scratched the surface of these programs, but enjoy them thoroughly. And of course they cost money.

Re: Undead Labor: why not? This is one of the coolest treatments of "undead" labor I've ever read, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Repped!

Re: Game World Economy Now that would hurt.