Dr Rotwang!

Really? I don't remember. How so? Dude, this's 10 years ago and I barely watched it. I...think. I was getting an early start on Totally Hating the Nineties and therefore ignoring stuff back then.

Well, lessee: I loves me some fantasy. I loves me some HERO. Whuzzat? Fantasy HERO with lotsa stuff in it that my 2nd Ed FH hasn't? Steve sez he can't hold a copy for me at GenCon, but he sure as heck won't mind signing it 'cause I'm gettin some!

I flip-flop. If want a high fantasy campaign, I'll design one; if I want gritty low-fantasy, that's what I'll do. That said, my players and I had a lot of fun with a campaign that I started and never finished (typical!) where they were the descendats of the survivors of a magical catastrophe and blah blah blah, and were the first daring explorers to go out into the wild and find out what was left some 3 generations after the kaboom. Result? No danged +5 swords lying around, no elves in every tavern...nothing but ruins. Finding a rusty knife was A Huge Deal because they'd forgotten steel! And when they met some goblins, they had no idea what they were, so they weren't sure how to deal with 'em...or even what to call 'em ("gakkins", they decided). It became a game of the re-discovery of the fantastic, rather than a game of jumping into a pool full of wands of wonder and splashing around. No, no, that's another campaign.

Brilliant. Thank you.

STEP ONE: Acquire Fantasy Hero STEP TWO: Use FH package deals for orcs, trolls, elves and dwarves STEP THREE: Use weapons from current era or from Star Hero STEP FOUR: Mayhem! ...I guess.

Hiya, folks. I think I've asked this before, but hell if I remember the answer. This time, I promise to learn! My wife and I both have ideas for characters whose powers are derived from an ingested drug. In her character's case, the drug gives her her powers (healing) for 24 hours; the powers leave in an hour if she misses a dose. My character turns into a sexy, blood-thirsty she-snake for 20 minutes at a time. We have no idea how to build "Has powers" with "When she takes the drug". Honest. I mean, we're not stupid; we just...can't...figure it out. Help? Thanks in advance.

Montealbán. Ricardo Montealbán. Está en Español. I need more ASCII codes for Spanish punctuation. And a nap. This is the end of Zeta Talk.

Yes, he was. BETTING OVER! ARCHER WINS! ...I watched "Banzai!" on Fox last night.

Uh...no, I...I'm...uh...I'm Rotwang!, lord of Stately Rotwang! Manor! Yes. STOP READING! POST ENDS!

[OT] Dungeons & Drunkards A bit of clarification: Indiana University (IU), here in Bloomington, IN, was recently voted "#1 Party School in the Whole Universe" or somesuch by A Very Important Periodical with a Masthead. Ergo the comment about students and their propensity towards slobbering, vomitous drunkenness, thing which I abhor in much the same way that bunnies hate lawnmowers. Or vice-versa. Bunnies, I like. Gooooooood buniiiiiiiies... POST OVER!

At my store, we sell it somewhat slowly, but my frequent, honest pimping of the game helps it out the door. For a while there, though, I couldn't get it back in. I was worried. But that problem's over. I expect to move more of 'em come Fall, when the students come rolling back into town with their quaint inablility to drive and their charming need to do something when they're not drinking.

Were you at my demo, at The Game Preserve? I ran a "Learn HERO" demo at my FLGS, and one of the players (who'd never seen HERO before) started asking about making Magi-Nation cards into HERO characters. I said, "Yeah, of course you could..." and he started doing it. Dangdest thing I ever saw.

Well, I wrote a big, long reply to this, timed out, and lost it before it could get posted. If that ain't funny, what is?

Yeah...Toon is your best bet. The biggest problem with role-playing cartoons has been stated -- in your Looney Tunes and your Tom & Jerry cartoons, there's not so much a plot as there is a premise: Bugs and Daffy fight with Elmer over what hunting season it is, Jerry's Uncle Pecos comes over, etc. This leads (invariably) to a series of loosely-connected scenes of mayhem and chaos. And they're funny for many reasons, but the key one is this: CONTROL. Yes, cartoons are silly and goofy and seemingly all over the place. There's an illusion of wackiness, of free-form zaniness, of loss of control. The truth, however, is that those cartoons -and all comedy, really- depend on TIMING, and timing means control. Knowing when the anvil falls, when the guitar string breaks, when the dog wakes up. Dying, it is said, is easy; comedy is hard. How many bad comedians are there? Okay, now how many good ones? Now, how many of those good comedians work well together? And howe many work well spontaneously, without rehearsal? If you can get 5 to 6 gamers who can improvise together, hit every timing beat and excercise great and amazing control in improv situations, get the hell away from the table and get an agent. Cartoon writers, animators and directors hash out each cartoon during production. They time out every joke, they map out every beat. It's magic when it just happens, but more often than not, it's craft. I'm not saying you shouldn't do it. But I am reminding you of what needs to be overcome in order to do a good, successful, emulatory cartoon game, and of why there are so few of those around, in theory and practice both.

Hoo-hah! She's gotta polish some stuff but that won't take long. Next couple of days? She has to work, you know. We'll be putting up a gaming website, too, when we have stuff done for it. Stay tooned.

No, but my wife has made prefabs for all sortsa armor and ranged weapons from the previous FH book. You want somma that action?

I don't, but it's a thought; if nothing else, it'd be easier for me to play than the actual video games, which I've proven time and again to be unable to play at all.

Well, I know better than to start a Star Wars d6/d20 discussion, so I'll just agree with you on the GURPS realism thing. Er, simulationist. Or, uh, attempt at...sim...ulation. Or...whatever. Star Wars d6.

Yeah, I'm on the same wavelength, there, Harvester. I'm a super, super die-hard Star Wars d6 fan, and even I think HERO would be an acceptable alternate system. In faaaaact...I have notes for my "Star Wars with the serial numbers filed off" campaign, and it sez "Star HERO" on it. I dunno why GURPS feels so right for hard-ish SF, anymore than I can articulate why I like Marvel comics better than DC or why I prefer vanilla over chocolate ice cream...I just do. Maybe it's the structure that GURPS has -- the skill-heavy feel. I dunno. Make Mine Marvel!

Steve. My wife sez to HOLD A COPY FOR US. You can sell it to me and sign it and my FREd book and then I can interview you. She wants that FH action bad, and frankly so do I. Do not crush our dreams! Er, please. Thank you. Sir.

Oh, hey, here. Last night Fraulein Codename (my wife) and I went to see Sinbad- Legend of the Seven Seas, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, Michelle Pfeiffer and Michelle Pfeiffer's character's hair. It's a DreamWorks animated flick with no dang singing. What do you want in your fantasy movie? Here, lessee... Swordfights? Check. Over-the-top heroics? Check. A quest? Check. Divine intervention? All over the place. Sexy, competent love interest? Yes. Hubba. Check. Giant monsters? Two. No, wait -- three. Planar travel? Check. Exotic locales? Briefly, but check. Fertile ground for a campaign setting of your own? It worked for me! Funny NPCs? Check. Slobbering dog? Check. Your wife comes home and makes a pirate-chick PC with HERO Designer as soon as she can sit down? Well, mine did, so check. ...and no singing, no cute talking animals, plus innuendo aplenty. It's not so much a fantasy romp for kids as much as it is a fantasy flick that kids can watch with their parents. And you eventually forget that the guy doing Sinbad's voice is that one guy from that movie I didn't wanna see. Swordfights, man. Rotwang! sez check it out.

*ahem* Xanadu. ... *cricket* *cricket* ...*sigh* Okay, okay. In...1992 or so, ABC ran a series called "Covington Cross". It lasted maybe 6 episodes, but not from lack of quality. It wasn't a fantasy series, really; it was a medieval family drama...with swords, crossbows, hot red-headed horse-ridin' sword-swingin' daughters and swords and crossbows and the hot redhead. Awesome. Speakin' of brief-lived TV on ABC, there's the totally freaking radical program that was replaced by "Baywatch": The Henson Hour. Thirty minutes of Muppety hijinks followed by thirty minutes of Labyrinth-quality art design and asbsolutely beautiful productions of classic farie tales, including the ones no one's ever heard of. Double awesome, order of killer, biggie-sized! So where're you gonna get this stuff? Hell if I know. I'm assuming you're all a bunch of crafty, resourceful little devils who can get ahold of video unattainable by me, so obviously you can work the magic and get your mitts on this goodness. Huzzah!

I have Stormhaven and Jade Jaguar, but they're at home on a bookshelf and I'm at work. Gimmie a couple'as days and I'll give you an answer you'll never forget.

Once again, Dr Rotwang! has the answer: FAKE IT! No, seriously! I'm a big GURPS geek and I ignore anything I don't feel like usin'. Vehicle design rules? I use a module system, and at that, I use it loosely. Trade rules? Hah! If I feel like cutting the PCs a break, then the water they bought in one place is suddenly in demand on the next; if not, then the residents of Goombah IX are drowning. Ta-daaaah! I'm the GM! I thought about using HERO for Trav, because I loves me some HERO, but...mehhh...I dunno, GURPS feels right for SF of that kind. So GURPS it is.

Mayhap I'm dense, or just missed somethin', but...why does the Fencing Parry maneuver give a +2 OCV bonus if all it does is Block? I'm confused. Thanks in advance for your clarity and wisdom, O Steve.