GestaltBennie

Re: Anyone combine Champs with Call of Cuthulu?

Re: A VILLAINY AMOK Freebie!

Re: Champions U help! She's in both books. I figured after seventeen years and two editions of Champions/Hero System, people could forgive an update, so she and Invictus were both brought back in Vamok. :-)

Re: A VILLAINY AMOK Freebie! Thanks guys. And hopefully Steve will do something nice for Pulp Hero when its time comes.

Re: Pulp Hero, after looking it over Well, after looking over it for close to a week, the verdict is... I don't know if this is the best thing Steve's ever written - but it is my favorite. Many kudos to Steve and sjohn for an outstanding read which (I hope) will result in many outstanding games.

Re: What's in a Name? Oblivion. The monstrous offshoot of a failed Russian telepathic experiment, Oblivion appears to be a human shaped negative field (think of Marvel's Eternity without the frills). At Oblivion's heart is a black hole that's a psionic, not a spatial phenomena. Originally Oblivion was dispatched by the KGB into the West to seek out members of the US intelligence community and use its telepathic abilities to suck out their memories. A battle with some silver age superheroes forced it into a tiny containment unit for thirty years; unfortunately someone recently let it out of its bottle. with thirty years of accumulated hatred (and improved abilities) to unleash upon the world. Next - The Macedonian.

Re: Batman VS Captain America! yeah right... I prefer the idea of a having a few characters switch companies over a messy massive company crossover. Judging by past efforts, big crossovers almost invariably bore the hell out of me.

Re: Old Villians Made New

Re: Old Villians Made New There was also a WITCH mentioned occasionally in the Really Early days. While my memory is fuzzy, I believe Gargoyle's origin was linked to them.

Re: Batman VS Captain America! yeah right... I like the suggestion from someone on the M&M board who thought it'd be cool if Cap and Bats traded places for a year, so Captain America interacted with the DC universe and Batman in Marvel. It'd never happen, but it'd be incredibly cool.

Re: Batman VS Captain America! yeah right... I suspect that Bats would have more problems with Cap's military background than his ideals. I'm also kinda interested in how Cap and Supes would get along. I think at first Supes might see him as Bats without the emotional baggage; they'd become quick pals, but they'd probably butt heads a lot if they were forced to work together. Yeah, I'd love to write a story set in the universe of the first few Marvel/DC team-ups, which seemed to postulate a shared world. Fusing the Avengers and the JLA would be *fun*. :-)

Re: Build your own "New Avengers"! Yep. IIRC, the Guardsman's essentially a cop, so he'd be the team's everyman. And since the Malibu-Verse crossed over with Marvel, I imagine Prime's fair game (though Marvel's probably too cheap to pay royalties to the creators. :-)) And the Skrull has some really useful powers, serves as a springboard to a cosmic storyline, allows exploration of the Skrull culture, and is a real big wild card.

Re: Build your own "New Avengers"! Okay, for interest's sake, let's try this combination: Captain America Prime Hawkeye Black Panther Warbird Clea Photon The Guardsman and, serving in the Avenger as one of the terms of his cosmic probation... The Super-Skrull!

Re: Is Doctor Who pulp? Certain eras of the Doctor take on different characteristics. I think the Barry Letts era was very pulpy, particularly when Robert Holmes was story editor. You don't get much pulpier than a season that gives us "Pyramids of Mars", "Brain of Morbius" and "Seeds of Doom". The current run of the doctor is largely a hybrid of science fiction and soap opera.

Re: What Super-game you like? Smudged four-color, or Bronze Age with a hint of iron.

Re: Lack of Fully Developed Worlds An interesting thread, even if it does cover, shall we say, well-trod ground. I like what Hero's done in 5e so far. That said, I sorta wish they'd get Darren to write a second edition of Champions Universe and Millennium City because when I look at work like Hidden Lands and Galactic Champions, I can clearly see how much he's grown as a writer since his early efforts - and those weren't that bad to begin with at all. I think he could really knock them out of the park now. The issue depresses me, because there's a bit of truth to it. I enjoy working with Hero as a toolkit; however the proof of a great toolkit isn't how much fun it is to tinker around with the tools, it's in the quality of the finished product produced by the tools. To play devil's advocate, if Hero is really such a great toolkit, we should be able to build products that are head and shoulders above everyone else in the industry, and frankly we're not. Lack of color illos aside, I'd put the content of books like Alien Wars, Hudson City, Hidden Lands or DEMON up against anything done for M&M or comparable lines, but I also don't think we're really using it to its full potential. I don't agree with anyone who thinks that recent Hero has been staid or too mired in the past. Hidden Lands (except for Atlantis), Villainy Amok, and DCTAS are all unlike anything that's gone before in Hero, and the closest thing the industry's produced to a Teen Champions was SJG's School of Hard Knocks (and a few forgettable X-Men sourcebooks from Marvel). However, there *is* a certain something missing. To use someone else's metaphor, Hero is producing good, dependable vehicles, cars you can drive for years, but the flashy sportscars are being produced elsewhere, even if they aren't as well made. Howver flash has its place in supporting an author's vision and making it really sing (just as sportscars are fun to drive). Steve's got to do what he has to do for the company to survive in a very tight market, and if some people have difficulty understanding that, too bad. However, I do hope there's room for the occasional experiment, the bit of extra glitz, the small risky project that's close to their hearts that they can really pour their passions into - and that when they take that risk, the market will be there to recognize it and support them.

Re: Champions (Super)Hero Resources Great work as always, QM. One resource I'd recommend adding to the list of games is Truth and Justice, written by Chad Underkoffler (published by Sock Monkey Press). Chad's an incredible writer, and even if the rules doesn't thrill, the genre advice is terrific.

Re: Tacky, tacky, tacky !!!! Both Invictus and the Engineer originally appeared in 1988's Villainy Unbound, the fifth book in the Enemies series. Invictus's original costume was a black T-shirt with a stylized American flag on it and a pair of blue jeans, nicely drawn by Glenn Johnson (who also did some interiors in Strike Force). I'm glad you enjoyed the book, thanks for the props. :-)

Re: Thinking Differently About SPD Yes, I have a table linking SPD to Max Base Points, Max Active Points with Advantages, Max DEFs, Max DEX, and Max OCV/DCV, which varies according to the power rating of a campaign. For an Experienced campaign (typically built on 350 points), they are: SPD Max Base Max w/Advant. Max DEF Max DEX Max OCV/DCV 4 80 120 30 23 11/13 5 70 105 25 26 11/13 6 60 90 23 29 12/14 7-8 50 75 18 33 12/14 Other campaign types have different benchmarks. I'm still tweaking the numbers; I plan to include the final ones in Gestalt.

Re: Thinking Differently About SPD I've treated SPD in this kind of the same way for years, linking SPD to max damage dice. The more you're in the spotlight, the less your attacks do, but low SPD characters get a higher damage cap, ensuring more frequent double-page panels. :-)

Re: Tacky, tacky, tacky !!!! Bad OddHat! You bad man! :-)

Re: MAKE ME A GOD!... Please Aaron had, IIRC, some divine package deals in his MYTHIC GREECE book, powers common to all deities in the pantheon. It's been years since I've seen them, but I remember thinking they were well-done. Even if you don't want that degree of standardization, they're worth a looksee. Olympians, on the other hand, wasn't one of my favorite 4th edition books and I don't remember anything I found particularly useful or inspiring in it.

Re: Tacky, tacky, tacky !!!! As I mentioned elsewhere, if you don't like Invictus's Villainy Amok get-up, consider it his formal suit, worn only for special occasions. I really don't see the Liberace on LSD part. That implies lots of glitter, which the Roman banded mail motif lacks. Yes he has a problem with Christianity and its practitioners. He tries to hide it, given the political climate, but due to the strength of his psych limitation he's not always successful. Good thing he knows how to spin doctor... :-) And I play Sutherland as a southern Democrat/Dixiecrat, but that's not official and your mileage may vary.

Re: MAKE ME A GOD!... Please I prefer the divine templates in Aaron Allston's Mythic Greece to anything in Olympians. Others may disagree.

Re: Dear G-D, NOOOOOOOOO!!! I hate Hollywood! To truly despise Hollywood as it deserves, you need to have worked with some of these incompetent control freaks. :-)