LadyChaos

No, not Kitty Pride. Belle. The Cat. All of my supers seem to be of the angst ridden ilk. One of the teams lost its mentalist. I toyed around with ideas and this one stuck with me. Ever see Secret of NIMH? Belle is an ordinary housecat who was picked up off the street and sold to a research institute. Through various experiments and drugs, she developed not only intelligence but psychic abilities. Using these, she was able to escape the lab and head out on her own. But she's still a cat with a cat's attitude. She's been getting by mind controlling likely humans ("See the cat. Pretty Kitty. You should feed the kitty.") She takes off whenever a human wants to restrain her or *gasp* spay her. How'd she get involved with crime fighting? Well, one of our players (and the PC) really dislikes cats. I talked to the player and we both think it'd be funny if Belle attached herself to Fury. Since Fury dislikes cats, Belle in catlike perverseness wants to stick around. Fury leads a super team. Anyway, I'm open for suggestions for how to reflect Belle as a feline instead of just another mentalist. Thanks!

Re: Disad Advice

Re: Disad Advice Um, doesn't EVERY homo sapien have a disad "lack of oxygen"? Don't think I'd give points for that--especially all those different points. I don't have a problem with the red skin. It depends on the type of campaign you run whether it would be considered a disad. It certainly would affect a secret ID if the character was trying to maintain one.

Re: Beginning of an Era I love that kind of play! It's a lot of fun when the heroes start to rethink things or change in significant ways. It's also good if you lose a beloved PC that he/she die in a heroic or dramatic manner. Great job to all involved!

Re: Killer dreams Our group's facing our evil twins from an alternate dimension who after several games have succeeded in taking our places. Our evils are exactly like us except twisted personalities (and minus any CvKs). We sat around the table, looked at each other and unanimously bemoaned "We're screwed!" Pretty fun stuff! Don't know why your player didn't like it. Seems some people can't have fun unless they're always "winning."

Re: Some suggestions for FRED revised. The only thing I would really like to see in the revised 5th (since I know changes, etc., will be in 6th) is the re-addition of the Limits and Advantages tables so you could calculate points at a glance. I can do the math, but I AM lazy!

Re: Why does Nighthawk always get depicted getting the crap kicked out of him?

Re: Character Templates + Paint Shop Pro = Frustration! I have only colored my own drawings (that I scanned in), but this is what I did. I'm self-taught so there may be a better way. You should have a tool called "magic wand." This tool selects everything in a given area of the same color. Use that to select what you want to color (or the free select) and then fill. If you have a lot of color variations, you may have to select tiny areas for each fill, but it does go pretty fast. I used Blue's method when I drew Manitou so I could get the shadow effect behind her. Also, if you haven't checked it already, the Jasc website has several tutorials.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Okay, that's it! The Masked Arrow is now hunted by my PC Afreet--who once failed 5 perception rolls while a super battle raged around her (bodies flying past, that sort of thing) while she stared, enraptured, at the side of an ice cream truck and tried to decide what to buy. The battle was over before she decided. Well, okay. Not hunted, but definitely WATCHED.

Re: Superhero Images Magmarock, didn't think you were! Afreet really has no body consciousness. She's had to change her look several times after a little misunderstanding. The new costume is strictly roleplaying ... she ran into someone who did make her self-conscious. The joke is that she either wears 8 sweaters at once or nothing at all. :-) Of course, there's that one adventure where she went starkers in the dream dimension for 2 weeks simply because she refused to admit she'd made a mistake. I cheated on the fire effects--they're picture tubes from paintshop. I agree that Afreet's second costume is awfully colorful. She's attempting to conceal her identity. The hair is different because the more powerful she becomes, the more elemental she looks.

Re: Superhero Images

Re: Evil Businessmen. What if Howard Hughes faked his death? Worldmaker, Lamar Hunt? Too nice ... or are you a Raiders fan? Now that I think of it, Al Davis ....

Re: Superhero Images Is GIMP comparable to Paintshop Pro which I do have? Photoshop would be great, but I can't justify the expense.

Re: How do you get players to role play the genre? I third, fourth and fifth most of the people here. There are different styles of playing. Some like role playing. Others just want to unwind by beating up on something. It doesn't sound to me like your players don't know how to roleplay (you can roleplay in a fantasy campaign just as well as in a supers or horror or anything else). They just like the hacking and bashing. Haerandir has some great tips. Sometimes the GM needs to bring the role playing to the player rather than wait for them to start up themselves. I game with a large group. About half really enjoy role playing. Most like it, but not too much. One simply gets bored if there's "too much talking." I think our GM thought we all felt that way until we began individually approaching him and asking for more roleplay. We still do a lot of fighting, but we get a bit more characterization (that's how I think of it). Even the Big Basher had a great role playing moment when his DNPC wife (who knew he was a super) realized what that meant after Viper attacked and tried to kidnap her and the kids. It may be catering to the players, but try and figure what they like best about their character concept and introduce some role playing around those elements. Good luck!

Re: Silliest Disadvantage Ever One of my PCs has a "must eat" disad. The black hole accident that mutated her and increased her density also incredibly increased her metabolism. If she doesn't eat, she'll pass out and eventually die. Of course, the ramifications of always munching on a Snickers or a granola bar or whatever's handy has led to a lot of humorous comments in our games. The last one came from another PC team who she had to stay with for awhile. One of these PCs watched mine scarf down everything on the table and look around for more and said "Remind me to increase the grocery budget and hire another cook."

Re: Superhero Images Well, I finally upgraded to PSP 8 (Photoshop is too expensive to justify) after working with PSP 4 for years. Wow, have things changed! I really appreciate their optimizer. I drew these freehand. Some where colored with pencil and some with markers. I took the opportunity to clean them up when I scanned them in (first time for working with scanned images, too). They are all characters I've played for years. I think Manitou was conceived back in the 1980s under Champs 3. 1. Afreet ~ my half human/half efrit magical fireling. She never suffered from body consciousness until recently; hence, the change in her costume. (Oh, yeah, we have a 4-color campaign) 2. Afreet (original) ~ Back when she had no shame and wasn't adverse to using her comeliness if it gave her an advantage in a fight. 3. Manitou ~ An Objibwe shaman who shadow walks in the spirit realm 4. Darkstar ~ A time commando from the future trapped in our present. A mutated teleporting brick. Anyone who ever read Simon Hawke's Timewars series--she's based on this universe. (EDIT: Okay, I think I shrank them down. I'm learning my PSP and how to work things here--thanks for the patience!)

Re: Superhero Images

Yep, I removed it because it was the original size (8x10) and I wanted to put in a smaller one. Now it's not attaching. At least I know it can work now!

Re: Calling all Mages... The Zodiac teemed with magic users. I know since one of my PCs has a disad v. magic. *sigh* That would be Capricorn, Aquarius and Gemini. I don't think any of the others used it.

Re: Superhero Images I am having the worse time trying to post pics. It's try, try, try again time. Okay, the upload function keeps giving me an error page. Could someone please tell me how I do this? Thanks! LadyChaos

Re: What?? Bruce Wayne isn't Batman??? I like that idea, too. The Zodiac would be another one to include there. I also liked CLOWN, but the GM needs to remember the fine line that exists between humor and humiliation. One of my PCs had a newspaper personals flirtation with Merry Andrew because she played along with one of his jokes (I mean, it didn't hurt anything!). Sigh, we'll always have lupines ....

Sorry that this reply is a bit late. My kid and I were just talking about the WWN and "science" the other day when I came up for a fun idea for a character ... ELVIS. Yep, The King did fake his death. Too many nitrates from fried bologna sandwiches and strange pesticides used on the bananas in those PB&B sandwiches account for any powers you might want to give him. Make him PC, NPC hero or villian. You're choice, although Elvis as villian does appeal. Maybe his "body" disappears from Graceland. HIs secret ID is fry cook at a Bob's Big Boy. Seriously (if you can take tabloid headlines seriously) you might also want to check out some conspiracy theory websites. I bet you can have lots of fun between those, the ideas here, urban legends (http://www.snopes.com) and other tabloid headlines.

After so many years I can laugh about it. I use it as my example for "how not to attract females to your game" for guys.

Oh, wow. Worst gaming experience ... would have to be when I first started gaming (long before there was dirt). I was new and didn't know what to expect. Had signed up as interested in a D&D-type game at the FLGS. The DM was a kid about 5 years younger than me. The players were all guys from about that age to around 20. I didn't realize how rare women in gaming were (especially back in the olden days). I rolled up a half-elven spellcaster of some sort. The 20 something guy kept reciting the exploits of his Anti-Paladin to me the entire time. "Anti-what?" I had no idea what he was talking about. I soon found out. We all "met" at the local tavern. The anti-paladin breaks into my PCs room that night and rapes her. My PC was given no opportunity to resist or fight back in any manner. No one had a problem with this behavior. The player bragged how his PC could get away with this because he was a "paladin" and no one would believe my PC. (Does this sound like a bad LIfetime movie or what?) Did I kill his PC? No. I had a first level nobody and his character ranked up there in the teens. I took him to court where everyone believed his PC. Until I pointed out that my own PC had "detect lie" and found three other clerics in town who also had it. His PC sang a different tune on the rack and subsequent execution. I never played with this group again, but that's not the end of the story. The player followed me home, swore his undying love. I told him to get lost. He then stalked me (parked outside my house nearly every night for hours, etc.) for several weeks. I finally had a "friend" talk to him. The stalking stopped, but then he went to the FLGS and wrote five pages of obscenties about me in the gamers' interest notebook. After that, the store never allowed that sort of sign-up again, which was too bad. It's a wonder I kept gaming. This guy was a poster child who proved just about everything the anti-gaming wackos howl about. Luckily, I met other people who showed me just how much of an anomoly this jerk was.

Can Power Defense be bought Hardened? For that matter, can drains, transfers, etc., be bought with Armor Piercing to disregard Power Defense? The answer is probably staring me right in the face somewhere.