Wolfgar

Re: Horror Hero: Cliches to Avoid Pretty much. Smart characters will at least try to escape. Although if I recall correctly, the folks in the Shining couldn't really leave after the bad stuff started happening, since they were snowed in. Really I'm referring to religeous figures in general being demonized. Of course it's an open secret many of them are pretty corrupt and venal people IRL. Nazis make great scapegoats and canon fodder, just like zombies. Only thing better is Nazi zombies. Depending on just how far you want to go, you could actually have a sympathetic Nazi character in your game and provide horror that way. I think the world still has plenty of room for evil clowns as well, although I must say I've never really understood the phobia.

Re: Horror Hero: Cliches to Avoid It is the problem with horror: It tends to have a high body-count, and that can make long term character development difficult. No one wants to bother getting to know a walking corpse. Which is too bad. He's so friendly. He just wants a hug. Other conventions: The party breaking up into small groups. This works fine in the movies. In game, you have to work to split the group up, and then it's really a pain to make sure no one is getting bored while they sit there watching everyone else play until it's their turn.

Re: Genres HERO GAMES may want to avoid (intended to be humorous) Exploding HERO: Players all play fireworks. Try to be pretty.

Re: Horror Hero: Cliches to Avoid Yeah. A monster with only one weakness is pretty much a garunteed TPK, unless the party is smart enough to run away. Please, please, be smart enough to run away. Right now. Go on. On your bike. He's moving real slowly. No, the bullets, aren't working. What? You want to...? With your...? Did I mention the huge dripping fangs and pile of eviscerated corpses behind him? But you still want to...? *sigh* Okay... Charging Into The Face of Oblivion Because You Think You Can Win: EGO + 30, Only to resist Common Sense (-2)

Re: Genres HERO GAMES may want to avoid (intended to be humorous)

There are certain cliches you want to avoid when running a horror game. A lot of these are really tired tropes that Hollywood has used to death, and the bulk of your players will either not find them scary, or guess them right off the bat. Some of these include: 1.) Evil children. Children represent innocence, and frequently are used to induce horror by distorting the familiar. Unfortunately, the technique has become overdone, and now making the monster be a evil child of some sort has become way to obvious. 2.) Evil priests/reverends. Again, priests and reverends are usually thought to represent goodness, so inverting them is creepy. Making your bad guy a priest is way too obvious. Double obvious if you have White Wolf players in your group. Just say no to evil priests. Anyone like to add any others?

Re: Hero System for Horror gaming I would like to suggest that having one big scary thing isn't always the way to go. Sometimes, you might want to try a swarm of smaller things that are individual weak, but just keep coming. A note on insanity: You don't necessarily need a SAN characteristic. What you can do, since you are the player's senses, is just give them odd or conflicting information. Tell them they see a monster, oh no, wait, it's just a shadow. Tell them they hear something that sounds like breathing coming from behind the door: Maybe it's a monster, maybe it's just the ventilation system acting up again. It's a pain bookkeeping wise, but it might be good to keep track of the player's STUN and BODY for them too. That way they should be a bit more cautious what kind of risks they take, and are more likely to just run. Just some thoughts really.

Re: Religion Hero?? Well there are three ways to look at it: Religeon as theme: This is probably the #1 you see religeon in RPGs. Somebody takes a classical religeous lesson or story and models a role-playing stuation out of it. Someone might use the game to impart a moral lesson, sometimes appreciated, sometimes not. Or there may be a statement about religeon or faith through a PC or NPC. The power of faith may overscome some great evil, even if it's just faith in a god that doesn't exist outside the game world. Religeon as Mythos: Also common. Many games feature angels, gods, demons, priests, etcetera. Here the main matter is just deciding on stats and powers, as well as degree of influence on play. Religeon as Meta-Genre: Probably the rarest of the three, religeon as a Meta-Genre would imply using Hero to try to bring about religeous experience or a feeling of proximity to the divine. RPGs could theoretically be very effective for this, and for some people it works quite well. Just as often though, these are the same people who believe spells are real and they are really possessed by demons. All in all it works out best for the hobby if this sort of thing is only done on an extremely limited basis.

Re: Genres HERO GAMES may want to avoid (intended to be humorous) Galactic Hero. You play a galaxy. Experience the thrill of enear endless existence, epic vastness, and being mostly full of nothing. Sentient galaxies not optional.

Re: What is special about this? I am curious why Flash Defense falls into this category. I could theoretically see Duplication causing a problem, for example, and if a character could put Enhanced Senses in a framework it could potentially step on someone else's schtick. But sunglasses? The GM's permission thing has to be in there, otherwise you compromise logic for balance. It would be kind of weird for my gadgeteer to be able to build a jet pack, a death ray, or a holographic projector, but was completely unable to build a telescope or a crystal radio. Maybe it would work better if they put "These powers are potentially unbalancing if bought through a framework, so you need to be really think about it first." Which is reall what GM's permission amounts to.

Re: Help Required. Undead PC Yeah, I'm pretty much of the opinion that if Advantages exist that model what you are trying to model, you should use them instead of trying to come up with some oddball backdoor method with "non-restricted" powers. Most of the Automaton powers really don't seem that bad to me. I don't see why not to use them when appropriate. It's more of an "Ask Your GM First" thing in my mind.

Re: Stone Fist Probably just as a special effect. It should be easy enough to form a cradle for the weapon using his stone arm and his neck, and then using his free hand to load clips/bullets/cartidges/batteries. Doesn't really seem like that advanced a trick as to require something special.

Re: Korgoth of Barbaria It's looking really good. I hope they do more with it. It's nice that while yeah, it was full of gags and such, the basic plot was serious and coherent. For me that's a step in the right direction.

Re: Question: Must I model everything I own? It has a zoom feature, so I tend to use it as a substitute for binoculars. It's a great game line, although much easier than the Sam Fischer games.

Re: Question: Must I model everything I own? I've actually given some thought to using something similar Money Perk as a way of modeling how posh/spartan a base was in general. For stuff like training rooms, labs, holding cells, security, etcetera, I would have them bought sperately, but just to have the place be really cozy or really uncomfortable could be bought as the Money perk variation. The Perk bought with the base's points, not the character's points.

Re: Question: Must I model everything I own? I feel I should explain that part of the reasoning for the camera was I was actually trying my hand at modeling all the equipment in Metal Gear Solid 3 as sort of an intellectual exercise, and the camera had me kind of stumped. I'm really not that nit-picky. Close, but not that nit-picky. And I didn't really have a point, I was just seeking clarification and guidance. A vampire not showing up on cameras seems to me to be a trait of the vampire's not the camera's, whether you choose to make it a Disad or a Power.

Re: Alignment Issues Honestly I've always been fond of Palladium's Alignment system. Especially since the way it is written the bulk of the population in Palladium worlds are jerks. Couple points on Humanity 1) It was, and is, really hard to actually get your Humanity stripped away completely. Largely it's used as a game balancing factor; in a game where access to blood is a potent resource, you need a way to keep the players from just viewing every single NPC as a power-up. 2) Humanity should not normally be taken away for killing in self defense, except at the higher levels. 3) A character losing Humanity is not just becoming evil, but is slowly losing their ability to act rationally. You didn't switch from Chaotic Good to Chaotic Evil; you switched to Chaotic Evil with the Brain of Angry Squirrel. 4) The lack of good in the world reflects that Vampire and it's sister games are horror games first and foremost, and in the world of horror, there are no good guys, only survivors. Rant Over.

Re: Question: Must I model everything I own? So since I have everyone's attention... What would I use to model a camera or tape recorder or similar such devices?

Re: Question: Must I model everything I own? The only problem, oh great and mighty palindromedary, is that I might very well be the guy running the thing, and I'm honestly looking for guidelines on what to stat and what to handwave.

Thanks guys. You've been really helpful, and given me some decent ideas about how I want to do things.

I know this topic has probably been discussed to death before, but I can't seem to find any specific threads on the topic. If anyone could point me in the right direction, it would be really appreciated. The book says that Superhero characters buy all their equipment with CPs rather than with money. My question is, when exactly does this cut off? Is there anything a character can reasonably assume to have for free? Do I really have to do a whole write-up for breath mints? As sort of a sub-question, does a superhero character have to buy a Base just to have somewhere to live? If they don't plop down the points for a base, are they homeless? If not, where is the cut-off between what's a base and what's not? I appreciate any answers you can give me on this.

Re: Making the math easier I find the fractions way easier to work with than decimals or percentages. I really loathe winding up with .4085723087502147524175872 of a character point, and I would prefer any system that minimized this. And if the book had me using .7 on a regular basis, I'd just burn it and be done with the damn thing. Of course I'm always getting something and 3/4s for my advantages and limitations anyway. *sigh*

Part of Social Limitations is the representation of discrimination, and an AI could definitely be treated as less than human. There will be cases where the AI's "life" will be considered much less important than a human one, for starters.

In most cases I would say the tetrahedron would be Comeliness of of 0. It's just an object and doesn't have anything particularly appreciable to look at. It's not hideous, but not especially attractive. It could have a higher Comeliness if it was fine crystal of refracted light in an especially pretty way. The Ghoul Princess? We could simply say she has a -2 COM when any other ghoul has -5 or -7. She's an incredibly beautiful member of her people, but still truly disgusting to a human. In the case of the super model I'd make it a Social Limitation, so that only part of her COM still applies. Mind you while beauty standards change, certain characteristics remain popular no matter what era you happen to be in. Good teeth tend to be popular just about everywhere. A more tricky scenario is when dealing with an alien beauty concept, which was alluded to in the above scenarios. You will note though that in almost all fiction all characters maintain a human sense of beauty, except for gag characters. Dealing with someone who finds something more beautiful when it's slimy, or the less color there is to it, would be a lot more difficult to quantify.