Markdoc

Re: Herophile Fantasy art That was sort of the intention. I generally tend towards more practical armour like this. This is one of my old characters, Caillé, of the order of Warrior-nuns the Little Sisters of Carnage You probably can't tell from the picture, but she used to be a guy..... cheers, Mark

Re: Character: Nieh Hsiao Tsing (Chinese ghost) Not an exact translation, but an "inspired by" NPC here: http://www.geocities.com/markdoc.geo/Gaming_stuff/Sengoku/anlee.html cheers, Mark

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Yep, that's the one. cheers, Mark

Re: Fantasy Rant

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Recently? Saw Layer Cake with friends post Christmas lunch - seen it before, but it was still fun second time round. Also Laputa, castle in the sky (ditto - it's amazingly good, considering its age). Saw Pom Poko (did a little anime shopping in London ) - very nice and not what I expected. And also saw Final Fantasy VII (it was on special...) My review is "Ooh! Sparkly!" Saw Banlieu 13 - fairly average French action flick (It's from Luc Besson), but it has some amazing fight/action sequences. After we had seen it, we went back and watched some of the fights and chases again. Also saw Infernal affairs III last night. Good movie, though not as good as I and II - and I suspect it would be *completely* incomprehensible unless you had seen both of the earlier movies. cheers, Mark

Re: Herophile Fantasy art No story to this one - just doodlin' And I thought "How about some improbable armour wiv spiky bits?" cheers, Mark

Re: Modern Magic setting...opinions needed Without that info, however, it seems reasonable - I'm assuming that characters still haveto pay for their magic. 15 points for a talent (I'd call it a perk, personally) is not too high if magic is very rare - it means for example that normal places like (say) a police station or a bank are not going to have precautions against infiltrators who can fly, turn invisible or walk through walls - and you can do any of those for 45 points. Likewise, most people won't have mental Defence or Power Defence and no judge is going to buy the story that someone acted under the influence of mind control, etc etc. so, it seems about right. cheers, Mark

Re: Werewolf for a PC I'd do this. You are right: it's cleaner and will be cheaper than buying "power X only in wolf form" "power Y only in hybrid form" etc. It also covers those cases where a skill is not appropriate. It doesn't matter if you have "seduction" in your human form - that's not going to translate over to your wolf form, even with other wolves. On the other hand, it lets him buy appropriate skills/powers as required to fit concept. There's no problem with simply duplicating much of his human skill set. There's also no problem - as far as I can see - with dropping (or reducing) skills/KS's that are irrelevant and simply saying they just don't function in a different brain. I've had such a character in my game - a player who wanted to play a hengeyokai (an animal shapeshifter: a rat in his case). I was initially against it, but in fact, it worked out fine. As for character advancement, that was no problem - the only thing to keep an eye on is that since the multiforms are bought at a discount, that the player doesn't pour all his points into making the wolfman an uber-combat machine - which he then uses every time combat threatens. cheers, Mark

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Just saw Infernal Affairs II (Infernal Affairs was the movie recently remade as The Departed). Not as good as the original, which means it's only better than 90% of the movies out there. Saw Nosferatu (original version) in the cinema with live musical accompaniment. Fun, in a slightly whacked sort of way. Murnau was an authentic genius, but my god! We've learned a few things about pacing a movie in the last 70 years. cheers, Mark

Re: Artifacts of the Rodent Wars Cool! he's done some new stuff! cheers, Mark

Re: Marine Corps Martial Arts Program Yeah, I can't see telling my players they can't buy "Offensive strike" because their characters are not commissioned cheers, Mark

Re: Anybody ever play Fantasy Superheroes?

Re: Water, Water Everywhere . . . Good heavens, you mean that Saving Private Ryan wasn't completely accurate? (Throws up hands in shock and horror!) OK, I enjoyed the movie more than I thought I would, but still, I also noticed the bullets zipping through the water in the first scene and thought "That's not right". There were a number of glitches, mostly to do with equipment, that you can pick up, some of which were made deliberately, for "effect". I guess (I hope) the bullets were done for the same reason. cheers, Mark

Re: Build a Vanship?

Re: Under the Eagle Standard--Roman HERO

Re: Build a Vanship? Worth every penny, trust me. That gets you about a week's worth of evening viewing, or more if you plan on doing other stuff with your evenings. On topic, I think McCoy has it: that takes care of the need for a navigator/engineer. Otherwise you build them as a plane, with the folowing provisos: 1. They're as maneuverable as all hell, so a limited turning circle 2. They are as durable as all hell - during the series, people crash them, they get holes shot in them, they make crash andings - and a few hours with some simple hand tools is enough to get them airborne again. 3. They float and can even operate on the water, albeit slowly. So, a souple of inches of swimming. 4. They are unreliable. They migh be easy to fix, but they also seem to break down a lot. Some sort of burnout on the flight, that can be fixed by engineering, would not be out of place. That should do it. cheers, Mark

Re: Magic Martial Arts Well, as far as I can see, there's nothing stopping you from using artial arts - but on the other hand, it's probably not really going to as useful as it is for physical arts, since many of the elements are attacks in and of themselves. It would allow you to add damage to spells a la the various strikes, but even though it would allow you to "cast defensively" - that wouldn't affect the spell any. However something you might like to consider instead is buying either an Aid or a naked advantage, which would let you alter the spell itself - you could attach OCV and/or DCV penalties to the power to simulate the style so for example: Dragon's Gambit - 5d6 Aid (any magical effect, one at a time, +1/4, side effect, -3 DCV, -1/2, standard effect +0) which would add 15 active points to any spell at the cost of -3 DCV from the flamboyant gestures used in casting. 12 real points Just make up a few such "adders" and you have a distinctive magical "martial art" cheers, Mark

Re: What does "Overall" not cover? Even in more "realistic" games they don't tend to be unbalancing (in my experience) simply because "realistic" games tend to use fewer points - at which stage sinking 30 points into +3 with everything is a really big investment. In addition, many genres feature characters who are unusually competent in a range of areas (often alongside weaklings who are competent in almost nothing ) so it's not necessarily out of genre. cheers, Mark

Re: Vast Underground Don't recognise the reference - but then it I never thought it was a terribly *original* idea As I said, it's kind of a homage to the days when I ran my game using D and D, since it was the very first dungeon I ever ran, back in 1980, when I was still trying to wrap my mind around the idea of why there would *be* dungeons. After a while it got the reputation among my players of being simply too dangerous. They all set off for overland adventures and it's basically lain unused ever since... cheers, Mark

Re: Herophile Fantasy art Actually it's hard to see, but if you look the rope goes round behind him - it's looped around his belt - and then comes around his side (you can see it coming out under the belt by the knife and down between his legs so he can stop his descent by grabbing the rope with his legs in case he needs both arms. He's not just hanging by one arm (although that would be much studlier). Cheers, Mark

Re: Herophile Fantasy art Tetanus? Tetanus? ..... Cleeeeric! As to the gamma thing, it's a problem for me too. I posted this from home, where it looked fine. Looking at it now, from work it looks too dark cheers, Mark

Re: Herophile Fantasy art And here's one I did last night - my character again, depicting a specific event from the game a while back, but a common enough situation in most FH games. cheers, Mark

Re: Wizard's immunity to the magical SFX they use

Re: Vast Underground My gameworld has several gigantic "dungeons" in it. The world's backstory is that long ago the lords of Darkness almost - but not quite - conquered the world. One civilisation (Thanataya) survived by digging in - literally constructing cities and fortresses underground and surviving by the use of magical gates and cornucopias to produce food. Some were destroyed during the dark ages, or abandoned at their end and sealed off when the Dark age ended. Still others stayed at least partly in use for centuries until they were destroyed in the great war between Thanataya and Atalantë.... That was of course, long, long ago but some of the ruins are still down there. Imagine. The ruins of cities built to hold millions of people, created and sustained by some of the mightiest wizards ever known.... Oh sure, they've been plundered, but you never know what you might find there... apart from the surviving minions of the lords of Darkness. The current game (though the players don't know it yet) is headed towards another megadungeon, where I plan to play out most of the story - a formerly wealthy city that was destroyed by a earthquake that caused a volcanic eruption. Half the city was buried under steaming mud and the other half subsided enough to let the sea come roaring in. What's left is a melancholy bay of ruins, thickly populated where the land was high enough to form small islands that allowed rebuilding, and small city built on a maze of ruins and tunnels on the landward side, that draws adventurers to dig and loot - while the descendants of the former inhabitants try to stop them so they can dig and loot themselves. And last of all, the cornball favourite - a giant purpose-built dungeon created as a trap/dwelling/treasure-collector by an ancient, powerful and totally mad lich. It's designed to draw in powerful adventurers (who almost always have neato magical items, natch). When they die in the dungeon, the lich's servants eventually find the bodies as they shuffle about resetting traps and placing or feeding new monsters and loot them, hauling the loot back to the lich's fabulous horde. Some of it - the 'less interesting" items - are placed in various sites so as to lure new adventurers in - that way, rumour has gotten out that the Lichlair is a truly dangerous place but if you avoid going too deep and you are fast and canny, you can come out rich... cheers, Mark

Re: Wizard's immunity to the magical SFX they use