Markdoc

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Last night: One of the first Kung Fu Movies from the Shaw Brothers: One-armed Swordsman. Cheesy. Very cheesy. But still a good laugh, and actually not that bad, when you consider when it was made and that all the sets were apparently made by colour-blind school children as their class "history project". It's considered "a classic" though later Shaw brothers films in the same genre like The Five Venoms and To Kill with Intrigue are much better. Then we saw Ong Bak 2. Not to be confused with the early Tony Jaa movie Ong Bak, with which it has absolutely nothing in common - apart from Tony Jaa, of course. Actually I liked this better than Ong Bak: better filmed, better paced and better fight scenes (IMO). Of course one wonders what all those samurai and ninja are doing in the north of Thailand, but, hey, whatever. Time for another fight scene! cheers, Mark

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? A bunch of stuff. District 9: easily the best SciFi movie I've seen in some time. Let the Right One In: Swedish vampire film. I'd give it a bloodstained thumb up. Slumdog Millionaire. It was OK. I enjoyed it, but can't see what all the buzz was about. The Triplets of Bellville. Entertaining, but surreal. Very surreal. Wanted. Cool action scenes, but overall a pretty lame movie. and some other films I can't recall right now. Tonight we're going to see a kung-fu double feature! cheers, Mark

Re: Medieval Diet Actually I was using beer to mean both Ale and Lager - that's the usual way here. Certainly most (but not all) of the beer brewed was ale, but lager was popular already in medieval germany: it was imported to Copenhagen by German merchants where it sold for 2-3 times the price of local beer - and sometimes more. The right to sell German beer was apparently highly sought after by the 15th century. Interestingly, a bucket of beer (about a liter and a half) was still given to workmen in Denmark as part of their daily pay many places right up until the middle of the 20th century - and in some places until a decade ago. Of course, medieval beer was often watered, and pure sugar was a luxury so it was "fed" with honey. There are a few places here that make beer to extant late medieval recipes and I've tried a variety of medieval beers. Many of them are quite strong and all of them are strongly flavored. I like a good ale, but many of these are too much for me. cheers, Mark

Re: Making up a current Day Germany for Champions..... I don't know about Germany, but in Denmark, superhero films and comics are popular, but not wildly popular. Danes are big on movie-going (even more than Americans), but in Denmark last year, the most popular film was "Flammen og Citronen" (The Flame and the Citroen): a drama about two resistance fighters in WW2 - and it sold roughly twice as many tickets as either of the new batman movies here. I've seen it - it's pretty good. The big hit this year is "Mænd der hader Kvinder" (Men that hate women) a drama based on a popular swedish novel. Most of the big hits here are dramas, with the "summer blockbuster" movies doing respectable business, but not topping the charts. The same applies to comics. Superhero comics are still big business, but they make up much less than half of the comics sold here. cheers, Mark

Re: Medieval Diet Thanks. It's interesting. When I was younger, I was often told that the medieval diet for most people was basically vegetarian, with small quantities of meat and fish as a supplement. The actual data however shows that medieval peoples (in many areas, at least) ate astounding quantities of meat - in Copenhagen, which wasn't a huge city - an estimated 750 tons of the stuff a month. That's meat - fish was on top of that. As a result the city was - quite literally - surrounded by heaps of bones, carted away out of the city limits where the stink would be less offensive, dumped into the moat (which had to be regularly dredged as result) or dumped in the nearby sea. The remains of these bone heaps turn up regularly in excavations. In Africa, I've seen similar piles, which is some cases reach 30+ metres (say 100 feet) in height Not unnaturally they attract hordes of rats, vultures and hyenas - I'm guessing they'd have attracted wolves and maybe even bears in Europe. Try adding that as a bit of local color in your games Add that to the fact that water was rarely drunk (most Copenhageners drank a lot of beer) and I suspect your average townsman was fat and jolly-looking It does explain why even the ordinary citizens who occasionally turn up in paintings from that era look pretty plump. cheers, Mark

Re: Re-introducing COM to 6th Edition Sure, but there are certain mechanics, which - in my game MUST be associated with mechanical effects. Unusually large size, unusually small size, unusual ugliness, unusual beauty, the ability to fling fire from your hands, etc. Saying "I'm 3 metres tall, but I don't want to pay for anything to reflect my greater reach and length of leg" is no more acceptable to me than saying "I want to be grotesquely ugly, but I don't want it to have any effect on my social interactions". If the character's physical form is defined as noticeably out of the norm, then - in my game - that needs to be mechanically modelled. Striking appearance certainly doesn't fit the "Grotesquely ugly" example given above. We could do this with a distinctive features, but what about "I'm slightly unprepossessing: people don't tend to take me seriously"? That can't readily be modelled by either the talent or the complication: it's an example of the granularity we've lost. To be honest, I am having a hard time seeing why this seems to be a hard concept for some people to grasp. I understand that in some games, appearance might not be a big deal ... but that's not the case for our group. Now there are a variety of ways to model the affects of appearance, and there have been some suggestions here, but so far what's been suggested have been mostly work arounds, which are little more complex and a little less granular than simply re-instating COM. However, it is possible that we can come up with something - that's the purpose of the thread, no? cheers, Mark

Re: Re-introducing COM to 6th Edition Really only viable if appearance always has the same effect. A hawt chick can certainly be scary and and ugly character can - in the right circumstances - be perfectly persuasive. However, the balance between situations is likely to be highly different unless as GM I continually resort to highly contrived situations. While it's true you could do this, it's a good example of the kind of clumsiness I'd prefer to avoid. cheers, Mark

Re: What is your plans for your first 6th Edition game? I did this in one game. Even better I did it without warning the players, and after they had stated to settle into their characters They were all vikings in Ireland and died a heroic battlefield death - only to wake up in Valhalla, where the actual game started. Despite the initial whining as the PCs died one by one, everyone perked up and the game was a roaring success. cheers, Mark

Re: Re-introducing COM to 6th Edition

Re: What is your plans for your first 6th Edition game? I'm wavering. I have a current game that's been running pretty regularly for 4 years and I'm not sure whether to let it run to its conclusion (probably take another year or so) and then start a 6E game, or whether to convert. Amusingly, in the discussion with the players, the biggest "non-convert" reason is the vanishment of COM, since 3 out of the 6 most active players are heavily invested in COM and social skills. I think it'd be easy enough to simply add back in: for me as GM, the biggest disincentive is converting all the NPCs cheers, Mark

Re: Re-introducing COM to 6th Edition

Re: Re-introducing COM to 6th Edition Yeah, at this point, porting it back is probably simpler, but I appreciate the suggestions offered, and I am going to ponder other options based on the 6E rules, when I get the chance to sit down with them. The only firm conclusion I have is that "Define your character's appearance however you like: it has no in-game effect" is a non-starter for our group. cheers, Mark

Re: Re-introducing COM to 6th Edition Right - but a high - or very low - COM will likely attract attention whether you want to or not. It can in fact, act to modify behaviour even when the character in question is unconscious, making both Acting and a new skill rather "unattractive" ways of trying to model what we are going for here. cheers, Mark

Re: Re-introducing COM to 6th Edition Yeah, I realise that with a little work, we can essentially recreate COM in 6E - I'm pondering at this point whether to do that or simply add COM back in. Cheers, Mark

Re: Re-introducing COM to 6th Edition It provides a measure of physical attractiveness (or the opposite) - and thus all the effects that can flow from that. Some of them have already been mentioned - the ability to act as a complementary in some cases, the chance to catch the attention of an NPC (or PC) the possibility of creating a favourable impression without interacting ... of course, it can also be a negative in some situations, primarily those where you wish to avoid attracting attention or memory. Here's real game example. The PCs arrive in town after along ride through the mountains. Hidden in their baggage is a wounded man (wrapped up in a carpet) they are trying to get into the city. As the guards approach, the high COM female warrior saunters over the watering trough and starts to remove her grimy armour, while at the same time pouring water over herself. She asks for (and gets) a COM roll, successfully attracting the guards' attention while her comrades hustle through the gate with a heavy carpet. It's pretty safe bet that if the COM 8, (but PRE 20) heavily-scarred barbarian had pulled the same move, it would not have had the same effect. cheers, Mark

Re: Multiform for Free? Frustrated....

Re: Re-introducing COM to 6th Edition Physical attractiveness, or "eyecatchability" which is not tied to any specific skill roll. One of the ways, I've handled this in the past is with a simple COM roll (modified, or course, by situation, like any other CHA roll). cheers, Mark

Re: Multiform for Free? Frustrated.... The original poster does have a point: as it stands, Multiform is almost entirely too abusable, even if you don't plan on it. OTOH, as it stood before, Multiform was 'orribly clunky. My house rule for 5E was simply that you couldn't have a character worth more points than the base setting rules. So if you are playing 350 point supers, Dragonboy can't play a 1200 point dragon that he morphs into at will and dump the multiform cost on his alternate human form, that he mostly spends time in "off camera". However, he might be able to get that 1200 point dragon, if he takes a heapin' helpin' of limitations to bring the "cost" of that form down to 350 - for example if he can only change with the help of his magical dragon ring (OIF, -1/2), once per day (-2). It's pretty clear in that scenario what's the "base form", and who pays the points. It's also clear what form he'll spend most of his time in. And it also balances with other characters: if Dragon lass has a magic ring that gives her a bunch of draconic powers, via an OIF and they come with a bunch of other limitations, she's essentially getting a similar level of power to Dragonboy for the same points, even if she is not using Multiform. The "base form" is the 350, or 150 pointer, or whatever it is, that everybody else is playing with. If the player wants lower point forms, then that's not an issue: he's paying points for some flexibility. If he wants a more powerful form then there needs to be some limitation to his access to that form to maintain balance. In short, by requiring the player the define some limitations on access to higher point forms, you essentially sidestep the whole issue of a base form, since the base form becomes a) the one that pays the points and the limitations will define how much time is spent in any given form. That seems to work OK. Cheers, Mark

Re: Nice to see you, Mr Irons, to see you nice... It gets weirder when you know that Bruce Forsythe began his career as "Boy Bruce, the Mighty Atom." Now there's a sidekick name if I ever heard one. He probably blames Randall Irons for the death of his mentor, The Great Marzo, in that tragic "Cook two pieces of toast in an electric toaster balanced on your head while standing in a paddling pool" incident cheers, Mark

Re: How to: Spatial Compression technology Depending on how it works, I see four solutions. For the pocket armory, a "gadget pool" with a reduced focus limitation (OIF, probably). I had a teleporting character who had this. He could teleport to himself any object he had stored at a memorised location, so he had an essentially endless supply of "stuff" that he could essentially pull out of his pocket. For a vehicle or base which is larger inside than out, EDM or shrinking UAA, area affect, continuous (if you move into a continuous area affect you are affected, no to hit roll needed) depending on taste. For the collapsed-to-pocket-size jumbo jets: summon, with a focus, one recoverable charge. cheers, Mark

Re: Re-introducing COM to 6th Edition Sure, but that's the core of the argument that the talent is a weak sister. Yes, most of the GM's who used COM used it exactly like that. They also used it for other things. The talent gives part of what COM does, but not the rest. It's not a terribly hard concept to grasp. cheers, Mark

Re: Re-introducing COM to 6th Edition In your opinion. Having used, both extensively in games for decades, I beg to differ. You can, with some extra effort use limited PRE as a clumsy substitute, but that's all it ever was.

Re: Help with faith based VPP

Re: Magical Engineer Commandos I have made characters without it, but taking background into consideration, it's one of those skills which I at least always consider - like Stealth. cheers, Mark

Re: Re-introducing COM to 6th Edition Basically as long as Hero designer supports it (and indications are that it will) I'm good. In that case, Striking Appearance becomes redundant in my games, but characters who spent points on COM are still portable to other games: the points spent on COM can be spent on Striking Appearance instead. cheers, Mark