Balabanto

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Maybe more so.

Re: [New Product] Champions Complete The problem there isn't the writeup. The problem is Doctor Destroyer's writeup. The latest two editions raised the power bar to the point where anyone under six feet tall can't fit the dice their character rolls in one hand. This is nuts. Go back to 10d6 as your starting point rather than 12, with 14 for mighty villains and some of the more experienced heroes, and 15-18 for master villain types. The system worked this way for years and it wasn't broken. Now Doctor Destroyer can level whole cities with a few well placed bolts. This is absolutely ridiculous. Whatever else the 4th edition BBB did, this was about the right range. There was no need to amplify it or overcomplicate it. Plus, now there is no model. Literally, the characters in the CU are so disparate that it's difficult to find a range to continuously challenge players. All games have a sweet spot. Doctor Destroyer's power level destroys that, too.

Re: [New Product] Champions Complete Champions Complete: The Nude Millennium

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares You should just buy King of the Mountain.

Re: [New Product] Champions Complete

Re: Wealth and Super Heroes You forgot just desolidifying and leaving through a wall.

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill It may not be rocket science. But I will confess to having an hour commute both ways each day to think about what it is that I'm going to write at the end of the day right now. Still. You can't write anything down and my hours are pretty tough if I want to be able to eat. The last thing a lot of people who work those kinds of hours want to do is have to build new NPC's every few weeks. That's what I'm getting at. Templating is nice, but if your world is character driven, that doesn't always work.

Re: Imaginary Friends Update Well, the final sections of the map spiralled into hugeness. Drawing this will take a few more days, followed by the horror of keying it. Maps should be done by Gencon, or a little after. I'm hoping not to have to bring them to Gencon, as that would be awkward. It looks like the final map is going to have around 100+ locations. This adventure is going to be humongous. Effectively, it's a giant campaign supplement, with an Evil Secret Organization, an extremely mighty villain team, six new agent types, additional villains and NPCs, tons of plot options, and loads of challenging fun. It might be as long as Champions Complete after all the object defense tables are finished.

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill Just how many hours a week do you work? No offense here, but I work 60-70 hours a week. A four color game with some shades of grey is my best option because then I don't have to devote a million extra hours a week to building these guys. When I design an adventure for Champions, I have 25+ years of cool stuff to draw on. But if you work like I do, you MUST obey this rule. Here it is. Don't build dead people. My game is high defense/slightly lower attack (20-30 defense, 10d6 attack for a basic hero), so villains get away a lot, go to prison a lot, etc. But that's comics. I don't need that much gritty realism in my games. I get that whenever I go to the movies now.

Re: [New Product] Champions Complete

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares The Church of Scientology meets Cross Dressing The Legend of Xenu, Queen of the Desert Xenu, Warrior Princess

Re: Imaginary Friends Update Another object defense table was completed last night. It's just the final sections of the map.

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill Well, let me tell you something about the laws of the United States of America. You cannot be judge, jury, and executioner. Especially on a guy like Binder. Follow through with me here. The guy is unconscious on your feet and incapacitated. He has no ability to do further harm. You kill him. Let me explain to you how this really works. You are now wanted by the law. The laws of most civilized nations do not allow systematic executions of helpless people. You will become a supervillain, because now that you've pretty much committed cold-blooded murder in the eyes of the law, your fellow superheroes will now hunt you down. This is the worst thing you could possibly want. First of all, they have access to law enforcement and resources and will eventually find you, unless you are so much more powerful than everyone else around you that no one could stop you anyway. Second of all, you're a robot, in this particular case. Do robots have rights? Well, if not, you're going to face the same situation, and be forcibly dismantled. Third of all, take a look at the abilities of some of the people you're killing. Binder and Slick have absolutely no lethal abilities whatsoever. All they do is entangle people and make things slippery and awkward. Imagine this one: Prosecutor: So why did you kill the guy with a glue gun? Robot: He was a legitimate threat to society. He continued to escape from prison. Prosecutor: How many lethal abilities did the glue gun have? Robot: I don't know. Prosecutor: Let the record show that this gun has absolutely no ability to kill anyone whatsoever. Your chances of getting out of this one with a half-decent prosecutor are, quite frankly, awful. This is pretty much two counts of Murder one, which is 50 to life, even if they don't dismantle the robot. This is why you don't kill people in superhero games. The law will burn you. Hard.

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill The problem is that in comic books, jail IS a revolving door. If I don't need a villain, and he gets arrested, he stays in jail. If I do need a villain, he gets out of jail. One time, a villain stayed in jail for eleven years. And players were just like "When is he gonna get out?" And my thought was...well...he's gonna get out when a plot arises that has need of this NPC. He's not bulletproof, so he's not going to just try and escape and get killed by some prison guard with an advanced rifle, he's in a superprison, so he's just going to wait. The problem, Tasha, isn't what you think it is here. The problem is players forgetting how comic books actually work, and turning things into a "Punisher-like" environment.

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill Oh, no, in D+D it still matters. If you kill the wrong guy, you can run into a WORLD of trouble. The real problem is that your player created a character who was a jackass and you didn't see far enough ahead to see the consequences. In four color games, all heroes generally have a reluctance to kill worth zero points. You always need to think about what you let in before you put yourself in situations. .

Re: Imaginary Friends Update The final map set is currently 1/3 done. I'll be sending that off to Bill for artistic reprocessing. Tomorrow, object defense tables, followed by a couple days of drawing, followed by keying locations until my face turns purple. After that, it's on to adventure text. And in between this, I'm knocking out revisions for my agent on my novel. Busy. Busy. Busy.

Re: Coaching from other GMs: How do you describe the combat effects Yeah. The key here is actually letting misses have effects, too. Unlike what it says in the 6th edition rules. Letting people know that a massive blast just ripped out a chunk of the wall behind them gives the heroes an idea of just how mighty they are and how mighty their opponents are. That way, when they do connect with an opponent, they see how mighty their opponent is and get an idea of his power level.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Michael J Fox is the Man of Bronze in Doc Hollywood Savage.

Re: Imaginary Friends Update Hi again. I'm beginning to hammer through the final map set of the adventure. Right now, I'm at about 78,000 words. And there's still only limited adventure text. I estimate a little over 100,000 after tacticals, scene settings, and the like. Wish me luck.

Re: Gestalt: Architects of Change: Preview Scott, there's a reason there's a "Running in Gestalt" in every single one of my recent products.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Dude, I think they actually did "Devolve" Captain America at one point. The thing I could never understand about Captain Caveman was the sheer amount of nerd rage involved in developing him. Here you have this disgusting, hairy, dirty thing in a cape surrounded by beautiful women. Just a little bit of bitterness, maybe?

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares No. It has Richard Roundtree. In a dress.

Re: Alternate Sexualities in Champions and Supers settings Well, if the person walks over everyone equally and is that big of a jerk, then more than likely, in a comic book world, he is a super villain. As such, we should expect the standards of villainy to apply.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares The Midnight Meat Train at the Whistle Stop Cafe Sweeney Todd, Barber of Seville Seven Days of the Vagina Monologues (Seven Days of the Condor + The Vagina Monologues) The Muppets in Fargo (Watchable, but disturbing) Pee Wee Herman Goes to Copland Paradise Lost in the Valley of the Dolls (Milton is awesome. But not in Hollywood.)

Re: Imaginary Friends Update Things you'll find in some of the maps in Imaginary Friends: IHOC! (International House of Crudites) Bogundys (What is it? Why is it important? Who cares? It's amusing!) More Burger Swine! Antique Shops An entire egyptian museum exhibit! And more!