Balabanto

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Now, I know the general consensus on these boards for scientology is to tell them to blow it out their asses, but this just takes it to a whole new level. Superman of La Mancha Super-Size Me, Showgirls!!! Susan Sarandon and the Banshees My Big, Fat, Greek Lebowski (Though this one could be good if handled the right way.) Rock and Roll Hebrew School Antonio Banderas and Cheech Marin tackle the works of Steven King in "The Taco Stand." Soon to be followed by the sequels of "The Tapas Bar" and THEN Diuretics by L. Ron Hubbard.

Re: Cassandra's Corner So let me get this straight? You, rightly or wrongly, say that you don't have good enough social judgement to know what makes your friends mad? That's fine. But don't assume it's the same for everyone. Every so often, I make a mistake. But it is better to fix the mistake IN GAME than to do a backhanded editorial rewrite. That's what I hate most about comic books. It happened. Move on. If the player feels slighted, give them a shot at undoing it, but don't make it easy. One of the things I have in my game is the one shot save your behind rule. You can tell me that you would really rather not die here, once, for one character in the world. And you get that. Be more careful next time. The coolest use of this rule was when one player blew his use of this for his fellow player. That was awesome.

Re: Imaginary Friends Update We are done with the Jazz Club map and it's object defense tables. Only one map remains. Unfortunately, it's bloody huge and it will take a few weeks to get that done. Wish me luck. Once this is over, it's adventure text time.

Re: Cassandra's Corner Clearly your definition of "cooperative" and mine differ. I take that to mean that you cooperate with the GM and participate in his vision. You're not the equal of the GM. The GM makes the world. He makes the rules. You obey those rules as a player. You do not break the GM's rules. If you're going to argue with the GM about something, you don't do it during game time. You do it away from the table. If you do something to a character without their consent, their actions have to lead to it. If you enter Mechanon's base alone, expect to get smeared. Actions have consequences. You revisit those actions all the time. Once a character in my game had his DNPC kidnapped by a villain. The villain, being evil, dressed the DNPC up in an aluminum mockup of his armor and had him prepared to fight the heroes after liberal doses of brainwashing and drugs. Sure enough, the super speedster impetuously ran the DNPC through with a sword without checking, and the DNPC died. Actions have consequences. That action still reverbrates in my game. All the time. The GM has to play fair with the players. But some things are nastier than others. You can't put a hard and fast label on "cooperative storytelling." Because if you do, at some point, it becomes nothing but ego gratification and "wow, we really beat those guys." The best fights aren't when you smear the bad guys all over the room. The best fights are when there's one guy standing and he has 1-3 STUN left. Why? Because you EARNED it. If you never have to work or struggle for anything, everything starts to look the same. And that's why I run my game the way I do. Because if you don't want to work for anything, you'll never have anything. Feel-good memories are just that. But the ones you feel the best about are always the ones you work the hardest for. So I run tough. But I'd rather be tough than easy.

Re: Cassandra's Corner Temporary power subplots? The point is that the idea of player consent is silly. When you start playing a game, you enter into a contract with the gamemaster to participate in his vision of the world. The GM is god. You don't get a say. That's when roleplaying is at it's best, when you exist wholeheartedly in the world the GM is created and a little piece of you becomes that character. When Spider-Man got six arms, it wasn't up to the GM get him out of the situation, it was up to his player, because he entered into that contract. When the Avengers wound up in that situation, they had to make a decision, and live with the consequences. Consequences. That's the key word. Actions have consequences. They don't exist in a vaccum because the player says they should. I hate that philosophy. It drives me nuts. It takes away my fun when I play, too, because it means all players are NOT created equal. The guy who whines the most always gets extra stuff, face time, and things like that. That's not a game. That's an ego gratification zone. In order for it to be a game, the possibility of losing/failure/less than optimal results has to be there in a very real way. You shouldn't play roleplaying games to feel successful. If you are, you're not doing it for the right reason. In every truly great game I've ever played in, you check your ego at the door. Sometimes, your character will soar. Sometimes, your character will fall. Sometimes, your character will die. These things happen. You reach across the table and shake hands with the guy running the game and say "Thank you." You have to be a good sport. Or it's not a game at all.

Re: Cassandra's Corner Really? Spider-Man "Wanted" six arms? Really? The Avengers "wanted" to keep a man alive so that the earth wouldn't explode? Really? Howard the Duck? Really? Infinity Gauntlet? Really? Jean Grey "wanted" to become Dark Phoenix? Really?

Re: Imaginary Friends Update Today, I finished up the Jazz Club and surrounding area. Tomorrow, I make the object defense table for it. After that, it's on to the last map in the adventure. It's a monster map, it's probably going to take 2-4 weeks to completely design and key out. Then it will be on to the adventure text. I could probably do it in two weeks if I didn't have to work, but good map locations take time. We'll have a "What do you want in your kickstarter?" thread up soon.

Re: Cassandra's Corner This is one of those things that always bothers me a lot. Players will do ANYTHING to avoid being captured, even though it's a comic book staple. The problem is that you have to be careful what you do when you DO capture people. If you get captured by "The Cyborg Master" you should expect to wake up with a couple robot parts. Players HATE this, regardless of how appropriate it is. If you get captured by Doctor Genetic Experimentation, and you wake up with two extra sets of arms, most players howl. Why should they suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune? Here is the reality. Marvel and DC have competed over what constitutes appropriate comic book genre tropes for years. One or the other sinks into your brain. In DC comics, the heroes are largely infallible and rarely make mistakes. In Marvel, the characters have epic failures and make tons of mistakes. This makes the Marvel model better for roleplaying games for a number of reasons, not the least of which are these: 1) Characters are less powerful. Yeah, you heard it here first, folks. This makes things a lot easier for the GM. You can actually capture people and make people say "That could happen." 2) When players screw up, thematically, that makes things more believable. Champions in particular was originally designed around this model, when Marvel was in it's heyday and DC was producing some truly awful stories that put me in a snit month after month. 3) In DC, the heroes are basically invincible. Invincible is boring. In Champions, your characters are built on points.

Re: Superhero team Leader: PC or NPC? The thing is, that we figured out a long time ago that this sort of resistance is artificially created by the GM/PC divide. Leadership is touchy sometimes.

Re: Imaginary Friends Update Today, I finished the jazz club map. Over the next couple days, I'll be populating it with NPCs and doing another dreaded Object Defense Table. That leaves the massive final battle map and all of it's levels and elevations to go. (Shudder.) Wish me luck.

Re: The bystander safety trope and your game I make a point of it based on the city the heroes are in. In New York, they come and watch. In other cities, maybe not so much.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Do you know what kinds of fanfiction are out there on the net? We probably already have this.

Re: What Happened to Force Fields?

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares This isn't a nightmare. This could actually be funny.

Re: Superhero team Leader: PC or NPC? I've discovered it's easier in groups where character development is more important than what you're beating up.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares A performing singer turns to Tibetan Buddhism in... Hello, Dalai Lama!!!!

Re: Superhero team Leader: PC or NPC? Well, it depends. In some games, the GMPC is the team leader. In some, not. It depends on roleplaying. Some PC's naturally gravitate to the role of leader. Some don't. In my Knight Rangers game, the GMPC's a secretary. Not a good leader type. In my San Diego Knights game, the GMPC is team leader because she's kind of like a den mother. A much better leader type. It depends on how the personalities fall out. Cybervulture: Awesome character. Much fun. Not a leader. Would rather watch football and have a beer. GMPC? Yeah. But a good leader? Cybervulture would rather eat glass than lead his team. Plus, he's kind of a jackass.

Re: Map Pieces Awesome, but your secret lab complex probably needs more than one exit.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Warner Brothers meets Vampires in True Fudd: Now I will suwwck youwah bwood! Ah-aht-aht-aht!

Re: Ideal: Basic Villiancy I usually have a section in my products about working things in the Champions Universe. It's only fair. They hold the licensing agreement.

Re: Robin Hooding Superhero Crimefighters Code vs. Killing (Group or Type): This is potentially dangerous, but a lot of superheroes have this. They have a code vs killing humans (Limited group), Common, Total. Giant Space Monsters, non-humanoid aliens and slithering blobs that dissolve whole buildings need not apply. Godzilla need not apply. If an alien is close enough to human that you can have a conversation with it, some societal differences, etc, it counts as human. The smaller the group, the less the limitation. In a gritty 1940's campaign, you can have the utterly awful "hero" (And I use the term loosely by modern standards) who has a code vs. killing only for a specific ethnic group. But, it's a gritty 1940's campaign. That was how the world was. Clearly it's not worth as many points, but there you go.

Re: Imaginary Friends Update I have completed an apartment map and it's object defense table, and thoroughly mapped out a Jazz club. At this point it is likely that Imaginary Friends will be Kickstarted. I hope you guys are willing to pledge to it, because I've been busting my hump on this thing for over a year. At this point Gencon also seems less likely than a Halloween release sometime in October. We'll keep you posted.

Re: Imaginary Friends Update A theatre basement map is finished. Object defense tables for that will be done tonight.

Re: Where is the rule that says that dropped equipment can not be used in super heroi This depends on how the focus is defined. If the focus is universal, you can pick it up and use it. If the focus is personal, then no one can. If you want to use a universal focus beyond the adventure, then it costs points.

What do you guys think Jason should have Champions kickstart next?