Balabanto

Re: Imaginary Friends Update As I work on the Negafire Villain Sheet, I want to ask if there's any additional "Fan Service" I can provide in this publication. I usually take at least one fan suggestion, but there's so much already here that I'm not sure I can take much in the way of fan suggestions. Please be gentle when making these.

Re: I've... forgotten how to run Champions... Try creating a world without any retcons or reimaginings. It worked for me. I had to hit time with a hammer twice thanks to rights issues and edition changes, but all that's part of the publication (game).

Re: Grant Morrison’s World? I wrote an adventure like this for Haymaker back in the early days. Ask Bolo of Earth to dig it up for you.

Re: Champions Villains Volume Three: Solo Villains when will it be on the shelf? This is why my products are moving towards more and more characters and becoming larger. Because that's the need I see growing on the boards from guys like you. Granted, I work sixty hours or so a week and write novels and freelance for Blackwyrm, but if what people want is more NPCs and stuff, that's the stuff you guys are going to get. I'm not in Steve Long's class as far as the amount of product I can produce in a year. I would rather produce one to to two great products with the time and energy I invest than four junky ones. Plus, making these things is NOT cheap. If you think I make a ton of money off them, forget it. I do this because I love the game and all writing practice is good writing practice. In general, I agree with the assertion that we all have less time, and this also means that we have less time to think about what we'd like to purchase with our money. But in general, choosing Hero means choosing a product that you can toolkit as you need to, because the toolkittiness is already built in. I think that as designers, we have to "embrace the toolkittiness" more, and try to incorporate the same kind of toolkitty design in the plots and adventures that people publish as the actual system itself. I TRY (And I stress TRY) to do this as much as possible, but as much as Greywind is joking, I think his comment may have more validity than many of us realize.

Re: Imaginary Friends Update Totem, The Chimeric Man is now completed. We are over 30,000 words.

Re: King of the Mountain News Look. I did not create Yo Yo. Mark Arsenault created Yo Yo! He's just letting me use him. It says Yo Yo and His Robot Elvises on the original sheets, now it says them on these.

King of the Mountain is now in pre-production and should be available at DunDraCon next year. Dave and I don't have a firm release date yet, but we'll keep you appraised. So keep an eye out for it. Fight the Cult of the Ebon Flame and one of it's dreaded masters. Fight Dog Demons and Horse Demons Meet Doctor Void, legendary collector of paranormal oddities and super villain! (And yes, his collection is all mapped out. This is probably worth the price of the adventure by itself. I had a LOT of fun coming up with this stuff.) Fight the Dark Path, the Cult of the Ebon Flame's very own super-villain team. Fight Yo-Yo and his Robot Elvises Fight Zombie Masters in a totally different way than usual! Oh, yeah... And Elvis... We've got him, too...

Re: Imaginary Friends Update The number of sheets has expanded to 23 between agents, robots, and all that other stuff. Totem's sheet is done, so I'll be working on his background over the next couple of days.

Re: USA 50 Discussion Well, I work 60-70 hours a week, and still have time to write for Blackwyrm, write novels, and not get much sleep. I was trying to avoid commentary on this particular book altogether. I do apologize for the misquote. That was my bad. The only reason I felt inclined to comment was this. I'm also a freelance game designer. I'm anal retentive and pretty thorough. I stand behind my products and do my best to market them. I get good reviews. I try VERY hard to make sure that players have a good time when they play my stuff, and provide the GM with as many options as I can possibly dream up in the allotted space. Dave and Jason are very good to me, (Thanks, Dave and Jason) and I appreciate everything they do for me. They find me artists and layout folks (Thanks, Bunneh), and do what they do. I wasn't trying to be a jackass. I was trying to make the next product better. It doesn't always come across that way, and I apologize if it does.

Re: Imaginary Friends Update Lady Warp is complete! I am at 27,846 words. Tomorrow I will begin the sheet of Totem, the Chimeric Man! Ideally all my sheets will be done by the end of October, and all my Maps by the end of November. Not so ideally, this should be ready by February or March.

Re: Imaginary Friends Update Mmm. Marshmellows. The adventure is pretty dark. Part of that is because when I ran the adventure, it was pretty dark. Part of that is because it's the perfect thing to release when it's likely that next year's big Gencon release is probably Horror Hero.

Re: USA 50 Discussion I concur with Oddhat in many respects. However, my issues with the book go beyond this. The characters in the book are neither balanced, playable, nor make a great deal of sense. If you inserted player characters into this universe, you would have to come up with some truly complicated designs to get them to work. The world was entirely concept driven, which is a great idea until you realize that all PC's start on the same number of points, and may have to create some really broken constructs to fit into the world. Some of the concepts weren't entirely comprehensible, as Oddhat also mentioned. In fact, most of these people shouldn't even be on the same team. Threats that would challenge Captain California would massacre half the other heroes there. They don't have powers that shore up each other's weaknesses, they don't work well together as a team, and the concept to me seems like it needs to be rethought, rebooted, and republished before it gets out of the box. Sorry, guys, but this one just did not do it for me.

Re: Imaginary Friends Update Today I broke the 25,000 word mark. I feel liberated. God, there's a lot of sheets in this adventure.

Re: Imaginary Friends Update I have completed the character sheet for Abyss. Next up. Lady Warp. There's also a whole bunch of specialized agent sheets in this adventure, along with a couple vehicles, tactics list, and a brief organizational history. Once I get the villains done, that goes to Dave. Then I draw the maps and send them to Dave. Then comes the actual adventure and flavor text (Those sections that I haven't already written). Ideally, I should be done by the end of the year. I didn't realize just how much STUFF there was in this one. My hope is "Before Thanksgiving, I'll finish this thing."

Re: Imaginary Friends Update Like all my products, it's really a supplement with an adventure wrapped around it. I do get pretty good to great reviews, though.

Re: Imaginary Friends Update (Repeats Trailer) What if there was a group of children who had imaginary friends? What if those imaginary friends were real? Now, someone is killing them..... How do you fight a serial killer who doesn't exist? How do you stop a villain whose very weakness is his strength? Meet Mr. Wumbles... Your heroes will never be the same....

Re: What to do with Mars In my game, Mars was populated by the Atlantean resistance to their alien creators. They turned Olympus Mons into a cannon powered by the entire planet's core, and blew up their base on the fourth belt, turning it into a ring of shattered asteroids. The leadership escaped to earth, where after a hard battle, their bodies were imprisoned in stone capsules and their minds imprisoned in the psychic field that surrounds the world. Yes. Superheroes got to have a battle in the cannon control room.

Re: Imaginary Friends Update I am now 22,000 words in. According to the methods Dave prefers, I am doing villains and sheets first, followed by maps, followed by adventure text. I have completed the following sheets. Georgie, the Singing Giraffe Polly Pooper, the Pooping Parrot Jack Bombem! Lisa Mr. Wumbles Toby Doherty Lord Dominus I am currently working on the sheet for a villain called "Abyss."

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Solomon Kane goes to Washington Solomon Kane eats American Pie Solomon Kane: Devil's Food (A cooking show) Solomon Kane Aux Folles

Re: Alternate Sexualities in Champions and Supers settings As far as certain eras are concerned, I'm going to have to disagree. In the 1950's, aliens were scary. Superman lived among us, but he still "lived among us." He wasn't "One of us." He was "Disguised as Clark Kent, Mild Mannered Reporter." Bruce Wayne put on a mask and BECAME Batman. But Superman hides behind the facade of Clark Kent. If you believe this doesn't make a difference, you're kidding yourself. The reason why Superman needed Clark Kent is because people were afraid of anything that came from beyond the planet. And you know what? No matter how hard we try to disguise it, sometimes we still are.

Re: ...And now the city is mine to control! Muahahahaha!!! The Spider actually fought this menace in the Black Police Trilogy. It's fairly awesome, if incredibly violent. As for means of keeping the city: 1) Robot Councilmen. They just constantly deadlock and don't do anything, and they're programmed to do it! Oh, wait. You don't need robots to do this! 2) Infectious Field: Anyone who steps into the bounds of the city gets a deadly time-release virus that will kill in three days if someone doesn't give you a pill. The pills are pretty expensive, but everyone needs them, so take your pills, citizens. 3) Kill Everyone and replace them with robots, zombies, or what have you. See #2, only the pill is a placebo and everyone dies. 4) Make it appeal to a certain type of person who feels disenfranchised yet has a useful skill set. (Minorities, Youths, Anarchists, Terrorists, whatever.) Offer those sorts of people money to come there. This is useful because then you have a built in militia. This is how all these "I shall build a city of crime" things get started.

Re: Alternate Sexualities in Champions and Supers settings I tend to agree that in certain historical eras, Gay or Lesbian is worth points. Heck, in the 1950's, I would argue that being an ALIEN is worth just as many points.

Re: I made the GM cry.... 1) He mind controls you to fly him away. A reasonable expectation, but not in a full nelson. He requires line of sight to use his abilities. 2) He switches minds and you and his current body dies. See above 3) He can fly, too. If such is the case, this guy is way too powerful for a four color teen champions game. See parameters above. 4) He is also a physical powerhouse. See above. A Brick Mentalist is pretty much broken in almost any game system. When a GM throws something like this at his group, he had better have a darned good reason. Most of the things you're talking about are fine...in a high powered game where the rules of four color comics are not in effect. But if you care about game balance and fairness as a GM even one iota, a lot of this stuff just winds up with the GM being a jackass.

Re: I made the GM cry....

Re: I made the GM cry.... Yeah, but again, Bolo, that's the situation done right, where you identify the villain, understand their point of view, and get to meet and roleplay with them. It places your characters into the scene and gives them a deeper sense of involvement. And it was a very good game.