Grow-Arm-Hair Lad

Geocities recently shut down my site where I stored my favorite little contribution to the gaming community. I just got around to moving it to http://hrclark333.tripod.com/Hero_Vamp_Masquerade_A.pdf
 
For those interested in keeping this old stuff archived, please update all your links appropriately. Thanks a bunch to all of you in the community who showed interest and gave support. It's always meant a lot.
 
-Agent333 (aka Ryan Clark)

This comes down to genre tropes, and links to some extent to the discussion on GM style. When a GM bemoans the fact that his players refuse to play in genre, I generally ask the same questions.
 
The Supers PCs don't play in genre. They go all-out to kill the villains.  To Doc D's point, what happens when they send the villain off to jail?  He escapes along the way, comes back, kills off a beloved NPC or three and rubs the players' noses in his continued depredations?  You have trained the players to build PCs who are killers.
 
The PCs are utterly paranoid, suspicious of every NPC.  They cast defensive spells at every Inn, carry silver manacles to check if NPCs are werewolves, post constant guards on any NPCs travelling with them, avoid giving NPCs any level of trust whatsoever.  How often does an NPC prove trustworthy?  Well, never - it's so much more dramatic when every adventure hook manipulates and betrays them, and every NPC they travel with stabs them in the back or steals their stuff in the middle of the night.  Gee, I wonder why that experience has caused them never to trust an NPC.
 
The heroes never show restraint, they agonize over making only the best tactical decisions and have no personalities.  So what happens if they don't perfectly execute combat plans?  The opposition ruthlessly exploits their advantage and takes the PCs down.  I see; and what do their enemies do with the defeated PCs.  Well, slit their throats, of course. What kind of idiot villain would let powerful enemies live, much less take them to their hidden base and give away all their plans gloating.
 
When leaving any gap in defenses results in the GM ruthlessly exploiting that weakness at every turn, the player strives to avoid any gap in defenses.  When beloved NPCs are targets to attack the PCs, player build orphan loner PCs.  When the slightest tactical error means defeat and probably a TPK or at least building a new character, players build ruthless tacticians with no personality.  If every NPC betrays the PCs, then they trust no one besides fellow PCs (and maybe not them).
 
By contrast, where having weaknesses creates challenges that the players can cleverly overcome, and the villains also have weaknesses, the players are not as incented to buy up a defense to everything that might challenge them. When beloved NPCs create role playing opportunities and sometimes even help out in-game, players are more motivated to build PCs that connect with the world, not hide away from it. When a tactical error consistent with PC personalities does not mean losing the battle, and losing the battle advances the story rather than ending it, and starting a new PC, players become more willing to have those tropes appear in the game. When many NPCs prove trustworthy and are there in the PCs time of need (not replacing them, but enhancing their ability to be heroes), the PCs start to trust more NPCs. 
 
IOW, if you want the heroes to embrace the genre tropes, then you as GM have to embrace them as well.  In the source materials, the PCs that follow all those genre tropes emerge triumphant. When following the genre tropes frustrates, rather than facilitates, that triumph, the players will avoid, not embrace, the genre tropes.

play video games
Video Game Mastery (DEX Based)
 
microwave food
Professional Skill: Microwave Cook (INT Based)
 
search the internet
Extra-Dimensional Movement: Internet (Must Leave Body Behind)
 
order pizza
Summon Pizza, variable effect, any toppings (Requires an Order Roll, Side Effect, summon Monster Pizza)
 
keep soda cold
Change Environment, Reduce temperature of canned and bottled soda, OAF Bulky - Refrigerator

These are, of course, important things to Foxbat. But we are going off topic. Or What Freddy would say, on topic.

Most Champions games I run are based in a city (usually New York) and a superhero team establishes itself (through a unifying adventure) or else the players and I establish the background of the team forming etc. before actual gameplay begins.
 
In long-running campaigns, the story is just a matter of an ever-evolving roster of heroes.
 
But there are other ways of running Champions. I enjoyed doing a campaign that was sort of like the X-Men, with heroes on the run from a government and a society that had no tolerance for superhumans.
 
What about you? Any Champions campaigns that differ greatly from the Avengers/Justice League template?
 

Considering he wrote Horror Enimies, I'm sure he is familiar with Lovecraft, Poe, King, Hill, Barker, Crypt Keeper, Cravin, and lord knows how many others who I never knew there names.
 
And beyond that? Well...I honestly don't know and can't know. I apologise for speaking for you. Don't curse me please.

It's the opening paragraphs of "The Call of Cthulhu" itself:
 
Dean Shomshak

I have to update my list:
 
1.  Elves
2.  Random / Wandering Damage
3.  Horses that maintain exact pace, all day long, and never, ever balk, throw shoes, go lame, or split hooves.
4. Kinds of Elves
 

Holy shnikeys, Duke! You're right, I found it.
 
https://hrclark333.tripod.com/roleplaystuff.html
 
Frickin' TRIPOD, and it's still active (i.e. I didn't have to use Wayback).
 
Thanks, Duke!
 
EDIT: The pdf for 5e Vampire on that page is amazing. It looks like a professional piece. Highly recommend.
 
Also, the creator is a member at the boards here, Agent333
Link: https://www.herogames.com/profile/498-agent333/
 
And, he posted about this PDF on the forums here:
 
 

I have tried this over and over- thinking it to be something of a shortcut to world building or getting everyone on the same page.  I wont claim to have done it hundreds of times-  realistically, over the years, _maybe_ as much as thirty times.
 
I have never, not even once, been able to get the players interested in playing in a real world location.  Even if I rebranded everything, once one of them noticed "hey!  This central Atlanta / Savannah / Jacksonville / wherever," they just lost interest.
 
So I stick with what my first Champions GM (the oft-mentioned Jim) taught me: a thing he called the DC approach, and we use fictional locations.
 
I mulled of it for years- why real world locations have never worked in our group, and it kind of hit me:  most comics (as far as I know, anyway) seem to be set in New York of Chicago or Los Angeles---
 
And from the POV and personal experience of my players in rural Georgia, those _are_ fictional places.  They are just as unreal as Metropolis or Gotham or Central City.  It is part of the feel that the associate with superheroes: a wondrous and dangerous place wholly unlike the places I know.
 
 
Now I want to reiterate that this has been _my_ experience with _my_ various groups, drawn from more-or-less the same area.  The fact that people still pitch this approach suggests on the whole, it works to at least some degree; I have just been an outlier.
 
On the plus side, I have also learned that building wxonomic infrastructures and such is, by and large, unnecessary, as the players don't really seem to care.  They want thw tech companies, the weapons and,chemical,companies, and who might be helpful and who might be secret villains, and that is about it.  After that: where do I live,and where do I work and where can I go for secret ID stuff.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
For a minute, I thought you were talking about Traveller. 
 
though tossing out that Scooby Foo comment has put certain historic Traveller campaigns under a new microscope!"   
 

We do seem to share one tendency, though, and that is starting small and growing the heroes and their stories.
 
 
 

I've had the most luck using the nearest "big" city (it barely breaks the 6-figure mark at night when the state workers go home) with my rural groups, which probably weren't any more familiar with urban life when we were young and what few of them are left are only slightly more so now.  No one wants to actually set a game in our podunk home towns (although we did wreck our share of local landmarks in our fictional youth) but Albany is just close enough that everyone knows it a little bit while it still feels kind of exotic to the folks who never actually lived there.  Other groups got a kick out of using my (current) college town and campus as a setting.  None of them were played straight - there were always fictional elements shoved in beyond just the PCs and their foes - but there were enough recognizable bits to save a lot of explanations.
 
Of course, it might help that Albany is a freaking weird town with a totally out-of-place vanity worthy of Nazi Germany project stuck in the middle of it, basically right next to the slums and what passes for a business district.  Schenectady (the next city over) is only a little less screwy, with a gargantuan half-empty industrial plant in the form of General Electric dominating downtown.  hove some supervillain lairs, fictional gangs and conspiracy groups in and it's pretty good turf to run low-powered supers in.
 
Not every group buys in to the idea of staying local, but it's an option to keep in mind.
There are fewer differences between classic Traveller shenanigans and low-powered space supers stories than most people think.  Just substitute "better tech than the local schmucks" with "superpowers" and you can do a lot of the same hooks.  If you're on a Tech 8 planet that second-hand suit of battledress is a superpower, and the difference between a good blaster hero and an FGMP-14 is pretty thin.
RPGs just plain work well on a growth model, even when you start as a hero rather than a zero.  I find everyone's more invested when they earn their reps as world-class supers through their in-game deeds instead of just starting off as respected JLA/Avengers members or the equivalent. 

Another game I thought would be interesting would be for the PCs to start as base level agents for VIPER, going on missions and dodging superheroes.  Over time they could get new experimental gear, be a choice for one of VIPER's villain-making programs, etc.  Maybe even take over their own nest.

Holy shnikeys, Duke! You're right, I found it.
 
https://hrclark333.tripod.com/roleplaystuff.html
 
Frickin' TRIPOD, and it's still active (i.e. I didn't have to use Wayback).
 
Thanks, Duke!
 
EDIT: The pdf for 5e Vampire on that page is amazing. It looks like a professional piece. Highly recommend.
 
Also, the creator is a member at the boards here, Agent333
Link: https://www.herogames.com/profile/498-agent333/
 
And, he posted about this PDF on the forums here:
 
 

Further, though probably gone now (as most of the "good" internet seems to be), there was a reasonably well-done attempt at this posted on someone's home page many, _many_ years ago.
 
I _may_ have a copy of it (I had managed to get permission to copy the conversion notes,so long as I attributed them if I ever posted them elsewhere.  At any rate, the Way back Machine may help you find at least pieces of it.
 
Not going to say it was great or amazing- reading it makes it obvious this was like serious personal shorthand, and it skipped over things that an experiences GM would not need fresh, etc.  It was never meant for publication: it was just a GM sharing his take on the universe and the conversions.
 
It was worth at least a run-through, though, which was why I asked about copying it.  It was more well-thought-through than a lot of similar sites.
 
 

This deserves addressing, because it leaves too much to the imagination, so let me take a few minutes to clarify:
 
You guys are not- at least not inherently (+1/2 to +1.  Ha!) poison.  What becomes dangerous is not going back to resolve grievances, disagreements, etc.  The ability to just drop a complaint or a calling-out on someone and never really going to follow up or- fate forefend- explain yourself or even pay attention to if you were right or wrong....   It must be more appealing than I think, because it happens more than we realize.
 
The most maddeningly frustrating thing in the world is watching (or worse- being part of) two pages of argument (though to everyone's credit, they are rarely insulting or heated) where both of the "sides" are actually in agreement with each other but aome difference in semantics has, rather than being resolved, flipped someone else's keyboard to autofire and "oh, it's _on_ now-!"
 
Though honestly, that is part of a larger cultural problem, I think, where in the past couple of decades argumentativeness, usefulness, combativeness, and just generally going out of your way to be the crappiest version of yourself possible- especially if no one is looking- that has insidiously crept into western culture on the whole.  I have even seen video of Canadians being jerks outside of hockey fandom!  That's pretty much the First Seal right there, and it is broken.
 
However, it is far outside the ability of this poster and _way_ outside the scope of this post to even attempt resolving humanity's increasing pettiness, so let's move on.
 
As mentioned, when one comes to share, discover, or otherwise discuss ideas and there is a consistent- small but consistent- percentage of discussion where argument or fault-finding trump discourse or clarity-  yes; that is frustrating.
 
Then there is the time investment.  I have never made a secret of my insane work schedule; it leaves me very little time to call _my_ time.  I have to carefully allocate it to get any rest or achieve any goals.  Case in point: we are in the middle of our summer shut-down at Job 1, but I had to go in foe six houra yesterday and I am here for at least two more hours today.  In the dead middle of my nine-day vacation!  Granted, it is not a vacation from Job 2, but still: it is time that I have lost and do not have to allocate to other things.
 
There is a similar problem with this board-  and again: it is _not_ an intentional thing that anyone here _does_; it is a combination of things:
 
Gaming-  RPGs, that is- have been dying for decades, with Magic: the Marketing setting up an entirely new production concept for coffin nails, with other properties like Nintendo's highly popular Dog Fight Simulator err, Pokemon games where you adopt, raise, and train pets then pit them against each other-  they all erode at the market, and Champions was never a _huge_ part of that RPG community anyway: the most successful Supers game, sure, but almost _any_ non-Arthurian fantasy game had a bigger player base, as did most sci-fi games.  And of course, the younger folks are cranking up the X-box or even phone games rather than shaking dice with their friends.
 
 
The end result of all of that means that if you happen to be a big fan oc Champions, you morw than likely don't have a lot of real-world opportunities to discuss it; there aren't even a whole lot of virtual places to discuss it, really.
 
So when you find one.....
 
Well, maybe you hang out there _a lot_, and eventually too much, because you _want_ to talk about it; you _want_ to share ideas and you _want_ to hear ideas from others
 
And before you know it, it becomes the recipient of the largest sharw of your free time.  Precious free time  you could be using to make home repairs, or repairing motorcycles, or talking to your kids, or whatever else you might be able to do with three or four hours here and there.  Sleep!  Even time allocated for sleep found itself being given to discussing Champions with relative strangers on the internet.
 
I don't think I need to run through the watershed of problems related to that.
 
But more and more, the reward for that lost time was less-frequently fun or interesting discussions and more frequently frustration over what would occasionally come off as deliberate obtusiveness- disagrement for the sake of disagreeing.  Rather than asking for clarification one a point of contention, "no; you're wrong," and as often as not, not even a "and this is why."  "This is why" is an incredibly helpful thing to include, by the way.  Sharing information leads to better understanding on both sides, and it used to happen here a lot more than it has in some time.
 
I could go on a bit, but those are the biggies: I was devoting far, far too much unrecoverable time to something that was becoming less enjoyable and more frustrating-
 
Again, none of it, I don't believe, is deliberate, but deliberate or not, the cure is the same:
 
Go away for a while; come back less often.  Spend time in the real world.
 
That's all it is.
 
 
 
Thank you, Stanley.  That is very much appreciated.
 
 
 
 
Mine was Mail Order Monsters.
 
 
 
Agreed.  Darren was always one of the most approachable people in this industry, and by all accounts, a solid guy.
 
Anyway, I will be around, just less often and less active.
 
(I forgot to count the words, Doc,but I hope that was satisfactory.     )
 
 
 

I saw Duke today!  In person! 
 
Over the past week my family and I have been driving cross country from Oregon to North Carolina to move my son there.  Duke got on his motorcycle and rode up today to my mother-in-law's house to meet up and hang out a bit.  This is the second time we've hung out in person.  🙂

Sorry tobe the source of distress.
 
I have been gone; I popped in briefly to share with those who might not know just what a person Scott's passing has taken.
 
Chris and Doc have both mentioned that there was a "where is Duke?" thread, so I popped over to say that I am alive, I am doing well,and frankly,time away from here has been considerably good for my well-being.
 
I perused a few threads this evening while marking everything read, and have realized that I am not at all ready to rejoin.
 
But remember that I am just one of many faceless people behind a screen.  I appreciate the concern,but I encourage everyone to have a good time without me. I may catch up later; I may not.  But either way, I encourage you to enjoy yourselves.
 

 
 

"Destroy the world?  But I keep all my stuff there!" 

My "Seattle Sentinels" campaigns were set in that city instead of NYC or other such "default" cities, but they were otherwise standard.
 
The two "Keystone Konjuror" campaigns, done as playtest for Ultimate Super-Mage and then "Ultimate Mystic/Mystic World, had the heroes all be mages of various sorts, and based in Tacoma, Washington (when they weren't in Hell, Babylon, the Congeries, or other exotic dimensions).
 
In my last campaign, "Avant Guard," the time-traveling and precognitive super-genius gadgeteer Doctor Future gathered the PCs from various futures in which one megavillain or another was destroying the world, or had already done so. While they fought regular supervillains as opportunity presented itself, their special goal was to prevent those megavillains from destroying the world. To this end, they sometimes teamed up with low-end super-criminals or even a squad from the international criminal/subversive/terrorist agency CROWN. Because even most villains don't want the end of the world.
 
Dean Shomshak
 

I ran a survival/apocalypse game where the PCs were basically using VIPER gear against supers who were villainous.  
I ran a New Mutants style school game.
Edit: I ran a Golden Age game set in 1939+ NYC but I'm not sure that is non standard.
 
I have for a long time wanted to run a low end/street super game of cops with powers as a special unit.
I played a Fantasy superheroes game in a con where the GM had to adjust the bad guys on the fly because we were demolishing them.
I never did it but I thought that running a villains game could be fun, supers working for an organization or a mastermind.
 
I never had any interest in a super high powered/cosmic game or a galactic champions game

Not just Champions, but I tend to lean toward using one of the small local cities as an initial setting, and the PCs are often part of an official government-approved supers program designed to spread hero coverage around the country instead of having them congregate in NYC and other big cities.  The PCs are usually the only full-time heroes in town barring a true vigilante or two, with NPCs and temporary PCs passing through now and then.  Resident villainy is usually pretty minor league, or "branch offices" for a big conspiracy, with the PCs gradually facing bigger threats as they establish themselves - either attracting them to town or going afield to deal with them.
 
Been doing that with variations on and off since V&V and Champions 1e.  The most recent iterations were the Syracuse Seven based in Syracuse NY (not exactly local, but several of us had lived there in the past) and the Tri-City Foursome based in the Albany/Schenectady/Troy area.  One advantage to using an area you know IRL is saving time explaining the setting's conventional elements, and as I said on my blog post here there's a lot to be said for using IRL urban history in your game when you can.  Much easier to explain there's a heist at the GE plant when everyone at the table has driven past the place a thousand times.  You can always jam in fictional elements when you want them, and you don't have to spend time developing the mundane infrastructure and demographics and economic parts.
 
For other ideas, I like the "road trip" model where your heroes are wanderers with a shared vehicle or two and drift around the country (or planet, or galaxy as power level allows) running into trouble or trying to avoid it.  Kind of a Scooby Doo with superpowers thing.  Have also had a good time with "occult defense force" games loosely modeled on Bureau 13, which lets you draw from urban fantasy/horror tropes as well as going on the occasional gonzo interdimensional quest.
 
 

I always wanted to run a Street level Martial Arts game.

There was an old thread that had a few ideas, mainly the blood pool.
 
 

Pity there's no signature on the picture. We don't even know who to ask for context. Although I'd be willing to bet it was just a cool image thrown in to symbolize the Hero System does everything no matter how weird.
 
I can think of a couple of other things it could represent, though. One would be a "wild" post-apocalyptic Earth, like TSR's old Gamma World game, or the 1980's Thundarr the Barbarian cartoon. Mutated animals and plants, crumbling ruins of modern buildings, high-tech mingled with archaic tech and mutant powers, and even magic. Another possibility would be a multi-universe crossover world such as Palladium's RIFTS, with mythic gods, aliens, wizards, mutants, vampires, super-science and more, from every genre, all thrown together into one chaotic planet.

Looks a lot like an unusually well-dressed bigfoot/sasquatch/skunk ape to me.  The proportions are closer to the one from the Harry & the Hendersons franchise than a gorilla and (while colors are just guesswork) the exposed skin tone seems lighter.