Doc Democracy

I do intend to have German superheroes who will come into conflict with the PCs when those heroes defend their people from the effects of allied bombing etc. I am going full on superheroes here, capes, masks and mystery men. ? To be fair Steriaca does acknowledge his issues, the Misspellian Master. And why you would focus purely on Excalibur, I have no idea. ? Doc

It is the difference between a narrative game and a simulation it’s game. Many gamers find it difficult to see any difference between combat luck and armour as the mechanic is the same. I think for some groups, it will work, for others combat luck needs to function differently. I am thinking of changing combat luck to introduce a random element. The defence comes with a dice pool. In a combat, when hit with an attack, you roll the dice pool. You remove every dice in the pool that rolls a six. If all the dice are removed, the defence fails. This introduces an element of luck. The martial artist can push his luck, he can seek to mitigate extra damage by rolling additional dice (one dice for every dice of normal damage removed from the damage roll, starting with lowest results, so 1s get removed before 2s, etc). This increases the chance of sixes to reduce the dice pool. My biggest hitch is deciding how quickly and how often the pool will refresh. Doc

Yeah, I have Justice Inc and two Pulp Hero. ? Am pretty well set up with HERO stuff....

First one by Chris Cloutier, Firebird Press If I remember properly... EDIT Yup, here is a link. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/257097/The-Golden-Age-of-Champions-3rd-Edition

Digital Hero 11 by the looks of things... HERO UNIVERSEThe Fabulous Five's latest members, Kestrel and Scirocco, face off against the pollution-powered Sludge. PAGE 8

I have all three editions of GAC, and they’ll all come in useful. I should have remembered GURPS though. Thanks.

Right, so the New Year will see the beginning of my long-planned Golden Age campaign. I intend to run a UK based campaign which makes the supplement a bit less useful than it would otherwise be. I intend to use this thread simply to post characters and plot ideas, my players do not live here, and ask questions. Am hoping other Golden Age aficionados will pitch in. My first question is about resources, I intend to begin in about 1937 and work up to the war. Am planning on reading one or two books for background on the history and politics of the run up to WWII in Europe. Any favourite history books out there that I might pick up? Am looking for books that deliver more of the broad thematic overview than the military detail which WWII histories I have previously picked up often dwell upon. ? would appreciate documentaries or tv programmes worth watching too. I have my first two character concepts, TANK, a Royal Engineer who stormed a German trench wearing steel plate on his chest with two maxim machine guns welded to braces on each arm. I imagine he's not always tooled out I'm this way, as it's a bit extreme, so thinking steel plate is probably ubiquitous but putting the whole machine gun frame in place takes a bit longer. For these times, he probably has a pistol and a steel-plates fist. TAM O’SHANTER, (turns out poor Meg's tail might not have saved him after all). I'll have a think on powers in a bit but I suspect he'll be able to call on "hellish legions" to do his bidding (much to their chagrin - "We'll do it this time Tam but one day your power over us will fade and the we'll have you for Eternity BWAAHAHAHAHA" etc). Will come back to this regularly. My heroes will be the premier heroes in the UK, high powered from the start. I want them to find a lot of things easy and there to be no one to turn to for high-powered back up. They will be IT. Doc

I think that I would focus much more on the fact that you are going to play superheroes and the kind of game they are going to play. I think you can get some of that stuff in there but the high school kids I have run stuff for were far more interested in the look and feel than the rules details (that came later when they wanted to run games for each other). I would establish early on the style, costumes or no costumes etc.

Have a look at the Pied Piper from the Flash's rogues gallery... http://theflash.wikia.com/wiki/Pied_Piper

It is the second part of this that I would have difficulty with as a GM. The Glass Gangster is getting immunity from Laser Guy's attack despite the fact that the EB has no limitation on it that prevents it from damaging glass. If Glass Gangster is a one-off villain that will pop up very irregularly to offset the advantages Laser Guy is accruing from shooting through glass without damaging it, then, after discussing it with the player, I might go for it. Without Glass Gangster, I would make the player take an indirect (or throw an indirect version into a multipower) to reflect the advantages acquired. I know my players would find LOTS of ways to use that and to extrapolate on the IF THAT, THEN THIS principle. Doc

It is RPG crack. Arguments about alignment and especially how that affects paladins have raged for decades. It was why I decided not to indulge myself. As Hugh said though, the arguments about alignments are very similar to arguments about code versus killing etc and it should demonstrate that no-one has a monopoly on the truth of these things...it shows how much work has to be done pre-game to ensure everyone is on the same page - which is indeed very pertinent to dealing with killer characters. If the right work is done at the start of the game to ensure everyone is on board with the intended tone, most major conflicts can be avoided. Doc

That is simply capitalist economy - even today there are harsher penalties for damaging property than there are for damaging other people....

With a challenge to come up with a holiday character am I looking to be part of the defence or offence? I quite like the idea of a character seeking to defend the Christmas Spirit, an entity that has existed from the beginning of time and whose nature varies dependent on the society of the time. The Spirit is one that sustains the morale of people through the depredations of winter, lifting their spirits and giving them hope that spring, with its renewed growth and associated warmth and food, will arrive and that it is worth planning for it. Embedding the ant mindset for general practise but providing crickets with a feast to keep them going. The defenders of the Spirit will have had many forms over the millennia. My defender of choice would be Yule. This hero holds the light of the world, bringing light to darkness and ensuring that light is passed on between the years. Yule would be an energy blaster but focussed more on defensive and investigatory powers than dealing damage. I would probably build him very much as a detective type with the ability to see through illusions and to the truth of things. I like the idea of Yule being able to move instantly to defend a Christmas community and so would give him the ability to appear wherever a yule log burns - I reckon a properly limited megascale teleport would work for that - though I would want a decent definition of what a yule log actually was. Doc

Just remember that by using that limitation you are telling the GM that this should be an issue your character will have to deal with. If someone hits you with a strength drain, then every power that you have unified gets a similar size drain. If you lose 15 STR, you will also lose 15 active points of your speed, defences etc at the same time. Is that something you want to happen, because it will...every few sessions. Doc

So close! But I still refrain from getting into a discussion of D&D alignments!! ? Doc

A default pulp setting would be useful as it would provide the backdrop for campaigns which can often be the most difficult thing for folk that have not grown up with Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Tarzan and Fu Manchu... My experience is that the younger folk (I am talking teenagers here, around 14-17) I run games for, love the ambience once they are introduced and most especially love the homework (go home and before we meet next week, watch three episodes of Gangbusters and the film Angels with Dirty Faces; or watch three episodes of Tarzan with Johnny Weismuller and She with Charlton Heston). It would be good to have The Adventurers Club actually made into a real thing with NPCs, maps and some setting decisions made for you. Doc

Lets keep the advice above the belt folks....no need to descend into personal commentary. ? Doc

Well, it sounds to me like this is a VPP. I would be inclined to limit the VPP with physical manifestation as well as the powers inside it, as powers are attacked instead of defended, the VPP itself begins to ‘take damage’ and limit what can be done power-wise as the pool shrinks. What would be missing is a idea of how the pool might heal. If this is a player, you need a healing mechanism, possibly along the lines of an endurance battery. If it is a villain, I would make it dependent on access to a type of location where the bots could be manufactured and renewed. Doc

I think I posted a character based on a person able to summon myriads of alternate selves from the multiverse (the Madding Crowd). I built this by buying lots of BODY and not a lot of resistant defence. Her powers waned as she took BODY, the effects of which were versions of herself being killed and fading out of existence (it was NOT a four colour campaign). I think this concept would also work in this instance, damage burning away BODY and diminishing the efficacy of powers. For Crowd she bought some resistant defence that only worked when she had less than 11 BODY. Doc

I just had a thought. What if, any attack made effects the character as if an equivalent drain was made on the power. So if a 12D6 EB was fired at the character the power would suffer a 12 DC drain on the power?? That is a substantial limitation to a power I think. Perhaps a more limited version of this limitation might do what you need... Doc

Tech, you want to give us your verbal description (flavour text) of the power? It would help us to come to a clearer idea of what the power needs... Doc

hmm. As previously said, you need an idea to properly model things but there will be many different ways to build stuff that can be degraded. You could use the focus rules and degrade the power proportionately as the focus is damaged. You could also limit the power based on how much damage has been inflicted on the hero during a fight. The power might have a base 8D6 damage+2D6 until 20 BODY damage received before defences+2D6 until 40 BODY+2D6 until 60 BODY etc. Doc

There a lot of different opinions about this and the application of alignment varies wildly from group to group. I do not think there is any particular right or wrong as far as rules go. I think the whole thing highlights the need for players and GMs to be on the same page when it comes to judgement calls on particular things - waiting until you need to do it in game is only going to entrench opinions, whether that is an interpretation of what lawful means or what it means to have a Code vs Killing. If you wait until it means a player is sanctioned in some way, then any gaps in understanding will only lead to hurt feelings. I like to go through a few scenarios with players when they suggest psychological complications to make sure we are on the same page before I think about what the complication might be worth in points. When you point out what it would mean in character behaviour to get all 30 points, the player often backs down and takes a lesser complication along the same lines or, when it comes up in play, we both understand what is going to happen - indeed the player will often volunteer the bad thing as it is a feature of the character in the player's head. In D&D I do the same kind of thing - talking through a few situations to see what the character would be inclined to do before settling on an agreed alignment... Doc

Not going to be drawn into a D&D alignment argument!!! ? Doc

I think this is a problem with the Paladin class to begin with. Most GMs, historically, have been caught up with the Lasful part of the Paladin alignment, forgetting the good aspect. It does make things pretty difficult because in a situation like that the Paladin is either Lawful or he is Good, unless he has an encyclopedic knowledge of the law to enable him to find a way round things legally. Obviously, he could make things part right with cash but that ignores the law element. It could be argued that the Paladin is only concerned with himself breaking the law (ditto Code vs Killing) but to me that breaks the spirit of these things. I think if the GM is going to strip a paladin-hood he would not only have to warn the paladin that the penalty for such theft is having the hand cut off but also what options the paladin might have that did not lead to either stripping the paladinhood for facilitating a crime (not turning them in) or the injustice of children being mutilated because they steal to avoid starving to death. From the scene as relayed - I think the GM was a bit harsh but I feel from the context that it was the end of a long series of such issues. ? Doc