This thread will be for discussing initial character concepts. It should also function temporally as a casual chat thread. It will eventually be deleted and replaced by proper character sheet display, character development, and OOC/casual chat threads.
This message was last updated by the GM at 04:38, Sat 25 Jan 2020.

Hi, everybody!

Looks like this thread is now open for business.

Ok. But what business have we sullying the white space with our aimless ramblings?

Apologies in advance for wall of text. Still, reading is what you signed up for, right? ;)

So Novi (TBD2) has PM'd me some. That's how I found out you guys couldn't send messages to this because it was public group. I guess that's for making announcements; I had assumed it was like always visible to anyone, players, lurkers, visitors... Now it's group 0 so you guys can post. Novi also sent me some questions to mull over, and to be efficient, I'm just going to repost those here for everyone to consider.



Firstly, I'm going to solidly say this is a homebrew universe. Maybe you'll see characters you recognize (Doctor Destroyer is always a classic), but they'll be fully my takes on them. *insert waffle about how no good campaign can just follow a 12-step program*

Secondly, I'm going to solidly state that, regardless of how it is justified, you will have communication, a base, and a vehicle provided for, whether that be through government grants, a wealthy sponsor, one of the characters, or what have you. If a character is willing to provide one of these for the team, the free version of that service will be nerfed or unavailable; the character providing travel, basing, or communications will have to meet the level of quality I expect as a minimum, but a character providing such a service will receive extra EXP. Some of that extra EXP will be required to be spent on improving your communication, travel, or basing service for the team. Generally, communication is the simplest service to provide, with travel being medium heat, and basing being super spicy, so EXP rewards for providing the service will scale with the difficulty of provision. Let me know if there's any other critical services you think we'll need, and discussion can unfold.

---

You can vote on 1a simply with a yes or no.

For number 2, rate between 1-10, high numbers representing that you want roleplay and skills to be more important, low representing that you just want to punch guys.

For number 3, rate between 1-10, high numbers representing that you want more personal character development, out-of-suit and in-suit, low representing you want to have mostly team-up adventures.

For number 4, rate between 1-10, high numbers representing that you want the world to question supers actions more, and want to have adventures exploring the ideas of the morality of Supers; low representing that heroes should just get back to being heroes and not have to worry much about public scrutiny.

For number 6, rate between 1-10, high numbers representing that you want few organizations/villains that keep showing up to kill you or destroy the city or rob the bank, etc.; low numbers meaning that villains should break out after you've handled them infrequently, and that organizations should each have limited influence in any particular area, reducing your number of encounters with any particular one.

You can vote on number 5 on two scales. The first scale is a rating between 1-10, high numbers representing the government is antagonistic to supers that it doesn't specifically endorse, and that it gives those endorsements very rarely; low represents that the government is very lax towards supers, and that it's found the best way to handle superhumans is to aid, or at least not hinder, heroes and let them handle the villains and evil organizations. The second scale is a rating between 1-10, high numbers representing the government appears often, either as cameos (an FBI agent found out about a deal going on at the docks at 11:00 PM) or with full-blown SWAT or MARS squads; low numbers mean the government will directly affect events in the campaign infrequently. Representatives of the government would be more likely to appear as objects you have to protect from capture/assassination, if they do appear.

I also wanted to add two questions.

8. Do supers as a whole, and thus the campaign, tend to have more magical Special Effects, or tech/skill-based Special Effects? Rating between a 1-10, high numbers representing you want the Super World to be more focused around magic and eldritch creatures, low numbers representing that most Supers get their powers from technology, super-skills, or mutations.

9. Will the campaign stay mostly on Earth, or will there be frequent jaunts to other planets or other planes? Rating on a scale of 1-10, high number representing that you want the campaign to visit the insane vistas of other worlds more often, and that aliens and/or summons from other planes will be prevalent, low numbers representing you want Earth as the center of the universe, with less inter-planetary/inter-planar travelers.

10. What power level do we want to play with? High powered, standard, or low powered? Vote 1-5; the lower the number, the lower the power level of the PCs. 3 is 400 Points.

---

When voting, you should have a post with just the numbers of the questions, followed by your answers, like this:



I'm still hoping to get at least one more player for the game, but this is so you guys can start thinking about and voting on these subjects. I want everyone to get a game they're interested in; of course, as the game master, it's ultimately up to me what elements get emphasized, but I want to take player-input on these things into account somewhat. Even if, say, we get all 1s for question 8, magic will still exist and there will be run-ins with one or two important magical supers, as well as their summons.

Also, an aside on the subject of power levels: I don't plan to use the standard system for Complication point-values. I'll discuss that a bit more when we get to character creation; after we have 4 players and every player has voted, or after this Saturday, whichever comes first, I'll post character-creation guidelines. If we get a 4th player close to the end of the deadline (Saturday) I will probably extend the deadline a day or two.

Voting
1. (a) no
   
2. 4
   
3. 2
   
4. 4
   
5. 3-4
   
6. 3
   
7. not sure of scale, but I would like to see vehicle/base/resource points both in individual and group expenditures just to add some complexity to things
   
8. 2
   
9. 4
   
10. 3

I have commentary that I saved in the scratchpad, so it can be added once everyone has voted (that will keep all the votes together).
This message was last edited by the player at 05:12, Sat 04 Jan 2020.

1a.  Um, present?
2.  4
3.  3
4.  4
5.  3, 3
6.  3
8.  2
9.  2
10.  4

edit:  Well, okay.  I suppose I can save my comments until after voting, too.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:29, Sat 04 Jan 2020.

1a. No
2. 6
3. 8
4. 5
5. 3,7
6. Your scale here makes no sense
7. Answered
8. 3
9. 3
10.3

Comments
1. a. I like having history that can be used as origins, hooks for rp, and permission to make up outrageous stories.
2. If we're just gonna punch stuff, let's all make bricks with mushroom level IQ's. Just think of the talk in the clubhouse. "Bertha SMASH!" "NO! Bertha bad, it Brock turn to SMASH!" "BROCK SMASH LAST TIME! This time The Amazing Bunbun turn to SMASH!"
3. ?
4. ?
5. Having governement involvement usually makes it easier on the GM without detracting from the characters.
6. Having to create new villains once a week is a great drain on the GM, so this one has it's own feedback loop.
7. Utilizing these resource points almost becomes a severely limited variable power pool.
8. Although I've voted towards the tech end, this is because any sufficiently advanced technology will appear to be magic. So I don't think this changes much.
9. Although I've indicated a direction towards off-planet, I'm mostly voting for alien incursion on earth, not for visiting Alpha Centauri to help out a local potentate.
10. Just up a notch or two, these don't need to go to eleven.

This message was last edited by the player at 07:56, Fri 03 Jan 2020.

Hey, my apologies, but I realized that having fewer numbers with more a difference between each one would be more helpful to me. Can you all edit your votes so that, every time I asked for a rating from 1-10, you instead rate from 1-5? Many thanks.

Commentary

1a.  I've got ideas for both ways.  Also, if we do go high-power, I may need to break out some different ideas than I was originally looking at.

2.  We're superheroes, we punch things. ;)  But I'd prefer that the longer story arcs need a mix of things, preferably from multiple PCs, to resolve.

4.  Especially if we're some of the first supers, it should matter how we act.

5.  I'm voting 5 because I want it all.  In particular, I want to see different politicians and parts of the government react differently.  Maybe some mayors and governors love us; there's a senator railing against us; a general who gives us cover because we keep him from needing to attack his own cities; and there's a group of spies trying to rope us into doing morally dubious things.

9.  I'm not going to be that disappointed if we have a bunch of wacky adventures elsewhere.  But I would strongly prefer that our travel is voluntary and controlled in general.  That we've got a mage to portal us over to Faerie and back; we've got our own spaceship when visiting Oa.  Sure, there will be adventures where we get kidnapped to be in the Malvan arena and have to escape, but I'd prefer those to be the minority.

1a. no
2. 3
3. 2
4. 2
5. 2, 3
6. 3
8. 2
9. 2
10. 4

1a. No
2. 3
3. 4
4. 3
5. 2,4
6. Your scale here makes no sense
7. Answered
8. 3
9. 3
10 3
This message was last edited by the player at 02:06, Sun 05 Jan 2020.

Hello, everyone.  Nice to meet you all.

A few comments on my votes:
- For number 2, punching guys is a lot of fun, but the best superhero stories (other than Nextwave) aren't only about punching guys.
- For number 3, I feel like (at least in my experience) character development tends to come up organically in-game anyway rather than being something I planned, so it's probably better for the game to focus on the team's adventures.  (If we find ourselves wanting to do more personal stuff on-screen, we can always do a sidestory thread or something, right?)
- For number 4, while public scrutiny can be interesting, I don't want to go too far with it.  I love Spider-Man, but actually roleplaying a character who has to deal with constant crap the way Peter Parker does would just be depressing.
- For number 5...honestly, it makes no sense that the government would be lax towards superheroes, but a game in which the government is as strict as they probably would be in real life just doesn't sound like much fun.
- For number 6, I'm honestly a little bit torn; I find it silly how prisons in superhero worlds so often act like revolving doors, but it doesn't seem right to not have some recurring villains!  (BTW, did I read the scale right, i.e. high numbers = more recurring villains?)
- For number 7, I need to re-read the books for how bases and such are priced.  (And I assume we'll all need to sort out character concepts before anyone knows whether it makes sense for their character to provide those things.)
- For number 8, I really like magical superheroes and such, but my default notion of a superhero world is one in which they're the exception and not the rule.
- For number 9, while I fully expect some number of aliens to be hanging around at any given time, I would prefer for the team to spend most of its time on Earth.  There's lots to do on Earth.
- For number 10, I must admit that I generally like high-powered games, but I didn't want to get too out of hand since I don't have a lot of personal experience with Hero System yet.

Hello, TDB4.  We'll help where we can with your game system questions.  Though, coming from Mutants & Masterminds isn't the worst switch - they do have some of the same basic conceptual roots on building powers out of their basic parts.  Though HERO's miniatures roots still show more strongly.

---

Well, we've all voted,  Curiously, there were no 1s or 5s cast, so the results all tend towards 3.  Yes, I'm not the GM, but I'm feeling talkative right now. ;)

1a.  N/-/N/N - NO!!!  On of two unanimous votes - and none of us want to be the first superheroes.

2.  3/4/4/3 - 3.5

3.  4/3/2/2 - 2.75

4.  3/4/4/2 - 3.25

5.  2/3/3/2, 4/3/4/3 - 2.5,3.5 - More governement involvement, and it prefers to work with us.

6.  -/3/3/3 - 3 - Other than an absention, the only other unanimous vote.

8.  3/2/2/2 - 2.25 - Only really lopsided vote, coming down against magic.

9.  3/2/4/2 - 2.75

10.  3/4/3/4 - 3.5

Actually, I'm not sure if the mean of the votes is the right way to think about things.  A 2/2/3/4 split, if you take 3 to be neutral, is a 2-1 vote one way.

And there is the quesiton of whether the GM wants to make his votes public. ;)

---

So, we are not the first supers in a homebrew universe.  Which still leaves a lot of options.  Mr. Conductor, how much stuff do you have already developed, versus what our characters will add?  And are you drawing largely from any particular setting, or are you borrowing from everything?

I was kind of afraid this would happen. Most of it isn't very significant; big take-aways are that we aren't the first heroes, the power level is slightly above 6E1's standard option, players want a focus on technology and skills and mutations over magic, and a slight preference to helpful, present governments. I've posted character creation guidelines; start talking about character concepts or asking questions here.

I doesn't have to be bad that our opinions aren't that divergent; maybe we're just all cool to run with whatever you've got, or that we all like some shades of gray in our stories.

I'm still digesting your complications scheme.  I'll probably come back to that more in the future.

How comfortable do people feel with talking about secret origins stuff in public?  The stuff that the other PCs are unlikely to know at the beginning of the game?  I like to think I'm pretty good at separating IC and OOC knowledge.  But I can dig if people want to keep their character's secrets secret.

My first concept is a stretchy, mutant, scientist.  How do people feel about having mutants and their haters in the game?  I have other concepts if needed.

I have two concepts I have played in previous Editions. One is a WWII pulp hero who partook of the Elixir Vitae and has an extended lifespan. He's a gunslinger who uses trick bullets and loads of skill levels named Sharpshooter. The other concept was based on an old Bill Cosby routine about 'Little Jeffrey'. In this case, it's a five-year-old Brick with control issues named Tantrum.

Those are somewhat... divergent concepts.  And while I could see Tantrum being amusing in the right circumstances, it feels way 'too silly!' for the vibe I'm getting from the GM.

OTOH, I think I recall a Sharpshooter in this GM's last game, though I'm not recalling much else about him.  Maybe a US Marshall?  Anyway, seems like a reasonable concept.  It's just hard to say more without knowing more about his background or the context of the game.

Yeah, same character. He's the grandson of Daniel Boone. He can out-wrassle a bear, and is an expert marksman. FDR made him a US Marshall back in 1941 and he was keeping Law and Order at home during WWII.

Personally, I tend to expose the character's stuff to teammates without hesitation, unless it's written otherwise (secret agenda, etc).
I shy away from the whole "anti-mutant sentiment" thing, myself. GMMMV.
Stretchy mutant scientist and gunslinger.
How about I propose a mind-addled mentalist that dresses and talks like a wizard from a fantasy novel but is really just a powerful psychic?

The other thing about Tantrum is that he has low-level molecular psychokinetic skills. He has fast running, about +30m, and can manipulate non-organic molecules into Stronger matrices (Aid DEF).

I have no problem with talking about secret origins stuff in public.  Keeping secrets can sometimes be interesting, but I wasn't planning on trying anything like that in this game.

Regarding the mutant thing: I've never understood how you can have prejudice against mutants in particular, but not against other types of superhuman.  I can't imagine the general public making that distinction.  I suppose I don't really mind if there's a plausible explanation for why mutants in particular are hated, though.

Tantrum sounds like he'd cause enough collateral damage for two superteams on his own. (And truthfully, from a roleplaying perspective I would really rather not deal with a five-year-old teammate.)  Sharpshooter sounds neat, though.

I've got a few concepts in mind, but I'm leaning toward a half-demon with pyrokinetic abilities and an unsettling amount of personal magnetism.  (Not too much angst though.  It's too easy to overdo that sort of thing.)  I haven't played a straightforward energy-controller type in a long time, and it's always interesting to have a heroic character whose powers would be way too easy to misuse if she had a bad day.

I had also considered a mystic archer of some sort (but that sounds like it would be redundant with Sharpshooter), or possibly a knight in magical armor, like the mystic version of a battlesuit (but if we already have someone who thinks they're a wizard and a scientist who builds gadgets, a magical artisan probably isn't needed).

I would say don't really worry about "overlapping" ideas like that. In any case, having a REAL magic-adept of some kind riffing on our "wizard" could be really fun/funny. In the end, though, it is of course your choice; just my two cents.

So I was starting to think a little bit about the setting of the game; I think I'd like to have the team form up in southern California (San Diego, Las Angeles, Palm Springs; there abouts).

That's a reasonable point, but I find myself really liking this demon idea.  (It helps that the character I'm playing in another game is already a sort of mystic, so it's nice to try something a bit different.)  Not to mention that if I wanted to have input on the magic discussion, someone with supernatural family connections could easily know a bit about the occult.

I'm fine with starting in California, although I don't know much about the area.

I'll try to start sketching out some ideas when I get home from work tonight.  I'm sure I'll have questions for the GM and/or more experienced players quite soon. >_>

My concept for this 'wizard' includes a sort of 'anti-demonic' stance, which could be an issue. I've also got a 'Green Hornet' homage I would love to try out. The Storm (vehicle) is armored, fast, has a smoke screen and electrical blast. It also flies. Lance Yuma (follower) is highly-skilled ex-military and a very good driver. The character is heir to an industrialist's empire and utilizes myriad gadgets to wear the spandex.
I've also been looking to use a 'Machine Man' homage.
Someone help me decide which to pick.

What is the nature of your "wizard's" problem with demons?  It's not as though my character is terribly fond of demons either; she'd probably be very happy to never see her demonic parent again.

I don't know a lot about Green Hornet (or how he differs conceptually from other gadget-wielding heroes with sweet vehicles) but that does sound like fun too.

The Wizard is a tad unstable, believing there is a demonic invasion that only he can see. He's been known to attack anything resembling a demon though he has learned to check for costumes before obliterating. Those gargoyles on that church over there? Yeah, they had to burn in the Flames of the Fauntleroy!
Did I mention his instability?
I've fleshed out Mechanico, as well. A robotic body with a true AI trying to find a place for himself in a human world, he's strong, durable, and has a few gimmicks.
Ach! Still can't make up my mind.

In reply to Conducter (msg # 4):
using 1-5 scale

1.  Established setting, or homebrew?

3

1a.  First supers in the world, or no?

does not matter(but my character has been a mage for most of his life)

2.  Do we just punch things until the problem is solved?  Or does that just treat symptoms, and actually solving the problem require other skills/roleplaying?  This, and others questions, is a spectrum, and will likely vary between adventures.

3

3.  Non-superhero time.  We don't have to go over what we're having for lunch every day.  But how often do we have to save the day?  How much does the other stuff in our lives come up?  Are secret IDs and NPCs legitimate complications?

3 my guy will have a very wierd domesetic life as his girl friend is a ghost

4.  Politics.  What kind of tolerance do people have for characters having opinions on issues?  Or talking about the implications of their actions beyond just punching bad guys?

3

5.  Government.  How much does it show up, and what kind of relationship do we have with it?

3

6.  Recurrence level of villains.  Existence of enemy organizations, their size, and resilience levels.  Plot sizes, campaign arcs.

3

7.  Support operation.  Base, vehicles, personnel.  Self-funded, or outside backer.  Character point expenditure for any of it.

3( I have bought my home as an extra diemensional space 2,048 sq m  this makes for a  32mx16mx4m area

I want to play a kinda mashup of John Constinine and Harry Dresden
so yes I'm of a magic background with a ghost lover and kinda as my guardian angel

I posted my character in character details
if wanted I can post here for all to see if need be

Mutants:

Well, part of the issue is assuming that anti-mutant prejudice runs on logic.  The other problem is lazy writers and poor editorial management at Marvel.  And HERO Games and others.

I mean, how many Americans are convinced that Muslim is synonymous with 'Arab terrorist who despises Western civilization'?  It apparently only takes one or two manifestos and a terrorist plot every few years to keep the hysteria rolling for some people.

As for not hating all supers, maybe it's an odd sort of jealousy?  "If I had power armor, or alien artifacts, or mystical training, or was exposed to weird energy fields, I could be a superhero, too.  But he was just born with powers; that's not fair or right!"  You also typically have reliable mutant detectors and mutant specific power suppressors, which help make it seem like mutants are somehow different from other supers.

Sadly, the problem is usually far more Doylist: lazy writers, who only use certain villains with certain heroes.  The Avengers can't fight an X-Men villain, and Iron Man can't fight a Hulk villain.  Spiderman comics aren't about racial allegory, so no one will accidentally suspect he's a mutant.  Game designers who throw stuff in to support as many character concepts as they can, but fail to build on any of it.

So yeah, I hear you on it being poorly done so often.  I'd want to work with the GM and add some background to help substantiate why an anti-mutant movement exists.  And do stuff more than a mile away from the X-Mansion.  Work with groups that are anti-all-supers, or investigate/harass supers they suspect of being mutants.

Any other thoughts?  Including from the GM?

So many posts to respond to.

TBD1:

No.  No bringing minors to a super-battle. :P

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TBD3:  *sigh* typed a bunch of stuff, without seeing a reply that invalidated a bunch of it.

The 'wizard' sounds a bit too problematic.

Huh, silly me mixing up Robotman and Machine Man.  And trying to keep from thinking too much about his incarnation in Nextwave.  A brick is always nice to have around.  Would want to hear a little bit more on his background.

I kinda like the Green Hornet homage most.  Partly, I was hoping somebody would have a character with resources, to help explain our base and vehicles.  Also, you can throw some Blue Beetle(Ted Kord) and Owlman nods in there.  Would the Storm be more Black Beauty or Quinjet?

---

TBD4:

Other than having Bruce Lee as a sidekick, the Green Hornet's shtick is that he is a hero with bad publicity.  Most people believe he is a villain, which lets him infiltrate criminal enterprises more easily.

The mystic archer or magic power armor could be interesting.  But sounds like you are leaning into the pyro-demi-demon.  Who might be our face.  Is daddy a generic demon, or a named demon with some infernal hierarchy?  Or is it a demon mommy, to do something different?

---

TBD5:

Hello, welcome to the game.

John Constantine mashed with Harry Dresden and played by Ron Perlman?  Alrighty then.  Not sure whether it would make more sense for your girl to be a follower than as written.

Seems you've got a strong idea what you want to play.  I'm pretty sure the GM was hoping we could build our characters together, and try to get a somewhat balanced team.  So, can we count on you to be our master detective?

---

Conductor:

SoCal sounds nice.  Not much potential for swinging, but oh well.  Does mean we should get plenty of fame, being in the media capital of the planet.

If Bruce Lee is his sidekick, the Green Hornet must truly be among the strongest heroes. ^_^

And anyway, I've been assuming the demon in question must be someone fairly important; I really, really hope Hell's rank-and-file aren't so powerful that their half-human offspring are strong enough to be superheroes!

I was actually thinking the same thing, that it would be interesting if my character's mother was the demon.  I've only seen that done...once, I think.  Of course, that means Mom's human disguise must be pretty good.  Perhaps she's a lawyer.

Okay, here's my first rules question: which power is suitable for the ability to shut down an existing fire?  Like, let's say a building is on fire (and it's not my fault), which power would my character be using if she can somehow reach out and shut down the flames?  (I'm assuming that this is one of the first things a conscientious fire-tossing hero tries to learn.)

Ron Pearlman was the only character I could find that worked for me as a scruffy type pic

she is a ghost so buying as a follower w/desolid always on would be a PITA for her attacks
this way attacks go through her and strike John Dresden
she could also be banished for a period of time

he has Bureaucratics 13-,Conversation 13-,Persuasion 13-,Criminology 13-,Deduction 13-,PS: Mage: all in practioner of the dark arts 12-,Streetwise 13-
so he could pull off that role


SoCal is my home stomping grounds as I drive all over SoCal for a living
so no Problem for me

@TBD4
There are two Powers that immediately jump to mind for shutting something down: Drain and Dispel. Dispel costs less per 1d6 of effect (3 Active Points), but if you don't match or exceed the Power's Active Points, you have no effect. For naturally caused fires, I would probably establish some kind of "Active Point" pool you need to beat to shut it off with such abilities. Since Dispel is all-or-nothing, you're probably looking more at Drain: twice as expensive as Dispel, but every point of effect you roll immediately weakens the targeted Power or Characteristic. Drain also stacks its effect with every roll you make.

If there were a raging building fire, you would probably have to roll Drain multiple times to put it all out; but you wouldn't be relying on the luck of the dice to score a high enough Effect Roll to put it out immediately. Dispel also has the cool bonus of, if you Hold a Phase, you can react to someone attacking with a Dispelable Attack; you can Dispel that Attack by using your Held Phase, and you automatically hit it (though still must beat its Active Points, of course). One last thing: Fire-based Attacks could be defined as multiple kinds of Powers; Killing Attacks and Blasts are the most common of course, but even then you're hamstrung if you can't affect both. It would pretty lame to have to say "Sorry boys, this isn't my kind of fire, so you're on your own." You'll almost certainly want to apply Variable Effect (+1/2) as an Advantage so you can effect any Fire-based Power, one at a time. You might also want to get Expanded Effect (+1/2 per level) to effect multiple Fire-based Powers at a time, though that one is entirely up to you; each level of Expanded Effect lets you affect one additional gameplay element at a time.

Finally, one last distinction to keep in mind between Dispel and Drain: you can Drain the user of a Power itself to prevent them from causing the Power again; Dispel only helps until that character's next Phase when they can restart the Power, and can only target the "projectile" of an Attack, or any continuing effects. For unattended flames, if you don't completely Drain them, they would recover; however if you Drain them fully, I would allow them to stay gone for good. Drain is recovered from at a rate of 5 Active Points per Turn, though with Delayed Return Rate (+1) you can make it take 5 Minutes to recover 5 Active Points; you can delay the return rate by 1 additional level down the Time Chart after that for every 1/4 you add to the value of the Advantage.

@TBD5
I don't live in SoCal, I just know it from afar. Prepare to get disappointed, I guess, maybe? In any case, I have thoughts about you character but must come back to that later; life is pressing in for the day.

Yes, I'll admit it. I'm a Blue Beetle fan. I've even got digital copies of the really old ones (the cop wearing chain mail and taking mega vitamins). Besides, Owlman WAS Blue Beetle. Ted Kord's retired namesake had been retired the hard way, and the bug (Kord's vehicle) had the same shape (and abilities) as Owlman's. So, I guess my homage is to all three. Fact is, I've pretty much decided to go with that guy.
He'll be a media mogul (like the original Green Hornet) but instead of a newspaper this media will be social (in college, he started a site where his buddies could share information on the girls they dated, and called it 'consort profiles', now confiles has billions of subscribers). One of his bodyguards will turn out to be a distant relative and the two uncover some unusual secrets about their family, which inspire them to build the car, gadgets, costumes, et al, and begin fighting crime.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:21, Tue 07 Jan 2020.

As the hidden owner of Boone Munitions, Sharpshooter is also a man with some resources, though not to a great extent.

TBD4 & Conductor:

Yeah, looking in Champions Powers for the appropriate power, "Extinguish Fire" is Dispel fire, Variable effect (any one fire power at a time, +1/2).  And has a pointer 6E2, p150 for rules on natural fires.  And yes, Dispel has an all-or-nothing nature.  It suggest the Cumulative advantage if you want to be able to whittle down bigger fires.

---

TBD3:

Okay.  I'll admit, I don't know that much about solo Beetle.  Most of my exposure has been Giffen & DeMatteis Justice League.

Though, as topical as Mark Zuckerburg is, I just want to say that confiles sounds kinda creepy and misogynistic.  A website for guys to talk about girls they date?  Have you seen the creeps on the internet?  The kind of shaming and rumor-mongering that a site dedicated to that kind of thing would generate?

Maybe you could do something along the lines of picking up your family's struggling newspaper and radio station right out of college, and pivoting them hard into online and social media right as those picked up?
This message was last edited by the player at 07:16, Wed 08 Jan 2020.

Sounds like Dispel (with Variable Effect and maybe Cumulative, I'll need to look at the rules/numbers) makes more sense than Drain.  There's no reason my character would be able to turn off someone else's ability to throw fireballs, and that's really not the point anyway -- mostly I want her to be able to put out fires if she accidentally starts them (although putting out fires in general is good humanitarian work).  Thanks for the help, folks.

Incidentally, is it considered bad form to stick a large STR increase in the same Multipower as your other attack powers?  I didn't originally have any plan to do that, but it sounds like this team might not actually have a brick-type character at all (I think that's a first in my supers gaming experience), and inhuman strength does fit for the scion of a powerful demon.  You never know when you might need someone to lift large objects and put them down.  But if you'd rather I stick closer to theme, I don't blame you at all.

GM, is there any particular format you prefer for character sheets?  (I do like how TBD5 is organizing things; I might need to look up how to do tables on RPOL.  It's been a while.)

Also, I'm trying to understand the distinction between social skills.  Do I correctly understand that Charm is the "make people like me" skill, Conversation is "extract information (politely)," and Persuasion is "make people actually do/believe something?"  (I can't help but feel like there are more social skills in this game than strictly necessary.)

---

TBD3:

Honestly, I'm with TBD2 on this one.  If you want to keep the social media focus, you could have Confiles starting out as a more general dating site or something?

I'm trying to color his social media platform in a specific way. If face book is the suburbs, con files is the trailer park. Face book is the golf course, and con files is the bowling alley. Face book is a ball park bratwurst, and con files is a boiled hot dog. The backstory for the social media platform should show this. Incidentally, this will also serve as the reason he can't pull KS's out of thin air by claiming the material is available to him through his company. Con files doesn't have any good information.
This message was last edited by the player at 05:39, Wed 08 Jan 2020.

In reply to TBD4 (msg # 39):

Yup, that's how the skills are.  And yeah, the skills are maybe more granular than they need to be.  There are legacy reasons, and issues with trying to make and balance a universal system.

As for STR in a multipower, it's a little suspect, but doable.  It should have a good justification for being there, as opposed to just point efficiency.  For instance, in the official Champions Universe, there is a villain named Lady Blue, who is an inventor with fancy force field technology.  She has a multipower with some energy blasts and brick-level STR.  And I can dig that her tech can be set to repulsor beams OR no range telekinesis.  OTOH, demon fire and STR just because we don't have a brick?  Not so much.

My thoughts for TBD5's character:
1)
Your ghost girlfriend Multipower is currently purchased with No Conscious Control. I don't really think this matches the Special Effects at play here; after all, she came back from the afterlife to help you so she must be pretty enamoured, enough to help when you really need it at least. You should remove No Conscious Control; you could replace it with Requires a PRE Roll to represent that you can ask for aid at any time, but have to cajole her for help, but without either Limitation would be good too, I think. Alternatively, what I'd really recommend is making her a Follower or Summon.
2)
Can you give me a book and page number for Suffocation and Stunning for Change Environment? I'm guessing they're in some supplement, some where. You can also just describe them to me, but I'd rather go to the source so I can read it does for myself.
3)
Regarding your morning rituals, I have a question for you. Do you really want to be assassinated in your sleep? That's pretty much the only way the theme is limiting. It doesn't really fit with more comic-y superheroes. Maybe for other genres like Dark Champions. Maybe it seems like I'm presenting that they don't work in too few situations; but really, if someone wants to just capture you, non-lethal options won't be hindered anywhere near as much by the fact your defenses deactivate. Entangles and Mental Powers are both very good for incapacitating a sleeping person; if they're just relying on surprise for the STUN modifier bonus, defenses help, but they won't save you if you're properly snuck up on. Unless you're willing to take them as -0 Limitations, you should remove the Extra Time, Concentration, Gestures, and Limited Power. It's fine if your Special Effect is that you renew these Powers every morning. It's fine if you want your vision to remain mechanically; but I will not kill you in your sleep, so those Limitations won't ever be limiting. Kidnap you, maybe. But not kill. (also, in any case, the Limited Power should have been made using 1 Continuing Charge lasting 24 Hours)
4)
Related to note 3, you are over Defense Maxima. Your PD and ED, with your Resistant Defense, has a total of 75 Points value; and you bought 10 Points of Mental Defense besides. You must lose 15 Active Points of defenses.
5)
As your character is not a Mentalist, it is not appropriate to sell some of your OMCV; while you could build Powers in your VPP with ACV, you don't have any other Powers that use OMCV, and so OMCV is all but a useless Characteristic for you; and you shouldn't get points back for something that won't have a negative impact.
6)
Personal Pocket Dimension should not be built as a Custom Power. You should build a Base Perk, which itself is constructed on another plane of existence; then, you purchase Personal Pocket Dimension as Extra-Dimensional Movement at the base 20-Point level. This also means you'll sell one of your Fixed Locations for your Dimensional base. You might want to apply Increased Mass Adders to that Extra-Dimensional Travel, and possibly build your Extra-Dimensional Travel like a Gate (see 6E1 301 for more on that).
7)
I feel like I've been kinda hard in some of my criticisms so far, so here's a much softer one. Since your ring is a magical artifact, I don't feel it's necessary to have it stop working on hallowed ground; still if you want to keep that you can.
8)
Your VPP breaks the Active Point Maxima by a lot. If you had basically no other Powers but a VPP, I might allow a 120 point VPP at the max; as it is, you also have your ghost to help you, so it should accommodate the 100 Active Point Limit. Moreover, you do not have a Power Skill marked down; it looks like you might be trying to use Inventor in replacement, but to change VPPs in combat, you must have the Power Skill, which can be based off any Characteristic you prefer. You do get an Everyman Power Skill, so even if you don't purchase one at least you aren't totally in the hole, I guess. Fortunately, you can switch VPPs during Non-Combat Time, if you plan on not buying a Power Skill. The VPP Attack Powers you have all or almost all break DC Maxima. Keep in mind Advantages like Reduced END don't affect the number of dice in one DC; but Advantages like Area of Effect do. So a 6d6 Mental Blast doesn't violate DC Maxima; a 6d6 Mental Blast with 1m Area of Effect does violate DC Maxima.
9)
PS: Mage is under the heading "General Based Skills" but is listed as having 12-; it should only have 11-.
10)
You have a large area in your character sheet that has the header Equipment, but it has a bunch of powers that break Maxima, as well as some Skills and more. I'm guessing this was kind of like a sketchboard of sorts for you, or a wishlist of things you want to improve in the future? When your final character sheet is approved, it should have this area removed regardless, for improved readability.
11)
Your Complications don't seem to match my guidelines for what I'd like to see out of Complications. Also, even if approved of, Smart Mouth is not a Psychological Complication; it's an Occasional, Minor Social Complication. Hunted: Eldritch Powers is a good Relationship Complication. Psychological Complication: Protective of Mortals could be fine as your Moral Code, though keep in mind it costs 2 Points to have it at the Strong level.



I don't know how I feel about you having Area of Effect: Thin Cone on almost every Attack Power. On one hand, it makes realize I should have added a Damage Maxima clause for using Area of Effect Attacks mostly, not just a Combat Value clause for Area of Effect Attacks. But in particular, the fact you made them almost all Thin Cones kind of screams to me like you were trying to min-max range, damage, defense, and Active Points. Everyone wants their character to be effective, obviously, but there needs to be some moderation.

Especially, I ask you to keep this in mind: the balance of the game is strongly weighted on things that save you Character Points coming back to bite you in some way. That's why you can't get any Limitation value out of your Morning Rituals taking Extra Time, Concentration, Gestures, and 1 Continuing 24 Hour Charge but you can take them at -0 values if you like. If you don't get value for those Limitations, you don't have to be punished for them: they're part of the roleplay only.

Ultimately, part of the fun of GMing sometimes IS punishing Limitations. But like how I don't want you to Limit your Morning Rituals the way you have because punishing it would be out of line with the tone I have in mind, I don't want you to have all your Cones be thin, or even all your Areas of Effect be Cones, because I don't necessarily want to have to punish that. It could get to annoying levels of finicky if so many of your options are Cones, and Thin Cones at that, as they are right now; and that would be unfun for me, and the ultimate goal of roleplaying games is that the players and GM all have fun.

So I hope you can understand. I do feel like my tone may have been overharsh during part of this; and I'm sorry for that. Though, I don't want to necessarily go back and make them less harsh because I have been writing and editing this post for entirely too long. So take my thoughts, work on at least some of them, and we'll come back for round two a little later.

---

In response to TBD4s questions:

You could use Drain with the Special Effect that, when you Drain an enemy directly, you're just preparing to Drain any fire effect they produce, taking an appropriate Limited Power Limitation to reflect they can generate new phenomena at full power if you aren't able to respond to their production of effects. I'd probably rate that a Power loses one third of effectiveness or more Limitation, for a -1/2 effect on Real Cost.

Slightly unrelated, but out of curiosity, do you have Hero Designer?

Strength is a Standard Power, and as such it can be put in Power Frameworks (AKA a Multipower or Variable Power Pool). The one thing I'd say is whether I approve it for sure depends on Special Effect; if the Special Effect is that you're super-strong as the child of a demon, I probably wouldn't allow it into a Fire-Manipulation Multipower. If the Special Effect is somehow something along the line of you use the force of roaring flames to move something, I'd allow it in the Multipower, though that's uh... It's an odd one, to be sure, but odder ones have been made. Irregardless, I don't know exactly how you're building your character yet, so I will not pass a formal judgement yet. Maybe your Multipower isn't Fire-Manipulation; I don't know, I eagerly await finding out.

Persuasion is like the generic starting point; you go out and tell someone IDEA X is good for REASON Y. You both roll and see whether you were persuasive enough to convince them. Conversation is like Persuasion, but if successful, the target doesn't necessarily know they've been manipulated by an Interaction Skill. Interrogation is another modified form of Persuasion; usually, the REASON Y is something along the lines of "You don't want to get waterboarded, do ya?", brainwashing, or other mental abuses. (Can you tell I have a negative opinion of Interrogation?) If Interrogation is Persuasion tailored to take advantage of imprisonment conditions, High Society and Bureaucratics are Persuasion tailored to take advantage of snooty, rich people conditions, and governmental conditions, respectively. Oratory is kind of like your ability to use Persuasion on a whole group of people. Charm is like Persuasion, but REASON Y is something along the lines of "Because I'm your friend", or because you gave them favors. Of course, each of these flavors of Persuasion are more tailored to getting different IDEAs X as well; Interrogation is to get confessions or information. Wait, sorry: "information"; Charm is usually more to get personal types of help; Bureacratics is to get bureaucrats to do helpful things for you, like in a governmental sense. I think you get the picture at this point.

Anyway, to finally get around to elaborating on my character concept:

Flex

Ashley Long thought she was just stuck with a connective tissue disorder (EDS), where double-jointed starts going from neat party trick to quality of life issues, what with the random dislocations.  But then one day, some anti-mutant creeps got their hands on a mutant detector, and were kidnapping mutants they found with it, including Ashley.  She was rescued when their fifth find that day was a superhero out of costume.  She was left with two take-aways:  one, there are some serious creeps out there, picking on innocent people.  Two, she got so gypped!  The mutant power to dislocate her hip?  That's why she became a scientist, researching genetics and biochemistry - she was going to find out why she got such a lame power, and maybe fix it.  And then she did.  Maybe stretchy powers wouldn't be her first choice, but at least she now has legit superpowers.  And a formula to boost superpowers that she illegally tested on herself.  Now that she's no longer angry at the world, she's worried about what she has created.  But at least she can protect innocents like that superhero who rescued her...


I was thinking that maybe in addition to normal stretchy stuff, she could have a bit of growth and/or density control.  Which would help cover that brick slot some.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:53, Wed 08 Jan 2020.

Conductor, I don't understand your commentary. Have you opened character sheets to the others so they can start building something you can review?

That could work.  On the other hand, "stand ready to counter enemy fire power" is a really oddly specific power slot.

Speaking of which.  Do I correctly understand that, if you buy a Power Tricks skill you can roll it to attempt things that aren't specifically in your Multipower array or whatever -- but if you want to keep attempting the same trick, you damn well need to spend actual points on it?


I just bought it last night!  It seemed like it would save a bit of time.

The download has failed seven times now.  I might just start typing up my character in Notepad and see where I get with it.  I've done GURPS characters this way, I'll manage.


I was probably going to name it something like "Infernal Powers."  My thought was that "Hellfire Blast" and "Unholy Strength" do both fit that theme, but I'm okay with leaving strength out of it.  ("Infernal" is broad enough conceptually that it might be too cheesy, honestly.)

I had also been considering a few ideas similar to stuff TBD5 has listed under their VPP array, like otherworldly hellfire blasts that strike at the mind/soul.  Mostly because I wanted to have some option besides just "do fire damage at the bad guys."  I could probably get more creative, though; maybe my character can Entangle enemies with chains made of solidified fire (or superheated brass) or something.

(I was actually considering other options related to the super-charisma theme, but I'm not sure what that would entail other than a creatively limited form of Mind Control, and if I do take such a power I don't intend it to be something that can be used in the middle of a fight anyway.  If our heroine, who I'm tentatively naming Wildfire, has actual Mind Control at all, it'll probably have an Extra Time limitation so she needs an actual conversation in order to talk someone around to her point of view.

I definitely understand if that doesn't belong in the same Multipower as her actual combat abilities in any case, though.)


I think I get it, yes, although I still don't get why Charm and Persuasion are separate skills.  The distinction sounds like a stretch.

Fortunately, I do not intend to take Interrogation.  If my character wants to spook someone, I assume that's what Presence Attacks are for.


TBD5 has a partial character sheet in their character description.

@TBD1
If you click on The Cast on the top bar of the screen, you'll see that TBD5 has a blue name. Click it to see his sheet.

@TBD4
Yes, you understand the Power Skill properly. I'd say something along the lines of if you something more than once through the Power Skill, you'll start getting EXP assigned towards having that full time. Well, maybe if there's a big enough temporal distance, more than just more than once, but you get my drift.

That's very odd that it won't download properly for you. It is a very nice time saver, though sometimes you have to do things outside of its normally allowed bounds.

I'm going to be honest, it does sound a lot like your Strength is something kind of innate to you due to your demonic birth, which makes me think it should be outside the Multipower. Strength has a lot of uses, outside of just bludgeoning faces, so if you do want to get Strength, I'd recommend putting it outside your MP anyways. Though you could almost certainly do a Limitation to make it only work when you're suited up, if you want; kind of like you have a human guise that's not supernaturally capable, and a half-demon form that is. Ultimately, if you are determined to put Strength in your MP, I'm not determined to stop you; I feel like part of my reaction might be lingering hold-over from Fifth Edition.

Otherwise, I think an Infernal Powers MP makes perfect sense, and if you want to define Powers like Entangle as being made of solidified fire that either doesn't actively burn chained targets, or is Linked to a Damage Shield or something like that; well, be my guess. An out-of-combat Mind Control based on super-Charisma would also be completely fine in such an MP as well.

Presence Attacks and Presence Rolls can function, but one of the general rules of HERO is that less specific Powers are less helpful in specific situations. A GM might allow a character to roll Dexterity instead of Breakfall because they lack the Skill; but such a Roll should be done probably with penalties to the Roll, and even a successful result shouldn't be as good as a less talented character succeeding with the Breakfall Skill itself.

So, at least in the sense of specific being better in its situations, there's a distinction between Charm and Persuasion; but more over, Charm is more like building trust with someone by offering companionship or favors; Persuasion is like trying to win an argument with someone, or trying to tell a convincing lie.

@TBD2
Making yourself primarily a Brick sounds like an excellent idea to help out the 3 Energy Projectors and one Gadgeteer(?).
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:48, Wed 08 Jan 2020.

will come up with a different character
too much to change to keep the spirit of what I want

next will be a tele based martial artist

I mean I don't have any problems with the character's concept at all. Just the mechanical construction. You are, of course, free to change the character you want to make. I guess just keep in mind the feedback I gave if you do, okay?

Characteristics Cost
• 183

Powers Cost
• 196

|  1 |  Weapon Element:  Default Element, Whips | | |  |

Martial Arts Cost: 38

Talents

Talents Cost: 12

Skills Cost
• 21

Total Character Cost: 450


Disadvantage Points: 75
Base Points: 450
Experience Required: 0
Total Experience Available: 0
Experience Unspent: 0

Okay, I like what you did here a lot. Mostly just some questions.

1)
Your Strength is pretty high, for a non-Brick; I set the max for Strength to 80, but that was mainly intended for Bricks. Also, with the DC modifiers of your Martial Arts and Martial Art HTH Damage Classes, your Martial Art attacks will currently break DC Maxima. Reducing your non-Advantaged Strength from 35 to 20 would address both of those qualms; and you get 15 more points to do anything else cool that you might like to. I would suggest maybe putting some of that into more Recovery and/or Endurance, it looks like you could run out in just a Turn, Leaping all over and hitting everyone.
2)
I really like the Special Effects going on with your Multipower; I'm imagining your Leaping is kind of like Thor's flight, holding onto his hammer as it flies. Of course, your Combat Sense doesn't work within Stretching range; just 1m. Of course, you can teleport somewhere and hope an enemy is within 1m if you're relying on the Combat Sense. Is your Teleportation caused by the cape, like by twirling it around? One thing I am confused about is that you have Telepathy. Is this like a Martial Artist/Mentalist hybrid?
3)
I would like a quick explanation of where your Bump of Direction and Absolute Range Sense come from; what's the Special Effect of how they work; how did you gain them? Similarly, I need to know a little more about your Striking Appearance. What exactly is the noteworthy appearance? A police officer might have a Striking Appearance because of their badge, which helps them perform interactions to convince people to obey the law, or helps them solicit help from witnesses; that kind of deal.
4)
Complications are looking much better this time; still some concerns. Your Distinctive Features must have at least a 10-Point value; it would be appropriate to make it Concealable, since you need your Distinctive Features to use your Powers (I'm sure your costume is more than just the cape, but it's obviously important). You should redefine Psychological Complication: loves playing the knight in armor to Social Complication (Occasionally, Minor): loves to play the knight in shining armor, which is a 5-Point Quirk, to be more honest to its gameplay/roleplay effects. Your Moral Code is solid, though.
I'm not really a fan of Rivalry's that are defined as against a group; however, I could come up with some kind of arch-nemesis character, and that could be the subject of your Hunted, and the subject of a Psychological Complication: hunts rival (Common, moderate) as your Minor Compulsion. Your Hunted is a Major Relationship Complication; Moral Codes don't count as a Major Complication, Moderate Complication, or Minor Complication for terms of the Complications you must take. You still need an Exploit Complication; you could play around with the value of the hunts rival Complication a little to make it a Moderate Complication, allowing you to make your Exploit a Minor Complication; or you can take my version of Hunts Rival (or make it Uncommon instead of Common), and make your Exploit a Moderate Complication.

1)He only does 12d6(your soft cap)(total str and MA + extra DCs) and a max of 72dcs out of 80dcs for a turn
he would barely be a demi brick when 80 str is possible

2)the Tele cloak acts as glide wings ala batman
  replacing Combat sense with this
  Telekinetic sensory web:  Detect A Class Of Things 14- (Touch Group), Discriminatory,(360 Degrees), Range,Telescopic:  +4
  His stchik is that all of his powers are based on those that start with Tele(teleport,telekinesis,telepathy)

3)bump of direction just 1 of those things you learn
  Absolute Range Sense based on Telekinetic sensory web
  +2/+2d6 Striking Appearance (vs. all characters)He is just that good looking(he should be in movies....  oh he is)
  I will be buying most of the Pre skill w/ exp

4)he can fight with out the cloak
  the cloak just gives him more versatility
  Disads redone

Characteristics Cost
• 183

Powers Cost
• 196

|  1 |  Weapon Element:  Default Element, Whips | | |  |

Martial Arts Cost: 38

Talents

Talents Cost: 12

Skills Cost
• 21

Total Character Cost: 450


Disadvantage Points: 75
Base Points: 450
Experience Required: 0
Total Experience Available: 0
Experience Unspent: 0

In reply to TBD4 (msg # 45):

Charm and Persuasion is roughly the same as the difference between Diplomacy and Bluff in MnM/d20.  HERO does have a few more skills, but they aren't created equally.  And it divides some things up differently.  Also, High Society and Streetwise get to be full skills instead of just Knowledge specializations.

Also, there is an export file format that outputs HERO characters in table format for RPOL.  Does anyone have the link to that somewhere convenient?

In reply to TBD3 (msg # 40):

Where do I even start this argument.

College guys with a platform dedicated to talking about their girlfriends will quickly start to have phone numbers and addresses posted on it.  And lists of who will have sex on a first date, and who the "stuck up bitches" who won't are.  And there will be a few creeps who use that to enable stalking and harrassment.  And no, you can't filter that.  Horribly finds a way.  Long before you hit a million accounts, there will be lawsuits, and you will be shut down.  Confiles is a horrible, shitty, dumpster-fire of an idea.

Is any part of this getting through to you?

---

Yes, I feel this strongly about it, and do not regret my tone.

Oh. You don't know. Zuckerberg's first platform was 'facemash', set up to allow visitors to compare two female student pictures side by side and let them decide who was more attractive. What you see isn't the idea that 'confiles' is based around, it's the player paralleling history from RL in his character's back story.
All I'm attempting to do is suggest that for each Nancy Kerrigan on facebook, there's a Tonya Harding on confiles. I'm not trying to describe what confiles actually does, because the only part of it that affects the character is the fact that it makes him boatloads of money.

I have it and am using it, but I do not remember where I got it
It is not in the hero games exports downloads

look for RPOLTXR.hde

It's crude, but somewhat effective. The following link downloads the file as soon as you click it.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9bsg...9i/RPOLTEXT.hde?dl=1
This message was last edited by the player at 13:06, Thu 09 Jan 2020.

Are we shooting for 400 or 450 point characters?

Yes, 450-Point Characters.

@TBD5
1)
So I was a little confused about your Strength; when you reposted, I realized that in your Characteristics table, you had Strength listed at a value of 35 but a cost of 5. I was confused into thinking you bought 35 base Strength, with the 20 at 0 END adding to that to make 55 Strength; the original confusion was because, in your table, you didn't list the Strength as, for example, 15/35, to show your base Strength and then your Strength with Powers. So with that confusion sorted out: yes, you're fine on Strength and DCs. The cost column is normally a formality, so I didn't see it was 5 the first time; I just happened to notice this time rolling a 3 on my Perception, managing to see it out of the corner of my eye.
2)
As far as just having every "tele" Power: you can't just have something because you want it; it has to be justified by the Special Effects. How does your Telekinetic Strength work; is it like Psychokinesis? Ferromagnesis?
3)
Similarly, you can't just have Bump of Direction; it's not really something you "just learn". Absolute Range Sense is fine, and you can define a Striking Appearance as just being handsome. But you need a good reason for having Bump of Direction. For example, birds have Bump of Direction because they read the magnetic field of the Earth to tell where they're going.
4)
Now, I get that your Telekinetic Sensory Web is like feeling at range; if it's supposed to simulate exactly, it should be a Detect at the 10-Point value, Detecting a Large Class of Things: Physical Objects.
5)
I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to accomplish with Stooge Fu Slap for mass fighting. Why did you buy another separate Stretching Power; and what's a Sweep Modifier? I tried searching for it in my rulebook PDFs with ctrl+f, no hits. I'm guessing you were going for something like making Multiple Attacks easier?
6)
You need to buy Accurate for your Super Slingshot unless you want it to not be. Since it's a different slot in the Multipower.

I'm going to have a discussion about Complications when I get back from work, because people having problems. Suffice it to say: I still got problems with it.

In reply to TBD5 (msg # 51):

Honestly, I did like your orignial character on a conceptual level.  But I can appreciate switching to a new character if you can't make it fit.

Personally, my big question is, who is Precision beyond the numbers?  Where does he come from?  What makes him tick?  How did he get his powers?  Coke or Pepsi?

---

And honestly, I wonder that about all our characters.  The GM is going to be building his campaign around our characters and team.  So we'll need to plan that stuff out together.  This is a cooperative enterprise, after all.

So I look forward to seeing some more prose on who the other characters are.  And I'm happy to talk about Flex and answer your questions.

In reply to Conducter (msg # 58):

1)that is the formating of the HD6 export format that was made for RPol

2) it is just the added power of his mind, focused through his body

3 watch water go down a drain the direction tells you what hemisphere you are in(clockwise north/counter clockwise south)
  moss grows on the side of things that face away from the sun(on the north side if in the northern hemisphere/south side in the southern   hemishpere)
  knowing the time of year and hemisphere where the sun should be at noon will give you Latitude
  using a 1/4 cicrle to mark off 0 to 90 degrees
  by folding a piece of paper twice in half will give you a 90 degree arc and you only need to cut a quarter circle and cut along the folds for a quadrant
  fold the quadrant curved corner to curved corner twice gives you markings for 45 and 22.5 degrees(0 and 90 degrees are the edges
  these are old sailor's tricks I have picked up playing a sailor at ren fair for 30 years(reenactor)and a driver moving cars all over SoCal for 10 years
  knowing landmarks when possible(mount wilson is due north of pasadena)
  and pasadena is NE of downtown LA
  LAX is SSW of downtown etc...
  mostly it boils down to using dead time to be aware of where you are and take mental notes

4)I did buy it as a class of things touch group 5pts
  Large class is 10 pts (real cost would be 29 pts)
  a class of things is 5 pts
  a single thing is 0 pts (real cost would be 19 pts)

5)Sweep is -2per extra target
  normally you can only hit targets within 2m, in this case the cloak actually stretches(not creating portals) to hit targets
  the skill levels are to only counter the first 5 targets(-8 first target does not count)
  these are 5 pt levels (large group of attacks)

6)Super slingshot is to launch and get altitude to Glide
  why would I ever want land on target into combat and be at 1/2 dcv
  range mods to hit a hex(dcv 3)would be -14 for a dcv of 17for 500-1000m vs my ocv of 10 means that on average I miss by 14hexes or 28 meters
  missing by 28m is very acceptable for a long distance move if I need to go that route

In reply to TBD2 (msg # 59):

Precision is a stunt man/actor(B level but ruggedly handsome)
he was raised to be a gentleman( back when dueling to 1st blood meant something)
if this is first supers he does not know
if it is super have been here a while and there are many flavors, he is not telling and will elude to various types mutant,trained,mystical,magical,mutate,druggie,alien,demigod,etc( keep everybody guessing, mystery means they want more)

It looks like the download problem was something about my home internet connection.  Two different computers both failed to download the file, but when I turned the wifi off on my phone and just downloaded via my data plan, it went very quickly.

I'll have to mess around with this and see how it goes.


Here's what I've got on Wildfire's backstory so far.  (I've been thinking about this a bit but this is my first time writing it down, so I apologize if it's a bit incoherent.  Also, the details could be subject to alteration if it fits the game better, or if some of our characters might have encountered each other in the past.)



The above is written as if Layla is still in college, but she could very easily have graduated and be working an actual engineering job now instead.  It sounds like most if not all of the other PCs are established adults, so that might be for the best?

@TBD2

I feel like this is kinda mean to say... But honestly I did prefer TBD5's first concept too. I had a number of mechanical reservations, but I liked the ideation more.

I was actually kind of thinking that it would be cool to have some of the characters know each other from before the campaign starts. I talked with TBD2 slightly about where Flex would be at the start: they said either a grad student, or a young PhD. I kind of like the idea of you both being UCLA students, probably even knowing each other, maybe feeling extra comfortable around each other since you're both - AHEM - "weird". Having similar connections between the other characters would be really cool.

TBD3 also talked about how their character created Confiles in college; perhaps, if he's not against it, he could rewind the concept a little and be in college as well? This also might resolve some of the conniptions you have about the concept, that the person who made Confiles becomes a hero; that he still has time to realize that it's being misused or to correct mistakes or whatever. His Follower could be a fellow college nerd friend or something. Just an idea I'm throwing out there!

That could leave TBD1 and TBD5 to be acquainted through work and/or hero work.

@TBD4

I'm getting what you're saying about that "priest" ;)

Just like I said to TBD2 in PM, your backstory is giving me all the ideas right now!

@TBD5

When you make a Characteristic Power, you can define it in HD as adding to Primary Total, Secondary Total, or Not Adding to Totals. If you set it to add to Secondary Total, it draws (Primary Total ( which is Base Characteristic Value + any Characteristics Powers set to add to Primary Total))/(Secondary Total). So now we have reached group enlightenment; hallelu.

Hmmmm... So it's like a short range Psychokinesis. if your character's mental aptitude is so high, perhaps their INT, EGO, and PRE should be higher? Perhaps they can be a mentalist/martial artist hybrid. I'm fine with the Telepathy, if that's what you're going for, though it is odd that you have the Telepathy in your Cloak Multipower.

Dang... That is, admittedly, pretty impressive knowledge. But that's not Bump of Direction. Bump of Direction means you don't need tools; what you're describing is the effects of successful Navigation Rolls. If you're committed, you could take Bump of Direction with a Limitation to reflect that it takes Extra Time, but represents an automatic success at Navigation/your expertise with Navigation. Of course, it bears saying, just because you know those tricks doesn't mean your character should or would; where did they learn those from?

It sounds like Sweep is an optional Combat Maneuver that's not in 6E1 or 6E2. Unless you can give me a page number so I can read it, I can't allow it. However, Multiple Attack is a thing, so there's always that.

I mean, I guess that's fine: I was making sure that Accurate wasn't there intentionally, and if it wasn't, effectively reminding you to get it. It's not there intentionally, so that part is fine.

Regarding your origins, I do hope you'll expound on it a little more, and come clean on exactly where his Powers come from, at least to me. I mean... I kind of need you to do that second one.

---

---

REGARDING COMPLICATIONS:
Okay, it seems like what I said about Complications in Campaign Guidelines has either not been read, or is very confusing people. SO, I'm going to try and re-explain. Now, you can fight with me on this, but I think Superman is a pretty bad example to a player for how to build and play a character. However, one thing he does GREAT is show how you should think about and build your Complications. Think about it like this:

• Clark Kent still has all the Powers of Superman, but Superman hardly ever stops crime without putting on his suit. This is because A) the suit has a power all its own to affect people, and B) your heroes and villains gotta have their dress codes.
• Superman has a very debilitating weakness, his weakness to green Kryptonite. He's basically a normal human, or is actively dying, in its presence. While not all characters should have a weakness that severe, they need A weakness.
• Superman has someone they care about that gets captured to try and force Superman to compromise himself.
• Superman has a job that he has to hold down, at least to keep up his Secret ID's appearances.
• Superman has a clear code of ethics that keep on him the straight path.

Not every character needs to have all of those, but this is a diverse set of weaknesses the story writer can work with to make INTERESTING STORIES. I tried to generalize by saying you need an Exploit, not a Susceptability; saying you need a Complicating Relationship, not a DNPC; saying you need a Compulsion, not to have a job. And I really want every character to have a suit they "must" wear, their Distinctive Features. And the Moral Codes of heroes and villains keeps them from easily Presence Attacking each other out of fighting.

I get the feeling from seeing TBD5s and TBD1s sheets (he PM'd me; I asked him to repost it here at some point) that at least some of us are making Complications mostly the normal way, and are focusing on hitting 75 Points. So if it helps: write down that the character has no Points of Matching Complications, and that each Complication, especially the Moral Code, has a Point Value of 0 (in HD, you can give Complications a Custom Adder; just add one of those, edit it's value to be the negative of the Complication's normal value, and delete the "Custom Adder" text). Maybe even write the Moral Code under Powers or Perks instead, since as I've said, it's more advantageous, like a Resistance Talent that affects all Interactions when they go against your Special Effects.

In reply to TBD4 (msg # 62):

Well, to start with, getting the store manager to believer her could be done with as little as a good persuasion roll (making it by 6 or more, 10+ if he actually saw her putting it in her bag).  You might have a decent amount of PRE normally, but also have some more with Cost END every phase (-1/2) and Visible(to unusual senses) (-1/4).  The Visible limitation represents that many mages, celestial, and infernal beings can see you channeling you demonic gifts when using the extra PRE.  Though check with the GM on that lim being valid.

Secondly, slightly humorously, Flex could also still be in college.  Well, grad school.  But she could just as easily have her PhD, as well.

Was Layla a church-goer growing up?  Or was it just the most obvious anti-demon thing when her mom dropped the bombshell?

And as for letting her demon mom carry on.  Is there some lingering affection that keeps Layla from trying to take her down?  Or does mom have defenses and schemes ready to protect her secrets?

In reply to Conducter (msg # 63):

Sweep is now Multiple Attack.  One of the many things they renamed between 5th and 6th Ed.

---

I dunno, I got what you were saying the first time around, even if I've been dawdling on actually writing up my character.

Though, I'm not as sold on having a Distinctive Features level costume.  I'm planning on having a costume, but I don't see it being worth points at the beginning of the game.  Flex is a relatively new hero with a reasonable costume.

OTOH, if you want to establish some reasons for people wearing funny costumes beyond just tradition, there are a few decent reasons.  One is that heroes are allowed to testify and do other legal things in their heroic identities, as long as said identity can be easily and uniquely identified.  Another might be for trademark and copyright purposes.  A third might be a weak super registration act, which requires supers with innate powers to register, but doesn't force them to reveal their secret identities.  I've heard a few others, but can't recall them right now.

Well, I left it vague on purpose.  That guy could very well have been a visiting priest who knows a little about actual demons for some reason.  (Or maybe he didn't know and was just freestyling everything he said to Layla about how being half-demon doesn't damn her.  Hopefully he's right. >_>)


I saw what you said in the guidelines thread, but haven't gotten to the point of formally writing up Complications yet.  My intent is that Wildfire will probably suffer a bit from being on holy ground and take extra damage from holy attacks.  Possibly she should have another vulnerability as well (silver?  cold iron?), simply because there are unlikely to be many villains slinging holy power around.


If I can make the point values work out, I was actually thinking of maxing out PRE, straight up.  (Per campaign guidelines it appears 40 is the limit, which seems suitably superhuman.)

We'll see how that works out for me, though.  I'm just glad we have 450 instead of 400 points -- it makes it a lot easier to customize characters IMO.


Hey, that could work.  Depending on their relative ages, if Ashley is in grad school she might TA for a class Layla is taking or something?  Or they could know each other from school for any other reason, really.

GM, are the PCs going to start as a recently-formed team, or will they first team up after the game starts?


Layla was not a church-goer growing up.  (If she was, she might have noticed that she wasn't comfortable on holy ground sooner, although maybe that didn't apply before her powers kicked in.)  She just went for the church because, yes, it was all she could think of to escape the whole demon issue.


There probably is some lingering affection, but what should Layla actually do?  Her mother is certainly evil, but what crimes has she committed exactly?  (Probably quite a few, but the evidence is not readily apparent.)  Also, Layla assumes her mother is at least as powerful as she is and quite probably more so (she doesn't know anything for certain, but this one seems logical), and doesn't know what her plans are anyway, making it tough to thwart her.

For all Layla knows, maybe the entire firm of Leland & Gaunt is evil.  There might be more demons in there, even.  If not, that just raises questions of why a demon would co-found a mundane law firm.  (Something to do with one or more clients, probably?)

Perversely, the easiest way for Layla to find out what Mom is really up to would probably be to pretend to play along.  But then, Layla is insecure about her own moral standing, so does she really want to give her mother the chance to work the super devilish charisma on her?  (She doesn't know for a fact that her mother is as convincing as she is, but it would explain her trial record.)

And it's hard for Layla to talk about her problem with others who might help (although I assume she'll end up telling the other PCs relatively quickly), simply because...well, how do you tell people who like and trust you that, oh by the way, your demon mother is 100% confident that you're going to end up joining Team Evil sooner or later?

(If Layla were calm and objective about her own psychological issues, she might suspect that her mother wasn't nearly as confident as she pretends to be.  But who can say?)

all the Tele powers that need conscience thought to perform are in the MP
putting Bump of direction with a 1 turn to use brings it to 1 point
will also buy lightning calculator at 1 turn and lightning reflexes to go at dex 19
where did they learn it
the easier question is how long has man been sailing and learning then passing that knowledge down father to son ,Old Salt to New cabin boy
remember laziness is the mother of invention so unless you want to hug the coast to cross the Med, you explore and invent

Sharpshooter isn't a high-powered character, but he is versatile. Expanding him to 450 points will let me make him a little tougher, but I'm not sure I should expand his multipower from 60 to 80 points (the maximum, I believe?) I think I need to review the guidelines and submit him with several changes.

Im not crazy about the idea of spending character points to make complications stronger. But if that's the case, I'd like you to define what a stronger Moral Code gives you. If a Moderate, Very Common code gives you +5 PRE, +5 EGO vs attempts vs crossing the line on your Moral Code, what is the benefit of a Strong or Total commitment?

Suit refers to Distinctive Looks?

What are we required to take as far as Complications? It is confusing as it is currently written.

I've uploaded the draft version of Wildfire that I've been working on in HERO Designer here: https://www.sendspace.com/file/qkblak

(Sorry for not posting it properly in actual text here, but it's really late and I badly need to sleep.  I will correct this when I have time.)

This definitely isn't final -- it still needs Complications, and I noticed that I have slightly too many Active Points in Defenses (unless you count Wildfire as a mentalist, which I don't and would make her OCV too high anyway), which is just as well, because I definitely forgot to buy a Power Skill and I really would have liked one or two more Multipower slots.  (I did want that Entangle if possible, and an area attack would probably make a lot more sense than one of those blast variants she has.)  Really, she probably should have some basic knowledge of both cooking and law, her parents' fields.

Still, I thought I might as well give people the chance to offer feedback while I'm busy at work.  I notice that (having based the numbers vaguely at example characters in the books) I ended up giving her lower REC and higher END (she currently has 8 and 80 respectively) than Sharpshooter and Precision currently have; would HERO vets say it's better to go the other way?
This message was last edited by the player at 11:49, Fri 10 Jan 2020.

Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!  Donnerblitzengeistessturm!

This message was last edited by the player at 13:27, Fri 10 Jan 2020.

Well, I'm also at work without much time to post.

Still, as we're getting our characters figured out, I was hoping we could try and make sure that we've covered as many bases as we can.  We've got detective stuff, science, tech, interaction, and survival covered.  But do we have anyone good at computers, or who knows something about magic?  And are there any other roles we should fill?

for me it will depend on a few factors

1 how much end does she spend a turn?
2 how often does she push?
3 how long do you wish to stay in battle and not worry about recovering?
4 how many recoveries do you need to become combat effective after going to zero for say a turn?

Well, um...

1. Most of her attacks cost 7 END, although there's an attack slot with Reduced Endurance.
2. Probably not very often?  The book says the GM shouldn't allow Pushing to be done routinely even if you can afford the END cost.
3. I don't know.  How long do battles usually last?
4. SPD is 5, so I guess getting back up to (7*5)=35 END (so as to fight at full power for another turn would take 5 recoveries.

Actually, I just noticed that HERO Designer doesn't seem to be consistently updating point totals when I change things.  I should probably check the math by hand and make sure the numbers actually work out. >_<

In reply to Wildfire (msg # 74):

I'd say up your recoveries to 14 or 21
Or remove the reduced end slot and make the whole MP reduced end and lower your end to 50 or 60 and raise your recovery to 10

maybe use Unified Powers to create a list for all your infernal powers
Int 18 is just as good as Int 20 for skill rolls

use extra points to buy range skill levels(penalty skill levels)
I'd buy at least 6 so you can be 32m away and still be accurate
your small flight will allow you to get a bit of altitude to shoot from the back as you have no HtH attacks
your 40 pre could be sued to get your foes attention and maybe fire at you maybe getting range penalties
This message was last edited by the player at 07:43, Sat 11 Jan 2020.

In reply to Wildfire (msg # 74):

What to say?  Nothing truly wrong with how you built the character, but it could use a bit of tweaking to better rounded.

If the GM is planning on using villains as written from the Champions books, it's probably worth bumping your DEX to 20 or 23.  OCV and DCV are kinda high for a suburban kid practicing their powers in secret and no other combat training.  END is a little high, but not out of line.  Unless you mean for Wildfire to be super hard to kill, that's a lot of BODY.  If I'm reading the GM right on wanting to do a fairly classic superhero campaign, it should be pretty rare that we take BODY damage.

Honestly, at 40 PRE, a skill level with interaction skills is kinda superfluous.  We're rolling 3d6, not 1d20, which gives a bell shaped distribution of rolls.  And it would be more efficient to buy straight OMCV than skill levels.

20m of flight is pretty slow, not even 20 mph (40 mph non-combat, aka all-out in MnM.  Also, unlike MnM, that 20m is a full phase action; you can only move half that and still attack).  I'd recommend doubling it if you can find the points, and maybe even grab an extra non-combat multiplier or 2.

75 points for that multipower is on the high side, but I can see the appeal in having a strong offense.  Personally, I'd just drop the mind control and focus on the Hellfire.  The armor piercing is going to leave a lot of 2nd and 3rd degree burns; unless you want to be a destructive savior, I'd skip it.  I'd probably go with:

Hellfire: 75 Multipower
1) Hellfire Bolt I: Blast 15d6
2) Hellfire Bolt II: Blast 12d6, 1/2 END
3) Hellfire Ball: Blast 12d6, AoE 12m Radius explosion
4) Flashfire: Sight Group Flash 10d6
5) Fiery Prison: RKA 2d6+1, AoE (1m radius), Constant, Costs END only to activate, Targets Only Take damage if they touch cage or Move Into/out of Affected Area (-1/2)
6) Extinguish Flames: Dispel 16d6, Variable Effect, any one Fire power at a time

You've got plenty of END, but a protracted combat could drain you.  In my experience, combat seldom goes more than a turn or 2.

How can anyone have a Range max of 250m when the base attack max is 12 DCs? 12 d6 Blast has a range of 300m I think.

Also, how does the High Speed Cap work if you have Autofire Attacks? In one phase I can do 20 DCs of damage (2 DC vs up to 10 people). Does that mean I can only attach 4 phases out of 6?

Okay, so, couple of things.

COMPLICATIONS:
I'm at the point of just saying "fuck it", because it's been a huge headache, so, I'm calling what I've attempted to this point a failure, cutting my losses, and committing to a more traditional Complication system.

Everyone takes 60 Points of Complications. You are required to take at least 5 points of Distinctive Features for your hero's costume (or if they have something more appropriate to use as a Distinctive Features, put that here). You are required to take at least 10 points total of Vulnerabilities, Susceptabilities, and/or Dependences. If you do not take a required category, you must pay for that with Character Points equal to double the missing value; if you are short on other Complications, you must pay with Character Points equal to the missing value.

So I just came across a good way to explain why I don't want Moral Code Complications. It's because they're essential to the fact that your characters are Superheroes at all: it's Everyman to heroes. Taking a Moral Code as a Psychological Complication would be like a Police Officer taking Psychological Complication: Follows the Laws. It's supposed to be core to your identity and position. You would have to have a very different or more extreme ideology to justify not having Heroic Morals and still being a superhero.

That said, Kestrel (TBD3) has a sidekick named Shrike who has Psychological Complication: Follows Bushido. I probably wouldn't approve this for a main character, but am for Shrike, since a Follower doesn't have to have Heroic Morals: they could be cowards who sit at the base all day and do paperwork. So hopefully, you now have a better understanding of my feelings on the matter. You should mark on your characters you do have a 0-Point Value Psychological Complication: Heroic Morals (Very Common, Moderate). You can rename it if you want (for example, if Kestrel wants to, he can say he also follows Bushido), but unless you have a very different ideology that you can justify and I agree to, it's all pretty much the same difference.

---

MAXIMA:
Some of you may have noticed (or maybe no one did, I don't know) that I've changed the Maxima once or twice already. I'm still evaluating some of the judgements I made. Admittedly, I kind of winged it by what felt right; and as the character creation process has gone on, I realized i forgot to think about a thing or two, was two harsh one category or two. There will probably be at least one more change to it. Appologies.

---

CHARACTER MECHANICS:
It's getting a little hectic discussing every character's mechanical design here, so let's take that to PMs. Still discuss character backgrounds, interactions, and stuff here, or if you have public questions, then put those here too, of course.
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:01, Sat 11 Jan 2020.

Thanks for the advice, everyone.  I'm going to need to double-check a few rules and make sure I know what I'm doing.

BTW, are we using the Language Similarity table?  It looks like I'd save a point on French if we were.

If we are, when assessing language discounts, do you have to have 2 or more actual CP in the language, or just 2 or more effective CP?  Like...if your native language is English, and you buy French at the 2-CP (fluent conversation) level for 1 CP, can you then use French to get the discount on Spanish?

Yes we are using the Language Table. My ruling is this: use the effective CPs to determine if you can.

Something to keep in mind: When you buy a new language that lacks discount similarity with your Native Language, you pay full price for that language, but all languages that second language has discount similarity with are now at discount similarity for you. However, if you buy a third language that shares the discount similarity, you don't get to retroactively regain the point the second language spent. This means if your Native Language is English, you spend one more Point learning Spanish then French, as opposed to learning French then Spanish.

Precision has been updated in the Character details tab

In reply to Conducter (msg # 78):

Even if it didn't work out, I'll still give you kudos for trying something different with complications.  I thought it was a reasonable scheme, but not everything works out in practice.  Live and learn.

I agree with you on heroes having a moral code.  OTOH, HERO is a universal system, and there are games where a moral code isn't the default.  The other issues is that pre-6th, you were expected to have a lot more complications for characters.  150 points out of 350 for a standard superhero, in 5th, with the same prices for things.  So it was standard practice to let people get points for things which should be default assumptions of the game.

---

So, while it sounds like the game world will be homebrew overall, it sounds like you'll be borrowing heavily from Champions.  Are you planning on using NPCs as written, or did you want to deflate DEX a little bit?  I'm just trying to figure out where to benchmark my stats.

---

For everyone, I just want to reiterate my question about trying to build a balanced team.  Is someone going to be a decent hacker?  And is anyone going to have any knowledge of magic?  Not necessarily spell casting, but some knowledge skills or senses that we might be able to notice it when the GM throws magic at us?  Are there any other skill sets people think we should be covering?

Yeah, I know that's how it was in 5E. I was there. In any case... As far as borrowing from Champions: yes, I will be borrowing some stuff I know of, but mostly just aesthetically. I'll be making a lot from whole-cloth. So do your DEX however you will.

On the subject of missing skill-sets: you can only do so many things. I understand some things will be missing. It sounds like Precision might branch into Mental abilities, so you've got that covered. You don't need someone good with computers, necessarily, because you can always hack the elevator panel by casting fist on it. Or firebolt. In any case, though, your best bet looks like it will probably be Kestrel since he's a gadgeteer. As she gains familiarity and power, Wildfire could probably gain mystical senses and Magic KSes. But you're not going to be able to do things at all times. So don't worry too much! Once I've okay'd everyone's characters, if the campaign isn't fun, it's primarily my fault. There should be things you encounter from time to time where everyone basically has to wing it, but I should also be tailoring a lot of the game to the what I have.

Something I do really need discussed: are we starting the campaign slightly after the team forms, are will we be having the team meet up in the first chapter? Possibly, we might have prologues where everyone does their own thing for one adventure. What would be authentic ways for your characters to meet? And another important and related question: why is each person here? Alternatively, if you guys want, I can come up with the answers to those questions on my own. I'm already forming my own ideas of what I think might be good; but they're your characters, so I shouldn't COMPLETELY force them into situations without consulting you guys first.

Also, if you would please, I'd like for everyone to edit their Character Biography on rpol to say their characters' true names. You just click Character Details at the top-left, then Change Biography.

One last thing: We potentially have team transportation courtesy of Kestrel and Shrike. However, he never gave a for sure on whether the car is for team transport or not; so, I've been planning what the team will do for communications, basing, and transport in case all those are needed.
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:41, Sat 11 Jan 2020.

I know we can't do everything, but at the same time, if we're bothering with character creation as a group, why wouldn't we try and make a well-rounded group?  Or at least make sure we've got complementary characters?

---

Anyway, I dunno.  It's kinda traditional to have the first adventure be the group team-up.  But since this is a game, not a comic book, you can run into issues trying to railroad things into forming the team.  Maybe part of that is that instead of just a one-off first adventure, it's one that sets up a long-term plot and bigger menace than we could deal with on our own?  Maybe we stop whatever VIPER is up to that night, but we find clues to a long-term operation that Shrike can't take down alone?

Also, since you've expressed interest in having us know at least some of the other characters before the game starts, maybe we could start with some lesser team ups?  Hmm, I'd suggest pairing off, but we've got an odd number.  Hmm, if the GM was up for 5 simultaneous threads, we could have everybody team up twice?  Make a nice web of knowing each other?

---

One other stray thought, for Wildfire.  UCLA is fine, thought I might have picked USC its more central location in LA  Though being in the hills above Hollywood has its perks.  Did you have a particular reason for picking that school?  I'm relatively agnostic between the 2, being a Big Ten person in real life.

I like the idea of our team meeting up in the first adventure, but I recognize that it can be difficult to handle those scenes.  It certainly would help to have a clear reason for our PCs to stick together, aside from a generic desire to be superheroes and discovering that they work well as a team (assuming they actually do).

And lesser team-ups was something I was about to suggest as well.  This could get a bit complicated, but it would be interesting to interact one-on-one a bit before jumping into a group scene with a lot of action.


No reason whatsoever.  It was the first California university that came to mind.  I honestly know next to nothing about either school.

Having just Googled it briefly, it sounds like UCLA has a somewhat better-ranked engineering program, but they're both quite good, so Layla would probably fit in at either place.

Regarding characters all teaming up and meeting fairly naturally: I was getting some ideas about it, to be honest, but I don't know how much you players would agree with the ideas I have. The problem is, at least to a degree, we each both have different ideas of the characters in our minds. I could, of course, go through with those plans; and maybe we end up starting in situations that you don't feel your characters would necessarily start in, but get a narratively natural entrance that you can then freely roleplay out of.

Or, I could reveal the curtain on my plans, tell you what my thoughts were, though if we agree they're good plans, it means that you're not gonna be surprised by what happens in the first little bit of the campaign, which might also diminish the fun in it's own way, as well as be a potential drag on roleplay, turning it into a more of a going-thru-the-motions. This is why I've been asking you guys about character interactions, but you've not given me too much yet. We've got Wildfire and Flex, who can be friends in college... And not much else.

Perhaps I could start two threads: one where Wildfire and Flex have their own highjinx, and one where the loners meet?

It would only be logical that any heroes operating in or around LA (or where ever we're basing this) would receive a visit from The Kestrel concerning whether or not they're on the side of the angels. It's also logical for Lawrence Martin Maverick to visit the college since he donated so much to the campus NPR station.
Not sure whether or not we're letting this be a 'thing', but if Sharpshooter has been keeping up with the descendants of those he might've dealt with in the past he might want to see what happens when Dan Reid's and Johnny Yuma's families combine. He might run into some of Bret Maverick's kin at the same time.
The Kestrel's vehicle is the same size as your typical automobile, and would seat four (including the driver/pilot), so we may need to work out something as far as transport goes.

That's easy, we draw straws.  Short straw rides in the trunk.

Nah Precision will surf on the roof
This message was last edited by the player at 19:03, Sun 12 Jan 2020.

Holy Teen Wolf, Kestrel, they've figured out your shtick!

Gosh, boss. How are you gonna ride on the roof if some guy is surfing there?

Uh oh.  I think Stanford and Berkeley might want to have some words with you. ;)

But yeah, they are both big, well-ranked schools.  GM, any opinion on which school we go to?

---

As for a team transport, our need partly depends on how far afield we need to go, and how much mobility we each have.

If Kestrel has been largely happy doing hero & sidekick since he started, it makes perfect sense his vehicle doesn't have too many seats.  Maybe he's been looking into something more capable/flying, but it hasn't been top priority.  Or it's taking a long time to build.

---

In reply to Conducter (msg # 86):

That's... a lot to parse through.  If you are that concerned about the differences between the Flex in my head and the Flex in your head, maybe that's all the more reason to start off slow with introductory threads?

Or maybe pare back the scripts you are working on?  This is play-by-post, so you've got more time to respond than if we were doing this live.  If we do something you don't expect, we won't see you doing your goldfish impression.  Just whatever you write in your next post.

And maybe you can go with small reveals.  Like, tell us the set up you have in mind and we can tell you if that seems like something our characters would do.  Or might get stuck in, or if it makes no sense at all.

Sorry it's taking me so long to get revisions done on my sheet.  This weekend was busier than I expected (mild family drama).

both Berkley and Stanford are 300 miles north of LA
other colleges down near LA are Caltech in Pasadena
Harvey Mudd near Clairmont (east of LA by 30 miles)for science
CalPoly Pomona(about 20 miles east)agriculture

here is a quick search just find the subject matter you want to do

https://www.bing.com/search?pc...angeles%20california

Almost done and ready to submit for final review.

Also.....Post #100!

Alright, I'll give a brief idea of how we'd start, with a little background. I thought every character should have done some hero work prior to this campaign, which is easy for the Kestrel and Shrike - they've been fighting VIPER for a while. Sharpshooter is older than dirt, and Precision is also an older, more established hero who has certainly done the odd solo adventure, maybe some incidental team-ups.

I was somewhat attached to the idea of Flex and Wildfire being friends, but as discussion continued it seemed like it would be more and more complicated. They're also young and in college so opportunities to do hero work would have been limited. I figured a natural way to make Flex and Wildfire friends and also give them a chance to first appear as Supers would be if they were forced to protect UCLA from a malevolent Super; the exact details aren't too important, but it gives them impetus to talk with each other about the fact they're both from the college and at least become acquaintances. With that background, my idea for how to start the campaign, in brief:

After Flex and Wildfire revealed themselves protecting UCLA, VIPER did some digging into them, not finding much on Wildfire, but discovering that shortly before Flex revealed herself, there were notes of an abandoned serum she worked on. Since Flex never had superpowers before, they're taking a gamble that it could be a powerful new tool in their arsenal, a source of superpowers, and will show up in force to capture Flex and Wildfire.

Kestrel, having just the previous day gotten information from an underworld contact, knows that VIPER is planning this op, and while he'd certainly want to keep the UCLA students from getting captured in the first place, he always very much wants to destroy the VIPER den. Having had a day to plan his counter-op, he sends out feelers to find any back-up he can, and turns up two heroes: Sharpshooter and Precision. With their numbers bolstered, the boys shadow the VIPER agents to track them back to their den. Many VIPER agents will be set up as snipers with painful, but non-lethal, knock-out weapons, allowing them to very likely detain you. The number of agents will suspiciously be an appropriate challenge for about 6 characters, but overwhelming for just you two.

After a short travel scene, VIPER will have arrived at their den: an abandoned movie lot. The boys will ambush them and help free Flex and Wildfire as they're being removed from the VIPER van, and there will be a chance for the whole team to have a proper fight with the VIPER agents and then clear out the VIPER den. The boys don't know ahead of time that Flex and Wildfire are Supers, so depending on how you play the original capture scene, they might be very surprised that the captives they freed start stretching their body and throwing firebolts, respectively.

---

Thoughts on that plan for a start of the campaign? My biggest concern is that in the first adventure, I'm introducing two player characters to detain them basically immediately. I'm thinking that the first adventure will be fairly short: not much in the way of traps or exploration, just two big combat and maybe a supplemental combat. Though, in play-by-post, combats can be slow no matter what, so... "fairly short".

In reply to Precision (msg # 93):

What do you know?  I tell somebody else I'm going to make stupid posts in the future, and I do.

Short answer: yes, that is correct.

Long Answer:  The first sentence was meant to be a dig at egotistical, Bay area colleges.

The 'they' in the second sentence was supposed to refer back to UCLA vs USC.

I like that scenario to start things off. It allows for enough introduction without extensive introspection, so we'll be able to work out the kinks in the character's interpersonal relationships plus punch some bad guys.

Hmm... the thing that sounds like a plot hole to me is how VIPER is expecting to find Flex and Wildfire.  Even if I didn't take a complication for Secret ID, I wasn't expecting to have it broken that fast.  Some of the other things we've been talking about make it sound like we want to keep it old-school and have secret IDs be something that can be kept secret.  So, even if VIPER suspects that Flex and Wildfire are students, they won't be able to narrow it down much further for several adventures.  So the only good way to find them in the short term would be another supervillain attack to draw out superheroes, but "It's a trap!"  OTOH, kidnapping 2 random students who were in a lab they attacked is a thing, but does require a reason for Wildfire to be there.

Also, Ashley has been doing her best to keep her secret formula a secret, not wanting to give responsible adults a chance to stop her.  That said, she is known to be studying something along those lines.  If nothing else, there is her public profile page on the college website where she is encouraged to talk about what she does.  Her description is obtuse and jargon filled, but the better scientists at VIPER could figure out that her research is applicable in giving people powers.  So VIPER could be there for that research.  While she does have notes on her super-serum, she keeps them on a flash drive that she hides at her apartment.

Beyond that, though, it could work.  As long as capturing the two girls doesn't become a recurring, suspiciously misogynistic trend.

Sharpshooter is plain murder vs agents, either in offensive or defensive mode. Rescue will be straightforward.

Precision could be scouting locations for various stunts(falling, brawls, car chases,etc....)

Suspiciously misogynistic? Ouch... But not entirely undeserved, I guess. The two college students are the only women on the team. It is ultimately a narrative contrivance of convenience; I feel that everyone, including myself, would like the team's first meet-up to be their first adventure together, and in that context I'm having a hard time thinking of good ways to tie everyone in mostly naturally.. I'd hate to have a "well, we all happened across this happening right now, so let's beat up the monster" adventure for the first one. I felt like having VIPER to tie in Kestrel and make him try to find reinforcements was a bit of a contrivance, but ultimately the best way to include the boys; and I felt the best way to include the students was to have someone go after the serum. Ultimately, if anyone has a better idea, I am listening.

---

I did have a previous ideation phase in which Wildfire was just an unfortunate loose end that needed taking care of from VIPER's point of view; that catching you two alone was their best option after hours waiting for an optimal window (again with the backdrop of you two being good friends and hanging out after classes or something like that). And of course if they can get your co-operation, they need test subjects, so a Wildfire's capture could serve double service in their eyes.

I also played with the idea that this group was a splinter cell: after all if there's one thing fascistic groups like to do, it's strip the rights of others; if there's a SECOND thing they like to do, it's decrease the size of the class at the top, and cutting out other VIPER dens would accomplish both of those. That, combined with the information about your blog (which I wasn't previously working with) allows the effective protection of your Secret ID in the greater campaign from this one adventure.

In this context, they weren't trying to capture Superheroes, just a useful scientist and a bystander; they got more than they bargained though, and will pay the price. Potentially, we could work that in - perhaps they have protective cages in their vans, but once you arrive at the den, before the boys even get out of the car, you and Wildfire are already freeing yourselves - easier when not being aimed at down a dozen sniper rifles scopes.

I don't especially mind getting captured early, as long as we don't make a habit of it.  It seems like as good an excuse as any to get this group working together.

I was being snarky.  Being abducted once isn't a trend, and 'abduct the scientist and witnesses' is a classic trope.  Just saying that, the next time somebody gets kidnapped in their secret ID, it should be one of the boys. ;)

Also, that sounded better the 2nd time you explained it.  Not holding that against you.  Communication is hard.  With that elaboration, it sounds like as good a plan as any to get us rolling.

Also, you don't have to tell us all your plans.  You need to keep a few secrets and surprises.

Sorry for being slow to finish my sheet.  A lot happened this week.  I should be able to get it done this weekend.

@Wildfire
No need to apologize. Life happens.

@Precision
Please don't clutter up public threads; those are mostly for my own organization, or for people to look something up in. To answer your question, I have no clue if there's a .hde that does pictures. I think you can imbed images into rpol, though I'm not sure how.

You post images like this, according to the FAQs:

<img src="http://beta.rpol.net/images/banner-light-beta.gif">

Or you can do this to move the image to the left or right side of the post (aesthetically I usually prefer to put images on the right):

<img src="http://beta.rpol.net/images/banner-light-beta.gif" align="right">

In reply to Wildfire (msg # 106):

thanks
where does the image go(I do not know html,etc...
This message was last edited by the player at 17:45, Sun 19 Jan 2020.

The image needs to be hosted on another site (I use https://postimages.org) in order to be placed in a post, here.

ok I got the hosting place you listed,an image uploaded and copied the url
now where in the command do I place the url of the image
I'd say use quotes to make place "url here"

Exactly:
<img src="paste image url here">
For example:
<img src="https://i.postimg.cc/tRvvYdJf/Curly-Circles.gif">
appears as



Yes, I realize animated gifs can be quite annoying.
"Everybody gets one."
    - Spiderman
This message was last edited by the player at 21:19, Sun 19 Jan 2020.

Got it thanks

character pictures posted
can now be viewed in The Cast
This message was last edited by the player at 00:10, Mon 20 Jan 2020.

So I’m thinking about the adventures I’m planning and a realization dawns on me. If I include plot lines revolving around the government or religion, or if I make characters with complex moral philosophies, I might end up having some contentious ideas surface. I don’t make this campaign with the intent to offend or ostracize. I hope we can all be grown-ups when political ideas surface. When I get back from work, I’ll post some content warnings to campaign guidelines after work. There will be some facetiousness but at the same time, each warning is serious in the fact it may happen. If there’s a no-no, talk to me about it and I might work around it, but there will also be some things I don’t budge on, and if you can’t deal, you can leave my game and have a nice day. I have a feeling that won’t be a problem at least for the non-negotiables, though.

Also content warning for the content warning: I have a fair amount of disdain for Conservative thought. This may come through in the content warning. Sorry, I guess.

Content Warning is posted. I also removed the part where you get a free Cramming Skill from your phone, as it was kind of awkward; instead, just keep in mind you can often do knowledge-based Skills out of combat with the power of Google. You may not understand the deeper mechanics behind the Skill, but you can passably do simple tasks.

Anyway, I think I'm finally done!  Sorry for the delay.  Wildfire isn't as versatile a fighter as one might hope, but she packs a punch and she's good at what she does.

I had a weird idea about Layla using her fire powers to help her with cooking (precise heat control, etc.), but then I found out that you generally can't put skills in a Multipower.  She probably still torches crème brûlée with her powers, but it's mostly a matter of flavor text. >_>

I'd allow you to say you use your Fire Powers as part of your cooking. It may not be under the Powers section of your character sheet, but you DID buy the Cooking Skill.

@Kestrel
Can you do a favor and post Shrike in Character Sheets? Since he's basically a 6th character, I think it's fair everyone get to know him.

I'm just missing Sharpshooter's sheet (partly because I procrastinated helping him a little) and once we have that sorted, we can move on to the last phase of character creation: GM FIATS. Not everything is worth paying for, but I don't want people to plan around that ahead of time. Once everyone has posted their "final" sheets, I'll announce everyone's savings, and a final round of adding little accoutrements will end character creation. I'm still finalizing plans for how to start the campaign, but it's coming along well.

The Kestrel wouldn't know anything about that. When he and Shrike want something special for dinner he just books Lorena Garcia for the evening.
Shrike's character sheet has been posted .

A couple things I want to ask right away.

1.  Are you going all-in atheist, all religions are wrong, and all gods are evil hucksters of various stripes?  Or something more ambiguous/in-between, maybe all myths have a grain of truth.  Such as, Yahweh didn't create the world 6000 years ago, but he was the God of the Hebrew people.  And may or may not be the same entity as the Holy Trinity and Allah.

2.  Will there be positive depictions of religion, or at least of people of faith?

Some of that may be spoiler-y, but I'm trying to judge the scope of your content warnings.  And how the campaign world works.  I would find it a bit disturbing if all Christians are wrong, but Thor is a real god and a widely accepted hero.

1) Technically, that would be anti-theist, as the gods can't be evil if they don't exist, which is the core belief of atheism. The campaign lost the ability to be atheist when one of our characters became the daughter of a demon, and I'm completely okay with that. I like drawing on religions mythologically. However, to answer your question more helpfully: I'll be drawing from my (limited) knowledge on multiple mythologies. And there will be at least one group of good creatures. That's as far as I'll go to avoid spoiler territory.

2) Okay, we all agree that cults are bad, right? But a member of a cult isn't evil, or the real problem; they're just misguided and damaged by the cult's manipulations. I see members of the major religions in a similar light: misguided people that ultimately want to be happy and do the best they can in life. Also, something that's important to remember is that faith isn't just religious; you can have faith in an unlikely event, without being religious. I have faith that I won't die tomorrow, but I have no way of knowing; it just seems likely since I haven't died in the last 21.25 years. So my problem is not so much that some people "have faith" that god exists; but the oppressive religious hierarchy that exists to reproduce itself and corrode modern society.

No reason you can't retain the atheist slant, just define demon in the same way Robert Asprin did in the Myth Adventures Series. No reason the hell that succubus came from isn't a parallel dimension.
BTW, I've been wondering what the "non-aggression principle" is?

Oh, it's just an in-joke for any leftists in the crowd. Basically, the non-aggression principle is the idea that you shouldn't shoot first; if someone isn't hurting you, you can't hurt them. This, in principle, I agree with. HOWEVER, in practice, invoking the non-aggression principle is often used to drag leftist actors. This is because liberals/conservatives and leftists typically have different definitions of "aggression". Is a factory polluting your drinking water aggression? I would say yes, but most liberals and conservatives disagree. Is hate speech aggression? I would say yes, but most liberals and conservatives disagree.

Oh. Ok, that won't affect my characters, either. Even irl I don't bother with such considerations.

Alright, so, did some things to start getting us ready to actually play: added a post to Campaign Guidelines listing what each group is used for, and I implemented the Combat Status Report Thread. It has a template for what your status report should look like in its first post, as well as a bunch of instructions. Basically think of it like us sitting at a table, and I pass around a notebook asking everyone to write their important values in it, but to the next level thanks to the power and ease of electronics and the internet. If you have any questions, I'll answer them here, or I can help you in private messages.

I also did one character sheet (Shrike) as an example to help give everyone more of an idea of how to do it - sometimes seeing what you're working towards can help you understand better how to get there. I also used Shrike's sheet to show something you can optionally do if your character doesn't have any Charges or a VPP that could give them a Charge-based Power: you can add END to the table with STUN and BODY and remove whitespaces and horizontal lines until the formatting is consistent. Shrike's finished report also illustrates that your reports may look intimidating right now, but that's because there's a lot of instructions to make the template as generic as possible that you're going to be able to delete.

A brief primer on how to work with your status report:
If there isn't a table, follow the instructions, and don't make a table. I posted it in that thread, but I will reiterate here: if I ask you to delete text and leave whitespace, that basically means if it's outside of a table, highlight the entire paranthesized text, not any lines above or below it, and delete that. This should leave you with a blank line: you should never fill that line or delete it, I want those there for formatting. If you have paranthesized text inside of a table, highlight the text and press space bar to leave a whitespace that allows the table to populate properly, unless of course you have a value to put into that space of the table, in which case replace the paranthesized text with that value.

Tables are made in rpol messages by using the "|", which is right above the enter key and requires you to hold shift. You place your gridpoint's value in between "|"s. If you need to add horizontal lines, it should be easy to do so by pressing enter at the end of the table's previous line, then adding "|"s and the respective values.

When you see "<.hr>" but without the dot, that's what causes the horizontal lines across the entire post: these are for formatting and to increase readability.

GM Arbitrary Cost Modifications:
Kestrel:

• Save 2 Points on Weapon Element for Clubs and Fist Loads

Flex

• Save 2 Points on KS: Roleplaying Games

Wildfire:

• Save 1 Point on Well Off Perk
• Save 2 Points on PS: Chef
• Maintain PS: Gamer as a free Skill. Add a new PS to be your Everyman PS, or sell it off to gain 1 Point.

If you got a GM Fiat for something, that means I don't expect it to be of any particular use to you in the campaign, however, that also means I expect you to not increase the ability that you got a GM Fiat for (so no free Gamer skill at 20-, for example).

In reply to Conducter (msg # 112):
In reply to Conducter (msg # 118):

No matter how much I want to go off on a rant, this probably isn't the place for long rants on political philosophy and current politics.  Still, I want to continue my efforts to speak against the mythology of the Republican Party, and the mangling of the English language they perpetrate to call themselves Conservatives.  Reactionary, anarcho-libertarian, and anti-democratic are better descriptors than classic conservatism.  Not that "Liberal" doesn't also suffer from misuse as well, but it hasn't reached the same level of doublespeak, IMO.

And I will agree on cults being bad.  And that many churches do seem to exist more to enrich their leaders than anything else.  But I do find some troubling sentiments in labeling anyone practicing a religion "misguided," and [religion] "corrodes modern society".  Even as an agnostic who finds himself uncomfortable when someone says "bless you," I still think that the community that churches provide is important to a lot of people.  And that most priests (or whatever title) mean well.

I suppose I'm just asking that

applies in all directions. ;)
This message was last edited by the player at 23:19, Sat 25 Jan 2020.

TBH, I just assumed Conductor had an experience similar to one I had and was attempting to avoid a recurrence. I was GM using a VnV module called "For The Greater Good". Long story short, the n-word was used by an NPC and one of my friends went through the roof.  After shouting at me for a minute, he walked off. He came back a few minutes later and started laughing at me. As he put it, "ya still gobsmacked?"
He apologized for over-reacting, and admitted I had warned everyone before we started that the module was that way. But I realized that if he had had a specific warning he might have been able to contain his reaction. Truth be told, the word hadn't been said to his character in any case.
So, I just figured the GM was going for "fair warning" and didn't attribute anything more to it.

Eh, I don't know quite where I'm going with this.  I'm just getting tired of intolerance from everyone.  And the assumption that people only hold different, and wrong, opinions from you because they are ignorant of the facts.  And that religion is inherently anti-science and anti-progress.  And that I was also once a 21 year old who smugly held the same positions.

God, I'm getting old.

Oh, forgot to ask if I could roll those two points into something else (there's an old saw about forgiveness and permission that may apply).

@Kestrel
Yeah, it's kind of like that except the left-wing version... I haven't had that experience before, but I realized it was a possibility I didn't like, so I tried to stop it before it could happen.

With regards to using those points, that was expected, but you do have to let me know what you did with them.

@Flex
It is refreshing to hear someone else echo my feelings on the United States Conservative party. In any case, I don't want to make this a politics discussion board, but I have one more word on the subject of religion. If you really want to discuss it further with me, we can discuss it privately. Though I suspect we've both picked our sides, and not much will be gained from it, neither of us will change their stances most likely.

In any case, a question for you: what separates a cult and a religion? How do we measure cults, prove that a group is a cult? There's this methodology called the BITE model. B stands for Behavior Control, I stands for Information Control, T stands for Thought Control, and E stands for Emotional Control. If you analyze major religions that are normally considered okay, like Catholicism, using the BITE model, you can make strong arguments for them being cults; with the listed example, Catholicism, you can point out things like how the religion encourages you to not think for yourself, but to rely only on the words of god; you can point out how the religion requires you to confess your sins to your pastor or be damned; you could point out how the religion uses ceremonies and thought stopping techniques like mass, prayer, and chanting. Those are all the religion attempting to control your thoughts and emotions.

Ultimately, cults and religions are too much alike to ever properly separate them into clean groups. You probably agree that Scientology is a cult, not a proper religion; but it gets tax exemptions for its religious status. Ultimately, all modern religions have a vested interest in manipulating their members so that they form a reliance upon the religion. Do religions have some positives like the sense of community? Yes, maybe they do. But could people get such benefits from better sources? Yes, they could. Maybe there's some far off utopia where religions aren't manipulative, and I could be theoretically okay with them, because I'm not inherently against spirituality; as a mostly recovered cult member myself, I still have lots of feelings about the spiritual world. As it is, all religions I know of may as well be cults as far as I can see.

I rolled the extra points into his non-resistant costume armor.
Let me preface this by indicating that I will have nothing to do with opiates, especially those of the masses. Now, I've heard the BITE thing before, and I think it's  a lot worse to find this in corporate entities than it is to find it in religions.
I also think it's more prevalent. Apparently, the retail giants are the worst.

How do we expand the tables for Defenses and powers on charges?
What do we do with powers that are on limited charges AND cost END? Two seperate values in the same cell?


Did I mention that I loathe F***ing Tables?
This message was last edited by the player at 11:55, Sun 26 Jan 2020.

I think you told me before you're working on a phone, yeah? If it's like an iphone, then what you do is you press the text field so your keyboard populates, then you press the key that switches the keyboard to numbers (on my phone, bottom-left); then, where the shift key previously was is a different key that gives you a new selection of symbols, press that key. You should have a key that looks like a vertical line, "|". if you need to add a line, what you do is go to the last "|" of the table's code, add a new line (on my phone, it's the "return" key), then key in a "|", key in the value, key in another "|" and bam, you have a new cell of the table added in and filled out on a new line.

I didn't ask you to list your Powers' END Costs, I just asked you to list their Charges, so just the Charges type and value.

Yeah, you did, but you'll feel really accomplished when you get it done by yourself, I promise! It really isn't that hard once you get it properly figured out; nobody is good at something until they understand it.

Just for clarity, here's an example in plaintext, and then what it looks like in table form, just deleting the dots turns it into a table:

.|Breachers|Standard Charges|4|4|
.|Fast Barrage|Standard Charges|12|12|

Actually there is a problem if you put a numeric value right next to a '|'. It gives you that many small boxes afterwards.

And the table for powers with charges has 8 columns for info, but on my phone it appears as 4 columns with 2 headers each.

I assume all of mine are Standard Charges? What other kinds are there?


Should Reputation and Striking Apoearance be listed with Levels, since they have a similar effect with Social Skills?
This message was last edited by the player at 19:21, Sun 26 Jan 2020.

boostable,continuing

@Sharpshooter
I don't know what you're talking about. I tried putting a number next to a vertical line and didn't get that many cells of a table...

The table is supposed to be 4 columns. You can delete the paranthesized text and replace it with the text for your Powers.

I believe all of yours are standard Charges, yes. As Precision said, some other types are Boostable and Continuing; there's lots of Charge types, but all you have are Standard Charges.

I suppose so, yes, any Skill enhancer like Striking Appearance or Skill Levels should probably be in the same area as the CSLs.

If you really need me to, I can fill out the report for you, though will you be able to update it when you spend END or Charges or take damage? I suppose it's reasonable enough to say I'll update combat reports when an NPC does damage, but I'd like you to be able to update expenditures that you do yourself, or to write down if another PC has done anything to you.

In reply to Conducter (msg # 128):

Ah.  Well, that sucks, that you were in a cult.  I'm not really sure what else to say about that.  That's a much worse background than just being an insufferable young smartypants who has to tell everyone about all these not really new ideas he just found out about that solve everything.

In reply to Sharpshooter (msg # 132):

I've never had that problem.  But I always add spaces on both sides of the values in the table.

In reply to Conducter (msg # 135):

I don't know.  If that is a reference for combat, do you really want non-combat info cluttering it up?
This message was last edited by the player at 19:52, Sun 26 Jan 2020.

@Flex

Both Striking Appearance and Reputation modify Presence Attacks. Shouldn't those be listed as Combat Modifiers?

Yeah, that's a good idea to include those, I think.

@Flex
It's fine of course, it's not you fault, it's nobody's fault really, except for the system I was born into, the system of child indoctrination, of mental and emotional manipulation. I feel like maybe I shouldn't have brought it up, that I was in a cult, but like... I just didn't appreciate you calling me into question like you were, prejudging me. Maybe you didn't mean it this way, but what you said read to me like criticisms of religion aren't valid. And I said before, I don't make this campaign to offend, I don't make this campaign to bring up political ideas, but my political ideas are important to me, and they will come out in trying to make good, fun stories. Or at least, that is to say, my ideas will sometimes naturally involve some of my political takes, and I don't want to have to censor myself.

In reply to Conducter (msg # 138):

Eh, I suppose that strictly, I was prejudging you.  I picked up some clues from what you said, and drew a conclusion.  Except that, this time, the most likely explanation was not the correct one.  Because I'm pretty sure that 'former cult member suspicious of all instances of organized religion' shouldn't be a common answer.

And I am shocked!  Shocked, I tell you, that there would be communication issues on an internet forum.</sarcasm>  Criticism of religion is valid.  As should be defense of it.  I have a habit of playing devil's advocate, often reflexively, and that's at least part of what's going on here.

And I'm not sure that what I'm asking is for you to censor yourself.  Maybe more that things can be messy and there is nuance.  I mean, I now know that you're not just anti-religion because Republicans are for it, nor atheist and dismissive of spirituality on principle.  So I may have been condescendingly asking you to do something you were going to do anyway.

But at some point, one of us is going to have to stop trying to have the last word, and just accept that we disagree on some things. ;)

Ok, I fought this but lost...
            ...ahem...
I believe, technically, the last word is "amen".



Of course, other translations of other works for other groups would have some other last words. "Resolve" ends many translations of the Bhagavad Gita and although they can't agree completely, the Quran apparently ends with "torment", "things", "believers", "Lord", or "rewards". Dianetics has had regular edits, so I don't know what word it ends with.
Anyway, it shouldn't matter. We're creating a story, not trying to solve a problem or make the world a better place. Let's not limit where the story may go because there are parts of reality we're uncomfortable with.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:15, Tue 28 Jan 2020.

Hey, look at that.  We've got a new game name.

---

Anyway, it looks like both Flex and Sharpshooter have KS: Superhuman World.  So what do we know about the other PCs before the game starts?  Just what would be public knowledge.

For instance, Flex is a new hero who has shown up in the last few months near UCLA, and she has stretchy powers.  And she has said that she is a mutant.

That's a fair point. here's some background for what every character knows. There might be some reasonable overlaps, but ask me if I didn't specifically say you know something.

Also, side note: I'm thinking of calling the team "The Hollywood Heroes". I might change the title to reflect this, "Hollywood Heroes: Shrouded in Shadows" to kind of emulate a comic title.

Flex:
You know of a couple heroes in the Los Angeles area, and a couple from back home. The one I'll let you know about from back home is Iceborn; they're the super that helped you out in your past, when mutants were being rounded up at your university. The rest shouldn't be tooooo important, at least for a while.

In Los Angeles, you remember encountering another super on UCLA campus a couple months ago who you haven't heard of otherwise. Maybe it was their first outing; you recall they had fire Powers. You've heard rumors of a couple other heroes. A master gunslinger who patrols the rooftops of Los Angeles and watches over the city with the help of keen eyes. An enigma, who moves without crossing intervening space, and strikes with unseen hands. A detective who haunts the streets at night, ambushing villains with his trusty sidekick, his flying car, and array of ingenious tools. An artist who delights the senses with his work, and wows the mind by bringing it to life. A woman of faith who channels radiant energy throughout her personage and protects the city from otherworldly incursions. You've also heard of "Lynchpin", a secret contact of some of the heroes in this city.

Sharpshooter:
Sharpshooter is fairly old, though he might not share that fact freely. I like to imagine Precision not necessarily as old, but more mature and seasoned than the other heroes, so if the two characters have no qualms, I'd like to say that Sharpshooter has done hero work with Precision before. In either case, Sharpshooter is not originally from LA; he moved here about a year ago as his grandson, Robert Boone, moved into town to start setting up a new branch of the family business, Boone Bullets, a firearm manufacturer and ammunition dispenser. Robert ended up liking LA and stuck around; Sharpshooter did the same to watch over him and this twisted city.

Sharpshooter probably heard of the attack on UCLA two months ago, and that it was handled by two heroes that appeared out of nowhere and just as quickly disappeared. He may be suspicious that they are students at the University, but that's harder to say for sure.

As Sharpshooter's main travel method is Swinging high above the streets, and Kestrel's vehicle can fly high, I'd like to think they've crossed paths at least once in this city.

As far as other supers go: I haven't made any sure concepts or names, but he likely has some knowledge of the old California Patrol, who reformed and broke up more times than you can count on one hand. I'd probably require a Skill Roll, to do so, but he has a chance of being able to track those old members down, if he so desired. He also knows a number of heroes in Europe from his time fighting the Nazi hold-overs that served under Baron Teuton.

Teuton's research team created two vials of a Celestial Draft, one which Teuton drank, and the other Sharpshooter drank. Whether this is because Sharpshooter stole it, or because he was captured at some point and used as a guinea pig, or some other third thing, that's not decided for sure, and I'd have to talk with him about it more to come back with a for sure statement. The Celestial Draft made both Sharpshooter and Teuton stop showing and feeling the effects of age.

Sharpshooter also has lots of (non-public) connections to the United States government/military due to his past service.

Wildfire:
You remember two months ago, you and another super with extreme body control saved UCLA from an evil super. Based on their sudden appearance and disappearance, just like yours, you might guess she's a UCLA student. Considering Flex also said she's announced herself publicly, you might have recognized the superheroine as being Flex.

As a magical hybrid, you've done some research into the magical organizations of the world. You've also heard that a mighty crusader stalks the streets of LA. At once, this might worry you, in that perhaps they will notice you and your demonic ancestry and judge you worthy of smiting down. But you also remember that priest who told you your ancestry doesn't determine whether you are evil, so you are also hopeful that you won't be noticed or judged by this crusader. Either way, you probably don't super want to encounter them if you can avoid it.

You've found clippings in the dusty section of UCLA's library referring to two defunct organizations: DEMON, a group that publicly announced their desire to bring about the apocalypse through planar invasion; and The Sentinels, a group of isolationist magic users, magical creatures, and their allies who sought to police the use of magic and prevent its misuse. The two groups supposedly annihilated each other a decade ago.

Kestrel:
I'll group the knowledge of Shrike and Kestrel here, since they should be pretty similar and should be sharing information. As mentioned previously, I like imagining you've probably had a run-in with Sharpshooter. If not, you've probably heard a similar rumor to what Flex heard about him.

You have intimate knowledge about the existence of VIPER and the organization's structure, as you've been battling them for years, and have gone in their midst undercover multiple times. You know that VIPER has a leading council of 108 members that disseminate information and orders to lower ranking members in every state. VIPER's goal is to assume control of the United States by any means necessary, and expel or exterminate all non-white, non-Christian, non-conforming members of society. On the small scale, an individual branch of VIPER is lead by a Diamondback, who receives their directives from the 108 core members, and actualizes those orders on the ground level.

I'd like to imagine you've also made trips over-seas, where you've investigated and helped the fight against similar evil organizations. Depending on how old Kestrel is (I don't remember you giving them a definitive age, but I could be wrong), you might have run into the Sentinels and helped them ultimately stop DEMON.

Precision:
As previously mentioned, I like imagining you as the most mature and established, after Sharpshooter (who is less established in the LA area in specific, but more established in the world at large). I like imaging that you two have done hero work before. You happened to be driving nearby at the time, heard about the commotion at UCLA, and arrived as the heroines Flex and Wildfire were wrapping up the villain that attacked the University two months ago.

You are personally responsible for stopping and imprisoning the Puppet Master and Freeze Frame, alongside Virtuoso, a blind artist who summons armaments and assistants from their artwork.
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:59, Wed 29 Jan 2020.

Well, I was kinda offering it up as prompt for the other PCs to respond to, give us something to talk about.  But this works, too, I guess. :P

yes that works for me

In my backstory it was an Elixir Vitae, purported to have first been invented by the Chinese madman Fu Manchu. In my case, I had been captured in the late 60s by an invigorated Teuton, who realized that his victory had lost its appeal, because as an old man, Sharpshooter had slowed down. While in his clutches, he gave me the Elixir to insure that future conflicts would result in battles that were Worthy of an esteemed adversary. Though neither would admit it, Sharpshooter and Teuton are remarkably similar in ethical codes. We both are Gentleman adventurers, although he still wishes to push the ideal of the Ubermensch to conquer the world.

In my head, The Kestrel's grandfather was a costumed crime fighter in the 60's, so The Kestrel's father was probably born sometime in the 60's. Assuming the father had children when the father was in his 20's (which is valid as the mantel of superhero skipped a generation) The Kestrel was born in the 80's. This puts his age anywhere between 30 and 40, which is a close enough range to begin with. The Shrike is similar in age, at most half a decade younger.

@Kestrel
Do you WANT to have fought alongside the Sentinels to end DEMON's bid in the early 2010s, then? I think it's reasonable enough one way or another.

@Sharpshooter
It's not super important what the elixir was called, so I can call it Elixir Vitae instead. Most of what I had to work with in characterizing this man and his organization was A) the name Baron Teuton and B) the memory that the Elixir originated with Baron Teuton. So I started coming up with details from there.

With regards to the Elixir originating with Fu Manchu, why has it not become mainstream in traditional Chinese medicine if it works? How come only you and Teuton have been treated with it?

Also, I don't know if Teuton was supposed to not be a Nazi originally, but I have cast him as one, and as a Nazi I can't really conceive of him as a "gentleman". Nazis are pretty messed up in the head.

Ultimately, if it would make you unhappy to keep the characterization I've created, I can work with it; it just means I have some rewrites to do, and you need to supply me with more details. Though I was pretty jazzed for the ideas I had for him and his organization.

I've got it. Kestrel was in Europe training to be a costumed adventurer, and he used his connection to The Sentinel to meet The Sentinels. Tagging along with them as they eliminated DEMON was a training exercise (in The Kestrel's mind, at least).

So I'm going to release a series of major events at some point soon enough, and the final confrontation with DEMON is going to be on there; it was a pretty serious deal. Being in Europe for training makes sense enough; perhaps while in a port city, fighting broke out at the docks between DEMON forces and The Sentinels. DEMON ultimately gets some of their forces out onto the open sea, heading for the Sealed Island in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle. During that fighting, you might have tried to help The Sentinels. Maybe you accompanied them to Sealed Island and fought DEMON again there, and become an honorary Sentinel, hence the name of your news organization. Most of The Sentinels died in that fight, though, so I dunno. Tossing thoughts out there.

Nah, keep your representation of Teuton. Now I am his Guinea pig.
This message was last edited by the player at 06:06, Thu 30 Jan 2020.

To be honest, I feel like "the Hollywood Heroes" doesn't fit the group too well.  It makes them sound like they're fighting crime for publicity or something.


I was actually going to just spend the 4 points I saved on that skill as well.  I figured that Layla, whatever else one might say about her, had the sense to start doing her research before she went out fighting crime -- although her knowledge certainly isn't going to be as deep as people with more experience.

(As much as I enjoyed Worm in a general sense, I want to smash my head into a wall anytime I read a story where someone goes out in costume to battle criminals and hasn't so much as come up with their own superhero name.)

Not exactly a fan of "Hollywood Heroes", either.  The Century City Crusaders would be a step up.  But I'm not sure what a good name would be right now.

---

Based on that Local Police Powers for costumed heroes, I'm assuming that police are generally receptive to superheroes helping them out?  If so, after stopping that supervillain at UCLA, Flex would have stuck around to give a statement to the police.  But more importantly, stuck around long enough for the media to show up, because if you don't give them a story, they'll have to make one up. :P  That, and making sure they use the superhero name she chose.

As a former member of the Texas Rangers, Sharpshooter would go for a team name like the Western Rangers.

I'm fine with working with Precision in the past. In fact, maybe he helped me foil one of Baron Teuton's plans (the man is a modern-day Dr Frankenstein).

The Kestrel, tongue firmly in cheek, suggested that they call themselves the Consolidated Century City Protectors so the group's abbreviation could be CCCP (Shrike was not amused).
I did drop a point on Kestrel to be familiar with Superheroes & Villains, because wearing a cape in a world of capes means you notice who does or doesn't wear a cape.
Of course, The Kestrel doesn't worry about team names as he thinks keeping the team's roster and abilities obscured is a tactical advantage.

Century City Crusaders sounds fine to me, though I'm not sure how Wildfire will feel about that... ;)

That means we can abbreviate the team name as CCC, or, if you will, C3. So now, one of the gamers in the party must make a joke at some point about how we're paupers that don't even have FTL Broadband yet, I mean come on, how are we supposed to have fun when we can't even watch our allies' starships engage in real time battles?! It only costs like 100,000 research funding! That's chump change!

... Anyway. Yes, Flex, you are correct in that local government and police are pretty open to working with you in costume.

Sorry for not posting the general backstory, I've got a schedule change and it so happens that the way the days of the week line up, I work 8 days in a row so I'm just relaxing until next "weekend". Small posts like this aren't much hassle, but taking a breather from major writing.

@Sharpshooter
You sound so dejected about it. Sorry :T
It does make sense that Teuton would capture you at some point during your enduring conflict with him. Testing a volatile new weapon on an enemy seems like pretty good risk management on Teuton's part.
If it makes you feel better, I'm looking at McGuffin-ing the Celestial Draft Aqua Vitae some.

Heh, not a problem. Hunteds have consequences, and it would represent Teuton's bad luck for an experiment to benefit an enemy.

Having had a little more time to think about it, I've got a few more serious suggestions for team name.

Flex wants something short and snappy, as well as a bit more defensive in nature.  AEGIS is the best I can come up with, but I'm not sure if anyone else in the setting has already grabbed that name.  She's not sure we count as rangers, and objects to crusaders.

Then again, if we're banding together to fight VIPER, Team Mongoose would be cool.

re: Baron Teuton
Also, depending on how nuanced you want to be, it's entirely possible that Baron Teuton was never really a Nazi, even if he worked for them in WWII.  Nazism was largely a grassroots, populist movement.  The German nobility, even if they didn't like democracy, often didn't care for the Nazis.  And the whole Aryan superiority/ Ubermensch stuff was polluting the discourse well before Hitler got into politics.  Not to mention antisemitism was practically mainstream in most countries until the Holocaust was exposed.

So if Teuton really is a Baron, he may well consider any Nazi collaboration on his part as a mistake of youth and convenience.  And not care for things like racial purity and genocide; being more 'advance yourself' and 'make your own strength'.

Or, Baron Teuton could be the grandson of William Franklin (Ben's illegitimate Loyalist offspring) and be German only in name.

@Flex
You are correct, sir!
...
However, running him as a Nazi holdover is simpler and already what I'm planning. While you may be correct that the aristocracy mostly didn't care for Nazism when it was starting up, some of them must have, so there it is.

In reply to Conducter (msg # 160):

Eh, Sharpshooter had mentioned that his initial version of Baron Teuton was also something of a gentleman adventurer, and then you mentioned it would be weird having a Nazi with a moral code.  I was just trying to suggest something to reconcile those views. ;)

---

But more seriously, anyone else have thoughts on a team name?

So, a Western-themed name isn't doing it for you?
How about...

The Champions
The Medianville Marvels
The Justice Brigade
L.E.F.T. (Law Enforcement Fighting Team)
to name a few....

Possible team names
• The Mighty Heroes
• The League of Freedom
• The Civic Minded Five (it's not that The Shrike doesn't count, it's more as if he's The Kestrel's plus one)
• The Medianville Justice League of Super Acquaintances

It's also possible the team calls itself "The Sentinels" and receive support from the media conglomerate the publishes the local newspaper (that would be The Sentinel).

Corporate sponsorship? Say it ain't so.....

I doubt that corporate sponsorship would work out well for the team.  Probably better not to be beholden to outside interests.

I thought about suggesting "the Angel Squad" or "the Angel Alliance," since the team operates in the City of Angels, but there is no chance in the universe that Wildfire would agree to that name.  You can probably guess why.

(I just prodded a random group name generator a few times, and got "the Angel Crusaders."  I don't think we want to reference the Crusades.)

What about "the Vindicators?"  It's got a decent ring to it, and it's just offbeat enough that there aren't likely to be many other teams using that name.

I still like the idea of the Hollywood Heroes. Someone said before it makes it sound like the team is fighting for fortune and glory, but I don't think it does, necessarily. Hollywood is just a culturally important part of Los Angeles. In any case, the team might be branded with a team name by the media before they even attempt to choose one. You could imagine, on your first big, public fight, that the media coverage gives you guys the name "The Hollywood Heroes" just to refer to you and the action more easily.

I used to play with a guy who had a Variable Power pool character named The Conductor who would fit right in with Hillywood Heroes. His foci were all movie or TV props that he spontaneously produced, and he acted like he was the director of a Hollywood movie. One memorable day he gave a super-villain a pink slip and told him he was fired from the set. Turns out it was the focus for an Extra-dimensional Teleport, usable vs Others.

I made a couple posts about recent history and the understanding of Superhumanity and the Supernatural.

Game starting for real soon-ish.

The Kestrel owns The Sentinel, so it's not really outside interests. The Kestrel can sometimes get the big head and start pulling this Bruce Wayne shtick...

In reply to Conducter (msg # 168):

A few thoughts on the history posted.

1)  So, sounds like the first reliable reports of people with superpowers is during WWII?  Anything before that has passed into the realm of myth and legend?  Hmm, while obviously are there tales of lost martial arts styles and techniques that grant superhuman abilities, to what extent does it appear that it is legit lost knowledge and not just tall tales?

2)  Why no mention of South America in the 1983 invasion?  Did they avoid it, or does the sparsely populated nature of southern South America make the destruction less obvious than the populated south coasts of Africa and Australia?

3)  The north pole is in the middle of an ocean without any glaciers.  Is it really on Greenland?  Or do you mean what you said, and there is something really freaky and unnatural up there?

Still, it should be fun to get playing.

In reply to Sharpshooter (msg # 167):

I forget the name, but one of the other players in a long ago game also had a media based VPP.  His shtick was powers based on song lyrics.  His most memorable moment was, to my recollection, in his backstory, when he discovered his powers the day he was singing "Video Killed the Radio Star" in a radio station.  I think it was less than literal, and the DJ was merely rushed to the ER after a monitor fell on him and exploded.

---

Anyway, on team names, I suppose that it might well depend on whether we name ourselves or not.  Seeing as three of us are based somewhat near Tinseltown, the media might well seize on Hollywood Heroes to describe the group.

On the one hand, The Sentinels is a short and snappy name.  And Kestrel did work with them for a bit, so he's got some standing to form a new team with that name.

On the other hand, there are some valid concerns having the same name as a large newspaper/media empire.  Such as people conflating the two, and getting stuck with a DNPC that most of us aren't getting points for.

Maybe we could go with the New Sentinels to put some distance between us and the corporation.

But we'd have to bother going public early on to get a name of our choice.  Which is something we probably should discuss in character.  Though we can probably get a sense of how we lean so that the GM has a clue what to prepare for.  Flex could go either way, especially as she doesn't have the resources to support a public team.

1)
Think of this more like a recap of the critical events from the last century, like when you were in history class and they talked about a war, but they didn't tell you about every battle of the war, just the ones that are deemed "really important". As such, these are only the most culturally relevant events. I would say the earliest reliable report of a super would probably be mid-1800s. As mentioned in the post, though there aren't 100% certain sources, it's believed that supers have been around basically forever.

2)
There's no clear reason why that humanity knows of, but the alien invasion didn't go for South America initially, and they started getting pushed back before they had a chance. There are probably theories like that, that South America's southern coasts are less populated and were thus less enticing targets, but who can say for sure?

3)
Hey, I'm leaving it vague. You guys don't know about this; the only one who has a chance of knowing about that event at the start of the campaign is probably Kestrel, due to his media background and ties to whistle blowers. Even then, he probably doesn't know or has very limited knowledge of it.

As far as a name goes, I think I would prefer not going by "The Sentinels" since there is an organization that already goes by that name. Even if it's supposed to be dead, you can never account for time shenanigans, right? Then it'd get real confusing that you both share a name.

Eh, amongst all the other kinds of nerd/geek-ery I have, I have an interest in history and geography.  So anomalies in those pop out for me.  And I enjoy lore in a setting.  Which gives me a tendency to chase down tangents of that lore that maybe don't affect the game in question.

---

Would "The New Sentinels" or "Nova Sentinels" be too close for your tastes?

"using "Nova" is to old timey for me"
and when I say old timey I mean 1500's and Drake labeling the bay area Nova Albion"

The New Sentinels doesn't sound bad, it could even inspire a publisher to change an aging masthead. Hollywood Heroes isn't too bad, and as has been pointed out will probably be applied to us by someone, anyway. You know, like when Shrike and I foiled that convenience store robbery and the nitwit reporter tried to dub us "Birds of Prey".

So I'm just about ready to post in character threads. Just asking, do we want to start with some roleplay between characters or jump straight into the action for this adventure?

either works for me

I have no preference.

I could go either way as well.  I had sort of thought we were planning on jumping into the action, so if nobody else has a strong preference I suppose I'd vote for that, but roleplaying is cool too.

...Also, I fixed my character sheet for the reduced point costs.  I put the costs that had been reduced in italics just as a reminder.  (I ended up marking PS: Gamer as -1 point, because I wasn't sure how to indicate on the sheet that I had sold off the additional Everyman PS for 1 point and keep the point costs adding up properly.  If there's a better way to do that, let me know and I will adjust.)

I do like me some roleplay.  I can also appreciate getting to some action.  Without knowing exactly where you want to start things off, it is hard to choose.

We are trying to tell a story here.  Perhaps think about how they would present the scenario in your favorite movie/show/comic, and use that as a guideline for where to start things off for us?

Just to set the mood, about when (month/year) is our game kicking off?

---

edit:  Also, the weapons that the agents are carrying.  Hunting rifles, assault rifles, or blaster carbines?
This message was last edited by the player at 21:59, Tue 18 Feb 2020.