ORtrail

My first thought was: "Where did the meteor land?" and then I wondered if that setting is even too crazy for my taste. Sounds pretty wild, but the last thing I need is another setting to try and convert over to a better game system. I could make you a list of all the possible games/settings I'd love to try out -and I'll need to be gaming in a nursing home 40 years from now to get through them all. "You can have my dice when you pry them from my cold, arthritic hands!"

So, I actually ended up at an Office Depot, and had no issue getting my PDF of Villains & Vigilantes: Final Fight With The Furies printed out. It was 64 pages (seven of those color the rest B&W) on 28lb paper, spiral bound, with a clear plastic cover and plastic maroon colored back. It was $15.03 which was okay, but they would have wanted close to $100 to print out my PDF of Capes, Cowls, And Villains Foul at 170+ pages in color. Uh, no, I'll just use my Nook or the laptop. I did expect double-sided printing, but they did each page on a seperate piece of paper. Actually, that gives me plenty of space to write conversion notes to Superworld and plot changes/additions, so I'm cool with it. For an actual gaming book, I would not have been happy. I also got another map laminated, with no waver to sign -and they gave me a "Why would we ask you to do that?" look.

I would think part of it would be the Store Manager and part company policy. With the explosion of PDFs they are missing out if they refuse print jobs. I will just have to take a PDF or two in on a thumbdrive to my local Office Max and see what happens. I need to laminate another map anyway.

What about Office Max? That would be the closest place to me. I had a map laminated there the other day, it nevered occured to me to ask about PDFs. As many as I have purchased in the last two years though, I really should look into prices, etc. Mainly for the ones with lots of color.

Thanks, yeah, I have a copy of the PDF. Never got around to more than glancing at it, though it seemed to be very old school (not a bad thing) and lacking a skill system (not so good). Still, for roll-up-a-character-and-go-kill-some-mutants gaming? Exactly what Mutant Future was intended to be, I think. If nothing else I'll mine it for ideas/stuff to steal for Gamma World. Speaking of which, though I have yet to get a copy of the latest Gamma World, I did like some of the setting -with the Hadron Collider accident? A one time thing instead of constant change (especially the mutant powers changing -I hate that). I've got some notes down on the setting I'd like to use, so I could combine several universes/various earths. The characters would be part of a community run by the "Unity council" who are tryng to make a workable government/society out of the varous "pieces". An alternate 1950's where Tesla helped build a world based broadcast power (an electric 1955 T-bird for example), a 23rd century space faring earth (so there could be some Moon and Mars colonies and some aliens), a Middle Ages America where King Arthur and his knights relocated to await the time when they would be needed again, remnants of a 2025 earth where aliens invaded (maybe some cyberpunk elements) and whatever else sounds like fun* (dinosaurs?). It would be good for the niece to experience a different game system -though I can imagine how that will go down at first: Me: "Okay the mutant spider-goat leaps from the web and bites at you." *Rolls 1D20* "And it hits!" Her: "What? Is this character that easy to hit? Firefly would have.... Nevermind. Okay, I'll dodge." Me: "Yeah.... NO, no dodge in this game. Your armor and Dex bonus is already figured into the attack roll." *Rolls damage dice* "You take 12 pts." Her: "Okay, and my armor absorbs how much of that?" Me: "Uh, none. As I said, the 'To Hit" roll already counts your armor and Dex into your chance of being hit." Her: "This game.... SUCKS!!" Maybe not that bad, but another learning curve for sure. *Full confession time. I have owned a 30 sided dice forever (bought on a whim), but never used it. Running a 20 sided based game means I can create an artifact like "Probability Gauntlet" and let them roll that 30 sided for attacks, etc. There will be some terrible side effect (minus the number over 20 from the other characters attacks?), and the things actually needs to be destroyed, but will they be Hobbits about it? Or seize the awesome power for themselves?

Oh yeah, that would be a great segue to another adventure I started writing two days ago. I'm calling it "Drug Lords of the Sedona Desert" and if Lanky and Gale are getting hitched in Yuma, AZ (say her parents are now retired there) the heroes will be on hand when things get out of control along the border. Two Mexican super powered gangs are indirectly fighting for control of the smuggling market in Southwest Arizona, gun happy private citizens have formed a "Border Milita", a high tech weapons company is testing a combat robot out in the desert -a volatile mix. Of course, things are "not quite as they seem" and the heroes will face a moral quandary before the adventure is over. I'm hoping to stay a full adventure ahead of my players, so I'll try to have this one ready to play before we even get together early next week for the "Assault on Precinct 31" scenario. Also, I just got a copy of Gamma World 4th Edition (from 1992) and would like to run a couple adventures with that. I've never played this edition of Gamma World, but love the fact you have PSH, mutant humans/animals, and plants(!) as potential characters. I even found some rules for running android characters, so all options are on the table.

Finished up the "Serve the Servants" adventure this past Monday. It was under odd circumstances, as the niece was actually out of town shopping having forgotten about the game that evening, we added a third player in an old gamer friend, and actually started a different adventure I have had written up called "Assault on Precinct 31". The third gamer, Heath, rolled up a character called "Collider" who can go insubstantial and change the SIZ (weight) of people/objects. For example, he can add up to 5D6 SIZ to a gun, making it nearly impossible for a normal human to lift and use (or just pin that human to the ground with a weight increase). He can also lighten things, such as when he went to SIZ 0 to make it easy for Firefly to carry him. He is being creative with the power too, such as when he used it in a park to rain branches down onto the villian. After texting back-and-forth a bit with the neice, asking her about finishing the adventure without her character (we left off previously with them investigating some leads) I decided to start the other adventure I had ready with just the brother-in-law and old gamer friend. "Assault on Precinct 31" is an adventure I wrote that is a blend of "The Mist" meets "Assault on Precinct 13". What do you do if you are the younger (normal) brother of a super powered sibling and you get busted for DUI? You call your brother, make threats to the police holding you, and suddenly the heroes are called in to escort a prisoner transport van from middle-of-nowhere Washington State to Seattle. Hopefully before Harvester, the older brother shows up. Harvester is of course using a captive scientist and his experimental equipment to boost his sonic powers. The police station, along with a bit of the small town, will be shifted to an alternate earth, a foggy land filled with a vast assortment of tentacled creatures drawn to the scent of human prey. The scientist will work franticly to reverse the equipment and get them back (with Harvester helping) while the heroes battle wave after wave of creatures to buy them time. Add in some other humans needing rescue in the town, the uniting with a villain for a common cause, and it should be all kinds of fun. Gunslinger and Collider had just arrived at Precinct 31 and understood this was a prisoner escort adventure when the niece showed up (having rushed back into town not wanting to be left out of the adventure). So, back to finishing "Serve the Servants". This adventure started with them at the Warren G. Harding High School (which amused the niece as she thought of the rapper Warren G) giving a talk to the students in the auditorium about tolerence, bullying, staying off drugs. Then a quick question-and-answer session with six randomly chosen students. The question were: • "If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?" • "Do you know Fury from the Golden Gate Guardians? She is hot!" • "What's the easiest way for me to get super powers?" • “What is your view on gun control? Is more security needed in every school?” • “What if we suspect someone might have super powers?” • “Shouldn’t all mutants and such have to register with the Government?” It was a great chance to role-play with goofy to very serious questions. The heroes were somewhat evasive with the heavy ones, classic coach/politician speak, "That is an issue that concerns us all, we need a united effort to deal with it." and so forth. They did cast suspicous eyes on the goth kids and seemed a bit nervous "something" might happen. Something did of course as a teacher approached Firefly afterwards and asked her to find her older brother, Lawrence "Lanky" Glenn aka Hangman. A minor villain with stretching powers. Lanky was out on parole, trying to turn his life around, involved with another minor villain named Gale Tempest (weather control) who was a bad influence and they had argued again and again and not spoken for awhile. It seems there was on-going investigation by a couple Seattle detectives into a string of jewelery store thefts (I got to work the phrase, "Gives new meaning to 'He went to Jareds', huh?" into the adventure). A man, looking like Lanky was stealing rings with his stretchy toes while distracting the sales associate. This was caught on security footage. The detectives contacted the sister to try and locate Lanky, so she wanted the heroes to find him first and get him to work out a plea bargain by turning on Gale or something. There was quite a bit of investigative work done by the heroes. Talking with his old employer (Lanky quit just a week before the thefts started) his parole officer (now outsourced to India so they had to call -I had fun with that), and tracking down Gale Tempest to a bar she worked at occasionally which was owned by her father. They chatted quite a bit with Kayla the bartender there, who knew Gale well and worried she was being led astray by this Lanky boyfriend. Then Gale shows up to "borrow" some money from the cash register, and Firefly (in civilian clothes as they all were) decided to pretend to know Gale (having told Kayla they were friends from long ago) and chatted with her about her life. "We partied together!" can be a plausible reason in many circumstances. They learned that Gale and Lanky were "going on vacation for a while". Suddenly the heroes get an alert from the detectives that a man looking like Lanky is at the Diamonds In The Rough jewelery store (an employee had called after getting a warning email from the detectives to be on the lookout and would stall him). Gunslinger and Collider rushed there while Firefly followed Gale back home to her new duplex. Now, I fully expected a battle at this point. Instead they get there, play it cool, and notice Lanky is buying an $800 engagment ring. Buying with cash, but buying. Yes, Lanky wants to propose to Gale, before they leave town to avoid the detectives who want to quiestion him about the thefts. Instead of a fight, they convice Lanky to turn himself in, after escorting him to the duplex to propose to Gale (who based on the dice roll, decided to say "No" until they got their lives "in a better place"). Firefly had snuck into the duplex by then and found no evidence against them. Lanky goes to the police station and is questioned about the security video, claims innocence, and is arrested. The detectives are happy, the DA is satisfied ("Slam dunk case with his criminal record, security footage, no alibi but his girlfriend -no way a jury lets this guy walk."). The heroes are convinced Lanky is innocent and they are dealing with a shape-shifter. Gale is furious with them all, and organizes a protest outside the station. She gets a half dozen patrons from the bar and a super powered girlfriend named Snowbird (wings, ice powers) to help. This was fun, part of my notes: They will be chanting, “Free Lanky Glenn!” again and again. Followed by, “What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!” The various sign messages include: • “Say NO to the police state!” • “Injustice League members: Firefly, Gunslinger, Collider” • “Free Lanky Glenn!” I had Snowbird flying around the police station windows (five story building) with her protest sign. The players were a bit flustered not knowing how to proceed. I had a news van from KING5 show up to do interviews with everyone. The heroes refused to talk, Gale protested the railroading of Lanky, and the police remained confident they had their man. The reporters leave, the protestors call it a day and head back to the bar. The detectives asked the heroes to be at the bail hearing for Lanky in the morning. Flash forward, and a bruised and battered Gale shows up that morning outside the police station with Snowbird and Kid Phoenix. Gale is furious at being attacked by Firefly and Gunslinger. What? Yes, cellphone footage shot by one of the protesters as they left the bar late last night shows: Firefly swoops down out of the dark sky and blasts Gale in the back, then picks her up and tosses her into the windshield of a nearby car. Firefly then flies into a nearby dark alley. Seconds later Gunslinger emerges from the alley and shoots Gale as she struggles to get to her feet. He fires rapidly at the other two protestors and they scatter. Gale attacks with her wind and electrical powers, while Firefly protests her innocence. After Firefly and Collider defeat all three protesting villains, the police rush out and say that Gunslinger has justed robbed a bank across town! My brother-in-law had to leave a bit early and missed out on the big battle. I declared that Gunslinger had a personal emergency and so never showed up that morning. Excellent timing as it turned out. Following the news reports of Gunslinger driving north on I-5 in a white Ford Bronco (our standard criminal vehicle) they flew after it, only to see it abandoned on the road and intead Snowbird is flying away with a tote bag of cash. They get closer, she lands, turns into Gunslinger and starts shooting at them. When finally defeated (after becoming Firefly and Lanky too) they see the face of.... wait for it.... Kayla the bartender! Kayla expresses her anger at working for six years to build up the bar into a cool spot and then having Gale's father about to retire and leave it all to her! Jealous and finally deciding to put her mimic power to work, Kayla framed Lanky, attacked Gale as she left the bar (to get her to attack the heroes and try to free Lanky, and then decided to rob a bank and flee town. Wow, much longer to recap than I thought. I'll mention again this was based on an adventure someone wrote years ago on a Geocities webpage and I expanded and changed it -but the basic plot of mimic frames innocent man remained.

Sad news, the elders of the first gaming generation are passing away. I don't believe I ever had any direct contact with Lynn, but certainly his work and passion at Chaosium made my gaming life better. Thank you, Lynn.

The BGB (Big Golden Book as the BRP book is often called around here) does have a section of sample NPC templates (starting on page 360 of the soft cover). Sample NPCs might be more accurate, but it gives an excellent idea of how to build certain types of characters. As for the creating of powers/spells and such, there is not really a system in the BGB -some of the monographs or supplements may have addressed that. With the wealth of settings for BRP games you can probably find something close to what you want to use (as examples if nothing else). Going to a BRP gaming system can be quite a change for some gamers. I remember wrapping my mind around the idea of having all those skills, no levels, starting with a fairly competent character instead of a first level guy. I laugh when I think about certain assumptions in other gaming systems that simply don't apply to BRP. "Welcome to the Borderlands," said the city guard, as our party entered the Coughing Rat Tavern. "You guys are newbies," the guard noted, then pointed to a full table across the room. "You see that group? The guy in robes is a wizard, the guy in leather is a rogue, the guy with the metal armor and mace is a cleric, and the other guy in metal armor with a sword is a fighter." Depending on your setting, those guidelines often don't apply to BRP. One other thought: BRP is good for low level super hero campaigns. Think Spider-Man level or less. It tends to break at the higher power levels.

Stats for Azriel the cat, or this NEVER happened!

Oh fine, I'll throw together a quick BRP look at Princess Ariel. I would first note that the world of Thundarr gained some kind of magic when the mysterious planet passed through and caused the apocalypse, OR all the so called magic users are in fact mutants with the Energy Manipulation power? This lets them create all kinds of effects on the material world around them. Dark Matter manipulation perhaps? Tapping into Neutrino energy? Thundarr was science-fantasy, so I guess the people they are helping don't care, as long as it works. Princess Ariel STR 12 CON 13 SIZ 9 INT 16 POW 18 DEX 15 APP 15 Move: 10 Hit Points: 22 (Heroic level) AP: 2 (high tech protective cloth) Energy Shield to absorb damage when created. Heroic-Level Powers: Energy Manipulation* 85% (5D6 effect or lower depending on what she is trying to do) OR you can give her a wide range of powers like: Magical Blast — Ranged Energy Damage Disintegration — I think this was non-living material? Force Constructs — Movable Servants of Energy Telekinesis — Move an object or two Cyclone — Area effect Flash — Blinding light Failings/Quirks: Must use free hands to focus her power use; Cautious in unknown situations; Hunted by Stepfather/family enemies; Feels Duty Bound to help those in need Weapons: Seems like she had some Martial Arts training but not much of a fighter. Skills: Bargain 50%, Climb 55%, Dodge 40%, Drive (Vehicle) 35%, Ride (war horse) 45%, Etiquette 40%, Hide 45%, Insight 50%, Jump 40%, Knowledge (Old Tech) 55%, Knowledge (Old Civilizations) 45%, Listen 45%, Spot 45%, Stealth 35%, Track 25% Language (Mok) 35% Special Items: Heavy War Horse *Okay, so in BRP terms this means how many points of effect she can use on the world around her. This can be as simple as the damage she does, the SIZ points she can lift, and so on. Give the Resistence Table a workout. Disintegration of enemy weapons? Yes, she did. Move heavy objects? Constantly. Mind control? Uh, maybe? Force Contructs? Yep. Blinding Flash of Light? Si. Cyclone? Right. The best simple 'magic use' system I ever saw was the original Marvel Super Heroes RPG where you just rolled on the chart for whatever you wanted to do. You needed a higher color for the more demanding stuff, but a good GM could make this work well. Simplified explanation, but it was close to that easy.

Well it is a supers game, so he has 16 hit points, is conscious until 0 or less, and can take up to half his CON in negative points before he kicks it. In other words, it takes 24 pts to actually kill him, and 30 if you count his base force field of 3 pts plus the 3 pt minimum for rolling those 3 dice. He will be part of an adventure where there is more detective work going on than usual. The heroes don't actually have to fight anyone until the main villain at the end -but could easily be involved in three super battles total depending on how they decide to handle things. Kid Phoenix will be eager to fight of course, but the heroes will have to push things a bit. I expect the players to think the Kid is really tough after the first attack or two does little to him, but the end of the round will tell the tale. He is really intended to be a nuisance villain, but when they meet him again in a year or so.... Besides, with a name like Kid Phoenix, would you expect him to stay dead?

Not a big fan of weekday gaming, but schedules being what they are, you can make it work. You get 2-2.5 hours of gaming in, so stopping points are welcome. I'm adjusting from weekends and having at least twice that much time. Also, my players really like destroying robots. Maybe it was my descriptions of the smoldering circuits and metallic limbs, but they felt like they had kicked butt and taken names. Having saved the Bay Bridge, they caught a ride on a police copter east, to the debris field just north of the Evans Creek Preserve. They quickly took note of the nearby auto salvage yard, checked out the craters for signs of NASA robots, then headed over to the now closed for business salvage yard. They had noted some dually tire tracks near the craters, deduced it was from the tow truck, and demanded to be let in to chat with one of the owners (Steven Walker) at the office building. Steven gave them evasive answers, refused to let them look around due to "liability issues" and clearly wanted them gone. Firefly walked back out the main gate, behind the fence and shrank down, to go explore the main shop. Gunslinger looked over the tow truck then ignored any protests as he walked out into the salvage yard and look for clues among the wrecked vehicles. Firefly saw quickly the place was a chopshop, as the men inside were taking apart a couple luxury cars. Gunslinger got ambushed by Ken Walker and his spider-like exo-skeleton. The guys in the shop let loose a couple robotic junkyard dogs, and the fight was on. Just as they finished off Ken and beat down the last of the dogs (Gunslinger much the worse for wear) a large robot rose up and the main battle was on. Hurling cars at them, Chopshop the robot finally hit Firefly with part of a thrown car. My niece protested at all the damage (first time her character really took a solid shot) the robot did, so I said, "Well, keep in mind Firefly just smashed through the front windshield... and the back one too." Pause. Laughs all around. Bugs, windshields, the jokes write themselves. They finished off Chopshop, with Gunslinger down to his last 4 hit points, tried to bluff the now armed workers into surrender (failed Persuasion rolls, so the workers yelled, "They're hurt, we can take them!") and made very quick work of those normal humans anyway. They were convinced there were more robots around, but left after finding nothing more and Kevin came out of the office and surrendered to the newly arrived police. I would change a few details of the adventure, if I had to do it again. While I wrote it up as just a "coincidence of comic proportions" that some NASA debris fell near the auto yard that just happned to have robots, I should have changed it to Ken Walker salvaging out some parts from the NASA debris and those parts being "just what he needed" to complete his homemade robots. I would also have Chopshop the giant robot (12' tall) being remotely controlled by Steven Walker and then I could have done a lot of trash-talking during the battle. Next up, I have an old supers adventure I printed off from a Geocities webpage back in the day. I think the site was called "Powered" and devoted to supers gaming of some sort. I wish I could credit the original author, but the basic plot is some stretchy guy is stealing from jewelery stores, the heroes catch up to him, he gets arrested, his super villain wife protests, then in the end they find out it was another villian, a mimic, who was behind it all. "Serve the Servants" seems to be the name of the adventure. I re-wrote quite a bit of the adventure, but the plot is mostly the same. There are no stats for the villains, but I want to say it was for Champions?

Well, I'm going to experiment with random force fields. I have a teenage super villain named Kid Phoenix who surrounds himself with a fiery force field. Random Force Field Cost to Buy: 4 Hero pts per level Energy cost: 1 pt per 1D6 protection Each level of this power protects 1D6 pts from all types of energy damage each combat round. The base protection is half the 1D6 levels (Kid Phoenix has 6D6 so he gets a base of 3pts) and the player can choose how many dice to use to defend from each attack (up to his max number of dice) each combat round. The force field can seal up airtight to keep out gas attacks or let the player dive under water with an extra minute of oxygen per level. The force field can be extended 1 meter per level to cover other people, objects or areas at double the power cost (2 pts per 1D6). Kid Phoenix is being shot at by Gunslinger, who hits once. Rolling 3d6 Gunslinger does 13 pts total. Kid Phoenix has a base of 3 and decides to roll just 2D6 against this attack. He gets 10 pts total, negating the attack! Kid Phoenix still has 4D6 to spend this combat round against other attacks. While his force field is underpowered (he is just a teenager) Kid Phoenix can protect himself from some heavy damage attacks -at least once per round. He could also find himself down to the base 3 pts if he uses all his dice up early each combat round. I will of course have him bluff the heroes by rolling 4D6 dice against the first attack and laughing (unless I roll low...). There are lots of extra features to add as desired. An Energy Projection attack using the force field to batter people, an Entangle attack that traps people inside a force field bubble/net, etc.

I'm going with Princess Ariel from Thundarr The Barbarian. No influence on any gaming campaigns, but she was cute.

I think we need to focus on the more important issue here -that I don't have MY copy of SoC! On a more serious note, how much would change for most of us if Chaosium slipped into the void? For those waiting on books and monographs to be published, (along with payments or for books bought but not yet recieved) there is a clear impact. What about BRP gamers as a whole? I'm running a campaign with a 30+ year old copy of Superworld, planning a brief BRP Star Wars campaign with a recent fan produced PDF. All the material published so far will be enough for me to game for the rest of my life, but there will be more fan stuff produced, no doubt. Then there are the other D100 systems like OpenQuest and so forth. Which is not to say I would not be saddened to see Chaosium gone. It has been a large part of my "gaming life" since the early 80's. I just mean that it will never be completely gone.

I was wondering myself. I have been waiting for my physical copy of Swords of Cydoria since early December. No reply to my last email, no tracking number, no book. I understand the Holiday season can be crazy, but they should be catching up by now.

Yeah, I had looked over the force field rules in Future World, compared them with the Super World version, then how first edition Gamma World did it, and so on with some other games. Future World stands out as an oddity since the force sword ignores all versions of armor, but is stopped by even a 1 pt Magnetic Screen. I like the idea of having to adjust for different types of damage, and that the force field eats up energy as it absorbs damage. A force field is cheaper to buy than armor in Superworld, but if you figure in energy cost, not so much. Being able to use the force field to attack, extend it to others, as an impromptu diving bell? Then it gets interesting again. On the other hand, I also like the idea of a set amount of points for a force field, say 50 pts? You know you can absorb that amount to start any battle, so you could do things that would otherwise put a hurt on you. Of course, as a GM I'd have minions with guns helping to drain those points down. Then again you have random armor rolls, so why not random force fields? You might take nada, you might take a lot. Who doesn't enjoy rolling dice? The BGB seems to have a pretty solid take on force fields at first glance, with different energy types and energy cost when damage is absorbed. The catch? There are 11 different types of energy! You also lose the shield when damage exceeds its level. Why am I not wearing armor again? I started this thread hoping to see someone post about what force field rules they use (mainly BRP style) and why those rules, uh, rule.

First, Link6746, I think that most people understand that Newtown was a near "perfect storm" of bad circumstances -with no easy or quick solution. I would be shocked if there was much backlash from the general public about Aspergers. The NRA solution was exactly what I would have expected. I will probably go the route of "each school assigned an armed guard" for my Superworld campaign. That said, I decided to skip over the school visit for now and focused on the city park idea. Gunslinger and Firefly (along with Great Uncle Stinger) attended a "Sustainable Earth Garden Project" ground breaking ceremony at Laurelhurst Park in Seattle. They were there to lend support to the project to plant gardens in various neighborhoods and schmooze with the Mayor. Firefly suspected something was up when she overhead from the stage a security guy and groundskeeper debating about how "how did that oak tree go so close to the speaker platform compared to where it was last night when things were being set up?" and then halfway through the mayor's talk, a couple starter fruit trees began growing bigger and blossomed. The crowd was awed and clapped, while the mayor stared at our heroes with a "Did you do this?" look. Suddenly, stepping out of the oak tree overhanging the stage was The Green Man, leader of the group Natural Disaster, an enviromental supers group. He praised the mayor and city for a "small step in the right direction" but warned that much more must be done and "we will be watching". He then transformed into a giant patch of dandelion seeds and blew away in the breeze. Someone in the crowd yelled, "Oh God! I've got allergies!" but no harm seemed to come to anyone. The players are now alert for Natural Disaster and have mixed feelings about how to deal with them. The Mayor finished his speech and was shaking hands when a series of sonic booms and flaming meteorites rained down from the sky to the northeast. A metallic sphere with breaking jets screaming came down nearby, extended three metallic legs, the top of the sphere pulled back, and Dr Null began making his speech, "Attention citizens of Omaha, look around you. The world you see today will soon be transformed for the better. I am Dr Null, future ruler of-" Gunslinger interrupted with a "This is SEATTLE, idiot!" A pause while Dr Null checked some tracjectory numbers. "Ah, I see. Well.... Attention citizens of Seattle, look around you. The world you see today will soon be transformed for the better. I am Dr Null -oh nevermind." The tripod sphere began marching toward the Bay Bridge. Gunslinger shot it down, learned it was only a projection of Dr Null inside, and then they headed to the Bay Bridge where the NASA Explorer-Replicator robots were busy building other robots out of the cars stuck on the bridge. As a bonus, I had picked up a NASA t-shirt at JC Penny a couple weeks back and wore it for this game. Three trashed robots later, the menace was over, with the heroes celebrating being able to knock the last robot off the bridge into the water below where it blew up on impact. They had rescued one citizen stuck in a vehicle being torn apart by the robots, but caused a lot of damage to a lot of vehicles during the battle. Our heroes had just recieved news that there was a SECOND debris field even further to the east when we had to call it an evening. Hoping to finish this up this coming weekend, when they will get a chance to explore the Walker Towing and Salvage Yard and find much more than anticipated. Also an outside chance at adding a third player/hero (the nephew headed back to school so Sir Baldarious is probably one-and-done) but things are still pretty busy for everyone, so we'll see.

I don't think I've seen force fields treated the same in any two games. As I was working on some super NPCs, I got curious about all the ways you can treat a force field power. Does it absorb a set amount than burn out/shut down? Does that mean it absorbs 10 pts per attack for example, or does it absorb all of the first 50 points of damage and then dissipate? Does it require only energy to activate, or does it take extra energy for every point of damage it absorbs/blocks? Only certain types of damage? Would it be fun to treat it like a reverse damage roll and try to match the attack damage dice ("Okay, roll your 4D6 force field to absorb the gunfire")? Does it protect from mental attacks? Does it prevent incorporeal beings from passing through? Can you expand it to protect others? Does it block outgoing attacks? Is it airtight? Does it do damage to others when touched? Let me simplify it down to one question: What is your favorite version of the force field?

Huh, funny, I played a bit of Cyberpunk by R. Talsorian Games Inc. back in the late 80's. Never cared much for the actual game system, but in measured doses the cyberpunk setting was fun. Running through the Net was interesting. Amusing that the starting date for the game was 2013. I picked up the GURPS Cyberpunk book a bit later, but never ran it (or any GURPS for that matter -though the setting books are usually pretty good, I don't care for the game system). The Sanity loss for adding all the cybergear is important. I don't know how any newer cyberpunk games have handled cyber-pychosis or net running. I would certainly be interested in a BRP cyberpunk book, though I don't feel in any way qualified to write any of it.

Well, reading this thread again in light of the Newtown tragedy, things have gotten really, really bad for our schools/society. Last month, in acticipation of the next Supers adventure (this coming long weekend) I had prepped a couple "public service" encounters/role-playing opportunities for the heroes. I wanted to forshadow the Dr. Drugs adventure by having a couple of the heroes (Gunslinger and Sir Baldarious) attend a school function at Warren G. Harding High School. They would be addressing the students in the auditorium for a quick "stay off drugs, stay in school" speech and then a question-and-answer session. It was going to be a chance to have fun with the heroes ("If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?" "Do you know Fury from the Golden Gate Guardians? She is hot!" "What's the easiest way for me to get super powers?") and in surprise twist -no villian attacks, no trouble outside of awkward questions. The other heroes (Stinger and Firefly) would be attending a city park grand opening across town where a couple members of the group Natural Disaster show up to praise the Mayor for "going green". The group members are either heroes or near terrorists depending on how far you think people should go to "protect the planet". Again, no battles or aggressive action. Then all the heroes get called away to help with an incident on Bay Bridge (Dr. Null and the NASA robots adventure). The idea of course is to build some "history" between the characters and people/places they will see again in future adventures. I have seen the players really enjoy a rematch with a villian, I like how they react when they realize "It's them, AGAIN!". Most of my past super adventures tend to happen more in a vaccuum and each adventure stands alone. I want to change that trend going forward. Back to the high school. While I had a quick mental list of questions the students might ask, the Newtown events and incidents since loom very large in my mind. We have seen a student bring a pistol to school at the encouragement of this parents (so he could protect himself), parents getting bulletproof backpacks for their kids, talk of arming teachers, armed guards at every school, etc. Crazy reactions to a crazy world. Should I abandon this idea for now? Ignore recent events? If not, what questions would the kids be asking? Should I include some angry/concerned parents in the crowd? I have tended to follow the Marvel/DC comic model, where big real world events happen, but the actions of the heroes and villians tend not to change the world around them very much. They "cancel each other out" in effect.

I really like the idea of resisting damage or shattering. What if you assume his glass body tempature is high, so he can be flexible? Hmm, the melting point of common glass seems to be around 1500 degrees C, so I guess he could double as a portable oven/blast furnace. Okay, maybe just assume his body temperature is much lower? You could make a strong case for weapon damage type to matter a lot though. An arrow hit versus a mace? Sword versus slingstone? Somehow, I expect the character to die in a fall. Or at least some adventures where he is trying to get body parts back from enemies, after getting shattered? Or he comes back as a smaller and smaller version due to the loss of mass? So he slowly shrinks down as the campaign goes on and he is put back together after damage?

The Jorune hack I was thinking of was for GURPS. Vagabond, you need to stop wasting all that time every night sleeping and finish BRP Jorune.

My thanks to AlmightyGM for creating the original. I took the BRP character sheet made by AlmightyGM from the download section, and modified it a bit for Star Wars (added "BRP STAR WARS" title, a little Millenium Falcon graphic, and changed one heading to "Force Powers"). I made another modifed version for my homebrew time-travel/dimension sliding BRP campaign I call "Multiverse". I'm sure I will modify things even more for each game, but it is a nice starting template. More "function over style", but I'm fine with that. I figure it will be easier on the newbie players to learn to "read" one basic style of character sheet across games (excluding Superworld of course). I was motivated to go back through a number of old RPG magazines I have collected over the years, and found several good Star Wars articles/adventures. I own a couple Star Wars modules I guess I picked up on a whim since they were on clearance (based on the stickers still on the covers). I have never actually ran a Star Wars campaign, but stringing together a short campaign (of 4-6 adventures) sounds like a good plan. I am assuming my potential players will be interested, I mean, it's Star Wars, right? It has always been on my list of "games I need to run/play someday". Of course, I ran across some of the Jorune articles from the old White Wolf magazine while doing this. Another "must run" campaign for me. Too bad I never liked any of the game systems Jorune was attached to. I think I have a BRP conversion someone did for Jorune, I need to find it and look it over. I digress....