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Michael Hopcroft

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Everything posted by Michael Hopcroft

  1. I would think there could be only one Fastest Woman Alive (She wouldn't be the Fastest Woman Alive if there were another woman who was faster), but that may be a world-building question. The project I'm starting is based around powers based on Zodiac signs. Sagittarius is a superhuman archer, Scorpio's punches can penetrate anything (like a scorpion's sting), Cancer's defensive shields are nigh impenetrable (like a crab's carapace), etc. These powers are only "on" when called upon, so in her personal identity Scorpio doesn't puncture everything she touches. So the Zodiac sign affiliation would be the main power, with Breakouts for specific tasks?
  2. Thank you very much. So write now, translate when the new documents come out? Sounds like the approach to take.
  3. In the Supers genre, I'm torn between using a single keyword to match an entire powerset (like The Fastest Woman Alive!) and risk a player spamming it to the point of nonsense, or whether players should be asked to list and spread their points to each power (so Faster than a Speeding Bullet!, More Powerful that a Locomotive!, and Able to Fly Higher than any Plane! would each be their own keyword). Some extensions make sense (being able to read an entire book in a few seconds might be no sweat to The Fastest Woman Alive!), some may need clarification (Does being Able to Fly Higher than any Plane imply the ability to breathe at those altitudes, or even in near-vacuum conditions?) and some would really be stretching it ("I'm The Fastest Woman Alive! I can throw 800mph fastballs!") Mind you creative use of Keywords that represent superpowers should be encouraged. But which is the better approach! Should the guy who's unbelievably strong and is also bulletproof because his body is so dense have to buy separate keywords? And should GMs set limits on how may keywords a superhero/heroine should be able to take at character creation?
  4. I guess the question for me is whether the rules will have significant enough changes that I can work on a HQ project now and not have to do the entire thing over again when the SRD is released into the wild. I own both HQ and HQ:G so I have a core to work with assuming the system undergoes no substantial changes.
  5. This merits some research: There are Energy Projection and Teleport spells in the Sorcerer's lists in OpenQuest. But Sorcerers are rare and, in the eyes of most folk, frightening and more than a little suspicious. a lot of people will not meet one over the course of their entire lives -- and that includes city-folk.
  6. Finally! The final files are coming in the morning, and the module should be ready for sale by Tuesday, with Kickstarter backers getting their copies over the course of the week. Thank you to everyone!
  7. OK, so setting aside media franchises, which as we all see don't work financially -- what qualities would differentiate a good, original Superworld setting from, say, a good Champions setting? What type of setting plays to Superworld's strengths and compensates for its weaknesses? And what type of setting would be good enough to make people want to play it in Superworld while making something that is definitely aimed at this game?
  8. How many of those stars have habitable exoplanets (assuming there is such a thing, which I doubt)?
  9. Thank you for all your advice! I think I will be pitching my fantasy anime idea soon enough (things like Slayers, Sword Arts Online, Overlord, etc.), especially as influenced by video games like the Final Fantasy series.
  10. Thank you for the offer. he problem I see is that many genres are variations on other genres, leading to the likelihood of multiple creators working on things that might be considered very similar. Like distinguishing between wuxia, anime-style fantasy, and the really over-the-top shonen series like the Dragonball franchise (I'm thinking about the style, not getting a license to make a Dragonball game). Tat's the problem I face when I inquire about something like that -- how do I know someone else isn't doing something so similar that we'll eat into each other's market?
  11. Galaxy Express 999 was transhumanism before there was a word for transhumanism. So was Testuwan Atom/Astro Boy, which dealt intensely with the idea of robot personhood (robots become more common and some face discrimination and have to conceal their nature, while Atom'/Astro cannot conceal his otherness and is accepted because he is a powerful "superhero". Osamu Tezuka was a devout Buddhist, and very humanistic, so he had a great interest in what qualities make one human and how those qualities apply to other types of beings. Astro is built to duplicate the lost son of his inventor, but is discarded because he cannot perform the essential function of a human child -- to grow up. But while Astro can't grow up physically, when under proper, compassionate guidance he grows up mentally and morally.
  12. And now there are three days left before the Kickstarter funds. I have the money it will take for just putting out the book, but I still have a great desire to get it out and start my new company on the right foot. So if you want to back the KS, time is limited -- and marching. Onward. Ever onward. Moving up and down again. There's no discharge from the war!
  13. And I now have a Print reward based on my eligibility for Print-on-Demand services though Drive-Thru. Pledge $10 and you will get a "free" PDF and will be able to buy a print copy at cost -- you pay only printing and shipping, neither of which should be expensive on a small book. Should I inquire with Kickstarter over international pledges? I have one pledge from Bahrain and am hoping to get pledges from the large UK/Europe contingent here. The more the merrier, and the more I get the more likely it is that I get everything I need done taken care of timely (I find that layout people and other creatives prefer to get paid for their work -- I mean, who wouldn't?)
  14. Thank you. Don't know what Chaosium would call "solid" though. And I need more of a track record, I believe. That's one reason I'm tearing my hair out over the Kickstarter.
  15. Since I don't know that I can change the name of a topic, here I am. If you wish to chastise me, go ahead. I am going to be releasing a new adventure for OpenQuest and other d100 system games called "The Mirror Tells Her Lies", about saving a village and its leader from a force of "Pure Sin" centered in a haunted church. The project is in Kickstarter mode now and has already reached its funding threshold, but with seven days to go this is a chance to get your hands on it before anyone else does (like if you're a GM who doesn't want your players to know what happens before you do) or if you simply want to encourage people to support d100. Here's the URL: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mhpress/the-mirror-tells-her-lies As of right now, seven days remain to back the KS -- a bargain at $3 US for a copy in preorder. I also have a reward level that puts your name in the book as a Patron, which includes yo0ur copy. Unfortunately, the NPC reward is sold out.
  16. Have there been any further announcements on a release date for the SRD, so we can finally get our hands on "the tools to make the tools"?
  17. I will be very interested to see the "first" take on superheroes. I remember when D&D 3.0 and the first OGL SRD came out and I recall four different D20 takes on superheroes, I read two of them. Foundation was unremittingly awful while the Silver Age Sentinels d20 edition was serviceable but lacked something the Tri-Stat version had in abundance -- a lack of ability to scale well, or at all. Green Ronin, of course, outdid everybody, using just enough d20 to be recognizable but importing their own core mechanic for things like powers -- becoming much more scalable and, at the same time, a great deal more like the comics they were emulating. That game, of course, was Mutant and Masterminds and was the biggest commercial success of the lot. It also worked: I was playing their Superman-pastiche at DunDraCon right after it came out and reveled in the fact that I could actually do basic Superman stuff like smash into a giant robot and pop out on the other side leaving a me0sized whole in between. The bad thing is that I won't know whether I'm duplicating the other writer's work until I see it. The main scalability problem with MHS is that they never did adequately define what an "area" was as a unit of measurement as opposed to the spaces on a map. Perhaps they simply loved to sell maps. I don't know if I was the only one who saw the scaling problems that resulted.
  18. I had to bump this because I don't know if anyone from the OQ community has seen this Kickstarter, modest though it is. With 11 full days left, the KS stands at 80%. Mind you, that's only $80US, but it means I'm well short of the goal. It would also be great to know how you think I could have done better on marketing this campaign. This time my needs are small and easily met, but this is for a 12-16 page module. The next project will probably be just as small -- maybe a little larger, but I'm working on more than just the text. There are many other things I will be working on as well, not just writing the modules. This module and this Kickstarter is the start. Hopefully, it will lead to a long and interesting journey.
  19. That gives me an idea -- a setting with a Late Medival social environment with powerful guilds, universities, rapidly centralizing governments, and merchants starting to eclipse the power of landed nobility. Adding sorcery and demihumans to that setting would lead to some interesting mixes, with rival nobles, guilds, or individual guild leaders hiring mercenary mages to settle disputes, crime is organized to a degree (organizations like "the mob" are starting to form whose main income is from loansharking -- they will give you money for any venture, however shady, but you'd better pay them back...But something apocalyptic may be on the horizon -- maybe there is a social ground of dragons nearby facing a crisis of their own that might cause them to lay towns and even cities to waste, or maybe the city is in the path of a massive Orcish invasion of the civilized world (and who organizes Orcs quite that effectively?). This looks like it might be a potential book... the question is whether I have the knowledge to write it! (At the workshop I attended last month, it was suggested writers keep a "candy jar" for ideas they can't use right away -- because eventually, it might be time to use that idea. I have a very large candy jar already.)
  20. I wonder if QW would support user-created powers -- powers that are initially described when designing the character has its capabilities explained, It's one of the ways the '80s Marvel Super Heroes game from TSR accommodated the scores upon scores of Marvel characters; define what each character did and give each ability its own Intensity ratings. Instead of fitting the new power into a list of pre-generated ones, it simply described the power and left it up to the Player or GM to make it work in play. Sure, the power level wasn't balanced, but neither are the comics. Genre emulation in action. I wouldn't try to do that with BRP, but it just might work in Questworlds.
  21. The DC Animated Universe had to be careful with lethality and built that into the characters as well. Superman always managed his actions to never hit anyone at his full strength. The famous "World of Cardboard" quote was from the DCAU. It is an interesting comment that provides insight into playing Superworld. Characters who don't want to kill anybody, ever (whether out of deep conviction or fear of negative consequences if they do) will have to cautiously assess their moves and keep up their self-control. If a hero like Superman or the Flash doesn't have razor-sharp focus and perfect self-control, the result is death and destruction on a massive scale (Flash should, logically, be killing dozens of people every time he runs at full speed, which suggests he is always toning it down or has found some way to reduce the side-effects in the environment.) That could be part of the point of the campaign, actually. The superheroes are either super-careful and occasionally forced into situations where they MUST take off the kid gloves, or they don't care and become a threat to everybody they can reach (the plot of The Boys seems to center around this concept, where government-sponsored heroes must be stopped, and possibly even killed off, before their powers destroy the world).
  22. I think one reason is the system's ongoing identity crisis. which is beginning to be relieved -- HQ Glorantha is such a superb product that people who would not otherwise bother with the system are looking at it with fresh eyes. Chaosium is on a huge roll in terms of fan acclaim and commercial success.
  23. It looks like most of the genres that require specialized rules (supers, mecha, etc.) seem to be taken. So if I were to go in cold and write something for QuestWorlds, would I have to wait to do some things until I know what I would have to become compatible with? Or would I be able to go in on my own, knowing rules will contradict someone else's more popular rules set?
  24. I'm trying to map out an adventure set in a capital or good-sized city of some monarchy. There's a bit of mutual social-class resentment going on, and some of the students at the local university occupy a middle ground where they must eventually choose sides. There is a tavern frequented by these students to which a hotel serving mainly middle-class lawyers, accountants, salesmen, etc. is uncomfortably close. So sometimes the two will meet, with the usual result that the kids moon the notables and laugh mockingly -- not seeming to recognize that someday that will be them. Or will it? I don't imagine officers of the state or the courts especially enjoy it when they get the ***** of drunken college kids thrust into their faces. The question is what sort of action they will take, and how PCs become involved. Now, this will be a somewhat different setting, as most OQ campaigns are not civilized enough to have universities -- it's hard enough just teaching people to read. I want to create a situation where the PCs may be called upon to take sides and act before the students get totally out of hand. (of course, there's some question that they will -- "We can't overthrow the state this week! Have you forgotten our midterms?"). But ideally, violence will be prevented because the students have no chance against the veteran soldiers of the City Watch when it comes to a fight. In a fantasy world, what is the typical punishment for showing grievous public disrespect to someone ahead of you on the totem pole?
  25. You can find -- and back -- the Kickstarter here. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mhpress/the-mirror-tells-her-lies I am already halfway to my goal of $100. But if I fall short of it, the KS doesn't get me a penny.
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