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Showing posts from 2013

Working Under Cover

I've been considering a pulp staple: covering the bad guy (or the good guy for that matter.) I'm thinking in particular about being able to whip out a small discreet pistol and threatening to blow some gorilla's brains out if he twitches. The problem being that small discreet pistols often do shit damage and big gorilla's often have a lot of hit points or endurance. So the plucky woman reporter grabs a hammerless .32 revolver from her clutch and covers Mickey 'the Rhino.' The revolver does 2d6 damage and as Rhino has 12 hit points he takes the shot and wrings the plucky woman reporter's neck. What can I say? He's a bastard. Players are often guilty of making similar choices (instead of roleplaying an aversion to being plugged.) Covering someone is a great way to set up a tense scene. But to do so you have to have a chance to come out on top and a chance to get screwed over and a few in between results. There is some justification in Traveller and o

Retro Traveler

Mongoose has used their version of Traveller in a variety of different settings as well as giving support for the traditional Third Imperium. Recently a number of OGL supplements have dealt near future and relatively hard SF settings such as Orbital by Zozer games. While working on my Microlite20 setting I received a request to run a pulp SF game using a setting I'd pitched a while ago. Basically humans use unobtainium from a disastrous meteor strike to build atomic rockets and voyage to a pulp solar system. Action is going to center on a Venus full of swamps and dinos. I pondered what system to use and decided to use Mongoose Traveller. It already has good rules for generating and running modern/SF characters and combat, rules for weapons, encounter systems with critters of all sizes (I can just port dinos in) and spaceships of various tech levels. Psionics can provide some mad science as well. Using Traveller in a pulp setting provides some challenges. I'll have to read t

Legion of Fantastic Heroes

Imagine a cosmos full of those floating islands I've posted about previously. Each island harbors a single fantasy race. They float or orbit relatively close to each other. Spelljammer type ships or chariots pulled by geese or whatever will allow the races to travel between them. Alignments are out or at the very least not mandated according to race. An orc can be of good alignment (though it's better to be safe and hang him - old elven proverb.) Unlike the typical fantasy setting the races are not necessarily at each others throats but affiliated in a confederation of sorts out of need. A demonic empire (or maybe a necromantic empire whatever anti-life/anti-freedom trope works for you) has attacked all the islands. Several islands were destroyed in the past. The remainder have begun talks to band together and defeat this evil force once and for all. A prosperous merchant and head of the largest trade guild who has already contributed arms and funds to the war effort has se

Laying It On the Alignment

Alignments. I have yet to meet two gms who agree on what alignments mean in the grand scheme of things. For that matter I have yet to meet two players who agree on what the alignments mean. Some people consider alignments the be all end all and you better play every move according to your alignment or else. Playing against your alignment leads to sanctions. You can be docked XP. You can be forced to change alignment in which case your old friends won't want to stick around you. Your god can yank your spells and special abilities (if you are a cleric or paladdin.) I prefer a more fast and loose treatment. There are after all nine alignments (without getting into those fiddly tendencies.) I never liked the idea of there only being nine responses to a given moral dilemma. I had a player ask me once how a paladdin should react to a betrayal by her superior (a non-paladdin.) I replied it depended on the paladdin and in that moment my take on alignment was born! Basically all my

Leveling the Game

I have a love hate relationship with class levels. On the upside you can create a non-player character fast and eyeball encounters pretty easily. Point based characters can be customized more, no contest there. On the other hand I'm using a rules light system. Four stats, five skills and more customizing means more rules. Microlite20 gives every character +1d6 per level, +1 to attack rolls and +1 to all skills. That's a little too streamlined for me. Why should mages advance in all attack rolls the same as fighters? It makes the fighter bonus to attacks and damage much less important (+1 at 5th, 10th etc.) I'm tweaking leveling up as follows: HP STR +1d6 per level. Skills +4 skill points per level. Max of Level +3 skill points in any one skill. Heroic Points + 1d6 Attack Bonuses for physical and magical combat are as follows: Melee/Ranged Fighters, Monks 1/1 level (1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10 etc) Paladdins, Rangers, Clerics 2/3 levels (1/1/2/2/2/3/3/3/4/4) Rogues, Ba

Segue Into a Good Cause

If I didn't mention it before I'm a teacher and hearing of a colleague in a rough   patch really makes me want to help out. The following was shared by Mark  Chance who I follow on Google + I'm Mark Chance, owner and sole employee of <a href=" http://spesmagna.com/ "> Spes Magna Games</a>. For my day job, I teach 5th grade at <a href=" http://www. aristoiclassical.org/ ">Aristoi Classical Academy</a>, a small classical liberal arts charter public school in Katy, Texas. Being a charter school in Texas, we do not receive the full funding from the state that a traditional public school receives. (For example, we receive no monies for facilities.) Consequently, my salary at Aristoi is thousands of dollars a year lower than it would be in a traditional public school. Now, mind you, I'm not complaining; I'm simply informing by way of a preface. One of my fellow teachers, who has fewer years experience than I, has hit a difficu

Fantasy Firearms

One of the innovations in my fantasy campaign will be gunpowder weapons. I'm doing chiefly this to show the players that sometime has passed since their old campaign. That and I had a lot of fun running them through a dungeon with mechanical monsters that was so much fun it must have been illegal somewhere. Those monsters screamed Steampunk to me and demands I address it. Gunpowder will be not quite magical. It's made with mundane means but tends to blow itself and the maker up. Muskets and pistols will be the weapons of garrisons and armies. Bows the weapons of adventurers. Learning to load a firearm is fairly simple compared to the years of training required to really master the bow. The saying went if you wanted a good archer begin training his grandfather. Gunpowder weapons are fairly easy to produce and a musket unit is much easier to raise than a longbow unit. In game terms a pistol does 1d8 damage and musket 1d10. Both are exploding dice. If you roll maximum damage

Races and Classes Pt. 2

The D&D game so far has the usual plain vanilla races: humans, elves, dwarfs, and hobbits. In my previous campaign I tried to stay away from orcs as easy adversaries. So I'm rulling that there are no sizable populations of them on the island (Old elf joke: Once there were two orcs ... now look. It's funnier in elvish.) Instead I'm going with gnolls. Lupinoids can be friendly types (doglike) or dangerous foes (think wolves, coyotes.) In fact I'm going with several types of gnolls (why should humans be the only ones available in more than one color.) Yeah, I know they're supposed to be hyena headed humanoids but it's my world.) Hyaenoid (hostile to humanoids and tough as hell) Gnoll: HD 2d8+2 (11 hp), AC 15, Battleaxe +3 (1d8+2) or shortbow +1(1d6) +3 Physical +1 other skills. Wolfoid Gnoll: HD 2d8 (9 hp), AC 15, Spear +2 (1d8) or shortbow +2 (1d6) +3 Physical, +2 Communication, +1 other skills. Wolfoids are more likely to use pack tactics (some sh

Races and Classes Pt. 1

I am fond of classes and levels in rpgs. On the plus side it's way easier to keep track of experience and do improvements to your character all at once than keep track of every niggling skill point and such. There is some concern that characters are placed in a strait jacket by their classes and not allowed to be individualized. I decided to alleviate some of this in Microlite20 when I run it. Instead of your primary class skill having an initial +3 and all skills increasing 1 per level characters start with 8 skill levels and may add up to 3 + their level to any one skill. So if you want a swashbuckler type fighter put some skill levels into subterfuge (good for feints and dirty tricks of all kinds) and communication (because hey smart ass remarks while waving swords around is required.) Characters will also use the optional fourth stat: Charisma (CHA) because I like social combat (and will probably write up something about it in a future post.) Besides the plain vanilla cla

Life on a Floating Island

This campaign is set on a floating island (at least initially.) I'm using Spelljammer-esque physiques since anything resembling real science leads to a lot of asphyxiated humans and demi-humans and the Undead laughing their heads off. The island was part of a larger world called Aarde. It is roughly crescent shaped. I haven't decided if the mother world exists still or there are only islands floating in the mist. There is no gravity as we understand it. Rather elements seeks their natural level. Levels from top to bottom are fire, air, water and earth. If you take these substances they will naturally fall into layers. As a result of this atmospheres are sharply defined. Flying more than a few thousand feet above the ground you encounter vacuum. The good news is you carry a small bubble of air with you. The Island is fairly sunny and warm. As one approaches the edge the temperature drops till you encounter a rim of snowfields, frost and glaciers. That's essential to ke

Over Planning

One of the worst sins I commit as a gm is over planning. One of my players once said that he felt like I always had a plan for what was over the next hill no matter which way they went as a party. I blushed a little then had a group of gnolls with polearms attack the party. In truth a lot of planning went into my last fantasy world. I mapped things out in minute detail. I made up a tree for language evolution and relationships. I came up with several major pantheons and worked out what the gods were doing when their people went to war with each other.* With all that stuff worked out it was very easy to fill in the cracks fast. Happily I don't have that free time anymore and sadly don't have the energy. So while I like to have an overview I'm not figuring out every store on Merchants' Row or what orcs have for supper (smaller orcs.) I'm also realizing more and more what I stat up and give my attention to should be things that involve the players. It makes it easi

Heel Turn Into Fantasy

I've been world building for a while and obviously concentrated on SF. All that is about to abruptly change as I'm getting the opportunity to actually run a game. Two of my old gaming group want me to introduce my Goddaughter (man I'm old) to fantasy RPGs. Since the parents had very fond memories of the AD&D 2nd Ed. game I ran many, many years ago I opted for one of the d20 engines and decided on Microlite20. Microlite20 where have o been all my life? It's simple to learn and run and it distills the essence of D&D into 8 frigging pages! You can prep a new monster in minutes and it's easy to convert the tons of D&D stuff I bought back in the day to it. So on to world building. The campaign starts on a floating island. If I'm going to do fantasy I'll go all out. The Island was part of a larger and disk shaped world called Aarde. This was the world my crew ran in those many years ago. Something very bad happened to Aarde/the Island. The learne

Care and Feeding of Zombies

With Halloween just ahead I stopped my Traveller designs to work on something more spooky: a classification system for zombies! Smarts  1) Bugs are smarter. Zombies react solely by instinct. Will walk off cliffs or into fire.  2) Animal cunning. Very dumb animals.  3) Feral human. Will throw rocks, particularly to break lights.  4) Semi-intelligent. Will throw rocks, use clubs and can learn rudiments of machinery. Could fire a rifle but not load it. Can open doors. Limited learning.  5) Near human. Often retains habits and knowledge of past life. Can learn by observing how to operate simple machinery. Quickness  1) Can plod slowly along. Forever.  2) Can stumble or shamble along at normal walking speed.  3) Can break into a shambling jog.  4) Can run but may fall.  5) Can run as fast as a human. Muscle  1) Half human strength  2) Below average human strength  3) Average human strength  4) Athletic human strength  5) Twice as strong as an average human Toughness  1)

M-Drives and Rocket Jocks

The major player in my next Traveller Campaign is the 'Polity.' I think FFE has copyrighted 'Imperium.' The Polity is made up of humans descended from Terrans who were abducted/saved at the end of the last Ice Age by aliens we'll call the Ascended. The Ascended ... ascended eventually. They evolved to the point where they no longer really had any cultural references with us lowly meatbags anymore. The humans left behind had access to their technology and managed to back engineer some of it with different degrees of success. Like the Terrans who arrive on the Up Port the Polity is about TL 9. They have gravitic drives and laser rifles and carbines. Their troops wear ablative (think chrome storm troopers who can hit what they aim for sometimes.) The Newcomers will probably assume they are much more advanced. The problem is a) the Polity is a stagnant culture (these humans are not as technologically inclined as the humans left behind on Terra) and b) having grav driv

Up Port Alpha

Up Port Alpha is built more or less to Traveller TL 9. The major difference between CT's tech level progression and my ATU's technology is that reaction drives are still used, at least by Terrans. Several sublight expeditions have been launched to Saturn and the outer worlds as well as the Oort cloud (they're very good reaction drives.) The port was built as a joint effort by the UN and the Lunar Republic. The Republic feels very strongly about weaponizing space and further antagonizing the Asteroid Coalition. Earth is determined to defend itself and its lukewarm ally. Alpha is 2000 displacement tons. 1500 tons is in a ring 20 meters in radius rotating at four revs per minute. This spin gravity takes some getting used to. The ring is 6 meters thick and 35 meters wide. It contains most of the space port systems. The ring is mounted on a central shaft that doesn't rotate and contains two shuttle (95 ton) hangars and two 50 ton berths for the two cutters. A smaller 15 to

Real Men Use Kinetic Energy to Kill

Traveller has been referred to as hard sf which is interesting for a game with FTL, psionics and reactionless drives. I always thought the reason for that was in the nuances. For example instead of blasters or other rayguns the weapons consist mainly of slugthrowers. Yep, board a ship in Traveller and you're liable to get shotgunned or similarly riddled with bullets till the air pouring from your vacc suit makes you sound like an convulsing bagpipe player. The game's designer defends this concept very eloquently: a bullet is a simple and efficient way to kill a person and likely to be around for a long time. Energy weapons make two appearances in Classic Traveller, the laser carbine and laser rifle and they are quite impressive and believable. An early laser carbine makes its appearance at TL 8 presumably for sniping or as an amped up targeting system. By TL 9 a culture has developed lasers as their battlefield weapons of choice and developed ablative armor to defend against

More on Minicosms

For the record I got the idea for minicosms (see Space: 2099 post) from the game Diaspora and an article in White Dwarf (can't find the issue sorry) by Marcus Rowland. You should check out Diaspora and anything by Mr. Rowland. The Alderson Drive used in Jerry Pournelle's Co-Dominium series is somewhat similar. The idea of minicosms is that a group of stars is very closed in jump space for various esoteric (handwaved) reasons that don't have much bearing on their real space locations. Alpha Centauri might be very close to a star in the galactic core for example but Earth might be nearly impossible to reach. Minicosms take the form of polyhedra with their component stars scattered across their surface. The most common form is a dodecahedron (sphere really.) Other shapes exist and I'll work them out if this game has any legs (a tetrahedron or torus would be awesome!) Unlike Classic Traveller in which a jump drive was measured in parsecs of range a jump is referred to a

Brother Alien

One of the tropes of many space opera settings (especially Traveller) is the scattering of primitive humans across the galaxy by an advanced alien race. Over the thousands of years in unusual environments some of these races may evolve strange abilities, morphologies and cultures. It worked for The Legion of Super Heroes. Battlestar Galactica did away with the alien travel agency entirely and simply assumed the humans somehow lost most of their technology after reaching Earth or wherever. The benefits to using this trope is that you don't have to create an alien race from scratch (which is a lot of work) and you don't have to worry that your new race isn't weird enough. After all they are human. The problems with this approach is that you seldom get any clue why  some advanced culture would take a bunch of cavemen (or Romans etc.) and plop them down on another planet let alone a whole bunch of planets. Some reasons: 1) Labor force- Humans are adaptable and show high

Fermi Paradox and Roleplay

If I'm going to do my take on a Traveller setting I think I ought to ponder the Fermi Paradox. This basically asks, "Where the hell are all the <censored> the aliens?" In an ancient and vast universe where is all the intelligent life? Most answers to this problem involve most of the aliens blowing themselves up before colonizing the galaxy. That's kind of a pessimistic view. It means that all these aliens managed to destroy themselves without ever managing to create at least one offworld colony to survive their equivalent of World War Three. It also means that our intrepid explorers will encounter many radioactive cinders with little of interest besides tech a few centuries out of date. Perhaps instead races usually develop interstellar travel after they already reached some new level of intelligence (or even a new kind of existence.) Humanity might be one of those very rare precocious races to find their way into FTL and discover a universe full off ancient

Space 2099

Reimagining 70's SF tv series like Battlestar Gaactica has become popular lately. I was trying to rework Space: 1999 which much like Galactica started with a cool premise but took far too many liberties with physics (to quote Isaac Asimov, "Moons don't do that!) and had a few problems with execution. Space 2099: mankind has moved out into the solar system with fusion drive ships. capturing asteroids and bringing them into Earth orbit for mining is a booming industry. Nevertheless Earth is facing stiff competition from miners in the Asteroid Belt and on Luna and negotiations for mining rights to the Jovian moons are breaking down. It is a tense situation and industrial sabotage and spying is rife. Asteroid Base Alpha is one asteroid and rumored to be the site of a very rich strike. Without warning the base suddenly is closed to ships and a new commander is called in. Arriving at the base the commander discovers the rumors are a cover for the high security. Scientists

Reinventing Traveller

I began reading some old school articles about Traveller. When I say Traveller, I refer to the bare bones 3 LBB set, better known as Classic Traveller or CT (here in New York CT has a much less flattering bit of slang associated with it so it's always going to be just Traveller.) I used to love this game. I must have run a half dozen campaigns in it before immature schmuck that I was I decided I didn't like the armor affects hit chances mechanics and a few other trivial rules and got into FASA's Star Trek. Traveller kept bringing me back in, especially when they fooled with the combat system. Now I'm older and (hopefully) wiser and have far too little time to read a 400+ page book to learn a new game and I broke out my LBBs, bought some new pdfs and started reading old articles. One of the things I'd tweak if I get a chance to run another game is the travel system. As it stands you have to travel weeks and weeks to get beyond explored space wherever you are. M

Steampunk in Five Points

Continuing my gritty steampunk setting what are the themes/tropes/memes etc? I have points to make (Five Points ... manhattan get it? No? Then go watch Copper on BBC and get a DVD of Gangs of New York .) Point 1 This steampunk is close to its roots - cyberpunk! You're either very rich and trying to get richer or very poor and looking to get very rich. Everyone is hungry. The street urchins want their next meal. The robber barons want bigger profits. Industry wants coal and steel. The army wants men. Point 2 Life is cheap. Death is everywhere. Confederates and anarchist are alway attempting what today would be called terror attacks. There's someone looking to roll you on every corner and that's just everyday life! Let's not even get into the what the Astors or Vanderbilts will do if you mess with their bottom line. In addition most medicine is pretty primitive apart from prosthetics or mad science. they can't treat TB but they can keep your brain alive in a jar i

Steampunk Redux

For your consideration: Things got really bad in New York City after the second Draft Riots. They were never too good. they got worse when the War Between the States started. The Republic needed soldiers and as always the poor supplied them. Immigrants coming off the boats were dragged off to serve in exchange for citizenship. The war is in its thirteenth year and every year has been worse than the ones before it. The British tripods sold to the Rebels turned the tide against the Union at Gettysburg. The only thing that saved Washington D.C. and the nation was the new lightning guns. Now both sides are nearly bankrupt and the wonder weapons becoming rare. Soldiers are going to win this, men shot up and rebuilt with clockwork arms and legs who just keep being sent back to the front lines. A Rebel submersible got into New York Harbor a few nights ago and used a gun that shot flames to set fire to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The fire gutted half the borough but the war goes on. They sho

Mystery Men Revealed Pt. 4 The Wild Die

One of the core mechanics of the d6 family is the wild die. There seems to be three opinions on the wild die: people love it, hate it or are doing it wrong. Basically you're supposed to roll one die as the wild die (which should be a different color to cut down on the number of knife fights.) If the die comes up '6' you roll it again and add the second roll to your total. if the second roll is also '6' you repeat. If the die comes up '1' then you remove it from the total and also remove your highest die roll. If this causes you to fail your roll the gm can then get inventive about just what went wrong. Supposedly some gms consider a '6' on the wild die to indicate success no matter what the rest of the roll is and a '1' to be an epic failure. This interpretation ticks off a lot of people but I suggest it with a few tweaks for a mystery men game. In the first place a success with the wild die doesn't let you do the impossible. A norm

Mystery Men Revealed Pt. 3 Men and Gods

Super strength is one the most common if not most common super powers (I'm pretty sure that's an oxymoron.) Wikipedia defines it as ranging from just above that of a powerful weightlifter to nearly limitless. So far I've dealt with more or less human characters now I'm taking on those of god-like stature. In the 40's there were a lot of them. Their strength levels were all pretty ludicrous. Super strength often leads to greatly inflated character stats. Captain Marvel was shown restarting the earth's rotation, surviving the explosion of a billion tons of TNT, and stopping the eruption of a volcano (and that was just in one story!) I don't even want to think about how many dice in lifting and stamina he'd have. Super strength falls into two categories: limited and (for most purposes) unlimited. Limited super strength is anything between 6d and 10d in lifting and stamina. Heavy firepower can still mess these people up. It's the gm's call on jus

Mystery Men Revealed Pt. 2

Okay we're making Golden Age style mystery men characters and we need a quick and dirty way to do it. I'm using Mini Six and looking taking a long hard look at the 'Making the Game Your Own' Section. Most d6 games default to rolling a number of dice you get by adding attributes and skills and trying to beat a number based on the difficulty of whatever you're doing. I'm going to break from that and use the No Attributes rule. Instead of the default 7d ice for skills you get 25d. I could have just added more attribute dice but I'm trying to keep it simple and fast. Attributes are all considered to be 2d. That's what most people roll for something you have no skill in and what you add to any skills you purchase. It varies for heroes. Bear in mind a normal person would have 2d to roll in most situations and maybe 3d for their profession. A thug or policeman probably has 3d. Most characters should have at least 4d in brawling and dodge. What skills do

Crunchkins

Before I start working out the rules for my Mystery Men game I'd like to address crunchkins (I don't think I ever heard that term before, if I invented it yay!) A crunchkin is a player who desperately needs a rule for everything. They are attracted to extensive and well developed rules systems and often nest in GURPS and Hero System forums among others. I hasten to add that they are a small minority of gamers and using a crunchy system doesn't mean you're automatically a crunchkin. Crunchkins are not exactly rules lawyers, those guys try to work the rules for their own gain. A crunchkin just wants to be sure they are doing things the right way. Some very good friends of mine are crunchkins and they're great roleplayers and gms. Crunchkins probably will not like the way I set up my game. I'm usually the sort of gm who hides behinds screen so the players can't see I'm improvising like mad and most of my notes consist of sketches of My Little Pony chara

Mystery Men Revealed

I was perusing the public domain super hero sites and naturally started thinking about using these characters in gaming. Here's my thoughts on running a mystery men style game. When you're dealing with Golden Age characters background and continuity were not foremost in the minds of their creators. I've often written a page or two of background for a character I've run. I doubt Bob Kane could have written a hundred words about Batman's personality when he first drew him. Most of these guys just threw on a dyed tights and started fighting crime. that was their origin. If they were supers they found a pill, elixir, ray, magic spell that gave them their powers and then they just threw on tights and started fighting crime. So, say you pick a character out of the public domain what makes this character stand out? The answer is probably not a lot! After all if they were in public domain they probably lacked a certain staying power. Not always, sometimes companies went

The Wardrobe of Justice

You have your mask (if any) you have your cape (if any, I don't judge.) Both are optional but the rest of the costume kind of ties things together and keeps you from being socked with indecent exposure charges (I want to see the cop with the balls to ticket Dr. Manhattan though.) There are several costume genres. Realistic, also known as cheap, means you're buying stuff off the rack or maybe fighting crime in normal clothing. Normal clothing has a tremendous advantage for the secret identity user. No one can go through your closet and discover your union suit thus outing you (That thing? I wore it to Mardi Gras. Yeah I know it's bulletproof and flame retardant; have you ever been to New Orleans?!) As an alternative to street clothes a hero could wear athletic gear (enter ... the Quarterback!) Some rigs, particularly for dirt bike riders looks made for supers. They also can afford some protection (speaking of which an athletic cup could pay for itself many times over eve

The Cape Controversy

Superman or Batman without a cape smacks of heresy. I shudder to think the powers that be almost decided to remove Supe's cape for his latest movie flight. The consensus is Superman started the cape fad. The golden age Superman's costume was inspired by a) circus strongmen and b) acrobats. Historically some acrobats used their capes in their acts to control their falls. This makes sense if you remember Superman originally didn't fly but make extraordinary leaps. So I suppose any human grasshoppers could use a cape likewise. The movie The Incredibles gave capes a bad reputation listing numerous wearers who suffered due to getting their cape snagged. I think they have a point however a super who can't tear his cape off in a pinch or design a quick release for it isn't much of a hero. Capes can keep you warm on a cold stakeout or protect you from the elements. I suppose a world with flying people also has room for bulletproof capes to add to a hero's protecti

Super Hero Fashion

Let's talk super fashion namely: costumes. The hardbitten urban warrior types refer to these as uniforms. Whatever. They are hardly uniforms unless you have a team wearing the same outfit which could have advantages as I will discuss later. First up -masks and gloves. Masks- masks serve to conceal a person's identity (d'uh.) If you're really serious about this a full face mask is the only thing that will do. This has a downside of possibly interfering with breathing and talking and if your super is going to an awards dinner in his honor he'll have a hard time getting sweet and sour shrimp past it. Mouth holes are just icky. Then again if you're really serious about not being outed the first and foremost rule is don't make scheduled appearances in public! Sadly these day even wet behind the ear cookie bandits have their own cel-phones so someone is going to take you picture and with the face recognition software on the market today only a full mask or simil

Supers and the Rule of 15

I had an idea for a super setting for an RPG or maybe a novella or three. Being prone to overthink I wanted to start by setting power levels. Sadly I can't just assume the hero can lift a building in his hands (unless he was using TK to mimic super strength you'd end up with a demolished building and that'd make a difference to me.) So I came up with the 'Rule of 15.' The Golden Age Superman in his earliest appearance could lift a car that weighed around 3000 pounds. A very fit human male could lift 200 lbs. So 3000/200= 15. Super powers magnify human capabilities by 15 where applicable. In DC Heroes terms this is a puny +4APs for a stat around 7-8 APs which is still pretty good. You could rip apart a normal car or flip an armored truck. In Open d6 I'm not as sure. I'm still trying to work out benchmarks for it but it seems to equate to +5d which is also pretty good. So supers wouldn't be able to flip tanks. A brick still could probably run up to o