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M&M - Heroes of the Shield [Group Full]
- Thread starter Insight
- Start date
Silverlion
Explorer
Skilled Hunter
I'd like to take on the Skilled Hunter, I've a character I played in Freedom Force computer game whose name I took for this forum that might work to fit the concept, my only dilemma is I see him as being British--essentially more SAS than CIA.
Silverlion
Conrad Gallant
Conrad was born to a world of wealth and prvivilidge but discoverd early on his family cared more for him and his sister as symbols of status than actuall children to love and cherish. Conrad howver was a strong willed boy who grew into a stronger willed young man, strong enough to take off wandering the world as soon as he turned 18 on a military ticket.
Yet he was always there supporting his sister emotionally with surprise visits, and letters contantly--until her college years. She moved across the pond to attend university. He last saw her 4 years ago when they met at their parent funeral (due to plane crash). During that time he traveled the world and lived a life of subtle, active leisure--visiting Africa, South America, and any place where wilderness remained with camera in tow. One year ago he came to visit his sister when her letters stopped reaching him. He found her apartment ransacked and strangely quiet suited men going through her things. With his sister missing he truly lost his focus. So he found a new one, turning years of hobby photography, tracking, and rough living in the wilderness into finely honed skilled detective and hunting talents to find his lost sister. Conrad has nencer explained some of his more supernatural capabilities (such as how his finger nails are strong enoough to tear like a lion's claws) or how he can mimic a lion's roar to the decibel. Yet using his senses, skills, and talents he managed to find clues to his sisters life, but no solid evidence to her disapearance. More recently he led worked to counter a gang/mafia war with the local authorities, and is generally well known for his pauses in rougher neighbourhoods where he stands as a sterling example of heroism.
Silverlion's name comes from a toy set his sister and he shared--a sterling silver noah's ark display--the only animal missing, a Silverlion (but had a silver lioness) Conrad's sister always calld him "her" silver lion.
Conrad appears to be a man in his late 30's with a shock of white hair and blue eyes standing a a bit over 2m tall and weighing in at 100kg of athletic muscle. As Silverlion he dresses in a black costume with silver gloves, boots, mask with a somewhat fank like motif and a rampant silverlion in shield across his chest.
I'd like to take on the Skilled Hunter, I've a character I played in Freedom Force computer game whose name I took for this forum that might work to fit the concept, my only dilemma is I see him as being British--essentially more SAS than CIA.
Silverlion
Conrad Gallant
Conrad was born to a world of wealth and prvivilidge but discoverd early on his family cared more for him and his sister as symbols of status than actuall children to love and cherish. Conrad howver was a strong willed boy who grew into a stronger willed young man, strong enough to take off wandering the world as soon as he turned 18 on a military ticket.
Yet he was always there supporting his sister emotionally with surprise visits, and letters contantly--until her college years. She moved across the pond to attend university. He last saw her 4 years ago when they met at their parent funeral (due to plane crash). During that time he traveled the world and lived a life of subtle, active leisure--visiting Africa, South America, and any place where wilderness remained with camera in tow. One year ago he came to visit his sister when her letters stopped reaching him. He found her apartment ransacked and strangely quiet suited men going through her things. With his sister missing he truly lost his focus. So he found a new one, turning years of hobby photography, tracking, and rough living in the wilderness into finely honed skilled detective and hunting talents to find his lost sister. Conrad has nencer explained some of his more supernatural capabilities (such as how his finger nails are strong enoough to tear like a lion's claws) or how he can mimic a lion's roar to the decibel. Yet using his senses, skills, and talents he managed to find clues to his sisters life, but no solid evidence to her disapearance. More recently he led worked to counter a gang/mafia war with the local authorities, and is generally well known for his pauses in rougher neighbourhoods where he stands as a sterling example of heroism.
Silverlion's name comes from a toy set his sister and he shared--a sterling silver noah's ark display--the only animal missing, a Silverlion (but had a silver lioness) Conrad's sister always calld him "her" silver lion.
Conrad appears to be a man in his late 30's with a shock of white hair and blue eyes standing a a bit over 2m tall and weighing in at 100kg of athletic muscle. As Silverlion he dresses in a black costume with silver gloves, boots, mask with a somewhat fank like motif and a rampant silverlion in shield across his chest.
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Dark Nemesis
First Post
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Last edited:
Insight
Adventurer
Character Update
Two of the submitted characters are in process. Silver Lion is pretty close to being complete, and Kid Paragon is just about done and ready to post on the Rogues Gallery thread.
Waiting for character submissions from the other four players. I hope to be able to start this coming Friday, but that's pending getting everyone ready to go, or at least 4 of you. So I guess in a sense, we're halfway there!
Two of the submitted characters are in process. Silver Lion is pretty close to being complete, and Kid Paragon is just about done and ready to post on the Rogues Gallery thread.
Waiting for character submissions from the other four players. I hope to be able to start this coming Friday, but that's pending getting everyone ready to go, or at least 4 of you. So I guess in a sense, we're halfway there!
Insight
Adventurer
Chat & Combat
I wanted to post something about how I would like the chat sessions to go for this game. Having thought this through, I think I have found some middle ground between what needs to be done in order to ensure we are moving the game forward and what needs to be done to best use the chat format to our advantage during the game.
Chat - General
I would like as many people to be on AIM as possible. This just makes it a lot easier to relay technical information about the chat format, as that is what I am most familiar with. If you absolutely cannot run AIM, your chat client needs to be one that has a built-in die roller that can accomodate d20 rolls.
If you're not sure how to use the die roller in AIM, ask one of us during the chat. The best way to do it is to copy the syntax to your computer along with 1 and 20 in the variables, so you can simply paste that into the chat window and get your die rolls going. 1d20 is pretty much all you're going to roll for M&M, so after that, you should be good to go.
Most of the time, your characters will be together, or at least mostly together in the same general area. But there will be times that the characters will be separated. Rather than create a huge headache and run separate IMs with everyone, I am going to run all of these in the main chat. I ask each of you to exercise your player vs character knowledge sensibilities in these situations, and not take actions based on player knowledge. In a perfect world, we would use the chat technology to completely avoid such a situation, but in practice, I have found running multiple chat windows hard on the GM and painfuly boring to the players who are not involved.
Combat
All right, this is where it gets a little more tricky. We need to have some guidelines to make combat run smoothly. M&M combat is designed to be easier on everyone involved, and enable some fun and exciting gameplay. To this end, I have come up with some guidelines that I think will continue the spirit of this sort of gameplay.
There needs to be an order to things during combat. For actions, this obviously is controlled through the use of the Initiative component. Thus, the characters will roll their Initiatives at the beginning of combat, and we will use that as a basis for their order of actions. When everyone has rolled Initiative, I will announce the order, including villains. I will be keeping track of the order offline, and will update with changes, such as held actions, etc. To make things easier on all of you, for each action, I will announce whose turn is up, and who is next.
Here is an example of what will happen at the beginning of combat:
GM: Everyone roll Initiative...
<each Player rolls online>
<offline, GM composes list of order, including villains>
GM: The order of actions will be Surge (villain), Water Dragon, Silver Lion, Doc Hazard, Giga-Bite (villain), Hinder, and Pitch Black.
GM: Surge (villain) is up. Water Dragon is next.
... and so on. In this situation, since a villain is up, the player for Water Dragon should think about what he wants to do.
If the scene has not already been properly set, the GM will reset the scene for everyone, before any actions are announced. Continuing the example...
GM: Surge stands in the middle of the warehouse, and Giga-Bite is about 20ft to the left. Around the villains are stacks and stacks of crates of various shapes and sizes, along with equipment used to move the crates around - forklifts and the like. The heroes have arrived through a large pair of shipping doors, and are about 40ft from the villains.
Finally, the GM asks the player what they will try to do. It is important to note that when you describe what you are trying to do, state a specific action ("Pitch Black will fly forward 40ft and punch Surge."). This must be done to move the action forward. If you have a specific question before taking an action, IM the Game Master. If its a more general question, feel free to post it in the main chat before declaring your action. General questions I would define as things that are likely to affect everyone ("How dark is it in here?"), while specific questions are things that just pertain to your character ("Do I detect the use of psi powers in here?").
In the case above, since a villain is going first, the GM acts as a player, and states the villain's intention, as such:
GM: Surge starts spinning and moves 30' toward the group of heroes.
Since there are no rolls or other actions/reactions to handle, the villain's action is complete, and the order moves on. At this point...
GM: Water Dragon is up. Silver Lion is next.
Water Dragon's player has already decided what to do, so he posts...
Water Dragon: I turn into water form and shoot Surge with a volley of water.
At this point, the action may move to IMs between the GM and the player, if additional information is needed. The GM will ask the player to make rolls and give modified results in the IM. If an NPC has a reaction to the player's action, the GM will post that in the main chat, thusly...
GM: Spinning wildly, Surge tries to move aside to evade the attack.
Now here's the cool part. No matter what the result, the Player posts the final result. He gets this information from the IM between himself and the GM. Let's say in this case, Water Dragon hit and damaged Surge...
Water Dragon: Surge takes the torrent of water right in the gut, sending the villain sprawling across the warehouse floor. Surge seems somewhat injured by the attack, but not knocked out.
Then, the GM moves the order forward once again...
GM: Silver Lion is up. Doc Hazard is next.
... and so on.
As a player, you have three main responsibilities during combat. First and foremost is to pay attention to whats going on, so as to alleviate as much as possible the delays in getting the action moving. Second, try to prepare your actions as much in advance as possible, again to help keep the action moving. Finally, you are responsible for describing part of the action, so do your part in making the game fun and exciting for everyone!
Die Rolling & Results
I ask that everyone apply their modifiers to die rolls, unless otherwise instructed. Please only roll the die and then post the total. I don't usually need to know your modifiers etc. If there is a question or issue, I would prefer to handle it through IMs rather than in general chat.
For Save DCs against your attacks or effects, I would ask that you advise the GM of that during the IM resolution phase of your action. This is especially important if your Save DCs have changed due to Power Attack or some other reason.
Let's go back to Water Dragon's attack in the previous example. The following would transpire in an IM rather than in the main chat.
GM: OK roll your attack.
<Die roll shows up in main chat as raw d20 result of 17>
Water Dragon: Thats a total of 28 on the attack.
GM: That hits! What's the DSDC? <----- Abbreviation for Damage Save DC
Water Dragon: 25. <----- this is the total: 15 base + ranks
<GM rolls the Reflex save (he has evasion) and posts about Surge trying to evade the attack>
GM: Surge tries to dodge, but takes a stun hit.
Then, the player posts the result to the main chat. That's basically how it will work.
As always, I will try to keep this updated as much as possible. We will most likely encounter things I haven't covered in this email, especially with the first session coming up.
I wanted to post something about how I would like the chat sessions to go for this game. Having thought this through, I think I have found some middle ground between what needs to be done in order to ensure we are moving the game forward and what needs to be done to best use the chat format to our advantage during the game.
Chat - General
I would like as many people to be on AIM as possible. This just makes it a lot easier to relay technical information about the chat format, as that is what I am most familiar with. If you absolutely cannot run AIM, your chat client needs to be one that has a built-in die roller that can accomodate d20 rolls.
If you're not sure how to use the die roller in AIM, ask one of us during the chat. The best way to do it is to copy the syntax to your computer along with 1 and 20 in the variables, so you can simply paste that into the chat window and get your die rolls going. 1d20 is pretty much all you're going to roll for M&M, so after that, you should be good to go.
Most of the time, your characters will be together, or at least mostly together in the same general area. But there will be times that the characters will be separated. Rather than create a huge headache and run separate IMs with everyone, I am going to run all of these in the main chat. I ask each of you to exercise your player vs character knowledge sensibilities in these situations, and not take actions based on player knowledge. In a perfect world, we would use the chat technology to completely avoid such a situation, but in practice, I have found running multiple chat windows hard on the GM and painfuly boring to the players who are not involved.
Combat
All right, this is where it gets a little more tricky. We need to have some guidelines to make combat run smoothly. M&M combat is designed to be easier on everyone involved, and enable some fun and exciting gameplay. To this end, I have come up with some guidelines that I think will continue the spirit of this sort of gameplay.
There needs to be an order to things during combat. For actions, this obviously is controlled through the use of the Initiative component. Thus, the characters will roll their Initiatives at the beginning of combat, and we will use that as a basis for their order of actions. When everyone has rolled Initiative, I will announce the order, including villains. I will be keeping track of the order offline, and will update with changes, such as held actions, etc. To make things easier on all of you, for each action, I will announce whose turn is up, and who is next.
Here is an example of what will happen at the beginning of combat:
GM: Everyone roll Initiative...
<each Player rolls online>
<offline, GM composes list of order, including villains>
GM: The order of actions will be Surge (villain), Water Dragon, Silver Lion, Doc Hazard, Giga-Bite (villain), Hinder, and Pitch Black.
GM: Surge (villain) is up. Water Dragon is next.
... and so on. In this situation, since a villain is up, the player for Water Dragon should think about what he wants to do.
If the scene has not already been properly set, the GM will reset the scene for everyone, before any actions are announced. Continuing the example...
GM: Surge stands in the middle of the warehouse, and Giga-Bite is about 20ft to the left. Around the villains are stacks and stacks of crates of various shapes and sizes, along with equipment used to move the crates around - forklifts and the like. The heroes have arrived through a large pair of shipping doors, and are about 40ft from the villains.
Finally, the GM asks the player what they will try to do. It is important to note that when you describe what you are trying to do, state a specific action ("Pitch Black will fly forward 40ft and punch Surge."). This must be done to move the action forward. If you have a specific question before taking an action, IM the Game Master. If its a more general question, feel free to post it in the main chat before declaring your action. General questions I would define as things that are likely to affect everyone ("How dark is it in here?"), while specific questions are things that just pertain to your character ("Do I detect the use of psi powers in here?").
In the case above, since a villain is going first, the GM acts as a player, and states the villain's intention, as such:
GM: Surge starts spinning and moves 30' toward the group of heroes.
Since there are no rolls or other actions/reactions to handle, the villain's action is complete, and the order moves on. At this point...
GM: Water Dragon is up. Silver Lion is next.
Water Dragon's player has already decided what to do, so he posts...
Water Dragon: I turn into water form and shoot Surge with a volley of water.
At this point, the action may move to IMs between the GM and the player, if additional information is needed. The GM will ask the player to make rolls and give modified results in the IM. If an NPC has a reaction to the player's action, the GM will post that in the main chat, thusly...
GM: Spinning wildly, Surge tries to move aside to evade the attack.
Now here's the cool part. No matter what the result, the Player posts the final result. He gets this information from the IM between himself and the GM. Let's say in this case, Water Dragon hit and damaged Surge...
Water Dragon: Surge takes the torrent of water right in the gut, sending the villain sprawling across the warehouse floor. Surge seems somewhat injured by the attack, but not knocked out.
Then, the GM moves the order forward once again...
GM: Silver Lion is up. Doc Hazard is next.
... and so on.
As a player, you have three main responsibilities during combat. First and foremost is to pay attention to whats going on, so as to alleviate as much as possible the delays in getting the action moving. Second, try to prepare your actions as much in advance as possible, again to help keep the action moving. Finally, you are responsible for describing part of the action, so do your part in making the game fun and exciting for everyone!
Die Rolling & Results
I ask that everyone apply their modifiers to die rolls, unless otherwise instructed. Please only roll the die and then post the total. I don't usually need to know your modifiers etc. If there is a question or issue, I would prefer to handle it through IMs rather than in general chat.
For Save DCs against your attacks or effects, I would ask that you advise the GM of that during the IM resolution phase of your action. This is especially important if your Save DCs have changed due to Power Attack or some other reason.
Let's go back to Water Dragon's attack in the previous example. The following would transpire in an IM rather than in the main chat.
GM: OK roll your attack.
<Die roll shows up in main chat as raw d20 result of 17>
Water Dragon: Thats a total of 28 on the attack.
GM: That hits! What's the DSDC? <----- Abbreviation for Damage Save DC
Water Dragon: 25. <----- this is the total: 15 base + ranks
<GM rolls the Reflex save (he has evasion) and posts about Surge trying to evade the attack>
GM: Surge tries to dodge, but takes a stun hit.
Then, the player posts the result to the main chat. That's basically how it will work.
As always, I will try to keep this updated as much as possible. We will most likely encounter things I haven't covered in this email, especially with the first session coming up.
Insight
Adventurer
Just a few notes for next session...
We need to get combat to run a bit more smoothly than last time. That combat should not have taken three hours to complete. To this end, I am going to create some cheat sheets for your characters' stats so I can get at some of the information I ask you guys for, and that will help to speed things up from my end.
What I am going to do are a few things. First, for things that affect your Defense (this is mostly what tends to fluctuate during battle and what I am normally asking for), I am going to assume that everything is standard unless you tell me otherwise. For those of you that have Dodge, I am going to assume that it is set to all foes (+1 vs everyone) unless otherwise stated. If you use Power Attack, All-Out Attack, Expertise, etc., I am going to assume that your bonuses will stay the same between rounds unless stated otherwise.
Also, I am going to institute a time limit on actions. Too many times, I was sitting there awaiting a response from a player. We need to keep things moving, so here's what we will do. Each player will have 3 minutes to make their action. If I don't hear anything from you within that time, I will control your character for that action. If we are in the middle of your turn and I don't get a response from you after a while, I will finish your turn, making any necessary rolls, etc.
Please post any questions or issues with these changes.
We need to get combat to run a bit more smoothly than last time. That combat should not have taken three hours to complete. To this end, I am going to create some cheat sheets for your characters' stats so I can get at some of the information I ask you guys for, and that will help to speed things up from my end.
What I am going to do are a few things. First, for things that affect your Defense (this is mostly what tends to fluctuate during battle and what I am normally asking for), I am going to assume that everything is standard unless you tell me otherwise. For those of you that have Dodge, I am going to assume that it is set to all foes (+1 vs everyone) unless otherwise stated. If you use Power Attack, All-Out Attack, Expertise, etc., I am going to assume that your bonuses will stay the same between rounds unless stated otherwise.
Also, I am going to institute a time limit on actions. Too many times, I was sitting there awaiting a response from a player. We need to keep things moving, so here's what we will do. Each player will have 3 minutes to make their action. If I don't hear anything from you within that time, I will control your character for that action. If we are in the middle of your turn and I don't get a response from you after a while, I will finish your turn, making any necessary rolls, etc.
Please post any questions or issues with these changes.
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