Next month, I'm going to be playing in an Emerald City M&M game.  So I've been in a supers mood lately, and have been playing with Fabrica de Herois again.

Yesterday, I got the idea of seeing how close to some published supers I could get.  I did three yesterday in amongst several original designs.

Captain America came out fairly well.  One big disappointment was that as far as I can tell, Fabrica 2010 doesn't have a shield you can use anywhere.  I would have settled for the kite shield design, but I couldn't find one at all.  I guess I could have put a round shield on his back by abusing the circular symbol, but I didn't think of that until just now.  But I managed to get the wings on his helmet by abusing a set of pointed ears, so I'm reasonably pleased.

The striped midriff was really tricky, by the way.
EDIT: And I just now noticed I forgot to put the scales on Cap's uniform.  Darn.



Spider-Man was remarkably easy.  I wish I'd used the option for a thinner body  But there was no challenge in the costume panels or the chest emblem.  His eyes aren't quite right.  I could have messed around a little more to get the black rings around the white lenses if I'd wanted to take the trouble.



And to represent DC a little, here's Captain Marvel.  He was dead easy, other than the cape.  There's not really a way to get the cape Captain Marvel really wears.  It's a very complicated half-cape worn across one shoulder.  I settled for the one you see here, which at least has the nifty gold cord.

And as a last treat for the day, here's the costume I'm probably going to use for my character in the M&M game: Mister Amazing!  (The "!" is part of his name.)



Mister Amazing is a pulp-type hero who's amazingly (heh) good at all kinds of stuff.  His mind and body are at the upper limits of human ability.  He's the master of dozens of esoteric disciplines, and inventor of new technologies.  Now he's turned his abilities to protecting his adopted home of Emerald City.

I've actually had the image, the text, and the stats since Monday.  I'm just now getting around to bringing them all together in one place.  This guy is a Novice level character, and pretty straight forward.  He flies around, hurts people, and breaks things.  Leveled up, I'd probably throw some more damage and modifiers into his attack, primarily.

Rattletrap
Agility d8, Smarts d4, Spirit d4, Strength d8, Vigor d6

Charisma 0, Pace 6, Parry 6,Toughness 5

Skills:
Driving d4, Fighting d8, Intimidation d4, Notice d6, Piloting d8, Shooting d8, Stealth d6, Taunt d4

Hinderances:
Gloator (Major), Vengeful, Greedy

Edges:
Arcane Background (Superpowers), Deadshot, Power

Powers:
Armor 6 (requires activation)
Attack (ranged) AE 1, Knockback
Flight 12"
Earthquake

Small-time thug Bruno Maltese was one of several criminals involved in a raid on an experimental technology lab.  The job was to smash the place up and engage in a little good-natured arson to teach the squints what happens if you don't pay your protection money.

Bruno was merily smashing his way through a robotic assembly station when he found the suit - an advanced prototype power armor built around a unique microreactor.  He decided to take it as a souvenier.  And he really hit the jackpot when it turned out the damn thing worked.  The suit was made out of light-weight, very strong ceramic and carbon-fiber materials, and was a platform for a unique vibration weapon.  It could project waves of force or tear up the ground.

 Bruno decided to go into business for himself as an enforcer for hire.  Mostly, he still does contract work for his old boss, but he'll hire out to anyone who needs people hurt and stuff broken.  With the suit, Bruno could be a major threat, but he still has the mentality of a small-time thug.  Left to his own devices, he'd knock over banks or something, and swiftly end up in Dankwell.  As it is, he frequently has to work for employers who have the means to repair his suit and recharge its power source.  What loot he doesn't waste on booze and hookers generally gets sunk into black-market technology.  But he still dreams of the big score that will set him up for life.

He absolutely hates the name "Rattletrap," but can't decide on another one.

This week's blog update will be delayed slightly, due to stuff.

See, the thing is I've recently decided to give Savage Worlds a go.  I bought it at Gen Con along with the supers companion.  As a way to dig into the system a little, I've decided to rip off Theron Bretz' idea on his "My Dice are Older Than You" blog of posting supers characters (and maybe some other characters, as the mood strikes me).  But one thing is holding me back.

I didn't have room to get the stuff I bought at Gen Con into my bag for the trip home, so I sent Savage Worlds home with a friend who was driving.  (Thanks, LJ!)  I'll be taking possession tomorrow, if nothing goes wrong.

So I'll probably have something to show you on Monday or Tuesday.

If I feel guilty enough, I might upload the last few Gen Con pictures I have, but I didn't take many, and they're really pretty boring.

I don't take a lot of pictures, but I have taken a few.  Here they are, for your amusement and occasional horror.

First of all, a lovely picture of the state of Oklahoma.  I've never seen it looking better.



Here's Tim (DM Tim of Radio Free Hommlet)




Here's the Doctor Who collectables booth.  The TARDIS has been around for years, but the Dalek is new.




This was a small fragment of the crowd at the opening ceremony yesterday.  Thank GOD I got to be a VIG companion this year, and thus had no reason to stand in it.




The new sculpture for the alcove where the Westin skyway meets the convention center.




The villains of my childhood.  To simply look at them was to hear outraged screeching in the echoes of my memory.




That's just a little of the cool stuff I've seen.  I'll probably take a few more pictures tomorrow.

Hey Gamer Nation,

A day early and a bit short since I'm probably going to be crazy busy for the next couple days getting stuff squared away for Gen Con, here's the revised combat cards.

First, the PDF : Unisystem Combat Card Blank mk2.pdf (8.25 KB)

Second, the blank card .pub file : Unisystem index Blank mk2.pub (144 KB)

And finally, the black border version I use myself : Unisystem index Fill mk2.pub (145 KB)

I may not see you this weekend or next weekend, since I'll be at Gen Con.  Usually, I do at least upload a few pictures.

Hey all,

We just played our first session of Hyperseed, so I got to try out my shiny new combat cards.  A battle with four PCs and seven NPCs went very smooth.  There were only two little hiccups, which I will probably fix with revised cards.

Problem 1 is that for unnamed NPCs, there's no good place to label each instance of a character.  I had six soldiers with identical stats, and I had to squeeze in a little number for each one.

Problem 2 is that I've decided for my game at least, Endurance is important to track.  One of my PCs uses Mindheal/Mindkill, and the easiest way for him to be effective is to zap enemies with his Mindkill 3 pain effect and wipe out their Essence or Endurance, which both tend to be smaller numbers than Life Points.  (And less murdery)

My cards have no Endurance slot, since I needed room for Initiative.  That's okay for mooks and non-powered guys.  Their Endurance and Essence pools tend to be pretty close, so the Mindkill guy isn't unfairly penalized.  But the PCs will eventually be facing other psychics who have Essence pools considerably higher than their Life Points.

I think I'm going to shift Initiative to the top bar and squeeze in an Endurance slot.  This will probably also mean I split the Life Pool and Endurance Pool trackers into smaller boxes.

I'll see if I can get that done this week to keep my one update per week streak going.

Hi campers.  This makes three weeks in a row.  It's been a crazy-busy weekend, though, so this is going to be a pretty short contribution.

We just did Chargen for my Hyperseed game last week, which reminded me of something I don't totally dig about Classic Unisystem.  The skills get really fiddly.  It's realistic, but not particularly heroic.  But then again, it's also not totally necessary.

Take the basic melee skill.  The game says you have to specialize the skill, and based on the way characters are written, the idea seems to be that a fully-trained historical warrior would have three or four different weapon skills, one for swords, one for axes, and so on.

But you don't really NEED to do that.  You can use similar weapons at a penalty.  So if you want to be a rocking swordsman who's also competent with axes, spears, and numchucks, you're mathematically better off increasing your Sword skill by two than trying to buy three other skills up to a similar level.

Similarly, Science and Academics are skills you're supposed to specialize.  But rather than penalizing players who would like to play characters who are really well-read or trained in science (instead of being Navy SEAL ninja gunfighters), I think you could probably take one Science or Academics skill and just use the others at a penalty.

And to keep things simple, the penalty is either -1 or -2.  Mostly -1. That way, you can also just buy an extra Specialty and even your skills out if you want to play a guy who's generally competent with everything instead of an expert in just one.

So anyway, that's it for this week.  Happy birthday to my favorite niece.  (Her birthday was yesterday, but the party was this afternoon)

See you later.

First of all, a note: I've added a PDF to the Unisystem Chronicler's Screen.  I meant to upload the PDF the first time, but I'd saved it to the wrong folder and wasn't paying attention.

Now, on to business:

Here's another inovation I'm planning on using in my Unisystem game.  I like the simplified stats from Cinematic Unisystem.  I tried them out in an All Flesh game a couple years back, and ran into a problem.  Classic characters don't have Drama Points, and therefore don't do well against enemies who always roll a 6.

Another thing I've tried and liked recently was initiative cards for D&D.  They provide a place for every character in the initiative order, and a handy spot for marking down hit points and whatnot.  So I wanted to do something along those lines for my new game.  I'm terribly disorganized, so anything that can help me is worth looking at.

So I kind of combined those ideas.  I wanted to get a functional character sheet down to an index card.

This is the result.





They're not quite perfect yet.  I may muck around with the design a little to get Endurance on there, since it's not quite fair that the PCs need to keep track of it but the NPCs don't.  But I think it'll be okay.  Major NPCs still have a full character sheet, since I plan to only have to deal with one or two at a time.  Mooks will probably tend to die before Endurance could become an issue.

I use Hard to Kill as a way to beef up the opponents.  Mooks who are more set decoration than real threat have none.  Challenging guys who I don't want to see falling over immediately will have three levels.  Tough guys who are supposed to be able to challenge several PCs have all five (or more if they're supernatural beings).  I like to have most of my NPCs in a given fight with little or no HTK, but with a bunch of NPCs, so they start off dangerous, and become less so with every round or two.  Nerves of Steel, Situational Awareness, and especially Fast Reaction Time are judged the same way.  Most folks shouldn't have them, and if you give them to every opponent, that sucks for the PCs, so most guys don't have them.  Only opponents who are supposed to be really dangerous do.  And I only worry about Nerves of Steel if the PCs have powers that can generate Fear tests.

Attributes shouldn't be tough to figure out.  Simplified stats are pretty much like the ones in Cinematic Unisystem.  I actually considered splitting Brains into two stats: One for perception and willpower type stuff, and another one for knowledge skills.  But I decided to stick with the Unisystem standard for now.

Now, I have slightly different ideas about calculating Simplified stats than the official party line.  When I do my characters, I don't bother to calculate them exactly.  I first build characters so a lot of their key stats will be pretty easy to average, then I just rough it out.  The goons with Str 3, Dex 4, End 3, Int 2, Per 3, Will 2 who are supposed to be pretty good at fighting but not too amazingly bright probably have combat skills about 4, other physical skills about 3, and brainy type skills at 2.

Mostly, mooks who should be easy to take down have stats that will average less than or equal to the most of the PCs.  Challenging opponents will average a little higher.  Really tough guys will be four points or more higher, meaning the PCs need to be very careful even fighting one.

For a Classic game, I think you need to roll dice even for the mooks, so you calculate the simplified stats without adding 6.

So our mooks would have Combat 8, Muscles 6, Brains 4.

Down in the Notes field, I put the damage for a few common attacks and any Qualities besides Hard to Kill, Fast Reaction Time, Situational Awareness, and Nerves of Steel.  (Those go up at the top for easy reference during combat.)

For download, here's a PDF designed to print out three cards at a time on Avrey 5388 card pages:

Unisystem Combat Card.pdf (7.8 KB)

Here's a Publisher file of the same document:


Unisystem index Blank.pub (136 KB)

And here's a Publisher file of the spiffy ones I use in my own game, where the top stripe is black and the character's name or label appears in white:


Unisystem index Fill.pub (137 KB)