Let's enjoy blogging together.

It's been a while.

Last week, I volunteered to help edit a friend's blog. While going over their draft, I was struck by how much I missed writing in a longer format than Tweets and Instagram updates. This will be my attempt at rectifying that.

The good ship Terribad Ideas is getting relaunched. All my old content, for better or worse, is going to stay up. Don't worry. That one RPG group in Argentina that's using my Mass Effect rules for Cortex+ isn't going to lose access. My grimdarke nonsense isn't going anywhere. It's part of who I am and serves as a reminder that even if I think my writing is garbage, someone out there likes it.

With that in mind, what am I going to be posting here? Game stuff, mental health stuff, travel stuff. Maybe, after I've worked at it for a while, this place will eventually congeal into an understandable theme.  Probably not, but there's always a chance.

Where do we start? I guess we'll do a bit of catching-up with what's been going on in my life.

Since last we talked, I've:

- Taken another trip to Japan.
- Ran a successful D&D game to completion, without scheduling or drama tearing the group apart.
- Hosted a D&D fundraiser (JephCon) on Twitch that raised $3,300+ for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
- Visited my Homeland. A topic for another day.
- Struggled through a two-year battle with a very severe bout of depression.
- Started streaming on Twitch, albeit irregularly.
- Wrote a bunch of homebrew content for both 4th and 5th edition D&D. A lot of which I'll be posting here over the next few months.
- Started a YouTube channel with my wife about our travels.
- Began a combination art project / protest over on Instagram.
- Survived the wait for Mass Effect: Andromeda.
- Crafted several cosplays.
- Wrote and recorded the first two episodes of three different podcasts, none of which were ever posted publicly.
- Successfully completed all three good Persona games.
- Continued to be gainfully employed.
- Backed a whole lot of Kickstarter projects.
- Called my Representative and both Senators every work day for the past 4 months.
- And a whole lot of other stuff that I can't remember at the moment due to lack of sleep and stress.

A good number of those experiences will be posts in the future, but for now I feel I should leave y'all with some new content. Below is the second draft of my Downtime rules for my upcoming D&D campaign. It details the stuff characters can do when they aren't out doing Adventure Things.

Town Phase:

1. Lifestyle Costs: For each day spent in Eternal Bedrock, each PC must pay Lifestyle Costs as a way of abstracting the individual costs of lodging and food. Provided below are a series of possible scenarios and their associated costs.
1. Sleeping in the Adventurer Tent City (Basically Homelessness):
1. Food is basic (bread, water, bean paste), provided free of charge by the Cathedral of Pelor. Characters must furnish their own bedroll and tent.
2. Benefits: -1d4 on Carouse and Fellowship checks.
3. Daily Cost: 0 GP.
2. Staying at Novagen’s Economy Lodge (Low Quality Inn):
1. Food is simple (porridge, fruit, water, eggs), provided as part of your daily cost.
2. Benefits: None.
3. Daily Cost: 1 GP.
3. Staying at Erathis’s Smile (Average Quality Inn):
1. Food is acceptable (bread, meat, cheese, fruit, ale), provided as part of your daily cost.
2. Benefits: +1d4 on Carouse checks.
3. Daily Cost: 3 GP.
4. Staying at Three Stars (High Quality Inn):
1. Food is good (pastries, meat, cheese, eggs, fruit, wine), provided as part of your daily cost.
2. Benefits: +1d6 on Carouse checks.
3. Daily Cost: 5 GP.

5. Staying at Twin Drakes (Exceptional Quality Inn):
1. Food is grand (full buffet for each meal, along with beverages of choice), provided as part of your daily cost.
2. Benefits: +1d8 on Carouse and Fellowship checks.
3. Daily Cost: 10 GP.
6. Staying at The Cockatrice and Medusa (Fantastic Quality Inn):
1. Food is grand (full buffet for each meal, along with beverages of choice), provided as part of your daily cost.
2. Benefits: +1d8 on Carouse checks.
3. Daily Cost: 50 GP.
5. Downtime: Players may spend as much or as little time in Eternal Bedrock between adventures as they want. For each day the characters pay Lifestyle Costs, they gain one Downtime Day to spend as they wish on the options below. Downtime Days may not be earned or spent while Adventuring. (Note: While other options are possible, these broad-reaching examples cover 90% of downtime activities available to PCs.)
6. Carousing: Adventurers can spend downtime and GP to gather information, hear rumors, or find quests in addition to those listed on The Board. For each Downtime Day spent, the player rolls a hard Streetwise check (with a possible bonus or penalty from lodging and a +1 bonus per 10 GP spent on carousing). Depending on the result, the Character chooses one from the appropriate list.
1. On a success, the Character:
1. Learns a useful rumor.
2. Finds a lead on an otherwise hard to acquire Magic Item.
3. Gains access to an otherwise secret quest.
2. On a failure, the Character:
1. Learns a rumor which gains them no useful information.
2. Runs afoul of The Law.
7. Shopping: Adventurers can spend downtime shopping for new or replacement gear. For each Downtime Day spent, the player may purchase any number of pieces of non-magical equipment with GP or a single piece of magical equipment (Note: Purchases subject to rarity and availability.)
8. Religious Services: Adventurers can spend downtime to attend or perform religious services and rites for 5 GP. For each Downtime Day spent, the player may gain Advantage on one roll during the next Adventuring Phase,
9. Equipment Upkeep: Adventurers may spend downtime to maintain their equipment. For each downtime day spent, one piece of equipment does not have to make the Saving Throw at the end of the month. (See the Equipment Upkeep rules in the Adventuring Phase section below.)
10. Fellowship: Adventurers can spend downtime to build bonds with other characters. (Note: Both characters must spend a Downtime Day on the same day for the Fellowship action to add to their Social Link.) See the Social Links section at the end of this document for more information.

Thanks for hanging out with me so far. It's been fun. We'll have to do this again sometime.

Medical supplies for some, mutiny for others.

Our second session of Mass Effect Heroic descended into madness. Well, madness might be a strong word. More like ridiculosity.

A third player joined us this week, who coincidentally also decided to play a Human Engineer. Thankfully, they chose entirely different Human powers (one has Enhanced Intellect d6, Enhanced Reflexes d8; the other has Enhanced Stamina d8, Enhanced Strength d6) and different Bonus Engineer Powers (one has a Machine Pistol d6, the other has a Combat Drone d6). Last week's Engineer will be referred to as The Hacker and this week's new Engineer will be referred to as The Mechanic.

Given the choice between three basic scenarios (go to the Citadel and dick around, hijack a medical supply ship and sell it on the black market, or smuggle some civilians off of a war-torn planet) they choose to be pirates. This seems to be a running theme with games in which two of these players play. I don't really see a problem with this.

So the MSV Triton sets off towards the Aralakh System. Upon their arrival, the Mechanic wants to try to dampen the ship's heat output so their approach will be stealthier. He rolls and gets a 10 with a d8 effect die, but with 2 Opportunities. The target ship is aware of them, but believes them to be a small shuttle instead of a freighter. The Mechanic launches a pair of docking cables and attaches their ship to their target. The Hacker gets the door open through a rather amazing roll (16 with a d10 effect die) against the Doom Pool (4 with a d6) so the door slides effortlessly open. Unfortunately for our heroes (I guess protagonists works better, as they're not as much Heroes as they are Pirates), there are some armed guards waiting for them in the entry hall.

Our Drell spots an overhead conduit and tells the Hacker to close the door after he fires a shot. The Drell's sniper rifle punctures a hole in the conduit, causing a power overload. The Drell's player spends a Plot Point to change the weapon that one of the guards is carrying into a Flame Thrower. The power overload arcs to the guard with the flamethrower, which has the predictable result of exploding rather violently. Thankfully, the Hacker has there wherewithal to get the door closed before the explosion engulfs Our Protagonists.

After a few moments, the fire suppression systems turn off and our protagonists are free to explore a bit more. The Hacker seals downloads a schematic of the ship to his Omnitool while the Mechanic starts unlocking doors. They decide to make their way through the sterile hallways to Engineering, because it'll be easier for them to override the Autopilot than it will be for them to take control of the ship via the cockpit.

The door to Engineering is locked down tight (Deadlock d10, Hardened Metal Door d10) and neither the Hacker or the Mechanic can seem to bypass it. Meanwhile, the Drell has found an access point to the ventilation system (this guy loves dropping Plot Points) and shimmied his way through to the other side of the door. He drops down into a creepily darkened Engineering and unlocks the door for his companions.

Upon further examination, it appears that the ship is on Autopilot, heading for a spatial anomaly which used to be a moon orbiting the third planet of the system. No craft or probe or other thing that's gone into the anomaly has come back out. Some say it's a doorway to another dimension, others say it's a quantum schism which turns reality into candy, still others believe it to be the doorway to Heaven/Hell/Purgatory/Alien analog of one of those things. Whatever it is, it is not a place that one wants their newly acquired ship and treasure to go.

It also appears that the Autopilot is on lockdown, with only the captain's command key to override it. So our protagonists decide to hoof it to the captain's quarters. As the first of their group sets a foot outside engineering, the lights go dead. The Mechanic scans the area with his Omnitool and realizes that Life Support has failed as well. The group puts on their helmets and flashlights, continuing towards the captain's quarters.

Along the way, the Hacker's flashlight illuminates a door with large dents protruding from it. Something on the other side is trying to get out. Cue dramatic music as a Very Angry Yahg bursts through the door. (At this point, I admit I may be overusing the Yahg in my examples, but who cares?) Combat starts.

Combat seems slow and ponderous until I realize I was doing Stress entirely wrong. Apparently getting 2 hours of sleep the night before a game and then working for 10 hours tends to make people forget some basic rules. After I adjusted for previous results that should have been successes, the Yahg was rather badly injured. Fortunately for the Huge Lumbering Ragebeast, the protagonists had generated quite a few Opportunities along the way and the Doom Pool was at 3d6+2d8+2d10. The Yahg picked up one of our protagonists' security escorts (whom they'd retconned, via some plot points, into existence after the lights went out) and threw him at the Hacker. I rolled exceptionally well (17 with a d12 effect die from the Yahg's Enhanced Strength) and nearly stressed out the poor, hapless Hacker.

The Mechanic stunned the Yahg with a conveniently placed Shotgun blast and the Drell finished it off with a pair of bullets to the eyes. As it turns out, Yahg are weak to Bullets-in-the-Eyes.

The protagonists carried on, their security escorts having all been rended into tiny bits by the previous encounter, towards the captain's quarters. A little Omnitool work and the door was open.

The room was in a rather bad state, clothes and supplies thrown everywhere. They stumbled across an audiolog from the captain, describing an attack by pirates and many of his crew being killed before they knew what was happening. Our protagonists thought pretty well of their success, until they realized that the timestamp on the audiolog made it clear that the recording had been made six hours before they arrived. The guards they'd killed on the way in? They were the last of the previous boarding party, left behind by their compatriots for some reason (justified or not) when they sent the ship towards the rift.

A rather frantic search through the quarters and the command key was found. The group nearly sprinted the entire way to Engineering. Upon their arrival, the Mechanic used the command key and a lot of elbow grease to disengage the Autopilot. Not a moment too soon, either. Had they waited another few minutes, the ship would have been past the event horizon of the anomaly; potentially lost forever to whatever hell dimension or Whimsyshire lay on the other side of it.

The protagonists reset the Autopilot to take the ship to the scrap yards, as was the original stipulation of the mission. In the meantime, Datok (their ship's captain and their boss) revealed that the reason they'd taken the mission is because he *knew* that the ship had been taken by pirates, so it should have been easy pickings. Unless, of course, the pirates had still been aboard or there was a muderous ragebeast being transported from its homeworld to a Salarian research outpost. Or the ship had been set on a suicide course into an unknown anomaly.

With that, the talk of mutiny began. Several quick conversations and everyone on board was convinced that their captain was a jerkface and needed to be spaced. And so, they did. Right out the airlock.

Next time, on Mass Effect. Who will step up to fill our Volus Captain's tiny shoes?

A Turian, a Drell, and a Human Walk Into a Bar on Palaven...

After quite a long time of trying to get a group together, I finally got to test out my Mass Effect hack last night. It was a real proud papa type moment for me, as this is the first hack I've put enough effort into for it to actually get to a playable state.

We started off with group character creation. Our team came together as a Human Engineer, a Drell Infiltrator, and a Turian Sentinel. Character creation, including the Relationship Map that I borrowed from Smallville, took up about two hours. Once that was done, the group named their ship (the MSV Triton) and decided to play a Privateer style game; starting out with a janky old ship, working their way up from the bottom. We decide to play in the post-First Contact War / pre-Mass Effect 1 era. None of them have decided on names yet, so I'll refer to them by their race for the time being.

As with all great stories this one starts out in a bar on Palaven, waiting for laborers to finish loading cargo onto the ship. The PCs order drinks and engage in some chitchat with each other. I have them all roll a notice roll against the Doom Pool (a piddly 2d6, since this is a dive bar in a minor port city). All three players succeed at noticing a pair of Turians looking to start a fight with the only Krogan in the bar. They know things like this tend to get ugly and quick, so they decide to GTFO. I throw them each a plot point and tell them that both doors are blocked by the Turians' friends. The Drell decided to sneak up and try to knock out one of the attacking Turians. The Human sent his Combat Drone out the front door to alert the authorities. Our Turian simply sat at the bar, enjoying her drink.

The Drell dropped a Plot Point to create a Stunt off his Sniper Rifle, a hidden stun gun inside the stock. The prongs just happen to extend out the butt of the gun. He rolls, gets a 14 with a d10 effect die. The Turian is reeling, but still up. Meanwhile, the Combat Drone finds a pair of policetypes walking down the street nearby. The Human rolls a convince-the-cops-to-help-out roll, getting a 12 with a d8 effect die. He tells the cops that there's a Krogan starting a fight in the bar and that he will probably end up killing two or more civilians if they don't hurry. The cops follow his Drone back to the scene of the crime. I write Palaven Police Patrol D8 on a notecard and hand it to the player. The Combat Drone leads the cops into the bar.

Bad Guys' turn. The Turians both pull knives, slashing at the Krogan. The Krogan activates his Fortification and headbutts the uninjured Turian.

Top of the order, the Drell declares that he's going to try to talk the Injured Turian into standing down. The Human hands him the D8 Police asset, under the auspices of them helping with his Menace roll. He rolls, gets a 12 with a d10 effect die. The player has a bright idea. He hands me a Plot Point and says that he wants to convert the Mental Stress into Physical Stress. It turns out that the Turian was goaded into attacking instead of standing down and the police shot him. I like it. The Turian drops.

The Krogan interrupts the Human, so the Human's player gets a Plot Point. The afore mentioned Krogan decides to completely punk the remaining Turian. A headbutt from an armored Krogan Helmet is enough to knock the Turian not unconsciousness. At this point, the remaining bar patrons riot. Our PCs decide that now is the time to beat a hasty retreat back to the Triton.

Through the back alleys, they're chased by a small mob of bar patrons. The PCs use their acrobatics (and a few conveniently placed crates to get back to the ship ahead of the baddies. Their captain, a Volus named Datok, gives them a bunch of crap for bringing the fury of the locals down on their heads, but luckily the cargo is loaded and they can get off this rock.

The session ended there. Overall, everyone had fun. Going from a very restrictive game like L5R run by a very restrictive GM to seeming cinematic like Marvel Heroic was a bit of a system shock at first, but ey seemed to get it really well by the end of the session.


High Points: The chase sequence and the bar fight.

Low Points: It took me quite a while to make characters and figure out how their characters were involved with each other. I think this goes back to the last game we played with out old GM. He ran a very "you have limited options and can only do things for which I have prepared" game. It was rather difficult to deal with.

I'm really looking forward to next week.

-J

The Reaper Pool and the Loyalty Pool

Last night, I was talking with my buddies Joe and Adam about how to mechanically handle the complex relationships of the Mass Effect universe. One of them contended that the Solo/Buddy/Team dynamic didn't really mirror the structure of the game very well. The other brought up the idea of using Relationships as a modifier for the Solo/Buddy/Team dynamic. On the long drive home from gaming, I was thinking (as often happens on moderately long car rides one takes by one's self) and came up with a little sub-game for the game.

First, though, we go to the Bad Guys. In most Marvel-based games, there's a mechanic called The Doom Pool which represents most of the adversity which the players will encounter. The Doom Pool is a great mechanic for showing the ever-growing threat that the Reapers possess, but with it being reset after each encounter it doesn't have quite the same inexorable menace attached. With that in mind, I'd like to introduce you to The Reaper Pool.

It really is just what it says on the tin: a giant pile (or jar or whathaveyou) of dice representing the strength of the Reapers. The number of dice in the Reaper Pool depend on the game you're wanting to mimic. For a ME1 game; the Reaper Pool is set rather low at around 25d12. For ME2, where the Reapers are a more credible threat; the Reaper Pool is set at a moderate 75d12. For ME3, where the Reapers are friggin' everywhere and we're all boned; the Reaper Pool is set to a cataclysmic 150d12. This pool can increase or decrease, depending on the actions of the PCs.

So, you're probably wondering how this Reaper Pool interacts with the Doom Pool. Lets look at an example:

Our heroes are on Intai'sei, in the Phoenix System of the Argos Rho cluster, trying to break into a Cerberus facility which has been using Reaper technology to indoctrinate a small army of abducted Yahg. The players are doing well, having successfully broken through the door's encryption and battled their way through the docking bay. They stand at a heavy blast door, when there is an explosion on the far side. The group's Drell Engineer finally hacks the door open, revealing a warehouse full of stasis pods. In each, a dormant Yahg is slowly corrupted by the Reaper tech which Cerberus has harvested over the years.

In the middle of the massive room, a section of the stasis pods have ruptured due to an inconvenient explosion. Standing in the center of the room are about a dozen Indoctrinated Yahg. The Storyteller has the Doom Pool for this bit of the adventure set at 3d6 + 2d8 + 1d10; a challenging, but not insurmountable, scene. The PCs, through some quick thinking and good use of Plot Points, reduce the Yahg to paste. Not wanting the PCs to get too full of themselves, the Storyteller lets the players know that they can hear the sounds of dozens of other stasis pods opening. As the PCs look around, the hundreds of pods surrounding them are all activating. The PCs, knowing they're outgunned, flee back to their shuttle. The Storyteller describes their flight back to their primary ship.

"As your shuttle docs with the MSV Hawke, a bright flash of light crests the planetary horizon. A Reaper has dropped from FTL just inside the atmosphere, igniting a small portion of it in a demonstrative fireball. Sensors show that its trajectory will lead it directly to the Cerberus Base."

At this point, the PCs have a choice; fight or flight. The PCs, being pragmatists, know that they have no chance of beating a Reaper and one hundred (or more) Indoctrinated Yahg. They advance in the opposite direction, towards safer ports. The Storyteller writes "Indoctrinated Yahg - 2d12" on a card and adds 2d12 to the Reaper Pool. Their enemies have grown stronger.

All of that is all well and good, but of what use is the Reaper Pool? During the primary game, not a lot. It sits there as more of a psychological tool for the Storyteller than anything else.

The PCs need a way to combat the Reaper Pool, of course, and that's where the Loyalty Pool comes into play. The Loyalty Pool starts the game with d12 in it for each PC. Not a lot of a chance against the unflinching destruction that is the Reaper Pool. Just like in the various Mass Effect titles, they're going to have to make friends and influence people in order to stop the imminent destructive hugeness of the Reaper Pool.

During any scene in which an Asset is created, a PC may spend 2 Plot Points to remove the Asset and create a Loyalty out of it instead. For instance, continuing the example from above: our PCs reach the Citadel to speak with their contacts. Not many of them are willing to help out, because organics are generally selfish to the core. The group's Turian Biotic decides to try to call in a favor with his cousin Barran who works for C-Sec. There's a rather intense social scene, but at the end Barran decides to help out as much as he can.

The player writes "Barran - C-Sec Officer - d8 Asset" on a card. The Turian Biotic's player can then decide whether he wants this Asset to be of use during the game itself OR in the meta-game. Being prudent, he spends the 2 Plot Points to add Barran to the Loyalty Pool. Barran's card is added to the Loyalty Pool stack. If the PCs wanted to cultivate their relationship with Barran, they can spend XP to increase his Loyalty value. If our Turian Biotic spent some time in a transitional scene working with Barran to maintain surveillance on a known criminal, he could spend 2 XP to increase Barran's value to a d10. (Preliminary costs are: d6 to d8 - 1XP, d8 to d10 - 2XP, d10 to d12 - 4XP.)

When the players reach a Final Mission scenario, the dice in each pool are up-converted to d12s (for example, if there are 32d6, 24d8, 20d10, and 6d12 in the Loyalty Pool, that converts to 26d12). The Reaper Pool stands at 80d12 (this being a ME2 style game and the PCs having fled the confrontation on Intai'sei, as well as a few other times the Reapers gained ground) versus the Loyalty Pool of 26d12. The difference of 54d12 are added to the Doom Pool for the Final Mission. The PCs are pretty boned. Had they spent more time cultivating their Relationships, they'd've actually stood a chance. As it looks now, they've got very little chance of making it out of their Final Mission alive.

Thoughts?

-J

Blasto, the first Hanar Spectre.

So, it's come to this...

Blasto - Hanar Spectre
Affiliations: Solo d10, Buddy d8, Team d6

Distinctions: Spectre Training, This One is a Loose Cannon, Harbinger of the Hanar
Morality Distinction: Renegade

Hanar Powerset:
Levitation d6, Neurotoxin d6, Shields d10
SFX: Grapple. Add a d6 and step up effect die +1 when inflicting a complication on a target.
SFX: Enkindler’s Touch. Spend 1 PP to step up Neurotoxin to d10, then step down to 2d4 for subsequent actions. Recover by activating an opportunity or during a transition scene.
Limit: Mass Effect Field Dependent. While Stressed Out, Asleep, or Unconscious, shutdown Levitation and Shields from the Hanar Powerset. Recover them when you recover that stress or wake up. If you take mental trauma, shut down Levitation and Shields from the Hanar Powerset until you recover that trauma.

Vanguard Powerset:
Barrier d8, Modified M5 Heavy Pistol d12, Shockwave d8, Geth Plasma Shotgun d10
SFX: Charge. Split any Vanguard power into two stepped-down dice.
Limit: Exhausted. Shut down any Vanguard power to gain 1 PP. Recover on Opportunity.

Specialties: Biotic Expert, Combat Expert, Cosmic Expert, Diplomacy Expert, Menace Master, Psych Expert

Milestones:
First of His Kind

1 XP the first time each scene that you defeat a non-minion enemy.
3 XP whenever you capture a criminal who is wanted by the Citadel Council.
10 XP when you convince the Council that the Hanar race deserves a seat OR you cause a more powerful race to declare war on the Hanar.

Bound by no Rulebook

1 XP when you flaunt your Spectre status to gain an advantage over someone.
3 XP when your overconfidence helps you succeed at a mission, or causes it to fail spectacularly.
10 XP when you cause trauma to a helpless opponent in order to gain information vital to the success of a priority mission.

-------------------

This one thinks that even the Enkindlers would fear Blasto.

-J

Weapons and Ammo Powers and Upgrades! Woo!

A poster on EN World brought a couple of points to my attention regarding things-not-well-detailed. His post has been reproduced here for completeness.

SilverKeyMan writes:

"This morning I had the idea of writing up Mass Effect using Marvel Heroic, but being lazy and all, I decided on checking to see if anyone else already had.

I must say, it looks amazing. I really like the idea of rescaling the d6-d12 for physical attributes, so even a base human can have a d8 strength.Excellent work! I do have a question about weapons, however. In Mass Effect, part of the character customization (especially in ME3 multiplayer) revolves around weapon customization. Any plans for this, perhaps as additional power sets?

Additionally, how does a Class go about getting additional weapons? For example, it doesn't look like it is possible for an Engineer to use anything except a Shotgun, and the Sentinel doesn't get anything at all.

Cheers! -SKM"

Skill customization could pretty easily be done through adding new SFX to them. For example, someone playing an Engineer may want to upgrade their Drone to one of those Exploding Drones from ME3. I'd probably write the SFX for that like: "SFX: Step up or double Combat Drone (1 PP for both) on your next roll, then shut down Combat Drone. Recover on an Opportunity or during a Transition Scene.". Such an SFX would cost a character 10XP.

As for changing out weapons, if it's a simple matter like "I don't see my Engineer using Shotguns, but she's pretty likely to use a Sniper Rifle instead." then talking to the Storyteller would be the easiest way to go about it. If you're wanting to upgrade, then paying the XP to permanently step up the die related to the weapon or adding an SFX would work well. The Ammo Powers could pretty easily be mirrored with an SFX like: "Custom Ammo: When using (Weapon) in a die pool, you may add another power from the (Class) skill set. Both of these dice are at -1 step for this die pool." I wouldn't recommend using an SFX like that until your non-weapon powers are at a d8 or higher, since adding a d4 is usually more of a liability than a help.

I'll see about writing these things up in a more coherent manner and adding them to the MEHR document after I get off work tonight.

Thanks for the feedback, SKM. And thanks for the feedback from those who've emailed me as well. I'm gonna make this thing playable if it's at all possible.

-J

Mass Effect Heroic Roleplay

I've been mulling over posting is for a few days now, mostly because I'm needlessly self conscious about any new systems or hacks I put together. Lack of confidence is a new experience for me, honestly. Uncharted territory. Scary times.

With that in mind, here's the link: CLICK THIS THING!

Some of this work is needlessly derivative, but that's a good way to describe most fan projects. Guess I'm probably not too far off the mark.

Comments, observations, deconstructions, or death threats related to this post are welcome.

(edit: Forgot to thank Adam Minnie for his work on the D&D 4e hack that gave me the idea for the structure for this hack. Thanks, Adam!)