Not exactly "new," but still cool!

[CCTelander]

Well, I guess I'll be the first to post in the new forum. Woohoo!

For anyone interested, here's the link to my Homemade OP site:

http://justabgkid.com/emporium/homemadeemporiumhome.html

I'd definitely love to hear any comments.

[Nostalgic]

I think that site is awsome. I wanted to print some of those off, but the size isn't quite right and the text is a little blurry. Any suggestions?

[CCTelander]

I think that site is awsome. I wanted to print some of those off, but the size isn't quite right and the text is a little blurry. Any suggestions?

Hay, thanks!

Basically, you need some kind of image editing software to print them at actual size. You'll have to increase the size of each card to roughly 2.5" x 3.5", and then transfer several to a single document to print out a sheet. You can get 8 per 8.5" x 11" sheet.

The quality will be a bit bad, to be honest. I just don't have the resources available to host what eventually will be thousands of homemades at full size in high resolution. Sorry about that but it's the best I can do at the moment.

[Jack]

What's the total size of that set of homemades?

[CCTelander]

What's the total size of that set of homemades?

By the time we're actually finished I estimate we'll wind up with 6-7,000 new cards. There are close to 1,000 done at the moment, but some of them aren't up at the site yet.

[Jack]

What's the total size of that set of homemades?

By the time we're actually finished I estimate we'll wind up with 6-7,000 new cards. There are close to 1,000 done at the moment, but some of them aren't up at the site yet.

I should have been more specific and asked how much space it would take. I can probably host them if it's not too much. 1GB or so should be OK.

[Karmanal of Zert]

Great looking set of home-mades. However as a huge Conan fan and someone who's been planning to make Conan an OP character for awhile, I really have to disagree with some of the stats he was given on his hero card. First of all, there is no reason for him to have a 2 Energy. It is made clear over and over again in the original Robert E. Howard (1906-1936; original author of Conan) tales as well as most other media he's been presented in (comics, cartoons, movies) that Conan has a strong aversion to any sort of magic (be it "good" or "evil") to put it mildly. He hates it, and avoids it like grim death. True, he may occasionally be on the side of a wizard, but it would be completely out of character for him to ever even consider practicing the mystic arts. Conan is a barbarian, and one of the few things (perhaps the only thing) that he has a primitive, instinctual fear of, is magic. A being of flesh and blood may be slain, when magic comes into play it's not so cut-and-dry.

And my other stat complaint is his 5 strength. It is also made clear if not in most than certainly in many of the original Robert E. Howard texts that Conan is capable of feats of strength that are unimaginable the modern-day civilized man, including feats of strength Conan can do alone that otherwise would take multiple men (even from his own age). To those who may not know, Robert E. Howard is basically the creator of the Sword and Sorcery genre, and decades before J.R.R. Tolkien would write down anything about Middle-Earth, Mr. Howard had created what he called the Hyborian Age. This was after the dawn of the Earth but long before any recorded history of man. The point is, Conan's physique as well as his strength are not limited by what we think is the highest reasonable stat to give a human with no super-powers, because he's not a normal human as we think of it. Robert E. Howard makes it clear that in this period of Earth "history" humans were much stronger just as a necessity to survive, and also that in this era it is Conan whose strength is never matched by another human. In a world whose strength standards are already raised, Conan is the strongest.

So to me, if Kingpin, Commissioner Gordon/GCPD, Ka-Zar, and Shang Chi: Master of Kung Fu all deserve a 5 strength stat on their hero cards, Conan is most certainly deserving of a 6.

I don't mean to be a negative-nancy with my first post in this thread because you've done some great work and obviously put a lot of time and effort into it, but I feel pretty strongly about this. I have a few special ideas for Conan, so if you need any just say the word. Would you accept an alternate Conan hero and some specials if I submitted them to you or do you only use your own work? Either way you're doing great and I hope you keep it up. Shatterstar, please!

[CCTelander]

Great looking set of home-mades. However as a huge Conan fan and someone who's been planning to make Conan an OP character for awhile, I really have to disagree with some of the stats he was given on his hero card. First of all, there is no reason for him to have a 2 Energy. It is made clear over and over again in the original Robert E. Howard (1906-1936; original author of Conan) tales as well as most other media he's been presented in (comics, cartoons, movies) that Conan has a strong aversion to any sort of magic (be it "good" or "evil") to put it mildly. He hates it, and avoids it like grim death. True, he may occasionally be on the side of a wizard, but it would be completely out of character for him to ever even consider practicing the mystic arts. Conan is a barbarian, and one of the few things (perhaps the only thing) that he has a primitive, instinctual fear of, is magic. A being of flesh and blood may be slain, when magic comes into play it's not so cut-and-dry.

And my other stat complaint is his 5 strength. It is also made clear if not in most than certainly in many of the original Robert E. Howard texts that Conan is capable of feats of strength that are unimaginable the modern-day civilized man, including feats of strength Conan can do alone that otherwise would take multiple men (even from his own age). To those who may not know, Robert E. Howard is basically the creator of the Sword and Sorcery genre, and decades before J.R.R. Tolkien would write down anything about Middle-Earth, Mr. Howard had created what he called the Hyborian Age. This was after the dawn of the Earth but long before any recorded history of man. The point is, Conan's physique as well as his strength are not limited by what we think is the highest reasonable stat to give a human with no super-powers, because he's not a normal human as we think of it. Robert E. Howard makes it clear that in this period of Earth "history" humans were much stronger just as a necessity to survive, and also that in this era it is Conan whose strength is never matched by another human. In a world whose strength standards are already raised, Conan is the strongest.

So to me, if Kingpin, Commissioner Gordon/GCPD, Ka-Zar, and Shang Chi: Master of Kung Fu all deserve a 5 strength stat on their hero cards, Conan is most certainly deserving of a 6.

I don't mean to be a negative-nancy with my first post in this thread because you've done some great work and obviously put a lot of time and effort into it, but I feel pretty strongly about this. I have a few special ideas for Conan, so if you need any just say the word. Would you accept an alternate Conan hero and some specials if I submitted them to you or do you only use your own work? Either way you're doing great and I hope you keep it up. Shatterstar, please!

Wow! I got TOLD!

But seriously, I don't intend to argue any of this with you. Clearly you have a great deal more knowledge re Conan than do I. However, I will lay out our thinking process, and why we made the decisions we did for your consideration.

First off, you seem to be working under the assumption that a normal human would score somewhere in the neighborhood of a 4 or 5 wrt their Power Grid Ratings. Back in the day there were several official and semi-official announcements regarding this point. While there was never any hard and fast rule normal humans were, in general, assumed to score somewhere in the range of 2-3 in all skill types. Fours were generally used to represent characters that were in the range of "peak human" to mildly superhuman, and anything above was definitely considered superhuman.

Again, there were never any hard and fast rules and the original game designers definitely played a little fast and loose in many cases, but those were the general, overall assumed values.

On top of that, Character Cards didn't always represent just a single character. In the case of Comm. Gordon, for example, his Character Card also represents the entire Gotham City Police Force, hence Comm. Gordon and the G.C.P.D.

Now I'm not as familiar with the DC Universe as I am with Marvel, but certainly the G.C.P.D. has some kind of tactical unit that's intended to deal with the threat of super villains. They would more than likely also have access to various kinds of heavy weaponry, and may even have an officer or two that actually possess super powers. Any of that could explain why Gordon got Fighting and Strength Ratings that are solidly within the superhuman range.

In other cases it seems likely that normal humans were given 5s in some cases simply for the sake of variety, or to increase their Deck Sum a little for the sake of game play. Not that I think the Deck Sum Rule ever really did much for game play, but it's clear that the original designers did.

On the Energy thing, the Energy Stat has never been a Power Type that was reserved exclusively for magical or mystical abilities. Energy has always been used to represent a wide range of abilities from technologically based or psychic abilities to simple things like a character's common use of firearms or whatever. There are also plenty of characters in "official" OP who lack any kind of energy-based abilities who score anywhere from 2-4 on their Power Grids.

Basically, we gave Conan  a 2 in Energy because 1s are less than useless, and we didn't want his Power Grid to suck. Also, since a 2 is about what the original designers intended as a normal human level, it seemed to fit. Further still, how many times has he picked up something like a torch or candle stand and used it as a weapon? Fire, in fact was a commonly used weapon in the Conan comics anyway, so, to us at least, it doesn't seem that far off the mark. You're entitled to a differing opinion, of course.

We actually considered giving Conan a 6 in Strength. The main reasons we didn't center around our plans for wrt the Teamwork Strategy. Let's face it, almost any character you pick, if you based their Power Grids solely upon editorial content, and considered ONLY their Power Grids, deserves at least a dual-grid. But that tends to lead to all characters looking and playing basically the same. Doesn't do much for variety, and could be problematic in other areas.

Most of the characters we've created so far do, in fact, have at least dual-grids. But we have plans for the single grid characters too that should make them as good as, or in some cases even better than, dual or triple-grid characters. So, where we think it's appropriate we do like to creat some new single grid characters too.

Anyway, that's some of the thinking that went into the Conan Character. Even if you don't agree you can hopefully at least understand where our minds were at.

Thanks for the compliments!

LONG LIVE OP!

[Karmanal of Zert]

Although I still plan on giving him a 1 E, I think you make good points as to why you gave him a 2. 1's are pretty rare and there are plenty of Fighting- and Strength-oriented characters with a 2 E on their Power Grid for no specific (and/or apparent) reason. I mainly think he should have a 1 for the same reason I think Penguin and Killer Croc got one - he is the epitome of lack of skill in a certain area. Nowadays the barbarian-who-fears-magic is a generic archetype, but as explained in my previous post in this thread Robert E. Howard was writing about Conan before any such backdrop existed, so as the originator of that character-trait (although to be fair he was the originator of that kind of character in general) it is of slightly elevated importance to me that he has a 1, although I find your explanation for having given him a 2 to be perfectly reasonable.

On the Strength stat however I don't think we're going to see eye-to-eye. I mean I understand the line of logic you explained but as someone who's been wanting to make Conan OverPower cards for years as you can tell from my previous post in this thread I have what I think are pretty solid grounds for giving Conan a 6. Given that you decided to make him a one-stat character ahead of time (which I don't think is all that fair), I still have to dispute the notion that any character could be a dual-stat character based purely on editorial content. I am more sympathetic to that type of argument for Power Grid ratings of 1 - 4 and maybe even 5, but once you're up to 6, 7, or 8 it seems there are some reasonably clear guidelines with regards to the differences between characters and their abilities set up since the very first expansion (though there are obviously exceptions and therefore different interpretations). And even though you're discounting editorial content, I believe there are sufficient examples of Conan using "super-human" strength in the original tales for him to deserve a 6. In Robert E. Howard's Beyond the Black River (originally published in 1935), Conan can be found in at least two instances throwing an axe with such strength that it splits the skull of Conan's adversary. In the same story he lifts a foe over his head and throws them "headlong to the earth with such force that he rebounded, and then lay still, his limp posture telling of splintered limbs and a broken spine". It's hard for me to see an actual human being achieving either of those feats. In The Devil in Iron (1934), "Conan caught up a heavy bench and hurled it with all his power. It was such a missile as few men could even lift. On Khosatral's mighty breast it smashed into shreds and splinters." (Khosatral being a being of iron, as per the title.) That seems pretty explicit to me - few men (and again, refer to my previous post in this thread, these are not "men" by modern, "civilized" standards) could even lift the bench, never mind throw it. Using "all his power", Conan can "hurl" it across a room so that it gets "smashed into shreds and splinters" on its target. As I said in my previous post which I've already referenced a million times in this one: "Robert E. Howard makes it clear that in this period of Earth 'history' humans were much stronger just as a necessity to survive, and also that in this era it is Conan whose strength is never matched by another human. In a world whose strength standards are already raised, Conan is the strongest." This is also leaving out the numerous examples that can be found in basically (I only add that word for the sake of accuracy) every single Conan story by the original author of quotes explaining just how difficult it is for a modern-day man to even imagine the level of Conan's physical prowess as well as his alertness and how in these areas and others modern-day man and people of Conan's descent and age are alien to each other. It is something he harps on quite often. And I've also left out numerous examples of Conan using a sword to do things that at least on the official Robert E. Howard message boards (when I frequented there a couple years ago) there was a pretty general consensus are physically impossible for a human being, such as slicing someone in half from their neck (or skull) to their breast with a single slash.

I'll leave it there for now since it looks like we're going to have to just agree to disagree anyway, but hopefully you understand why I had my heart set on the stats I did. I'll be making a new thread soon for everyone to post their Conan-homemades because I now have enough Special card ideas for him to actually make him a playable character. Which brings me back to a question I asked before that you didn't answer: do you accept other peoples' homemades for your site? Even if you wouldn't want to put my Conan hero up since you have one already which I completely understand, I still think you might find some of my card ideas for him and their explanations useful!

[CCTelander]

... Which brings me back to a question I asked before that you didn't answer: do you accept other peoples' homemades for your site? Even if you wouldn't want to put my Conan hero up since you have one already which I completely understand, I still think you might find some of my card ideas for him and their explanations useful!

Sorry it took me a few days to respond. Been really busy lately and have had little time for the fun stuff!

I'll get to the rest of your post as soon as I can, but wanted to at least pop in and answer your question.

We've actually considered doing just this, and think it would be kind of fun to have a section of the site for other people's homemade efforts. Where the problem comes in is that the whole site is basically maintained by me, all by myself. I frequently don't even have the time to update with my own stuff, let alone add additional stuff from others. There are SO MANY things on the site that NEED to be done and haven't been (I have 2 addiotional strategies ready to go, more or less, but no time to actually create the pages), that taking on anything else, at least for the time being, probably isn't an option.


Let me talk it over with a few of my OP Buds and see if maybe I can get a little help on this end. But for now, regretably, I'd have to say probably not.

[The Dude]

Hey all, I actually just a designed a Shatterstar a month or so ago (well I built off and modified someone else's design) but the point is I have a working Shatterstar and he's a force to be reckoned with.

[Karmanal of Zert]

Cool, CCT. Look forward to hearing back from you! And eating up the strategies once you post them as I have been waiting to do.  

The Dude - You should make a new thread detailing what Special cards and Power Grid rankings you gave Shatterstar! I am highly curious. Though I don't know much about the character beyond the absolute basics, he was always my favorite member of X-Force by far. Also, the fact that they put him on a Location card and came out with a specific X-Men Expansion and still never made him makes/made it all the more excruciating for me!