Unfortunately, I have the same problem with Power Points... I don't have a problem with PCs or NPCs that have powers that use PPs... those are pretty easy to track, make an attack, lose X PP, but for the Scrappers and Brute types, I find it difficult to keep track of them.

Movement is OK when everyone has a fixed number of inches, but when you throw flight, superspeed, etc... in, it really seems to lose all meaning.  If you are using miniatures or cutouts, the fast characters end up running off the table... I know I've read here that some people don't use them, and just let everyone uses their imaginations... I wonder how they do range modifications, or if they do?

John wrote on Nov 9^th, 2009 at 12:49am:


  Just tell your beloved players that you want them to track their movement points and educate them on what they have to do. I'm sure they will happily comply. If they (we) are keeping track of power and hits then movement should not be a big deal.

eLock wrote on Nov 10^th, 2009 at 9:01pm:


Wow! That could be insane!  Still kind of cool, but WAY too much work and potential for problems and issues, I would think.  Reminds me of three things:

1) Just finished watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban last night, and specifically the part where Hermoine uses the necklace/time travel thingee to make it so there are two of them.  Brilliant storytelling, but (and I was just thinking about this earlier today) problematic to implement in a RPG!

2) Just did the write-up/summary for the last three issues of the Guardians.  It was a lengthy storyarc called "Sands of Time" and the GM was inspired by a storyline from Stargate where they did something similar.  The short, simple version is that the team went back into the past (nearly 6,000 years) and defeated a major alien foe.  When they returned to the present they learned that the reason these aliens feared and focused on them so much a few years ago was because they had defeated them in the past.  So it's kind of like the six chapters of Star Wars, where you have the original adventures and then the prequels happen chronologically (at least as far as real-time) afterwards.  So we played the game sessions out of order, but it worked for a neater story because you had these villains (in our present) that it turned out hated us for adventures we hadn't even played yet (and didn't play out until a few years later!).

3) This also reminds me of a concept called the 'chrono-punch' that some old friends introduced.  We played the most MASSIVE battle that I've ever seen for V&V.  They had a group called the "Hero Horde" where each hero has exactly one superpower, and each superpower in the rulebook corresponds to that one hero.  Then the same thing for a very large group of villains (called the 'Villain Squad", or something).  One New Year's we decided to play out this mega-battle, figuring that - if we started early enough - we could play all evening, all through the night, and into the next day.

So we did this, and the battle came down to just a few participants; IIRC the good guys were going to lose.  So this one hero - who had a power called a 'chrono-punch' - had the ability (if he hit somebody) that could send EVERYBODY (at least in his vicinity) back in time.  I don't recall (this was back in the 80's) if it went back one turn or one minute, but with that many participants, it meant a HUGE change in this mega battle, which had ALREADY taken many hours to play out.  We ALL hated it (far too slow and plodding with way too many characters), and yet we watched helplessly as the one guy did his chrono-punch, sending time backwards to be replayed.  We all then (stupidly) sat through the replay of the skirmish, where (I think) the heroes did better the second time.  A horrible experience (at the time), but one we could look back on afterwards and laugh at...   

Interesting to read everyone's take on this.

We'd use grid maps with counters, and count movement as our PCs moved.
PCs would keep track of their own movement.

We allowed you to use all your movement in any action, but you'd have none left for your other actions if you did, of course.

When a power or activity said "requires movement" we would charge one third of the PCs full movement.

Opening an unlocked door cost 5" of movement. Other activities cost movement as well, as an indication of expending time to do something.

That's all I remember.

Doctor Foom wrote on Nov 15^th, 2009 at 5:31pm:


This is pretty much how we do it.  In fact, one time I made a list of all sorts of mundane things (like opening a door, as you mentioned) and how much movement it would take.  I'll post it sometime (it's so old I'd have to re-type it since it was done back in the days of typewriters, rather than computers).

I used to think that when something cost "Movement" or "Movement only" I had to figure out how MUCH movement. I was quite miffed when the rules did not say how much certain actions took!

Then I realized they MIGHT have meant "Your Movement option during your PC's action phase."

In other words, as the rules state, you can act and move or move and act, but not act, move and act again. That's a no-no.

So I now consider something that costs "Movement" to mean: "On your Action phase, you may act, but your Movement is zero since you did this other thing instead."

Evidence "Costs Movement Only" can be interpreted this way: Note how Wonder Woman and others who obviously have Transformation: Power Activation, don't MOVE ANY DISTANCE when they are changing into their super-selves. Oh sure, they may spin around or something, but they have stopped any running, etc.

Just my two cents.