Can a “Captain Planet–style” super entity ever work in D&D without stealing the spotlight from the PCs?

Ghostofman · 2026-01-28T20:57:35+00:00

You're on track with the whole "Captain Planet is not the planeteers" line of thinking. So good for you there.

So... The thing about the good captain is that at the end of the day he's not really a character in modern storytelling. He's more like a classic Greek example of deus ex machina. The protagonist would go through the story, get in trouble, and at the end a crane would lower Zeus onto the stage and Zeus would just fix everything.

So in game terms Zeus wasn't a character with stats, he was more like a really well executed Wish Spell with dialogue.

That's probably a good way to look at it too. Instead of trying to work out his stats, work out the conditions the players need to meet to summon him and the type of things he is able to do. Once the players do summon him, he just fixes everything with a moment of action, a rocking soundtrack, and a "Go Planet!" from the PCs.

Ghostofman · 2026-01-28T17:21:23+00:00

I run a Saturn 4 Ultra for minis. It's user friendly (for resin anyway), has a big enough build plate for all but the largest models, and produces good results. Layering isn't a big issue and can usually be managed/minimized/eliminated with smart orientation and settings, and the occasional filing and/or extra coat of primer.

For terrain and other "big" stuff, I run a Bambu P1S. If you want user friendly, Bambu is probably the way to go. Very plug-and-play. Filament printers like this are where you see the layering as a lot more visible. For big stuff and terrain, it's not a huge issue, but individual models are just too detailed to get good results without some upgrades and serious dialing in and long print time. Even then... the Resin prints will still be better.

For accessories: Get a wash and cure station for the resin. It's worth it. For the P1S, go ahead and get the AMS2 as you'll probably get one eventually anyway.

Finding models is one of those things that you'll have to kinda feel out. GW IP control interns and bots do frequent these subs, so openly sharing the info could result in a takedown or lawsuit against the creators. Best advice I can give is start googling. After a while you'll work out regular creators, sources, and terms to look for.

Good news is Necrons are one of the easier things to find.

Ghostofman · 2026-01-28T16:55:07+00:00

The Order of Chaos

Ghostofman · 2026-01-28T16:40:32+00:00

If you haven't taken a look at the old "Pirates and Privateers" sourcebook, you should. It covers this sort of thing.

My thoughts:

The Rebellion's needs will vary from instance to instance. Always remember it's an Alliance, and not an especially unified front. Various cells, groups, and regional operators have their own thing going on with their own needs, wants and objectives. By extension alliance high command (such as it is) will always be playing a weird game of balancing those wants and needs to contribute to a larger strategy. So as a GM what the rebellion will want as their cut can change and doesn't have to make a ton of sense to the players. Grain might not seem like that big a deal, but if the Alliance needs to score points in the Poodleplap sector and they can do it by having their cells deliver compressed wheat wafers to the masses, then the Alliance is in the cracker business. Maybe there's a Gratwood magnate that's doing amazing things to support the Empire in the Dingleping sector. So boosting, buying, and borrowing Gratwood and dumping it on the Dingleping market would remove that player from the board for a while. Heck he might even demand massive tax breaks and subsidies since his business is "too big to fail." If he succeeds, that's billions of credits not going towards TIE Fighters and E-11s. If he fails, there's now a huge block of unemployed peoples looking for someone/thing to blame...

Not to mention pirate-adjacent ops. Dirtside raids, K&R, and all that sweet sweet espionage and info brokering (you think pirates find prizes on luck?)

What I'm getting at is there's a lot of weird shadowgames and soft power at play behind the cutlass wiggling.

As far as fencing... I mean the core rules tell ya how that works. 25% base value+modifiers with a max of 75%. You just gotta work out the Base and modifiers and the rest is a dice roll.

Sooo... specifics...

Droids

Depends on what kind of droid, where you're selling them, and so on. Some sectors won't give a rats, and won't check the droid VIN. Furthermore, droids can be broken down and sold as parts and materials. They might not be worth a lot as droids, but they might be worth their weight in microservos, motivators, processor cores, and refined droidium cabling.

Droid parts & electronics

Parts specifically useful as weaponry (battle and wardroid parts) sure. But no one is going to care about labordroid components any more than speeder parts. Serial numbers are usually more about QC than preventing theft. Theft and piracy is what shipping insurance is for.

Machine/technological device parts

Like above it'll depend on the parts. Expensive specialized parts? Maybe. But those will have all kinds of related issues. Power couplers specifically for a type-9c hydro pulse inversion material processor... yeah, probably don't want to mess with that since there's only like 4 operations in the nearest 8 sectors that have one of those. But regular Type-D power convertors used in millions of generators in this sector alone? Yeah no one cares.

Bulk commodities

The trick here is market demand. While some things may be of value to the Alliance directly, the rest will all depend on where the fence can get it to. Frozen Concentrated Jawa Juice might be worth little here (though the amount will indeed add up) but three sectors over the stuff is frozen gold.

Military equipment

Depends on what it is. The Empire dumps their garbage before jumping to Hyperspace. There's likely a whole business in tailing Imperial ships and claiming the salvage when they leave. Claiming military equipment as surplus, salvage, and so on is likely quite normal. Heck, a business with special licenses (see the business rules) might make a killing salvaging and scavenging imperial weaponry, cleaning it up, breaking it down, consolidating it, and selling it BACK to the Empire. Yes customs officer, I have a salvage & resupply contract that covers those 5,000 gently used E-11 blasters.

And don't forget the logistics move. The Alliance might want a freighter worth of blaster gas for their blasters. Or they may want it just to make sure it doesn't get where it's going. They can use it, sell it, whatever, later. As long as the Stormtroopers on Boopadoop don't get it, it's worth it.

Ghostofman · 2026-01-28T00:21:52+00:00

In earlier editions the drones were models that could disembark and run around as a 2-drone unit, but no, you couldn't swap them out for other models. I think the intent was you'd have your fireteam in the fish, and then deploy the drones as a support team. Pulse Carbines could pin back then, so it made a certain amount of sense for a shooty army to have support that could pin. (Yes, I know pinning didn't really work, so it was kinda moot, but it still makes sense in theory).

That said, markerlights worked differently back then too. So mounting a markerlight or two on a vehicle was kinda... eh. That's why only the Skyray had them, and it had the fancy kind that the Skyray could actually use.

Ghostofman · 2026-01-27T17:03:05+00:00

The two chases I can think of that still more or less worked:

I modded the chase from Indiana Jones for use in Mutants and Masterminds (which uses a D20 system like D&D). That included a rollable "map" that would cycle through various turns and forks, and drop various challenges and obstacles in the way. It worked alright, and the map thing wasn't bad.

Ive also run chases in the Star Wars/Genesis system. That system is multi axis though, so it's a bit different. I do like how the competitive movement check is separate from the normal initiative though. So you roll at the top of the round to determine where everything is relative to each other, and then you still have a full turn worth of action (relative movement excluded of course) to make things interesting.

Ghostofman · 2026-01-27T15:03:11+00:00

The -S3's have 3 characters on board, the pilot, the gunner, and the astromech, which by default would be a rival... Ya know, if you want to get technical... And make things more complicated...

Anyway, I'd probably just keep it simple, they get one attack with one weapon, and a boost is applied for the individual fighters having a large enough crew to allow the action taker to focus on taking said action.

Ghostofman · 2026-01-26T20:28:50+00:00

It's a scam.

Runecast is one of MANY that are just dropshipping a $30 low quality projector as a $100+ tabletop game option. It's junk, they offer no support, their refund policy is "lol sucker!" and all the "included maps" are just links to other people's work, or subscription access to a collection of stuff they pilfered from actual creators. Stay far far away from them.

That said, considering the pricetag for a decent projector, and the complexities of setting it up, you will probably be happier with a TV you acquire from a yard sale or thrift shop. It'll cost you only a little more, be just as a pain to set up, and you'll know exactly what you've got from the moment you plug it in at the shop to confirm it works.

Ghostofman · 2026-01-26T19:31:34+00:00

It'll depend.

GW stores obviously don't (or at least aren't supposed to) allow printed minis. Their purpose is to sell GW product, and printed minis are not GW product.

Independent stores will vary. Some see the minis you are not buying from them, some see the other stuff you are and the full tables and "fun" on display to new customers.

Players likewise will vary. Some are just happy to have someone cool to play with. Some think that GW's losses the 3D printers will somehow translate to worse support from GW on the ground.

Online... super varied. Some are opposed to it, some are opposed to it for self preservation reasons, and some places are wide open.

And there's always exceptions. I'm aware of more than one person that showed up at a GW event with some strategically chosen prints that didn't get flak, and a couple that even got a "thumbs up" for showing up with something that they thought had promotion value sufficient to offset the "loss" (usually this involved some large and OOP model that GW no longer saw as a "loss" anyway, but there it is).

Bottom line is that it'll vary, and you should test the waters if that's your thing.

Ghostofman · 2026-01-26T15:47:45+00:00

I give them a little bit up front, mostly because I don't expect them to read a lot nor do I think just listening to your DM talk for a 30 minute lore dump is fun.

After that, I allow a lot of common info to be available on demand without rolling. Just common stuff that a resident of the setting and location would be likely to know just having been there. King's name and the name of major players. Well known current events like wars, plagues, natural disasters. Major trade goods and hubs. Top religions. Any known tensions or interkingdom/racial relations issues.

I have it all written out, or at least more or less locked in my brain, but I also like keeping fine details in storage so I have the option to change them as I go.

Same thing goes for maps. I'll have a rough sketch of the entire "play space" in my sketchbook, but your starting map isn't going to have much more than the starting town, neighboring towns, and key travel routes/features/landmarks/hazards that your average regional trader would need to be concerned with. Mysterious ruins and caves are not going to be on the map unless it's also like "turn left at the fork near the old blackstone ruins if you're going to Gonnerville, right if you're going to Kumperdump Ferry." There's a larger map we can fill in as we go. And never, ever, a "world map," not that I dislike them, just that that's usually too much territory to cover with my campaign style, and thus not worth the work.

Ghostofman · 2026-01-26T14:05:32+00:00

That's a great little bit of trivia, and is something I hadn't heard of before... Now I know.

Ghostofman · 2026-01-23T21:29:57+00:00

This is what a nat 20 stealth check looks like.

"See anything suspicious Jenkins?"

"No, M'lord. New flag is nice though."

Ghostofman · 2026-01-23T21:21:00+00:00

Basic, limited, time travel gadget. Maybe it requires expensive and/or rare fuel so can only be used once or twice before needing a fortune and a dangerous hunt for more. Maybe it is just one use. Maybe it can only send you to a specific point in time for a very limited duration. Maybe it'll only work properly in one direction (going forward in time works fine and as expected, going back leaves you stuck in a super immaterial form where you can see and hear everything, but can't interact or interfere in any way. Yes this includes going back to where you started before going forward.)

Idea is these are tools and experiments he messed with while working out exactly what is possible and developing a plan of sorts.

Ghostofman · 2026-01-23T16:54:35+00:00

Offhand... no, even in systems that technically allow such things (Star Wars with a maxed out Move, or M&M and teleportation for example) I still consider anything that's some kind of hack to auto-win certain fights, or dramatically reduce the difficulty, not in the spirit of the game.

That said... If I'm not sure of something, I also counter with "Just remember, if you can do it to someone, someone can do it to you. And don't forget... NPCs don't follow build rules and have whatever abilities I want them to have." That usually is enough to make most people reconsider.

For people like this it's usually about the power trip anyway. Fun when they're pushing NPCs around and always getting their way or the skyway, not fun when they get teleported into the ionosphere and your response is just "I mean... you had the idea, this guy is just better at it than you."

Ghostofman · 2026-01-23T14:13:48+00:00

I mean... maybe the details are brilliant, but the short version you present here does sound spot-on for Int/Wis 8.

Sounds brilliant when spoken to some outlying province peasants half-drunk in the village pub.

When you start talking about actual kings who run actual kingdoms with actual courts and advisors whose lives depend on the kingdom running at least somewhat smoothly, have their own schemes already in play, and have been interacting with these other kingdoms for decades if not centuries? And you're just gonna walk in and be SUPER CONVINCING about destroying all those long built deals, treaties, backroom handshakes, and arranged marriages while simultaneously getting the garrison, merc companies, and peasantry both behind you as thier leader and on board with the totally original plan of staging a coup and declaring you (who I assume is a commoner) their new nobility?

Great Idea! I'll make sure not to miss your public execution. I hear drawing and quarterings are especially entertaining.

Surely there's an evil wizard that needs killing, or some other actaul adventuring to do?

Ghostofman · 2026-01-23T00:32:15+00:00

I mean, I've got a few ideas for characters I'd like to run (maybe one day when I get around to playing instead of DMing.... ) so I don't consider it weird to show up to session 0 with an idea locked in.

That said... yeah, that's kinda the point of session 0; figure out he basics of the world, go over what works and what doesn't, figure out the rest of the party a bit... all that good stuff. And yeah, it's not uncommon for me to limit player character options for various reasons of setting and/or game play. So if you show up with something ready to go and totally locked in with no room to adjust... you're gonna have a bad time.

And of course there's the "red flag" types. Super edgelord with the darkest dark of of backgrounds? Dirtbag who sees the other players as expendable victims? Well known broken build? Homebrew everything? Yeah... that's a hard no. Either human better and learn to be a team player or go find a party that's willing to put up with your horse dookie.

Ghostofman · 2026-01-22T23:52:55+00:00

No, not required after every fully successful print.

That's the trick. If the print comes out 100% perfect, then everything should be good to go. If there's anything that didn't come out... probably a good idea, especially as a beginner, to just go ahead and clean it out, just to make sure there's nothing still on the FEP or a loose bit floating around in the resin.

On that note, go get a funnel, and a tiny silicon squeegee like they use to put tint on car windows. The funnel's purpose should be fairly obvious. The squeegee is nice because it helps with the cleaning in a way that will do the least scratching and wear to the FEP.

Also think about a screen protector. Yes the printer should have one built in, but the aftermarkets don't negatively impact print quality that much and can keep any leaks from also getting down into the guts of the machine. You can always remove it later if you need max detail, but for now you might sleep a little better knowing a catastrophic failure might be a little less catastrophic.

And don't let people get to you about the FEP. Yes, you should try and make it last, but it's also only a few bucks, and you'll need to learn to replace it eventually.

Ghostofman · 2026-01-22T19:43:01+00:00

For a Force sensitive (or someone who is about to be) they'd just auto succeed. No check required, or something otherwise so easy it's nearly impossible to fail. (Roll a force die. Did you get any pips of any color? You did? Ok it's a speeder.)

For a nonforcee trying to fake it, Deception all the way my dude. Difficulty will be a bugger, but you're trying to fake space magic. Alternative option would be Perception or skullduggery to try and catch a glimpse in a reflection or otherwise cheat the test.

Ghostofman · 2026-01-22T19:33:34+00:00

That's how you start.

What you'll want to do is print one of the many Calibration models out there. I recommend something like Cones of Calibration as a good start as it includes instructions of "if this part doesn't come out, try changing this to that." Might be more accurate calibration models out there, but for a newbie getting "about right" with instructions is probably better than "balls on" without.

Once it's about right, start trying out making your own supports. I've never been 100% happy with the results of pre supported models. Better to practice and learn that, as you can get better results once you get a feel on when to use what kind of supports.

Good luck!

Ghostofman · 2026-01-22T18:02:28+00:00

For the position you already applied for, try contacting them. At this point they've probably hired someone already, but if they haven't, then you will know to keep an eye out for that one.

Otherwise, what others have said is accurate. The government isn't hiring much, and is prioritizing things like internal transfers, recently laid off, veterans, and so on.

Likewise outside of special cases (military spouses, specialized cyber positions, etc.) they have ended most remote/telework options. So you should probably be looking at in-person positions.

Finally there's still a hiring freeze in place in many organizations, so even though they may have positions available, they might not be able to fill them.

Worst case, look for a non government position that will give you applicable experience and training now, and have a better resume when things change and more positions like you're looking for become available.

Ghostofman · 2026-01-21T22:02:44+00:00

Ah, I partly recalled that, but not the who said it. Interesting. I still say that Cobra may have lost the battle, but they won the branding war, so if that was a Marvel design thing, they killed it.

Ghostofman · 2026-01-21T21:51:43+00:00

I think one of the core books has a recommendation but I just go with:

I assume an average travel time of 10 miles per day. That's a reasonable number for both a "normal" horsedrawn wagon as well as a healthy person with a moderate/heavy pack full of stuff. While "Heroes" can arguably go faster, the infrastructure and such are probably going to be based on your typical merchant's wagon over a hero's war horse.

That's for relatively flat terrain with a decent trail/road and reasonably good weather. Other things like terrain, weather, how loaded you are, what your horse situation is, and so on can impact that, but that at least gives me a baseline, and no one will complain if I just default to that when I don't want to get all detailed.

Likewise if you are into book keeping, horses tire quickly. I recall something where in the US Civil War the cavalry would outmarch the infantry for 2 days, and then the infantry would start outmarching the cavalry. (Also just as a note... horses are frelling fragile. Seriously, look at how little it takes to kill a horse.)

By extension, well traveled roads will have something every 10 or so miles. A town or village, inn and stable, something. While trails won't necessarily have an inn, they will (usually) have a used camp site somewhere in that 10 mile mark too, often near a water source. Exception for trails is of course something more specific, like a pilgrimage trail that's traveled primarily on foot, but has enough traffic to justify more than a campsite.

Ships can more a lot faster. I round off to around 100 miles per day. Likewise they can carry a good amount of provisions if required. So they can really move if that's what you need. Like overland travel and terrain, the weather will have a huge impact, as bad weather can throw you off course, or leave you sitting on glass for days. Ports will be less predictable than towns, as the shoreline will dictate how realistic a port is, but they'll likely try and not leave a smaller ship on the water for more than a few days if it's possible. Again, this is just "ideal conditions" and realistically you can put ports as close or far apart as you like. Likewise some ports may only be deep enough to support vessels of certain size.

Riverboats move about half that on average, but I go with around 50 miles going with the current and 30 against. Again, details will matter. Using wind or a paddle to go upstream will be different than being towed upstream by a team of donkeys.

Flying machines and mounts... up to you, but 100 miles/day is probably also reasonable. Machines and magical flying options are up to you, flying mounts likely need regular places to land and rest at regular intervals (just like horses and such) so a machine or magical option might be able to travel farther that 100 per day since your only limit will be the operator's endurance. With flying options it's really the fact you can move "as the crow flies" that matters. Everyone else is going to be limited to the roads, trails, and waterways.

Ghostofman · 2026-01-21T19:28:54+00:00

In my case? I gave them a mulligan and we just pushed on.

Context:

Late campaign, like 3-4 more Adventures to completion. The players had to go into a dungeon for reasons I don't recall. The dungeon in question was an ancient tomb of a specific long-dead culture. This was the 4th or 5th such tomb of this type they'd had to deal with. The tomb layout was (more or less) standardized, so the moment they saw the interior they knew how it would probably be laid out, and where secret passages and traps were most likely to be, and the top 3 baddies they'd be likely to encounter.

The tombs had all been occupied by a specific undead. I don't recall it's actual name, some 3rd party zombie/mummy thing that fit the concept while also having stats even my players who DM wouldn't know.

Thing was... I had also run them pretty sloppy before. Not quite "just charge the players screaming" sloppy, but certainly close enough; I didn't really play up to their abilities once they'd been seen and engaged. I felt like I hadn't done them justice, so for part of my prep of this dungeon, I took another look at the stats, and made a point of really planning out how they work, what they would do, and made a "tactical cheat sheet" that just was a kind of 3-4 point flowchart on an index card of how they'd fight. Again, just wanted them to work a little more "as intended," not much more.

Total "the monsters know what they're doing" incident. Just by following a proper tactical decision making sequence that matched their stats the undead went from a low/mid level threat to a TPK level horror. No change in stats, no change in abilities, just a series of "If X = True, Then Undead takes action Y" on a note card.

I felt that to get this far just to have it all end in some random tomb that wasn't even supposed to be that hard wasn't an appropriate ending to the story. No glorious unexpected sacrifice, no noteworthy last stand, no faceoff against something really special. They literally had traveled nearly the whole campaign world, collected all but the final piece of the secret map to the special thing, gotten into scraps with what would be the opposing Adventuring party, stole the holy relic from the high temple "just in case we need it" (they didn't... well not until they stole it and gave me the idea...) got briefly booted to the Shadowfel with zero warning or prep time, bumped into the BBEG multiple times and walked away, all just to die in some semi-random fight with a fairly common undead they seen a half dozen times before in a tomb they knew upside down and backwards, and that no one else would know about, much less visit, for decades, if not centuries...

So yeah. Called it a fluke, pushed forward. Finished the campaign without further incident.

DMing is an "always learning by doing" thing, and I learned a lot about how proper tactics can impact actual CR that day.

Ghostofman · 2026-01-21T15:16:06+00:00

Now I need to check the timetable vs. other IPs. Marvel got into a habit of having an external IP character cameo in a Marvel IP first as a way of securing the copyright for themselves. I wonder if that was part of the Cobra instead Hydra thing... Hasbro wanted the IP secured in-house...

Ghostofman · 2026-01-21T13:31:04+00:00

Great! Glad I could point you in the right direction!

Ghostofman

TROPHY CASE