Space Cadet Posted April 27, 2003 Report Share Posted April 27, 2003 Originally posted by Al_Beddow Besides the fact that y'all can go look at the original B5 RPG rules, I just saw an add in the current Dragon Magazine for "B5 d20" The darkness spreads... We stand between the darkness and the light, between the candle and the star. Space Cadet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aroooo Posted April 27, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 27, 2003 Originally posted by Al_Beddow Besides the fact that y'all can go look at the original B5 RPG rules, I just saw an add in the current Dragon Magazine for "B5 d20" The darkness spreads... Its supposed to be released in May last I heard. I'm not a big advocate of D20, but I admit I will pick it up for the source material. May Valen forgive me Aroooo Live for the One, die for the One. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Posted April 27, 2003 Report Share Posted April 27, 2003 B5 D20 I too will pick it up for the source material. Though I probable will never run the d20 version. TimS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al_Beddow Posted April 28, 2003 Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 Source Material is the only reason I will pick it up. I'm not a fan of d20 and only play anything d20 for 2 reasons: 1) Kingdoms of Kalamar 2) Spycraft & StarGate SG-1 (which will be using the Spycraft d20 system). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aroooo Posted April 28, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 In case the link has gotten burried, here is the link for the d20 game: http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/ They say its due next month, but has not been assigned an ISBN number or listed in their May release schedule. All I have to say is it better be worth $45. Aroooo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al_Beddow Posted April 28, 2003 Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 The link wasn't posted... The ad I saw was pretty much just a grainy pic of the station with the B5 andx d20 logos. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Space Cadet Posted April 28, 2003 Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 Originally posted by Aroooo In case the link has gotten burried, here is the link for the d20 game: http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/ They say its due next month, but has not been assigned an ISBN number or listed in their May release schedule. All I have to say is it better be worth $45. Aroooo 45 frelling dollars?! The bloody thing had better have gold trim on it for that kind of money. Sheesh! Space Cadet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aroooo Posted April 28, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 According to their web site, its 304 pages hard bound. But we'll see. Aroooo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al_Beddow Posted April 28, 2003 Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 Originally posted by Space Cadet 45 frelling dollars?! The bloody thing had better have gold trim on it for that kind of money. Sheesh! Space Cadet Figures its that high, it's from Mongoose. Nuff' bad things said about it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aroooo Posted May 22, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 22, 2003 Big Update I've just posted a big update to my B5 site. Updates include major revisions to the existing ships. I've completed my armor and flight speed charts for the rest of the ships, hence the update. I've also added the Icarus Class/Type Scout ship - sure to be a prime candidate for the player character ship. Based on ship speed increases, I've also adjusted the numbers on the Jump Gate write up, but the mechanics remain the same. Aroooo http://www.aroooo.com/rpg_stuff/b5/index.php Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eodin Posted May 22, 2003 Report Share Posted May 22, 2003 Looks good! Keep up the good work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wyrm Ouroboros Posted May 22, 2003 Report Share Posted May 22, 2003 Having read the Jump Gate rules, I think I might suggest something different. Jump gates each open to a specific location in Hyperspace; one navigates from beacon to beacon in hyperspace, until one reaches a 'jumpgate-interrogator' beacon. Pinging the beacon requests/makes the jumpgate in 'realspace' open up, and you slide into realspace. I would, therefore, remove the 'megascale on ship's flight' (you can, after all, have fighter battles within jumpspace), as well as removing the 'Any Location in Hyperspace'. You have to travel from beacon to beacon, point to point (and can get lost!!), can get attacked, etc. etc. It's just that the distances travelled in hyperspace correspond to much larger distances in realspace. Instead of giving this 'power' to a gate or whatnot, it instead becomes a property of the dimension into which they're travelling. Also, I suspect that these distances aren't always the same, nor is the equivalency constant. What I mean by that is that the 'realspace/hyperspace' ratio might be 50:1 from Earth to B5, but it might be 55:1 from Narn to B5, and 45:1 from Centauri to Narn. Earth to B5 might also vary, ranging from 48:1 to 53:1 -- you can never be quite certain. Undoubtedly the beacons have some way of checking their 'real' location and adjusting themselves for appropriate stationkeeping... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aroooo Posted May 22, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 22, 2003 Originally posted by Wyrm Ouroboros Having read the Jump Gate rules, I think I might suggest something different. Jump gates each open to a specific location in Hyperspace; one navigates from beacon to beacon in hyperspace, until one reaches a 'jumpgate-interrogator' beacon. Pinging the beacon requests/makes the jumpgate in 'realspace' open up, and you slide into realspace. I would, therefore, remove the 'megascale on ship's flight' (you can, after all, have fighter battles within jumpspace), as well as removing the 'Any Location in Hyperspace'. You have to travel from beacon to beacon, point to point (and can get lost!!), can get attacked, etc. etc. It's just that the distances travelled in hyperspace correspond to much larger distances in realspace. Instead of giving this 'power' to a gate or whatnot, it instead becomes a property of the dimension into which they're travelling. Also, I suspect that these distances aren't always the same, nor is the equivalency constant. What I mean by that is that the 'realspace/hyperspace' ratio might be 50:1 from Earth to B5, but it might be 55:1 from Narn to B5, and 45:1 from Centauri to Narn. Earth to B5 might also vary, ranging from 48:1 to 53:1 -- you can never be quite certain. Undoubtedly the beacons have some way of checking their 'real' location and adjusting themselves for appropriate stationkeeping... Good points, and many I'm aware of. Here's some of my reasoning (many of which I think are in earlier parts of this thread - or was that the old/temp boards?): Why the megascale flight? I agree with you on this, but after talking with Steve and others about the nature of Extra-Dimensional Movement (especially the part that when you exit the other dimension, you return to the point you started from), I put it in to represent what 'happens' to a ship in hyperspace; i.e. the ship appears to travel faster than light, although it really does not. Since I didn't want to impose a house-rule sort of thing on GMs (giving the players/universe something for free), I put the megascale in there to cover all bases. From the character's perspective their ships travel at their standard movements in hyperspace, fight each other, etc. If your group is okay with the understanding of how the EDM works, feel free to remove the megascale flight. Jump Gate openings... Yes, they open to one specific location in hyperspace. I'm not sure why I put ...Any location... in there, unless I was thinking about ship's engines at that instance. But it probably relates to the ability to leave the extra-dimension at any location (see EDM note above). Essentially you enter hyperspace at one location, but can exit from any location - another Gate or via your own jump engines. As for travelling along beacon paths, you don't have to. Its the safe thing to do, and for ships without jump engines its really the only thing they can do. But ships with their own jump engines can exit where they want. Another thing to keep in mind is that each jump gate only has beacon pairs with a few other gates, not every other gate. If memory serves, the civilian jump route from Earth to B5 was through 3 or 4 gates. I think the military could do it in 2 (there was no direct beacon pair between B5 and Earth, although they are working on one). Distance. Yup, not the same. Several B5 publications make that same point that the distances/scale/ratio in hyperspace to real space is not constant. About the only constant is that commercial gates are put at roughly 48 hours travel time apart to minimize the risks of commercial ships getting lost. I leave the rest of the space/time issues up to the various GMs as plot devices. The Cham. Eclectic RPG had a pretty decent write up on Jump Gates. The B5 Tech site (http://www.b5tech.com/misctech/jumpgates/jumpgates.html) also does a good job of it. So, after all that (I'm usually not this long winded), I'll leave the megascale in (GMs are free to remove it if their players are cool with the inherant nature of the hyperspace EDM), but I will double check to make sure why I have ...Any Location... in there. Aroooo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aroooo Posted May 24, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 24, 2003 Update I've added the Thunderbolt Starfury to the ships list, as well as posted a minor update to the Icarus (I forgot to adjust the END reserve from the duplicated template). Aroooo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aroooo Posted May 25, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 25, 2003 Psionics review I've posted the telepath/psionics guidelines to my B5 site for review: http://www.aroooo.com/rpg_stuff/b5/psionics.php I have not made any of the links to this page live yet. I'd like interested folks to review over the next day or so, and let me know what you think. Aroooo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aroooo Posted May 29, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 29, 2003 Psionics Update While I have not gotten any comments from the board members yet (hint hint ), my gaming group has reviewed, so I present an update: http://www.aroooo.com/rpg_stuff/b5/psionics.php I've also added notes on telekinesis, and telepathy for the other major races. As always, thanks! Aroooo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tiger Posted May 29, 2003 Report Share Posted May 29, 2003 I like the writeup. Nicely thought (no pun intented) out and writen up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nolgroth Posted May 30, 2003 Report Share Posted May 30, 2003 A few notes for clarification and an opinion. Does the P level have an impact on the size of the multipower pool? I noticed that your sample P5 has a 50 point pool. That's one hell of a pool size for a Heroic (I presume) game. Does that mean that a P12 will have 120 point pool? What about how Bester "programmed" Garibaldi in the later part of the show.? My opinion is Mind Control with Gradual Effect and/or Trigger added. Maybe you or somebody else has a better way. The Centauri Death Dream seems like it would do nothing other than drive the plot, so I wonder what the use of making it a Talent or Disadvantage is. I think that I would make it a freebie since it is an insignificant ability. Besides those rather unimportant quibbles, it looks like your Psi rules are quite usable. Overall I think you have done a great job with the site. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aroooo Posted May 30, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 30, 2003 Re: A few notes for clarification and an opinion. Originally posted by nolgroth Does the P level have an impact on the size of the multipower pool? I noticed that your sample P5 has a 50 point pool. That's one hell of a pool size for a Heroic (I presume) game. Does that mean that a P12 will have 120 point pool? What about how Bester "programmed" Garibaldi in the later part of the show.? My opinion is Mind Control with Gradual Effect and/or Trigger added. Maybe you or somebody else has a better way. The Centauri Death Dream seems like it would do nothing other than drive the plot, so I wonder what the use of making it a Talent or Disadvantage is. I think that I would make it a freebie since it is an insignificant ability. Besides those rather unimportant quibbles, it looks like your Psi rules are quite usable. Overall I think you have done a great job with the site. Thanks for the feedback. First, the pool value is 10 x P rating. I think I made sure that was in there. I'll double check that. Honestly, I'm not sure if 10x is too high or not. I first played around with 5x, but that seemed too low. We're still playtesting that in our group. Hopefully others will be able to give some playtest feedback. But so far it has not been too bad. I've tested a P5 commercial telepath, and it seems to fall in line with how things worked on the show. Oh, and yes, presumably its a Heroic level game (75+75 points - but we're still playing with those numebrs too). Bester's reprogramming I would work as a Major Transform -> 'normal' Garibaldi into 'messed up' Garibaldi. But thats just how I would do it. As for the Death Dream, it started out as just a disad - I was looking at it from the point that the player would start the game having had it already. If you knew how you were going to die, wouldn't that mess you up? But then one of my players asked some valid questions, so I made it an option. But you're right, 10 points for a Talent that is mainly story line is too high. Maybe 3 points? After all, it does convey some glimps of the future for you. And, like my example, if you know you are going to die a peaceful death, wouldn't you be more gung-ho? If you wanted to treat it like a Talent, how about a sliding scale? 1 point = quiet death 2 points = not quiet death, not related to GM plots 3 = violent death, not related 4 = violent death, related to GM plots Aroooo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mastermind Posted May 30, 2003 Report Share Posted May 30, 2003 Just recently acquired a copy of STAR HERO and am blown away, like I usually am with most HERO system products. I really like what you are beginning to do with the B5-Hero project. I like the P, rating scale...so what are your limits for powers in the 75 + 75 scale? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aroooo Posted May 30, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 30, 2003 Originally posted by Mastermind Just recently acquired a copy of STAR HERO and am blown away, like I usually am with most HERO system products. I really like what you are beginning to do with the B5-Hero project. I like the P, rating scale...so what are your limits for powers in the 75 + 75 scale? Thanks for the nice words! As for your actual question, I'm not sure I follow. Can you expand on it more? As for point levels, we've been playtesting 150 point and 200 point character builds. Like most heroic level games, 150 seems to work well for most characters. We upped the points to 200 to make a) some more experienced characters; and some psi characters. For psi's their actual powers (strength thereof) are limited by the multipower pool - i.e. 50 active points for a P5 rated commercial telepath. The P rating is what B5 Earth Alliance Psi Corps used as a measuring stick. I just tried to put a resonable point value to their scale. So far it seems ballanced enough, but to be honest we have not done extensive psi playtesting. I'm hoping for folks on the boards to give me some independent feedback on that. If that did not cover your question, please post a follow up. Aroooo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nolgroth Posted June 1, 2003 Report Share Posted June 1, 2003 Originally posted by Aroooo As for the Death Dream, it started out as just a disad - I was looking at it from the point that the player would start the game having had it already. If you knew how you were going to die, wouldn't that mess you up? But then one of my players asked some valid questions, so I made it an option. But you're right, 10 points for a Talent that is mainly story line is too high. Maybe 3 points? After all, it does convey some glimps of the future for you. And, like my example, if you know you are going to die a peaceful death, wouldn't you be more gung-ho? If you wanted to treat it like a Talent, how about a sliding scale? 1 point = quiet death 2 points = not quiet death, not related to GM plots 3 = violent death, not related 4 = violent death, related to GM plots I think the Death dream would be better served as the special effect for some minor powers and/or talents; specifically Luck and Combat Luck. No matter how the character dies in his dream, he will know that "now" is not the time. Well, until he actually meets the circumstances leading up to his death that is. That would justify the fact that he always seems to get through the most ridiculous situations. Perhaps a couple of Psych Lims representing his sense of manifest destiny (Overconfidence) and his ultimate fear and/or resignation to his fate (Freezes during the events leading to his death) would be appropriate. I can't remember if the Death Dream is absolute or just the likely conclusion of a Centauri's life. If it is not absolute, then maybe through EGO rolls, the Centauri may be able to overcome his fear/resignation and react in such a way as to circumvent the Death Dream. Just my own thoughts. I'm sure you've created a system that is fun and playable. My suggestions are nothing more than an alternate view. Good work and good luck with the rest of the conversion project. It is most cool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aroooo Posted June 5, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 5, 2003 psionics update While I'm still woring on the latent telepath section, I've done some semi-major updates to the psionics section: http://www.aroooo.com/rpg_stuff/b5/psionics.php I've taken the general advice and ditched the talent for the Centauri Death Dream. I've also added a section to the Centauri covering the Emperor's telepaths, as well as other changes here and there. Let me know what you think. Aroooo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KawangaKid Posted June 6, 2003 Report Share Posted June 6, 2003 Psi-Ratings Interesting that the Security Manual says that they don't pull you into Psi Corps unless you're a P5. Wasn't Ivanova concerned that she'd be pulled into the Psi Corps even though she "didn't even rate a P1"? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aroooo Posted June 6, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 6, 2003 Re: Psi-Ratings Originally posted by KawangaKid Interesting that the Security Manual says that they don't pull you into Psi Corps unless you're a P5. Wasn't Ivanova concerned that she'd be pulled into the Psi Corps even though she "didn't even rate a P1"? The Security manual is not the most accurate source out there, which is why I actually listed the source for that scale. The scale is pretty accurate, but I have my doubts about the validity of all the details, especially the lower end (P1-P4). But it was the best source I had at the time. I'm still looking for better. However, if it is fairly accurate, we can rationalize it like this: Ivanova was probably more concerned than most because her monther was a telepath. Even though Susan was not very strong, she had the gene. We've seen how Psi Corps loves to play with the gene pool. Aroooo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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