Sougen

Re: Armour/Power Suit that can retract into a non-functional state. Your idea #1 is the simplest and best approach, IMO. Place the OIHI on all non-perm powers / abilities. Leave it to special effect how they 'phase out' and 'phase in'. Worrying about trying to build something that is in essence the 'lack' of a power, is odd. The lack of having your power is best design by showing what it takes to get your power (putting on your suit, etc). All other designs to the opposite effect seem ill placed.

Re: Interview with Prometheus writer Jon Spaihts on io9 Personally, I just like my SciFi to be fun and entertaining. I guess I'm the weird one around here because I don't come with many other pre-conditions. I'm not a fan of camp - no matter the genre- and Star Trek TOS struck me as being too much like that. I did like TNG but the lack of consistency and the last moment techno bable bits did annoy me. Enterprise was good for a lot of itself, but it did start to get a bit repetitive. B5 was one of my favorites; not because of its use of techno babble and whatnot, but because it had a consistent and progressive plot that took time to develop characters you felt you could fully invest in. This is also why I liked StarGate. But the eventual run on of mega villains and convoluted techno blah got to me. The reboot in Atlantis was also good because even if they used techno babble, it felt like we were part of it. That it came at a good time in their reasoning. All in all, a good show. A lot of the harder scifi out there doesn't grab my attention because it really wants to focus on the strictness of how we understand physics now, and not on the compelling human story wrapped up in it. IT leads itself well to stories of person despair, distress, and the un-yielding environment we are all caught up in, but not much else, IMO. All the other story ideas don't really need the hard sci-fi. It doesn't seem to add to the value - just let certain people geek out about how 'realistic' it is. But to be honest, it is fiction. Its not even 'based on a real story' kind of fiction, it is whole clothe fiction. So, I'm okay with it as coming off as fiction. It shouldn't be ashamed of itself so much as to try and hide itself in the vestiges of 'believe-ability', only shine in the realm of 'compellingness' and 'relatability". ^^

Re: [Xenozoic Tales / Cadillacs and Dinosaurs] Lost technology idea needed. Wow, it has been forever since I saw any mention of Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. I never played a game of C&D and only ever thumbed through the book at my friends place. So I can't say I got much of a 'feel' for the game but I don't think it ever struck me as pulpish. Also, I think you might get more traffic in the General roleplaying forum. All that said, I think the undergrowned cities that were a mainstay of the C&D I remember had computers that still could run various functions in the city. Maybe if your city has one on the frits or has already gone down, a quest to find a replacement control program / AI might be good. Maybe they heard stories of a shutdown city that has a still working computer core just 'out yonder'. It gives the Players a environment challenge from the surface creatures. It gives them a since of distance and scarcity by being so far away from home. It also gives them the chance to 'interact' with the locals of the 'what should have been" abandoned city. What strange customs do they have? Maybe they aren't the original inhabitants. What happened to the fore generation? Were the new 'residents' innocent in the previous groups disappearance? How will the players know before it is too late? As to tech, beyond the Comp Program, there could be a wealth of data that goes with it. There could also be access to various advanced weaponry or vehicles that are more than the gas guzzlers. Just my two cents. It has been a long time since I saw any mention of the game setting, so my knowledge has all but been lost to the flow of time.

Re: Sign Language I think your view of "RAW" would mean that anything is possible since the RAW also says the GM should modify any part of the rules they see fit. At this point the RAW gets so abstract as to not mean anything at all. But maintaining a strict view of what RAW means helps us better understand what isn't explicit in the rules. The above example of getting two languages (ish), being fairly clear example of what isn't RAW.

Re: Sign Language Indeed. Although you said it in a less and more direct way than I, that is in essence my point. Is the above RAW? No. Does it absolutely have to be? By no means. GMs can grant any allowances they deem fit for their game given the full context of the character, the setting, and the other PCs. Actually, the idea of a super hero team that uses sign languages is kind of entertaining.

Re: Sign Language

Re: Avatar: The Legend of Korra Found this on youtube just now and it gave me quite a laugh. Hope it does so for you all. Also, it is most certainly NSFW

Re: Sign Language

Re: Evil doubles from another dimension In one game we met not our evil doubles per se, but rather our evil post-apoc selves from the future. One of the characters does something to cause the apoc and the rest of the team apparently ended up turning on him (probably for good reason). Our team consisted of the guy who would cause the problem and two others. Their team consisted of of one of our current team, one of our teams past character (who left and was replaced with another PC - same player, though). And then one NPC who had just been introduced to the PC who causes all the troubles. It caused us worry that one of the current team was shown as being present in the future verse, too. But we never got a clear answer as to why. And the PC character that caused all the troubles was assumed dead in the future verse but no body was ever found so when he (our version) showed up, it caused a lot of alarm. In retrospect, it was way too believable that the Player in question might cause an apoc. And after the story arc ended it, it stayed with him so that he was always trying to figure out exactly how he would cause it (probably leading him to be so paranoid as to actually cause it! ). Anyway, that's my tidbit.

Re: A Thread for Random Videos Well, its Saturday morning and rather than recovering from a late night, I seem to be up watching a lot of TED... Anyway, here is another good vid: http://www.ted.com/talks/amory_lovins_a_50_year_plan_for_energy.html

Re: Make Your Own Motivational Poster What? There was text? ^^

Re: Like Cold Fusion... Except It Works? I can't remember, is the TSAR bomb the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated (well, largest weapon period, really)? Also, did anyone ever try to make anything larger with success?

Re: A Thread for Random Videos Although I enjoyed the video, I really can't understand the appeal of vocaloids. Their voices are so hard to listen to.

Re: Beaks and Speech

Re: Sign Language To the best of my knowledge, you also know a new set of grammar too. I could be wrong (never studied sign lang), but to the best of my knowledge, American sign is as distinct from American English as English is from Spanish. Some things are indeed shared but the syntactic, morphological, and of course phonological rules are distinct and different.