sinanju

Which, sadly, means that the excuse for the first error is an error. Last I heard, the Bussard ramjet idea is dead. The interstellar medium (hydrogen gas) is too thin to support the "electromagnetic ramscoop fusing hydrogen for fuel" concept. I am disappointed.

You're not the only one. Watching a plane that large land on a dirt strip completely destroyed my willing suspension of disbelief. Plus, yeah, SIX jet engines? That's kind of excessive, isn't it? And VTOL ramjet engines? Only two? On the rear of the plane? How's THAT supposed to work? Eh. I find Agent "Generic White Guy" Ward coma-inducing in his boringness. I like Coulson. I like Melinda May (I like watching Ming Na). Fitz/Simmons are okay. Skye is okay. As for Coulson: my favorite theory of how he survived: 1. He just survived. In modern combat, a huge percentage (high nineties) of soldiers who reach a field hospital survive. That's been true since Korea. The helicarrier no doubt has a first class medical bay/team. Fury lied to the Avengers to motivate them (or maybe he technically didn't lie, since Coulson's heart stopping briefly could be considered as dying). 2. He spent a long time recuperating, and his trip to "Tahiti" was actually just a Matrix-like simulation he experienced while his body was being repaired.

Technically, Tony Stark should have died a number of times. Comics (and comic-based movies) tend to treat armor as if it made you tougher overall, instead of simply being a hard coating around the soft, squishy candy center. I don't care how tough the Iron Man armor is--if you fall twenty stories and hit the ground while wearing it, it is still going to kill you as inertia splatters what's left of you all over the inside of the undamaged armor. But I agree that the answer to the original question is: it depends on the level of realism you're going for. At one end, you've got classic comics, where pretty much nobody dies from gaining their powers. At the other end, you have the Wild Card virus, which rewrites your DNA if it manifests. Ninety (that's 90) percent of the time, this results in the subject dying horribly in the initial manifestation (usually brought on by an accident or some othe severe stress, in a nod to the comics). Of the survivors, 9 out of 10 will survive, but be physically (and possibly mentally) twisted, with all kinds of physical limitations, distinctive appearance, and possibly susceptibilities or vulnerabilities. They _might_ have some kind of power. Only one percent of Wild Card subjects will gain actual powers without any unfortunate physical mutations, and even then their powers can vary from laughably limited to awe-inspiring.

I like the system. I'd like to play it but haven't had a chance. That's true. Plus, I haven't noticed that Champions alone has become more and more complex. That seems to be a trend throughout RPGs. When is the last time a major RPG didn't come in a huge book (or two books) with a $50 or more price tag? While I still play Champions when I can (though, yes, some of the guys in my face-to-face group find it far too intricate a system to want to play very often), and GURPS and other major games, most of MY game purchases the last few years have been much smaller, indie games. Dogs in the Vineyard, Apocalyse World, Monsterhearts, DungeonWorld, Monster of the Week, 3:16, and others--games with simpler rules, yes, but also rules aimed at creating a specific play experience. They aren't intended to allow you to play any genre at any power level in any setting. They're more focused. They're generally much less expensive, so trying them out has a much lower cost, and almost all have on-line fan communities producing additional resources that are even cheaper (or free) just for love of the game.

I'd recommend taking a look at Wild Talents. They have a "cafeteria" of pregenerated powers, but you can design your own if you want. The system is relatively simple. You roll sets of d10s (stat + skill or power), and instead of a target number, you want sets (a pair, or three or four or five of the same number). Any single pair is a success, the more of that number you roll, the better you do. The numbers also constitute a hit location system (10 = head, 7-9 = torso, etc). The number of successes you have (a pair, three, etc) also determines action order in a turn--so it's possible for an attack to happen before you can dodge/block even if you succeeded in the roll. Damage is usually number of successes + weapon/stat bonus minus defense (if any). So one roll determines who goes first, how much damage you do, and where you hit the other guy. (There are rules for going faster in the combat order, called shots, multiple actions--but they're all optional.) Power design can be a little more complex than it sounded like when I first heard of the system, but nothing like as intensive as Champions.

Yeah, I've been there. For many years I played with a single group back in Virginia (Steamteck's, actually). It was a very pulp-oriented game, so getting captured, confronting the villain, and destroying his lair/plans in our escape was a commonplace plot development. And mostly I was fine with that. Mostly. But I sometimes tired of the bad guy always getting away to bedevil us again later on. So I'd fight like my immortal soul depended upon it, doing my level best to KILL that SOB before he could escape. The same was true of getting captured. Occasionally one player or another, and even more rarely all the players, would decide (for whatever reason) that THIS was the battle in which we. Would. Not. Be. Captured. Sometimes we succeeded. Sometimes we didn't. The moral of the story is, it can work as a plot device, but it can be overused like anything else.

I'm not sure ANY superpower would motivate me to put on a cape and become a crimefighting superhero. Why? Because the chances of my stumbling across a crime in progress are virtually nil. How many times have you encountered a situation in your life to date where you thought, "Darn! If only I had superpowers I could totally take care of this!" Rarely or never, I'd bet. We already have costumed crimefighters. They're called "the police." And there are hundreds or thousands of them in any big city, constantly patrolling the city, and even so they almost never discover a crime IN PROGRESS. They're called after the fact--or called while it's happening and (usually) arrive after its over. That's not to diss the police--it's just that criminals are seldom SO stupid as to commit a crime when/where they're likely to be spotted by the police. It happens, but not all that often. So the addition of one additional crimefighter (i.e., me) seems not to be a big deal. Of course, if scores of super-powered folk go out and start committing crimes, that might change the equation. But in a world where I'm one of the only superpowered folk at large? No. That said, the powers that I would gleefully use at every opportunity? Flight. Teleportation. Superhuman strength or invulnerability? They'd be nice, but really, in my generally sedate life there's simply not much call for them. But I'd go out of my way to find opportunities to fly, or to teleport.

Well, there's always the test the Bene Gesserit used DUNE. You stick your hand in a box. The person doing the test then threatens you with a weapon which will indisputably kill you instantly if used, telling you that if you are about to experience horrible pain--but that if you take your hand out of the box, you will die. They aren't lying. You experience horrific, agonizing pain as your hand is subjected to (what feels like) horrible damage. If you yank your hand out of the box, you die. If you don't, you prove your humanity by being able to overrule your animal instinct (to avoid pain) with your conscious mind in order to avoid the real danger (the weapon).

None of my character even know what Slender: The Arrival even is (i.e., I the player have no idea).

Woooo! Like the teacup ride at the fair. Don't forget five earth-like worlds in a pentagonal array, all orbiting around a common point, each circled by a score of artificial suns...as the whole thing goes flying toward galactic north at a large fraction of the speed of light.

That's something I've thought about occasionally. This is one of those "we're living in the future!" moments. Time was when SF writers (or gamers) could realistically depict earthlike worlds within a few light-years of earth and nobody could say, "that's not right!" Sure, we might know they aren't broadcasting as much EM energy as a small star (the way earth does), but they could be inhabited by intelligent creatures with some lower (or vastly higher) tech level. Not so much anymore. We're living in a world now, where we can--with increasing certainty--say that there are NO earthlike worlds within a given radius of our solar system. That we can, in fact, know what sorts of systems ARE in our neighborhood. (And this is another thing I don't remember ever seeing in science fiction--a universe where you didn't have to fly to another solar system to see what was there, because your high-tech civilization could SEE it from home, even though it was light-years away.)

Good question--and good point. In fact, without too much of a spoiler...such a weapon does get used in one of the books. And yes, trying to figure out who did it is much harder than anyone thought. That's specifically why Jerry Pournelle made use of of "jump points" in his fiction. The FTL drive only works in those places, and only to go to and from specific places. So there's no possibility of fleets jumping into orbit without warning and blasting you back into the stone age. Once they arrive in-system, they have to slog across space the old-fashioned way, which gives you time to react.

Regarding "first strike" capabilities, something we see in David Weber's Honor Harrington universe is something I think would be fairly common in any space-faring civilization. The "Eridani Accords" are a (virtually) universally-agreed treaty. ANYONE who uses a kinetic kill weapon (i.e, throwing or dropping big rocks) on a habitable planet will be hunted down and exterminated by EVERYONE ELSE. And they'll stop whatever else they're doing (including fighting with each other) to do it. Such attacks can be very hard to see coming and difficult-to-impossible to stop. After all, it's just a big rock flying through space without power, and if it is being used a weapon (as opposed to simply falling through the system like a normal asteroid) it could be traveling at godawful speed, making that much harder to detect (or stop if it is seen) before it strikes.

In addition to the issue of the "blind spot" I referenced earlier, Larry Niven's Known Space universe also required human pilots because the "mass pointer" (the device that pilots used to navigate while in hyperspace) was a psionic device--only living minds could use it, so auto-pilots couldn't be relied upon. (They were fine for letting the pilot leave the bridge; you only had to check the mass pointer every few hours to make sure you weren't getting dangerously close to a star or planet. But you couldn't depend on an auto-pilot for the whole trip.) I like this idea a lot. If I were going to run a space-based campaign, I'd definitely use it. I like the idea of giving the campaign environment some real history and seeing how things had changed over time.

It's your campaign, so you can set it up however you like. In Pournelle's (and Webers' and others' universes) naturally occurring jump points are of fixed distances--they simply exist (or don't exist) between Point A and Point B. And you can only jump to Point B from Point A. Anywhere else and you just burn up a lot of fuel and go nowhere. That's rather different than the Traveller approach, where as long as you're far enough from a star (or planet), you can jump out from anywhere. That difference will radically alter how navigation (and warfare) works. In fact, Pournelle set up his fictional universe to require jump points precisely because he felt that if a ship can jump in anywhere from anywhere, there's no real hope of mounting a defense. The enemy can pop in, hammer your planet, and pop out again. With defined jump points, you can fortify them against attack. The issue of shedding excess heat in hyperspace... That's an issue in normal space, in the real world. One of the reasons the space shuttles spent so much time in orbit with the cargo bay doors open was so they could more effectively radiate excess heat from the shuttle's interior. Space is already either very hot (or very cold). Is hyperspace even warmer? Maybe it isn't an issue of dumping heat. Maybe hyperspace has bad effects on human beings (and aliens). You have to start making CON saves if you stay in hyperspace too long--or you become hysterical/catatonic/otherwise useless, or you have to be sedated. In that case, military vessels might select crewmen who have the highest resistance, and/or use drugs, to tough it out. Commercial vessels will just drop out of hyper periodically to rest. (And if unfriendly folk know this, and know where they tend to do that...piracy could be a possibility.) Larry Niven limited the distance vessels could travel in hyperspace with the idea of the "blind spot". Human eyes can't see hyperspace. If you look out a window at hyperspace, your mind tries to blot it out, so you don't see the window, just a blank expanse of bulkhead. And it works on your nerves. Even the best pilots, who don't even try to look outside--they just navigate by instrument--need to drop out of hyper occasionally to look around and reassure themselves that the real world still exists.

Why is the planet drying up? If it has earthlike gravity and an earthlike atmosphere, what's different? If the planet is closer in size to Mars then that's a different situation--and the gradual loss of atmosphere (and water vapor) isn't unreasonable.

I agree with Paycheckhero that Jerry Pournelle's future history (the CoDominium universe, which later got re-used in The Mote in God's Eye, with Larry Niven) is a good "age of sail"-style universe...in some ways. Given that jump points allowed for instantaneous travel between systems it doesn't fit exactly, but the spread of news was limited to the speed of the fastest ships, and travel within a system could be time-consuming (especially on commercial ships which tended to coast long distances to save fuel) or difficult (on military ships which would boost at high gees, turnover and decelerate at high gees to get there fast). No magical reactionless drives or artificial gravity. Spacers endured zero-g or had to deal with acceleration issues. The Honor Harrington series did use some of the same ideas as Pournelle, but they actually had THREE FTL drive systems, each with their own limitations and advantages. There were the jump points, which allowed instantaneous travel between linked systems--but which were hard to find initially, and once discovered could be fortified against incursions. You had "gravity currents" in hyperspace which allowed really, really fast travel--but which could destroy ships not specifically equipped to detect and ride them (they were a real threat to 'standard' FTL-drive ships for centuries in-universe, before someone figured out how to "surf" them, then they became very valuable travel routes). And standard FTL, the slowest of the three. Unlike Pournelle's uiverse, where the ONLY way to travel FTL was via jump points, in the Harrington universe hostile forces CAN reach a system without having to brave the defenses of the womrhole junctions, it's just slow--and coordinating attacks is almost impossible.

For an "age of sail" feel I concur--don't allow FTL communication. Messages travel at the speed of light within a solar system, and at the speed of the fastest vessels between systems. If you want to steal from Traveller (well, and real life, to a degree), you might have a fleet of designated courier vessels that carry the (official) news, dispatches and mail at top speed from system to system. The "hyperbridge" or "stargate" system idea could be used as well, in limited locations--think of them as the equivalents of having a Panama Canal available. You CAN get there by going around the long way, but the bridge/gate/canal makes the trip a lot shorter, and control of it can give you a huge military and economic advantage. This sort of assumes that you need a device at both ends, so that you cannot use such shortcuts to reach (or attack) hostile systems except by surprise (fly through, seize the gate and hold it against counter-attack, and hope it doesn't have a remote controlled self-destruct); otherwise, they'll just shut it down to deny you access. Or the "bridge" could be a naturally occurring shortcut that may or may not exist in any particular system. Then it's even more like a canal. If a given system has such links to more than one other system, that system becomes extremely valuable real estate even if there's nothing else of much worth there. (As seen in David Weber's "Honor Harrington" novels, where the Star Kingdom of Manticore is the power it is because they control five--FIVE--such terminals linking them to systems that are otherwise months of travel away.) If I were going to map your universe, I wouldn't bother with a literal map, or at best a map with Campaign Central in the center with lines out to all the other systems. I'd just create a grid showing average travel times between the planets. Look up Planet A along the side. Look up Planet B along the top--the intersection tells you how long it will take to get there.

An ordinary citizen has the legal power to arrest someone and hold him for the authorities, so a superhero would probably have the same right. Of course, that theoretical power comes with a lot of strings. If you make a citizen's arrest, you'd best be **** sure you know what you're doing, and what your legal rights and responsibilities are. And you'd probably also better be prepared to be sued. A suit doesn't have to have merit to cost you boatloads of money to defend against, to say nothing of the time and aggravation--even if the suit is ultimately dismissed as without merit, it can still be expensive and troublesome to deal with.

First thing I do is beat our computer security "expert" like a red-headed stepchild for failing to "air gap" the computer he let the KNOWN SUPERVILLAIN HACKER access. I don't care good you are at hacking, if the computer you're using is not connected to a second computer, you can't hack into the second machine. ANY access is "too much access" in this situation and our IT guy ought to know that. Then I have our group's brain hacker (i.e., mentalist) "hack" his brain to discover where all copies of the stolen information are, how to safely destroy them*, and then delete his memories of what he learned while hacking our system...and anything else we decide to remove. But then, I take betrayal and blackmail efforts very badly. *And by "safely destroy them" I mean confiscate the physical media (server hard drives) on which they're stored and reduce them to powder.

Re: A power to swap places with someone. ...or he could call it "castling," like the move in Chess when your king and a rook trade places.

Re: Lex Luthor Is Worse Than Useless

Re: Lex Luthor Is Worse Than Useless I'm reminded of a scene or two in PROTECTOR by Larry Niven. Pak Protectors are superhumanly intelligent, and I mean SUPER intelligent. Humans Protectors (we're the mutant descendants of the Pak) even more so. They're all incredibly long-lived--thousands of years, assuming they don't get killed by violence or starve to death for lack of motivation...which is how most Protectors die. Protectors never developed computers because they don't need them. They don't build automation into their machinery either. They can predict and prevent most problems, and improvise and adapt for those they can't foresee or can't stop. Their weapons and tools and machinery are designed for use by Protectors. Any other Protector is expected to be able to grasp the purpose, function and limits of any device at a glance--and they can. If this is how comic book superscience works, it's no surprise that almost none of it reaches the market. Maybe Reed Richards (or whoever) can keep his gadgets working, but certainly no ordinary human can be expected to manage it, much less figure out how to build them in large numbers so that they can be produced and sold at a profit, or made reliable enough for anyone to bother with them.

Re: Welcome to the Silver Screen Iron Maiden designed her costume to be a) easy to replace anonymously, and to include no spandex. It consists of a black tank top, black leather miniskirt and boots, black leggings, and black coachman's cloak. Other than the cloak, any piece of it could easily be purchased without drawing attention. Millions of women own them. (It also has the virtues of not requiring a huge budget for "unstable molecules" or tailored spandex.) A Hollywood movie about Iron Maiden would undoubtedly ditch her costume for something a) more colorful, form-fitting, or c) both.

Re: Sliders Dino-World. A world where dinosaurs still roam the earth, complete with lizard-man equivalents of cavemen. Nothing unusual...until the players discover a lizard-man village slaughtered by high-tech weapons and vehicles. Then they spot, in the distance, the spires of a high tech city (which turns out to be a settlement from some other, high tech world via the same technology the PCs are using). I ran this one just recently in my Expendables game. The PCs are the Search & Rescue team for a Stargate Command-type organization using a gate to explore alternate world. They get sent in when the first contact/exploration teams go missing, to find and rescue them. The PCs tracked their missing comrades (who'd been captured by cave-lizards) to said village, where more humans had killed all the lizard-folk and rescued the humans. Turned out, the high tech colonists (refugees from a world destroyed) had assumed the humans were some of their own people and rescued them when they attacked the village in retaliation for attacks on the work crews building a road out toward that area. Pseudo-Fantasy World. A world populated by centaurs, orcs, goblins, minotaurs, etc. all living in a pastoral setting. Except that they're all genetically engineered from human stock to provide entertaining game for hunts by genetically engineered super-soldier types. The "Sliders" have found themselves in the middle of a vast nature preserve/hunting park.