sinanju

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us Well, sure. If you accept the basic premise in the first place. You push a button here, and are instantly there? Sure. But--you push a button here, spend a week in hyperspace regardless of the distance traveled, and then find yourself there? No.

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

Re: "Neat" Pictures Access Denied You don't have permission to access "http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/" on this server. Reference #18.c4ec54b8.1317619269.1613ad0e

Re: "Neat" Pictures Is anyone else not seeing any of mattingly's pics? All I see is a series of empty posts.

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us I'm partial to the Alderson Drive (named for Dan Alderson, a Cal Tech physicist) from Jerry Pournelle's SF (and his collaborative work with Larry Niven). It's kinda like the Traveller jump drive, except it takes you there instantaneously--and only along specific "tramlines" that exist between solar systems. Not all systems have such links, and some have more than one. One advantage to this system is that it means the PCs can't go anywhere you don't want them to go. You don't have to map every possible destination in your campaign.

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us These guys sound suspiciously like Larry Niven's Outsiders.* *Aliens who evolved in the dim, cold recesses of space like the moons of Neptune or Pluto. They sold the secret of hyperdrive to all the species of Known Space, for unimaginable sums of money. They also sold the secret of the reactionless planetary drive (for moving whole planets) to the Puppeteers when they decided to flee the galaxy--and take their homeworld with them. They will answer personal questions...for a trillion stars (credits/dollars) per question.

Re: "Neat" Pictures Sure you can. Just put them all on Ringworld. There's room for 300,000,000 earth-sized maps there.

Re: Effects of "Heightened Libido"?

Re: Effects of "Heightened Libido"?

Re: Billionaires: Supervillains earn, Superheroes inherit I don't think it has to do with corruption, it's just (as the article points out) part and parcel of the historic attitude the comics tend to follow. It was always in bad taste for a Gentleman to sully his hands with mere commerce. An income (in the traditional sense, from rents on property, investments, etc) was one thing--and necessary to maintain that gentlemanly style of living, or to gain a worthy bride. But earning a living? Working with your hands? Or even with your mind? Earning a wage, or even building a successful business? Well...SOMEONE has to do such things, I guess (sniff), but no real gentleman would stoop so low. Thus...Tony Stark inherits a fortune. Yes, he builds upon it, but that's really only maintenance (like overseeing your gentlemanly investments and holdings), not grubbing for a living like a commoner. Lex Luthor, on the other hand, is the epitome of the money-grubbing social climber, ruthless and ill-bred....

Re: Teleportation 'Destruction' Power... I'd say Tunneling is the best bet. While typically tunneling leaves a hole big enough for a man to travel through, it doesn't HAVE to. You could define it as a hole no larger than the palm of her hand (or possibly, that making a bigger hole requires Extra Time, as she moves her hand around, "erasing" a larger area). One inch of Tunneling vs lots of extra DR would work. (I have a character whose "lucid dreamer" schtick includes being able to "find" doors and windows that didn't previously exist--the way dream geography often works--and use them. And that is how I built her power. One inch of Tunneling, just enough to make an opening a wall, floor or ceiling, with enough oomph to penetrate anything up to a bank vault's door. I think this would work for your purposes too.)

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

Re: Augmented Reality Start-Up Ready to Disrupt Business That Futurama episode explains why I don't WANT a cybernetic implant. A visor/earpiece combo (that I wear, WEAR!) will do just fine, thanks.

Re: Augmented Reality Start-Up Ready to Disrupt Business Not just one really annoying planet. I think it will be ubiquitous anywhere the technology exists. It will be like being online all the time. You'll be plugged in 24/7, with vast amounts of data (useful, amusing, or annoying) available instantly. There will probably also be an ongoing war between advertisers/spammers and users, just like the internet. I expect you'll be able to customize the "overlays" in nitpicking detail, so you can see only the tags you're interested in. This isn't a new idea--I remember reading about the MIT media lab playing with the concept many years ago. But now it's turning into a real thing. I use a system like this (except it involves a visor you wear) in my starship repo man novels. The visor has a desktop-like interface that can read your eye movements and learn to recognize your intent, so you hardly have to think about what you want to see or do (open a phone link, for instance) and it will happen. Or you can "Google" someone you meet instantly. I'd like to have one of those.

Re: Effects of "Heightened Libido"? Well...duh. Hence her libido enhancement being a disadvantage. It leads to conflict with her teammates...especially the one with smart mouths. Q: Why do Baptists never have sex standing up? A: Someone might think they're dancing.

Re: Effects of "Heightened Libido"? Possible replies from teammates: "Is that what they're calling it these days?" "I got your robot right here!" "I'll be in my bunk."

Re: Unusual Magic Items Bug-Out Bottle - A tiny ceramic jug sealed by a small cork on a leather thong. You wear it around your neck. In an emergency, you grab the bottle and yank it free of the cork--and Pop! You're teleported to a predesignated safe spot. It's a one-shot enchantment that all the members of a magical order wore in a game I played once. Trying to raid their lair resulted in the sound of popping corks all over the place...and then you found yourself in an empty building.

Re: What are YOUR character trademark(s)? As someone with a lot of experience with VPPs, I want to point out an oft-overlooked issue with VPPs. Namely, that flexibility comes at a price. My most recent Champions game was a "round-robin GM" sort of game. Each of us players took a turn as GM for 1-3 sessions before turning the game over to the next GM. It was a very high-powered game, with the PCs acquiring 25 (TWENTY-FIVE) XP per session. We all rapidly became obscenely powerful (and our opponents equally so). And it soon became evident that my character, flexible as she was, was NOT the heavy hitter in the group. ALL of the other characters were more powerful in their niche than I could be. They were stronger, or faster, or tougher, or could dish out more damage than I could. I could duplicate their powers, yes, but always with a significantly reduced pool of points after having bought the VPP and the Control pools for my character. Which is not to say I didn't have fun, and wasn't effective. I was. But I wasn't able to steal anyone's thunder.

Re: What are YOUR character trademark(s)?

Re: What are YOUR character trademark(s)? Well, you have to have a GM who will allow VPPs and who can appreciate them. VPP characters of mine include Raven (who manipulates "reality", which as she knows is merely a collective dream, and she's the only lucid dreamer); Black Mask (similar, but more Matrix-y in concept); and Jesse James, who could change her form in many, many ways. Raven is the most free-ranging of them, with "dream logic" there's very little I can't justify as being covered by the VPP. Black Mask can affect himself best, with more limited powers based on altering the world around him as in the Matrix movies. Jesse is the most limited: she can change her own form (shapechange, density increase/decrease, size changes, etc.) but can't affect the world around her except indirectly. I've played version of these character (or others) using Multi-Powers in games where the GM didn't want to deal with a VPP.

Re: Blasters: why? Heh. The "Wunderland Treatymaker" for instance. In Larry Niven's "Known Space" universe, the residents of Wunderland tired of being attacked by the Kzinti (intelligent, carnivorous cat-like species). So they scaled up the Slaver Disintegrator, which had a slow but effective single-barrel digging mode and a fantastically destructive double-barrel mode, and threatened the Kzinti on a nearby world to surrender "Or else." The Kzinti, of course, refused to surrender. So the Wunderlanders used the Treatymaker to dig a mile deep canyon the size of Southern California into the planet in question. At which point, the Kzin decided that maybe negotiating an end to hostilities wasn't such a bad idea. Hence, "treatymaker".

Re: What are YOUR character trademark(s)? I tend to play either classic flying bricks (it's the FLYING part that matters) or characters with flexible powers. I love VPPs and the ability (and necessity) to think on my feet and figure out how best to handle any given situation/opponent.

Re: Those poor humans Kevin O'Donell Jr. (I think) wrote a novel in which the human star-faring culture is fighting a war for survival against an overpowering, ruthless enemy. Turns out, they're just using us to give their newbies troops a little experience before sending them out to fight the REAL enemy, which is slaughtering them wholesale. The human-slaughtering bad guys are the only thing between us and the REALLY bad guys....

Re: Transplanted Immortality If such a thing were possible, I might buy into it--but for my loved ones*, not for myself. See, even if the clone is identical to me in every respect, including every thought and memory, it is not me. _I_ am dead. The "me" that wakes up in the Gold Cross facility will no doubt feel like me, and be very grateful to be alive...but he won't be me. _I_ will still be extinct. And he'll know it just as well as I did. *Assuming they were interested. They may well feel the same way about this that I do, and not consider a replica of me worthwhile.

Re: Repercussions of mass-producing comic book technology "Would" have? It WILL have. If I'm not mistaken, there have already been lawsuits (or at least rumblings) about the use of the images of dead actors in commercials and the like.