sinanju

Re: DEX: and the Marvel Universe

Re: Stranded in the Past A friend and I created a "fanfic" (more like anti-fan fic) character named Ensign Sugarbaker who we liked to insert (via commentary and adding our own dialogue on the fly) into Trek episodes we were watching as our mouthpiece. Ensign Sugarbaker also had a habit of carrying a 20th century handgun under her tunic. Why? Because anyone with two braincells to rub together knows how often the Trek cahracters run into beings who can neutralize their technology. But any effect that would cause a chemically propelled slugthrower to not function would probably also kill the characters, so.... It's no stupider than Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. That's like taking a guy from 1400s and transporting him to the 20th century. By virtue of his superior physical ability, he is--naturally--a better soldier and fighter pilot than anyone living today. ...not.

Re: DEX: and the Marvel Universe You can quote the books all you like, but I think that putting the breakpoint for "superhuman" at 31 is just silly. That's the sort of thinking that begs for characteristic inflation. As far as I'm concerned (i.e., in any game I ran), the NCM is hard limit. Nobody whose character concept doesn't involve superhuman STR, DEX, INT or whatever can't go above 20 at all. Spider-Man, the epitome of the super-agile character would have a DEX of 33 or so, and everyone else would fall somewhere between 21-32. I've seen too many games where even the player of the big, slow tank of a PC feels like he needs a DEX of 21 or 24 just be marginally acceptable. That's ridiculous. A DEX roll of 15 is more than enough on a 3d6 system. You can add to the character's perceived DEX with missile deflection (dodging) and other powers. All this is IMHO of course.

Re: Class in Fantasy Certainly. I'm talking more in theory than in practice. That's probably true too. Nonetheless, the russian serfs _had_ wide open spaces into which they could flee. English serfs? Not so much. Depends on exactly how things are organized. But if lords in _neighboring_ nations go out of their way to find, cultivate and employ mages in service to the kingdom, lords who do that sort of thing are at a serious disadvantage.

Re: Class in Fantasy It's already been said, but it bears repeating: emphasize that in a feudal society, rights and responsibilities run BOTH ways. Yes, the upper classes have greater power, but they also bear duties to the people who serve them. It's the whole Spider-Man thing: with great power comes great responsibility. The feudal system in Russia was, for a long time, less rigid than in western europe (from what I've read) because peasants in Russia could simply vanish into the immense forests or wide open spaces of the steppes and set up housekeeping elsewhere if their lord was too obnoxious. In crowded, thoroughly settled England or western europe, that wasn't really much of an option. So the frontier option works. If magical ability appears at random, with no regard for the class or station of the individual, that will tend to moderate things. When any random peasant (or a member of his family) could turn out to be a powerful wizard or sorceror, treating him (or his family/loved ones) like dirt isn't a good idea.

Re: Deliberatly Abusive Character concepts

Re: Star Trek: The Talosians Plot Idea: The Talosians never actually stopped fooling with humans. There are no Organians. There are no Metrons. The Squire of Gothos never existed. The Q don't exist. The giant space amoeba? Never existed either. It's all an illusion. The Talosians are bored, bored, bored. They have phenomenal cosmic power (megascale telepathy and illusion powers with seemingly limitless range--they can reach earth!) and itty-bitty imaginations. What better fun than creating fantastical threats for the humans they're toying with to try to overcome? Eventually, though, the humans figure this out... Alternative Plot Idea: Just because the Organians aren't fooling with the minds of other species doesn't mean they aren't still listening. It's better than TV! Maybe they've discovered some plot by bad guys so heinous, so dangerous to EVERYONE, that they feel obliged to let Our Heroes know about it (they can't act directly because They Don't Do That Sort Of Thing Anymore).

Re: Lethality in Star Wars In the Fudge system I like to use, characters have a wound chart and the levels are as follows: Scratch (2 or 3 boxes) Hurt (1 or 2 boxes) - you're at -1 to all actions Badly Hurt (1 box) - you're at -2 to all actions Incapacitated (1 box) - barely able to crawl or speak Near Death (1 box) - unconscious and Mostly Dead. Note that the highest level is Near Death. Nothing will kill you outright by accident or bad die roll. That's left as a decision for the GM. Doesn't mean you can't die, but only if it's dramatically appropriate or otherwise called for. If you're really worried about lethality, use that rule. No matter what the dice say, death happens only when and if it seems right. Doesn't matter how much body you take.

Re: Villains and their Secret ID, post-trial Not at all. That's why I posted it. I steal stuff--uh, I mean, borrow stuff--all the time myself.

Re: STUN/BODY reach 0

Re: Villains and their Secret ID, post-trial

Re: Secret ID and Social Limitation: Famous And that would address the issue. But then we're not talking about an active CEO of the sort I was discussing, are we? If Bruce Wayne has a guy who handles all the real work of running Waynecorp, that's one thing. If he's supposedly running the corporation -and- being an international jetset playboy -and- being Batman...sorry, i don't believe it.

Re: Secret ID and Social Limitation: Famous I wouldn't say it's abusive, but I have serious suspension of disbelief issues with characters whose secret identity is either famous or has a job as a CEO of a major corporation or the like. Either he's so famous that his every move is likely to be tracked (and frequently, unexplained absences noticed) or he's simply going to be too _busy_ to make time for a second and secret career. One of the thing I really liked about the movie THE SHADOW was that Lamont Cranston had a reputation as a lazy playboy. Not so much because he was cultivating it intentionally but because being The Shadow by night and sleeping/resting/healing by day left him little time to go out and be seen doing other things. "Sorry I'm late, Uncle Wainwright. I got caught up." "With what? You don't do anything! It's unseemly...a man your age. At least pick a HOBBY or something." Peter Parker, freelance photographer works for me. Clark Kent, reporter, works for me. They both have jobs that entail a lot of unstructured time; they don't have to account for their whereabouts all the time. As long as the work gets done (and maybe the occasional office visit/meeting), they can get away with it. Bruce Wayne, millionaire playboy works for me. He's a lazy, lecherous goldbrick. Nobody expects anything of him. Bruce Wayne, CEO of Waynecorp doesn't work for me. If he's _really_ acting as CEO of a multi-billion dollar corporation (as opposed to a powerless figurehead), he's too public, his schedule is too booked up, for him to be Batman. I think the same would be true of an actor on a popular television show. Actors tend to work long, long hours with lots of other people. Unexplainable absences are going to cost a fortune and cause a lot of trouble.

Re: Creating a mafia

Re: Creating a mafia You might want to look for the comic (or the compilations in paperback) of the comic Fables by Bill Willingham. In this comic, all the characters from classic fables and legends really exist, and they're living in exile in the human world undercover (having been driven from their homeland by "The Adversary", who conquered it many centuries ago). The human looking Fables live in NYC. The non-human ones live on "The Farm" upstate (magically enchanted so nobody notices the place). They all have their classic powers AND the ones who are most famous (whose stories have remained popular for centuries) are all but unkillable. (Snow White gets shot in the head by a sniper with a rifle, and she spends months healing...but she does heal completely. Her sister, Rose Red, is very annoyed. SHE couldn't have survived it--she isn't remembered nearly as well.) The interaction of all these disparate characters with their various powers and abilities is...wierdly entertaining. (When they have to break into an apartment building without getting caught, Sleeping Beauty attends a party there and pricks her finger--on purpose--putting everyone in the building into an enchanted sleep until the mission is accomplished....) And more to the point, it might give you some ideas of how to handle your fairy tale mafia. These guys tend to play very rough.

Re: Villains and their Secret ID, post-trial D.A. Jack McCoy: "If the suspect were eight feet tall or weighed 600 pounds, it would be equally difficult to find five other people who closely resembled him. That's not prejudicial--it's a fact. Maybe living skeletons should reconsider crime as a career choice."

Re: How would you "Gath" Earth? It wasn't that, really. I wanted more books about the world of Ariel. I just couldn't really bring myself to care about the second book.

Re: Villains and their Secret ID, post-trial How could you NOT lose your Secret ID when you go on trial and your real identity is disclosed in the public record? The whole point is that nobody knows Spider-Man is really Peter Parker, so when JJJ launches a smear campaign or the DA issues a warrant for Spider-Man, nobody knows to look for Peter Parker. Who, unlike Spider-Man, has a well-documented existence, including a physical address, a job (with paper trail), bank records, phone records, and all the usual handles by which people can be identified and tracked. Spider-Man just stays out of costume for a while and nobody can find him. Nobody. If the police know to look for Peter Parker--even if John Q. Citizen doesn't know Parker from Adam--retreating to his "secret" identity doesn't help. If the Kingpin can look up Spider-Man's real name in public records...how does he have a secret identity? "Who robbed the bank?" "It was the Wrecker!" It takes five minutes or less for the cop on the scene to pass that on to the dispatcher (or type it into the computer in his car) and get back the info that "Wrecker" is AKA Dirk Garthwaite, along with a photo and/or address, record, other aliases, know associates, etc. His cover couldn't be any more blown. It's not a PUBLIC ID, I agree. John Q. Citizen doesn't know and probably doesn't care. But anyone who _does_ care can find out his real identity with ease. It isn't a secret anymore. Admit it, you're just _wrong_. :-)

Re: Villains and their Secret ID, post-trial It certainly helps, though. Or do you think the police would rather _not_ know the real identities of all those criminals? "Who is he?" "We don't know." "What's he look like?" "He wears a green-and-yellow costume with a lightning motif." "And when he's not in a costume?" "...dunno." "Well...that's helpful." "Who is he?" "Max Whatever, AKA Electro. Last known address is X, relatives are A, B, C and E. Known associates are F, G, H, J and K. Here's his arrest record and his bank records and credit history and his phone records--from last time he had a phone, anyhow--and we checked for recent activity on his credit cards and questioned his friends and relatives..." Yeah, they still may not find him. But a secret ID stops all of that cold. They can't even try. If you've been publicly identified in court, you don't have a Secret ID anymore.

Re: Villains and their Secret ID, post-trial I strongly disagree. The whole essence of a Secret ID is that you have an alternate persona you can disappear into, one in which your enemies cannot attack you because they can't find you. Why else do superheroes work so hard to protect them? "If Evil Guy Man knew that John Smith was actually Captain Hero, he would avenge himself on my loved ones!"* If you are a supervillain and the authorities know your real identity, your secret isn't a secret at all. Any time they even suspect that Electro was involved in in a crime, they're gonna be all over Max like white on rice. Sure, John Q. Public may not know you from Adam, but John Q. Public isn't trying to find you. The local police, the state police, the FBI, the local newspaper or television reporter or a licensed PI may be--and they can all find you with remarkable ease because your identity is a public record now. *Yeah, there's also the "Aunt May would have a heart attack" rationale, too. But villains seem less concerned about that as a rule.

Re: Villains and their Secret ID, post-trial I don't think for an instant that a supervillain would be allowed to maintain a secret ID after being _arrested_, much less tried and convicted. But then, how many really do? Consider Spider-Man's opponents. Everyone knows who Kingpin is. Rhino, Electro, Vulture, Doctor Octopus--there's no big secret there either. Green Goblin maintained his secret, but he was never arrested as far as I know. Just beaten up, an eventually died by his own hand (though not intentionally). The Lizard may have a secret ID, but I'm not sure about that. It appears to me that most of Spidey's opponents who've actually been acknowledged as having been jailed (as opposed to those who haven't) have known identities, even if we seldom hear the real name mentioned. And I suspect this is fairly typical. Edit: Note that most of them wouldn't qualify as PUBLIC ID either. Except the Kingpin, maybe. But they sure don't have secret IDs. If Electro goes on a crime spree, the cops know who to look for....

Re: How would you "Gath" Earth? I read "Architect of Sleep" but didn't like it nearly as much as Ariel. Alas, Boyett doesn't seem to have written anything else. Haven't read the other two.

Re: How would you "Gath" Earth? Ariel: The Book of the Change by Stephen Boyett. It's long out of print, I suspect, but if you can find a copy, read it. It's set in a world where science stopped working and magic came into the world...for no reason anyone in the book knows about. Our hero is traveling with a unicorn (yes, he's a virgin) at the beginning of the novel. Swordfights, monsters, evil sorcerors, armies fighting with swords and spears and shields in the streets of NYC amongst the stalled cars. It's fun. Dies the Fire by S. M. Stirling. Released last year in hardback, should be out in softcover shortly. This is kinda-sorta sequel to Island in the Sea of Time (where the Island of Nantucket and its residents are hurled back in time to the bronze age. This book shows you what happened to the REST of that world--and maybe the folks in Nantucket didn't get such a bad deal after all... Like Ariel, this book is about the sudden and inexplicable failure of technology (no electricity, explosives won't explode, hell, even steam engines won't generate enough pressure to work!). But it is a more realistic look at the consequences. Not surprisingly, mass starvation is unavoidable. The main characters live in the Willamette Valley (Oregon) and spend a lot of time a) figuring out how to plant, raise and harvest food crops, and fighting to keep what they've got from other groups. What happens to 99% of humanity, especially those in NYC, Chicago, is left to the reader's imagination.... Both books would be full of things you could, uh, borrow.

Re: Astrogator's Handbook Still another source for various kinds of software to produce 3D star maps (some game oriented, some not). http://www.projectrho.com/starmap.html

Re: Building Political Intrege I don't remember where I saw it, but I once saw a gaming article about this sort of thing. Except it used a grid. You put the names of all the parties involved down one side and across the top. Then in the box where two names intersect, you put a symbol that indicates how one party feels about the other. Bob Carol Ted Alice Bob x L B L Carol T x L H Ted Alice So Bob loves Carol, secretly hates ( Ted and loves Alice. Carol tolerates Bob, loves Ted and hates Alice. ...and so on. For very large groups this would become unwieldy, but for relatively small groups, it ought to work pretty well.