sinanju

Re: Using nanotech in a campaign

Thanks for all the suggestions. I;'m still frightened of grey goo' date=' however, as it seems the mpost likely nanotech to get developed. Everyone wants a weapon that will utterly wipe out their enemies, and someone is going to want a weapon that wipes out [i']everybody[/i], friend or foe, someday.

I don't worry about gray goo because we don't know that it'll be possible. That stuff has to be powered by something; either a concentrated power source is necessary or its going to spread slowly, giving you time to deploy defenses*. Nanotech replicators may also be too fragile to be so dangerous anyhow.

*I refer you to the Diamond Age world--defensive "dog pods" and an ongoing arms race between attacks and defenses. Gray goo may be good at spreading, but defense nanites designed to attack and destroy gray goo won't be all that hard to create either.

Re: Character: Robocop

ZERO ED? I'd think that heavy armor would give him some energy defense, personally.

I wouldn't give him the Life Support advantages either. He has to eat and breathe (he's vulnerable to gases), and he has an exposed face, so he's vulnerable to low pressure/vacuum too.

Re: Modern-Day Urban Fantasy

Most of my campaigns in years have been of the "secret magic in a contemporary world" sort. Mostly set in Santa Carla (Buffy's Sunnydale writ large, basically). Werewolves, vampires, demons, ghosts, mages, Slayers, immortals...everything.

And it's always fun when all the groups are ignorant of the existence of all (or most) of the others, or--alternatively--if every group thinks _they_ are the secret masters and everyone is a pawn.

Re: Evolution of the races?

Okay, this question will most likely crown me science geek of the year, but you guys knew that already.

 

If I were to explain the existence of different humanoid races (elves, dwarves, orcs, etc.) as the product of evolution, how should I go about it?

 

Should they be different strains of Homo Sapiens? Then half-elves and half-orcs would be able to exist.

 

Should they come from different branches of humanity that pre-dated Homo Sapiens Orcs could have evolved from Neanderthals, for example.

 

If elves are the eldest race, could they have evolved from Australopithecus?

 

Keep in mind I'm trying to come up with a scientific explanation of how these races came to be. None of that "created by the gods" or "magical creatures" stuff. They could be aliens, but I don't particularly care for that explanation either.

The Anicent Race (humans? dark elves?) came first. They were around for a very, very long time and grew wise in the ways of the world (i.e., science or magic, depending on how you want the gameworld to go). They also grew decadent and cruel. They created all the other races to be their servants and/or playthings.

Dwarves were created to be strong, tireless and small enough to work underground in smaller spaces than would be required otherwise.

Orcs/Goblins/Ogres/Whatever were created to serve as soldiers or gladiators. "We'll pit armies against one another like a chess game! We'll take our due in blood!"

Hobbits/Halfings were created to be house servants, cooks, butlers, etc.

Centaurs, Minotaurs and the like were created to be prey animals--they were animalistic and lived in the wild, but had enough elf-level intelligence to make them more interesting to hunt.

Elves (or less elves if the Ancients were also elves) were bred to be beautiful playthings.

And then the Ancients disappeared. Maybe all at once, maybe over centuries. They're gone, but all the races they created are still around, still well designed for the roles they were created to fill. They may or may not remember their origins.

Re: Doctor J.A. Quest

If you like Johnny Quest, then you'll love the Venture Brothers, a brilliant parody on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim.

 

Brock is voiced by Patrick Warburton, and his love/nemesis is superspy Molotov Coctease, just to give you a taste...

I absolutely agree. Venture Brothers is "must watch" tv in our household. It's on the Tivo season pass list. It's hysterically funny more often than not, and always good for a jaw-dropping "I can't believe they did that!" moment in every episode.

Dr. Venture, son of the ORIGINAL Dr. Venture, is what I suspect Johnny Quest would grow up to be. A second-rate "super scientist" with serious self-image issues....

Re: WWYCD? #126: For Whom the Bell Tolls

Your character has been asked by a teammate or friend what sort of funeral arrangements they want, should the worst occur.

 

"But I'm immortal."

 

"Just in case, okay?"

 

So, what sort of sendoff would your character like to have (and what's likely to happen instead?)

Hmmm.

LE FANTOME would want a wake. A huge party with truckloads of booze for all of his many friends to eat, drink, remember him, and then move on with their lives.

HELL'S ANGEL really doesn't care. Whatever the people who care about her need to deal with their grief is fine by her.

CASSANDRA is 16 years old. See "But I'm immortal" above. Forced to confront the idea, she'd probably opt for a traditional funeral (with lots of weeping and wailing, of course).

Re: Name for a fictional city

Santa Carla, California, baby!

I've set all but one of my contemporary campaigns (mostly mystic wierdness-oriented games) in this fictional town, which I lifted from the film LOST BOYS.

"The murder capital of the world? Are you serious, grampa?"

"Well, let's just say that if all the corpses that are buried around here was to stand up all at once, we'd have one hell of a population explosion!"

***

"One thing I never could stomach about living in Santa Carla--all the damn vampires!"

Re: What's the best way to conquer Canada?

Best way to conquer Canada (or anywhere else): Mind control the voting public to go along with whatever you want to do, including--if necessary--passing amendments to the Constitution (USA) or other founding documents, as well as to the laws, to make it all nice and legal. If you want to be subtle, arrange for the votes to be close enough to be convincing. Nobody is going to believe that 100% of Canadians think Sinanju should be God-Emperor For Life, but a hard-fought campaign to elect me, and then to give me ever-increasing political and military authority...that's somewhat more plausible.

Re: Is a politician a good secret ID?

there really arnt many jobs that are compatyible with a superheroic life style

Or, as an article in a comics magazine once put it many years ago...

We ALREADY have colorfully costumed characters patrolling our cities, fighting crime. They're called THE POLICE."

Re: Is a politician a good secret ID?

About as viable as millionaire playboy. The truth is that the responsibilities of running a corporation would interfere so greatly in your ability to fight crime that you'd basically be using your vacation tiem to combat evil. A politician with a secret ID would constantly have aids running around looking for him, "Where's the senator? He's never around when we need to discuss the Lataverian Arms Deal!"

 

But it's a game. Bruce Wayne gets to rarely show up at the office because people buy into the idea that if you run the company you can do absolutely nothing but rubber stamp things a couple times a week. Politician is fine for a comic book setting, but don't try it in real life

That was one of the things I liked about The Shadow (the movie). Lamont Cranston had a reputation as a slacker (well, a lazy layabout playboy in period terms) precisely because being The Shadow all night was a fulltime job.

"I got caught up."

"In _what_, for God's sake? You don't do anything! At least pick a hobby or _something_! It's unseemly--a man your age...."

Re: WWYCD #125: The Turn-Coat

For Hero Teams: One of your enemies has “reformed†and struck a deal with the feds. He or she will be granted amnesty in exchange for giving evidence against his or her former partners/employers and public service in the form of Crime Fighting. For some reason your character has been asked to look after this ex-criminal.

1) Who has reformed? Is it sincere, or part of some scheme?

2) How do you try to protect your new ward in case his/her old partners show up?

3) A victim of your ward turns up looking for revenge. The crime your ward committed against this victim was serious, and is one of the crimes that will go unpunished if the amnesty goes through. Do you protect your ward?

Hell's Angel: 1) Absent utterly convincing evidence of sincere repentance and both the desire--and ability--to travel the straight and narrow, Hell's Angel wouldn't cross the street for her would-be ward. Her entire life experience (mostly with her own family) has taught her that leopards never change their spots, and that users will ruthlessly abuse any trust. 2) Protect him physically? Whatever's necessary. Protect him from temptation? That's not her job. Resisting temptation is HIS job, and he'd damn well better be up to the challenge if he wants her protection. 3) Depends on the crime. If restitution is possible, it better happen; if the crime was rape or assault or murder, Hell's Angel isn't going to accept the proposition in the first place.

Cassandra: She's neither a hero nor a villain yet. She could go either way, depending on how things work out. The question isn't really applicable.

Re: [Pulp] Suggested Reads

Part of my definition of "Pulp"is the setting' date=' roughly the period from the turn of the 20th century and the end of World War 11. After that time it is too easy for technology to get in the way. [/quote']

 

Ah, well, that explains it. I don't consider the period important, except within _very_ broad parameters. If it has the _feel_ of a pulp story (massively competent heroes, very evil bad guys, lots of action--especially of the "get captured, then wreak havoc during your escape" kind (a staple of Modesty Blaise stories), then it's pulp in my eyes.

Re: An idea on how to make characters

I think Worldmaker's GGU campaigns have a pretty good approach--you're required to have at least 25 points of non-combat-oriented skills. Knowledge skills, professional skills, area knowledges, languages, etc. are all good places to spend those points. Deciding what skills my character would have that have nothing to do with combat or being a superhero really helps focus on the personality.

Re: Your Favorite Useless Power

Detect Honest Politicians - You probably need about 38 levels of Mega-Scale to find one.

 

Extra Limb - Prehensile Scrotum. Actually, this could have some potential uses, though not of the sort likely to come up in a CHAMPIONS campaign. Maybe when PORN HERO is released

It's been done. PROPHYLACTUS! was a (short-lived) character in a Champions game my gaming group played years ago. His power was a superhumanly powerful prehensile penis with stretching.

And everybody in the room cringed when an NPC archer pinned it to the ground in combat.

Re: X-Men Continuity Question (shudder) concering Emma Frost.

You see' date=' I think it has less to do with the movies than the absolute abyssmal performance of comics as entertainment media. Comics wouldn't even exist if not for the money made from licensing the characters. At least, mainstream comics wouldn't exist. So everyday at Marvel they're like "Oh my god, we suck! What can we do?" and they're feeling around in the dark for a way to make comics popular again. Some would say it's over and they should just cater to the community of fans who are still loyal to them. But what about the success of manga? Or, as mentioned before, their movies/tv?[/quote']

 

I have a theory about this. My theory: comics have waned over the years as other forms of entertainment have proven able to give us what comics used to provide. Comics once included westerns, detective comics, war comics, soaps, horror, etc. When comics were at their peak of readership, the main competition was radio and early movies. Then black & white tv. Then color tv. And movies, of course. With increasingly convincing special effects. And comic readership has slowly declined over the years as other media proved effective for telling many of the stories the comics used to tell.

 

Westerns vanished, as did soaps and romace comics, and war comics. Some of these are still seen occasionally, but for the most part, we can see the same stories done in live action with SFX just as good as any in the comics on tv or in the movies.

 

The last bastion of comic superiority was superheroes--for a very long time live action superheroes sucked like a whore behind on her rent. The comics could still show you things that neither tv nor movies could equal. That's changing, though comics can still show you these marvels on a monthly basis and tv and movies can't. Yet.

 

So if the comics people are trying to find a way to get back to the glory days of yesteryear, I think they're screwed. It's over. The fat lady has sung--so far as recapturing past glories. They _can_ still be successful, but only if they reinvent themselves to give readers something they can't get elsewhere.

Re: [Pulp] Suggested Reads

I'm not sure that I would call "Modesty Blaise" exactly a PULP character; but then I think that half of the thing with Pulp is the setting (pre 1945). You could probably drop them into a Pulp campaign easily enough (and Lucifer would make a good villain/ally as well !) or create analogs of them. (Hmm give Modesty an unusual ' date=' for the period, Martial Art such as Kung Fu and the "trained by a master"advantage and Willie a touch of ninjitsu plus their normal abilities and they might be fun !) You might need to make Modesty a "dashing aviatrix"type to account for her rather masculine taste in clothes, but hey, it could work ! They certainly might make an interesting pair of allies/nemeses for a bunch of P C's.[/quote']

 

You wouldn't call Modesty a pulp character? Are you mad? She and Willie are classic pulp-style characters. They're fantastically adept at combat and strategy and countless other adventuring skills, gorgeous/handsome and thoroughly oversexed, and they can't go out to dinner or visit friends without stumbling across a villainous scheme or having bad guys try to take them out pree-emptively.

 

Of course they're pulp characters!

 

Don't make me declare jihad on you!

Re: Anybody ever play Fantasy Superheroes?

What did you do to them to convert them to Godlings?

Gave them all 200 points of Primal Base, 20 points of Primal Flux (per day), and all the advantages that go along with that* per the Primal Order book.

Immortality and Total Life Support, of course. Plus the ability to duplicate any magical feat they'd witnessed, enchant [transform] items or beings, and shield themselves or inflict damage by spending Flux. And they could draw power from consecrated items/places/worshippers, which increased the amount of Flux they had to draw on. More worshippers meant more power.

Three of the players' characters got together and formed a pantheon, pooling their daily Flux allotment to create Paladins (1 Flux point = X character points for granting advantages/stats/etc) to do their bidding and spread their religion. Spending three times the points anyone else could scrape up each day gave them a real headstart. They gamed the system beautifully and were well on their way to kicking ass on a global basis when the campaign ended.

Another PC bumbled around accomplishing little but doing it very entertainingly.

One player simply couldn't get into the campaign and dropped out.

The last tried to organize the goblin hordes of western Yrth, turning them into good anarcho-capitalists. He ran into the annoying problem that they were very good at being yes-men when a god showed up, but left to their own devices, quickly reverted to squabbling and exploiting whatever advantages the god gave anyone for their own advancement.

Re: Anybody ever play Fantasy Superheroes?

I ran a GURPS Primal Order game once. I let the players take any existing GURPS character (except no psionics and no supers) they'd ever played or wanted to invent and turned them into Godlings, and then dumped them into Yrth.

Except that this Yrth was being depopulated by YADE (Yet Another Dark Elf), who'd finally been convinced that humans were vermin and had to go. He was too powerful for any existing human nation (or heroes) to stop by the time the PCs showed up. Fortunately, they were Godlings. And they needed worshippers to grow in power, so they soon set about gaining worshippers by defending them from the genocidal Dark Elves.

Re: Crime and Punishment

. . .so' date=' your not even allowed to use magic to protect yourself from some psycho trying to kill you??[/quote']

 

Nope. Using hostile magic on someone is not allowed under any circumstances. Not fair, perhaps, but the way it is (in the Anita-verse, anyhow).

 

Which means that Anita is in a world of hurt if the truth about some of the things she's done ever comes out....

Re: Crime and Punishment

Look at what 9/11 did to Civil Rights in the USA. All it would take is a few major super crimes, and the entire Bill of Rights as it applied to suspected Super-crooks would go out the window.

In the Anita Blake (necromancer and vampire hunter) novels, ordinary crimes are treated as usual, including capital crimes. The trials, appeals and whatnot for capital cases can drag out for years or decades, just like in the real world. It's...different for supernatural types.

Lycanthropes are considered varmints in several states, and can be killed with impunity (as long as a post-mortem test proves the dead guy was a lycanthrope, you're golden).

Vampires are too powerful--physically and psychically--to be held in prison safely. Therefore, there's only one punishment for vampires: death. And the death warrants aren't hard to come by once a vampire is discovered to have committed a crime.

As for magic--the use of magic against an unwilling victim is a capital crime, and self-defense is NOT a defense to this charge. And dangerous magic-users, like vampires, are just too damned scary. Someone convicted of using hostile magic will have his conviction appealed immediately, to be either affirmed or overturned, and then the sentence carried out WITHIN A MONTH.

Re: Crime and Punishment

People may debate the circumstances that due process justify killing; but no one would really argue that the government has the right to kill. It is a perk that comes with being a "sovereign" body.

 

If this position were untrue, then the government would not have the legal right to authorize the military to kill, or to authorize a police officer to kill.

Actually, a policeman has no greater authority to kill than any ordinary citizen. He is entitled to kill only in self-defense, or in defense of another. In fact, very little that a cop does involves powers that a normal citizen doesn't have, although an ordinary citizen who attempts to arrest a fellow citizen is more at risk of finding himself sued for it and doesn't have the advantage of job- or union-provided legal advice and protection.

Re: [Pulp] Suggested Reads

IIRDC, the character Erle Stanley Gardner originally created is very muich different from the charfacter Raymond Burr made famous on TV. reading one of the original perry Mason novels from the 40s was a revlatory experience.

 

The original Perry Mason had a lot of rougish charm to him.; Sinking his teeth into a good, scandalous mystery was his favorite part of the pracitce of law, to the point that it frequently got him into trouble. he actually expresses delight when discovering corpses because it means a new challenge to his intellect. Burr's mason, by contrast, is grave to a fault and takes himself and everything around him extremely seriously.l

Yes--I highly recommend the Perry Mason novels. I love them. On top of which, many of them were written in the 40s or 50s, and it was truly a different world then. Reading those books will give you a real feel for how that world differed from ours.

Also, I highly recommend Peter O'Donnell's MODESTY BLAISE novels. They're more contemporary, but Modesty and Willie are classic pulp-style heroes, and the villains are all black-hearted villains thru and thru, perfect for copying into a campaign (along with the death traps and villainous schemes they employ). I've used the basic plot of LAST DAY IN LIMBO for several different groups of players over the years.

Re: Usning nanotech in a campaign

Here is a good question for Michael Hopcroft: What is the TL of your campaign? It is true that we currently do not possess the ability to make matter suddenly appear out of nothing' date=' we are trying to make devices that can do so. A society that is sufficiently advanced could put such a device as ST replicators into a nanite and enough nanites working together could make that ship suddenly appear in empty space, no air, water, etc. Like in ST rubber science could explain how it works even though the real world does not have the full understanding of how to make one work today.[/quote']

 

I'm skeptical of science that rubbery. In _Engines of Creation_ (one of, if not the, first popular book on nanotechnology), Eric Drexler made a point that I've never forgotten. He wrote that the universe operates on physical laws and that while we're still discovering the basic rules of the universe, eventually we'll figure them all out. And when that happens, scientific progress will stop. Forever. There will still be room for innovation, for endless variations in how we use what we know, but that there are immovable limits on what can be done (even if we don't know yet what they all may be), and when we find them...that's it.

 

Sure, maybe Trek-style transporters and replicators are theoretically workable--but I doubt it. More likely, I suspect, it's going to be more like the matter compilers (with source and feed) I described above from The Diamond Age.

 

And from a purely dramatic point of view, when anything is possible, there's little room for conflict or drama.

Re: Usning nanotech in a campaign

Read "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson for a look at a world awash in nanotech. Some of the things he describes (in no particular order)

Cookie Cutters--nanotech explosives that are injected into the body, drift around in the bloodstream for some length of time, then explode, turning you into undifferentiated goo.

Mites--invisibly small nanotech devices with myriad uses. Surveillance, espionage, counter-espionage, attack, defense, etc. Any time you visit a friend or establishment, you can expect to spend a while sitting in his waiting room drinking and reading magazines while _his_ nanotech system scours you for hostile mites before you're allowed to interact.

"London Fog" -- Armies of mites act as seeds for water vapor to coalesce around, tending to create fog. When two armies of mites go to war, the air is awash in pinprick flashes of laser light (for ranging, targeting, destroying one another), and the "dead" mites accumulate as a layer of "toner" on every surface....

"Dog Pods" -- a hemispheres of airborne widgets that surround an enclave, of various sizes up to the size of a small ball. So called because they're close enough together that a dog cannot slip between them. They keep track of everyone who comes and goes, and can attack intruders (people who belong can walk past them with impunity).

Mediatrons -- surfaces ("smart paper" more often than not) which consist of layers of nanotech machinery. They possess enormous amounts of computer power and can display still or moving images (and produce sound), respond to commands or even act independently (within the limits of their programming), responding to events around them.

"M.C." (or Matter Compiler) -- programmable by voice or keyboard, you request...well, any material object, pretty much, and it begins building it an atom at a time in a vacuum chamber. What you can create is limited by how fast it can acquire raw materials, the size of the chamber, and what it's programmed to produce. (Free public compilers are slow and limited.)

"The Feed" is the network of conduits that feed the MCs.

"The Source" is the source of raw materials for the feed. Some are simple bins of chemical elements; others are far mor elaborate (giant coral-like nanotech structures which draw constituent elements from the air, earth or sea).

There's lots more. It's a fascinating book.

Re: An Alternate Superman

Young Kal-El rockets to earth from the doomed planet of Krypton, where he is found and raised by...

1. Joe Kennedy, growing up as young Clark Kennedy and going on to be elected as the nation's first bulletproof President!

2. Eric Von Strakenberg of the Domination of the Draka. He grows up as Clark Von Strakenburg, and goes on to show the world what happens when a REAL superman with a will to power comes along....

3. Raised by the apes who raised Tarzan. The mind boggles...