Nevelon

Re: Template List for Space Opera Noir: what to include? Space stations (in SF) are going to have a high turnover of transients. Ships dock, crew gets off, does some business, loads up, moves on. The population is always in flux. They pay their docking tax, which covers the air they breathe, and station upkeep. The guys working the air scrubbers and life support utilities can probably get the population numbers (or if they are good, judge them by looking at their gauges). But they don't really need the numbers, they just care that the needles are in the green and the air balance is good. Food and water I assume is sold by individuals/shops. People have been living off of scraps and handout for a long time, or stealing from those who have food. As long as the water stays in the recycling system, the station does not care who's drinking it. Colony bases (of a certain size) are the same way. But they have the additional advantage that they should have a lot of flex in their system, as the are designed for growth. All this assumes a "city in space" level station. Or at least a good sized town. If you have 20 guys in a tin-can listening post on the fringe of known space, there isn't much room for anyone not actively involved in the station. Or if you want your space stations to be places where the halls are gleaming white and the **** doesn't stink, that's fine as well. Whatever you want for your world and your game. Slums on space stations are common enough in the genre to not trigger suspension of disbelief. While space opera can do without them, I don't see how noir could.

Re: "Neat" Pictures I've heard of cars that were lemons, but never a watermelon before.

Re: Template List for Space Opera Noir: what to include? Plenty of space for bad areas, even on 'Habs. C-Deck has never been the same since the blowout in '32. Sure they say it's been fixed and patched, but something's off in the air down there. Everyone with any sense left to other parts of the hab, those who stayed behind, well, if it blew again, nobody would miss them... Or the warrens plastered together out of scrap and caulk -outside- the main docks. Sure, it's dangerous and full of smugglers, cut-throats, and aliens, but station security never seems to do anything about it. They do a sweep from time to time, but as long as the commander is in the pocket of the gangsters out there, nothing is ever going to get done. Lots of nooks and crannies on a 'Hab. Places for people to hide. People who can't pay their air-tax, but can't afford a ticket off this spinning pile of junk. Trying to scape by on the fringes. And a place for the people who prey on them...

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? You can't just watch 1/3! Or if you do, make sure it's "The Good" part. Sounds like you got the "The Bad" or "The Ugly" part.

Re: "Neat" Pictures And how many of us just read that with a russian accent?

Re: Foods for those that just don't care anymore Sure, but being a Pepper doesn't carry the respect it used to. Wouldn't you like to be a pepper too?

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Godzilla vs. Mothra Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah These were the early 90s re-dos, not to be confused with the 60s' originals. While you'd think that ~30 years would help the SFX, it doesn't. They tried to do more overlay 2 scales in one shot, but the technology of the day left a noticeable edge. It's a pet peave of mine. When the special effects stand out in a jarring way, it ruins the immersion in the movie. When it's just a guy in a suit trashing scale cities, there are no SFX artifacts to jar my monster movie experience. 30 years of military aviation didn't help the guys in the movie either. F-14's bounced toy rockets just as ineffectually off of Godzilla as their 1950's counterparts.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla Terror of Mechagodzilla Double feature of robotic terror! Does Hero vs. Evil robot duplicate ever get old? Nah, didn't think so. Both fun movies.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Godzilla vs. Hedorah Godzilla vs. Gigan Both of these were closer to what I expect from a Godzilla movie. There was still a little camp and cheese, but for the most part it was giant monsters trashing Japan. The low point was probably Godzilla using his radioactive breath to fly backwards. An interesting note, both these movies were less "atomic bombs are bad, and nature is getting revenge" and more "quit polluting the planet, or the waste is going to come alive and kill you and/or attract space cockroaches"

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? If anyone can tell me why I watched "Godzilla's revenge" sober, I'd like to know. I knew it was going to be bad going in and I watched it straight up. The thing is, it was bad for all the wrong reasons. Bad acting, bad special effects, bad scripts, all these things I can forgive. But they realy phoned this one in. Almost all the fight scenes were STOCK FOOTAGE FROM EARLIER MOVIES! If I wanted to see Godzilla vs. the sea monster, I would have rented it! And it wasn't just one fight, it was most of them. We've come a long way from trashing Tokyo. If this was anymore kid-frendly, you'd have to paint Godzilla purple and have him start singing. If you are drunk enough to enjoy this movie, you are probably too plastered to hit play on the remote.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Son of Godzilla Make the hurting stop! Now, I love me some good monster movies, but this was bad on so many levels. Still, I continue to work my way though the franchise in order. Next up is Godzilla's revenge, which by reading the blurb on the netflix envelope is a movie that skips right past the "number of beers to enjoy" scale, straight to the "mixed drinks" one.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Re-watched firefly + Serenity. Good stuff Finally got around to watching Avatar. Not bad, but not as good as it was hyped to be. A little formulaic and preachy, but visually stunning. The CGI work was seamless and believable. Kinda wished I had caught it on the big screen, the visuals would be worth it. Godzilla vs. the sea monster. The change of director from previous movies is obvious. This is more 60's camp then 50's radioactive horror. I expected Adam West Batman-esque "Pow!" "Kaboom!" shots during the fight sequences.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares League of extraordinary green-people? A secret branch of Greenpeace dedicated to preserving swamps and wetlands (and possibly desert testing grounds)?

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Zorg Industries: A subsidiary of the Umbrella Corporation. or How many hot chicks does it take to save the world anyway?

Re: Do I need a metaplot for Star Hero? One could argue that firefly didn't have enough time for its metaplot to show. There were a lot of hints of stuff going on. Most HERO campaigns have the understood meta of "We're here to save the world!" with arcs being filled with bad guys, threats, etc. The genre doesn't need a whole lot extra to make it work. Fantasy has the D&D roots of killing orcs/trolls/dragons and taking their stuff. This does not translate well into space, where killing people just because they are a race different from yours tends to cause problems with the cops. As others have pointed out, what kind of story do you want to tell? A planet of the week, rambling exploration set up (ala Star Trek) works fine for when you want character growth and development. How will they react to -this- environment/culture/situation? You just need a flimsy excuse for them to be out there. merchants/survey team/etc... You can run a traditional HERO campaign in space. Rather then just keeping a city safe, you cover a galactic sector. Dealing with crisis as they show up, thwarting Big Bads, the usual stuff. Some long running sci-fi campaigns I've been in: Rim Corps: Characters are hero-level (no powers) collection of rejects and misfits in a foreign legion type unit, patrolling the outer sector of a galactic empire, keeping it safe from aliens, criminals, and the like. No metaplot, just adventure. GDC, the galactic defense corps. Superhero team set up on a mystery base between 3 empires. Why was the base abandoned? What's going on with the surrounding empires? plus random events/bad guys. Some meta, some random. (I might be mixing up 2 games in my mind here, it was a long time ago)

Re: Armor Wars Even if the major powers refitted with power suits, there are still a lot of tanks in the world. How many countries in the world are at the State of the Art? Most nations make do with older stuff because that's all they can get and all they can afford. Plenty of third world dictators will be using them. You will always have tanks for the brick to pick up and toss around; generally the heros aren't going up against the US army. Some old tanks might filter down to the local level as the army replaces them. With supervilleins kicking around, local SWAT teams might have a real tank in the garage.

Re: Order of the Stick

Re: Armor Wars I'm badly miss-remberbing the quote, but something like "Our Tigers are worth 10 of your Shermans, unfortunately you always seem to have 11 of them" Sometimes quantity can trump quality. If a powersuit cost so much that you could buy a few attack helicopters and a half dozen light tanks for the same cost, and those conventional forces and throw enough firepower at the 'suit to snuff it, why bother with fancy armor? Yes, there will be situation where you want the suit, but that's what superheros a/o special forces are for, not "generic" military troops.

Re: Does the Giant Flaming Ape have a name? It's no harder to scream then "Godzilla!" (or Gojira!)

Re: Armor Wars One reason to still have tanks is that they have room for gizmos. There is only so much stuff you can cram into a suit. Super-tech tanks can have massive sensor arrays, onboard supercomputers to help analyze the information, ECM, ECCM, etc. They can coordinate the data from a squad of power armor. They have mass, a presence on the battlefield. Armor tough enough to laugh off anything man-potrable and guns big enough to stop anything equal or less then another tank. When you are postulating the tech for mass produced power armor you need to keep in mind what that would do to other aspects of the military. You can't compare the 'suited infantry of 2050 with the tanks of 1980 and expect parity. There is a lot of military SciFi that deal with these issues. I like SJG's Orge universe for a gritty look at infantry on the nuclear battlefield, and David Drake's Hammer's Slammer's novels for what every tank should aspire to be. Hovertanks FTW (well, at least until you get anti-gravity up and running) ...Heads off to the bookshelf to re-read some books...

Re: Martial In Space 2: a style for all worlds

Re: Martial In Space 2: a style for all worlds Another thought on weapon elements: You could have something based on a magnetic grapple with a tether. Similar to the kama/chain/rope ninja thing. Could be used to either grapple foes, anchor yourself, entangle, or attach yourself TO your foe so you can smack him without flying backwards. You might want to add legsweep. If you are on the outside of a spinning hab, or on the surface of a ship under thrust while using magnetic/cling boots to stay put, making your foe loose his footing will end the fight. Is crush still a maneuver? I see 0-G MA being a lot of grabbing+do ugly stuff to people.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares

Re: Martial In Space 2: a style for all worlds I'm still stuck in 5th ed, but does 6th still have environmental movement? You might want to include some for low/zero/spin G as part of the art.

Re: How do you make this?