Spence

Actually the thing that made me like the series was the clash between modern and primitive. The Core worlds were high-tech while the colonies degraded down to using draft animals. It makes perfect sense, to me anyway. Like CC said in the quote, the fringe worlds don't have a strong enough infrastructure to support very much tempremental technology so they would rely on things they could make or repair themselves. Draft animals are perfect, they breed, work and you can eat them. Slug throwers are the weapons of choice since you can always make new powder and bullets. Of course the guns used by the Serenity's crew were a step above our modern weapons, not only in rounds before reload, but there was a distinctive energy build-up when they were charged/readied/cocked.

Did the site go down? I tried to access the site and keep getting diverted to a seacrh site because the server cannot be found.

OK regestered.

I just got through watching a TV series I bought as a boxed set. Apparently I missed the entire series when I was oversea's. I have to say it just screams SH roleplaying and I was extremely surprised it didn't make it. It is better than Enterprise or Voyager ever hoped to be. Anyway it is called Firefly and only has about 14 eps. Just thought I mention it.

Re: Stellar Coordinates Try the Astrogators Handbook at http://www.scifi-az.com/astronomy/astrogators_handbook.htm They have a free sample you can download.

Ranks For my scifi style games I do away with the Officer/Enlisted break. The entire reason to have one has esentially gone away and many "enlisted" are far better educated and experienced than the officers placed over them. In a technical military where large numbers of under-educated fighters have been replaced by small numbers of highly skilled technical soldiers it becomes very important that the officer in charge actually understand not just in general but in specific of how a task or objective is to be acheived. Anyhow, I suggest you decide how you want your organization to be structured and then make ranks to suit.

5E binding I bought my copy via the internet as soon as they could be bought. It has since followed me oversea's through several countries and survived an extended cruise on board one of the Navy's finest warships. So far the binding is as good as new.

Did I mention I have bruised ribs.....and I really hurt now...

I don't see how. The original Traveller in the original three black books, which I still have, contained almost nothing about an existing universe. It did tell you how to generate one. In fact the "Worlds and Adventure" doesn't have anything of the existing universe other than mentioning "the Psionics Institute" as a way to cover the Psi rules. Animals are decribed by type: Herbivore, Carnvore or more specifically Pouncer, Grazer and so on. Even later on, in the 80's (the original game came out in 77) when an adventure was published it would say a name (planet, starport etc.) but there usually wasn't and actual map to place it. It was later when they began to publish the sectors and prebuilt universes that I started to lose interest. Heck, one time I had purchased the "Azhanti High Lightning" supplement for the deck plans, and when one of my players noticed the cover of the pamphlet (pre-box version) he started telling me about it in detail. I do have to admit the Judges Guild traveller map for a spaceport hotel (can't remember the name} was the site of many a Champs battle.

I was thinking of what made me like the SciFi games I played in the past. I loved Traveller in the begining, but now it prompts little to no interest. When LUG put out LUGtrek I enjoyed the system as one of the better games to catch the "Trek" feel, but never had it "grab" me. I think I have figured it out. The early SciFi games were heavy (for their time) on the gear and tech of the ships. They had detailed world building. But, they had vague and generalized "world/universes". I never had a player "Know" a Grill wouldn't do that as I've been told "A Klingon would never do that!" To me SciFi more than any other genre is about exploring the unknown. If the player can buy the supplement and read it, and they do, the magic of the unknown is gone.

The "Ships & Battles" book has deck plans with interior plans? I've seen tons of the gratuitous pic of the weatherdeck. But very very few that include the inside. Hold arrangement, berthings, bilge, cabins, magazines (if applicable) and so on.? It would be great to get a gaming supplement with all that. I've got shelves of supplements that promised long and delivered short. I wish I could take a look at a copy, but my FLGS is not so F and carries less stock than I do.

Crimson Arrow I think I will go with your definition. Works for me.

Not a flame troll or anything else intended. Since my entire experience with 7th was reading through the core book a long time ago. But even though I absolutely love the swashbuckling genre, I never bought 7th because it didn't ever have ships. Yes it had "write ups" but no deck plans or anything. Did they ever put out an actual supplement that covers ships? And my definition of covering includes side and top view diagrams, deck plans of the ships of the periods, from cog and caravels to barks, brigs and frigates. Ships crews and desciptions of what they do. Movement rules and combat rules. Harns "Pilots Almanac" is the best I've seen so far but they never included deck plans. Once again this isn't a knock. I'd use Hero to run the game regardless, but I really like good books with deck plans and such. So if 7th has one I'd buy it.

While I have to say I am a bit disappointed, I'm not surprised. I love SpaceOpera and will someday run a SH game. But I can see where is isn't a big line. One of the big things that make a Space game good, are the ships. I know many people who are put off by Hero's vehicle system. I think it is because they want the ship/equipment rules to be separate from the character rules. My problem is if I see stats on a ship I want a deck plan. which is why it will be a bit before I run my SO game. Free time to do deck plans is scarce. I think that there are just too many scifi games on the market for hero to compete without expendng major resources. And right now they are doing the right thing by sticking with the items selling well now.

But how do you really know. Maybe it wasn't Grant. Maybe it's all part of a conspiracy and grant is hanging out with Elvis laughing at us.........

Re: Re: Weapons and such I like that. Gives me ideas....

Hudson City is one of the product lines I have been avidly waiting on. I have always prefered lawer powered supers and HC has been my favorite citytype of those that have been published. The DC line are tagged as "buy as soon as possible". I did have a thought which may or may not be feasable. ProFant has a section of their site where people can send in maps they have made which are then posted for free download. Some are high quality some are not. But they all are maps . It would be cool if someone made a map of a store, say an apothacary in HC's version of chinatown, and could post the map. This would create an expanding resource for GM's. Of course it would also create problems for you so I don't know if you would ever consider it effective from your of DoJ's perspective. And I REALLY wouldn't want you or anyone else at Hero to split you attention from the Hero lines in ANYway that would lower the quality. By the way, I just received my copies of CKC, CB and VCotS. I need a second copy of CKC to cut and fill. I usually have one copy of an enemies book where I have the binding cut an place the sheets in doc protectors and a ring binder. I then just pull the sheets I actually need for a game. But I just wanted to say I think CKC and CB are really well done and I love the maps in CB. I haven't read VCotS yet. But flipping through looks great.

It looks good. It's bsing discussed over on the "other Genres" board under " Very Pulp Hero Movie". Spence

I just got my copy of CB. The Construction Site section is exactly the type of mapping I love to see. For larger areas, like the Galleria, the way you denoted "1 Game hex" is a very useful touch. the map scale is too large to make the printing of game hexes over the complete map useful. But placing hexes over the "empty" halls puts a scale right by almost everything. Up thread you mentioned that using CC2 would probably not happen. My question is about using PDF format. I make most of my maps in CC2, can I re-scale and print the the PDF maps using Reader, or will we have to lay out the price of a small car to by the full version program? Now remember I am not that familier with the whole adobe thing, but the last time I looked at a full version of the Adobe program that allows you to edit and publish PDF's it was fairly pricey. Targeted I would guess, toward commercial business use not private hobby use. Is there a more cost effective version of adobe that allows the manipluation of PDF maps and pictures, mainly resize, adding GM notes, and then printing, I am not familier with? As for the CC idea, there are many herophiles who would be glade to assist in converting existing maps into CC format and they could then be available for download. I myself would be glad to give it a crack once my personal situation settles down, sometime in July 04. Anyway just a few ideas.

After I got through laughing I had a thought. Hmmm could this guy make a supervillian? hmmmm....

Read one of the early "Hammers Slammers" novels. His "tanks" used the compressed feed method, I think that is where BT got the idea.

My personnal thought is this is heading in the wrong direction. Rather than trying to adapt modern (or past) naval organization to spacecraft, I think we should be looking at a blend of modern military aircraft blended with parts of ship organization. Not suck'n'blows (jets), but the large crew long endurance mission aircraft with crews of 11+ and mission duration of 10+ hours. Right now a large part of the maintenance on board a ship is due to the fact that ships and their equipment have a lot of metal. Metal and saltwater equals corrosion, hence a lot of grinding and painting and other corrosion control. In space a craft could control its interior atmosphere and be able to limit interior corrosion. Exterior corrosion would be drasticsally reduced unless they spent long periods in atmosphere. I am an avionics technician by trade, and most of the rountine malfunctions I have dealt with over the years can be attributed, at some degree, to corrosion. When we "reseat" a card and fix a transiet error, all we actually did was cause the pins to scrape and get a clean contact. All in all, for spacecraft, I think there will be a reorganization and redefinition of crew positions and jobs. I also think that the maintainers will continue to outnumber the users (operators). And last off, I never thought BM's were were that bad, but someone has to be at the end of the foodchain :D

Regardless of how narrow you want the definition of "Pulp" to be. It has always been my favorite genre. I have copies of all the, well most anyway , of the pulp style RPG's from over the years. Justice Inc was the best I'd every used to actually run the genre, the systems built in flexability allowed me to do everything I wanted within the rules rather than having to "tweek" and make up things "just because". But to get back to the subject at hand. I know that Pulp isn't the most popular genre these days, but I would really REALLY like to see PulpHero come out

Crimson Skies! The original FASA version. Not the Clicks stuff. If you can find them the novels were pretty good.

No problem, I'd hate to do the Sub thing myself. They have benefits, but overall I'll let them have it.