Publius

Re: A Map of Zothique Wow, three for three. That is the first things that the last three people to have seen the map have asked. From Necromancers in Naat: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/151/necromancy-in-naat The Black River is only mentioned in the one tale, but since it was designed as a highway of sorts for the Necromancers and their servants, I figured that it would wind it's way around the continent -- generally not too close, but close enough to allow for a summoned storm to bring some hapless vessel into their clutches.... bwahahahaha! The direction of the River's "pull" would be easternward along it's length. Oh, and I already caught at least one spelling error (gah! that always gets me).

Re: Thrilling Places question

Re: A Map of Zothique wow. nada.

I read Clark Ashton's Smith's Zothique the other day and figured that while I was working off some steam from a recent spurt of activity I could maybe put together a Zothique map. Two days later and voile! For those of you who may not have heard of Zothique, it is a post-post-post-apocalyptic in the style of the Dying Earth subgenre (actually Vance's Dying Earth was inspired by Zothique). Smith said this of his world in s Letter to L. Sprague De Camp: Zothique, vaguely suggested by Theosophic theories about past and future continents, is the last inhabited continent of earth. The continents of our present cycle have sunken, perhaps several times. Some have remained submerged; others have re-risen, partially, and re-arranged themselves. ... The science and machinery of our present civilization have long been forgotten, together with our present religions. But many gods are worshipped; and sorcery and demonism prevail again as in ancient days. Oars and sails alone are used by mariners. There are no fire-arms—only the bows, arrows, swords, javelins, etc. of antiquity.... I thought with all of the Post-Apocalyptic stuff, this would be a neat format (it is so postapocalytpic of course that it doesn't fit into that mould at all though, nothing of the previous centuries really exists so it may as well be Fantasy, the whole post-post-post-Apocalyptic thing is for tone and flavor IMHO) Clark Ashston Smith was a contemptorary and collegue of HP Lovecraft. I know the style is not everyone's cup of tea, but I have always enjoyed it myself. You can get the Zothique stories online (http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/bibliography/publications/books/92/tales-of-zothique) which is also rather cool. As for the map, there wasn't one from the author himself. Zothique kind of grew into being much like Howard's Conan stories, and built on top of one another. There was a map that Lin Carter did (and CAS "edited and approved") but it is a rather sorry looking creature (not entirely unusual for its day of course). The following map used that sketch as a base, then adjusted for my take on the stories and their locales. I tried to stay true to the tales where possible, which was an interesting exercise in and of itself. All of the placenames used are directly from the stories...

Re: Is Gotham City a substitute for Sin City? This stuff often moves around too. I have heard that Metropolis is somewhere in Rhode Island or Delaware, Gotham in NJ. I think that these things often shift and morph, based on the needs of the story and the persopn at the helm of the titles (as well as the sensibilities of the public). If you need it to be gothic and crowded go certain areas of New York, more caves of steel and glass go Chicago around the Sears Tower, that sort of thing. But I do think of Gotham and Sin City as more or less the same; "with comics code and without" is as good a description or observation as I have seen or indeed would make myself.

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Hero -- What Do *You* Want To See? Now that is funny, what happened was that I cut and pasted the post I made in an "Other genres" thread, and it works there. The Board software truncated that line and it cut and pasted with the elipses and everything.... It works there, here is the link: http://discovermagazine.com/2005/feb/earth-without-people/ Edit: notice how it has that ellipses here still? Wow, I didn't know that would happen on a straight copy & paste. I also went back and fixed the link above.

Re: Malign Hypercognition Disorder (MHD) Sing it Brother! I totally agree with this. Intelligent people make their own rules, about politics, sex and social norms so why not about conventional morality as well? Someone truly hyperintelligent would perhaps enjoy playing the game of the simple ape-creatures that surround them, but for how long? Frustration alone should drive them to conquer the planet. Schmucky the clown and the cast of simpletons in charge? Give me the Destructo-Ray. Plus we all know that superheroes are just authoritarian bullies in tights with issues. Batman is driven by his psychological flaws to do things, not his native intellect. Without that, he may have been the Lex Luthor or Ras a Gul(sp) model, and outdone them all if he were strongly motivated enough.

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Hero -- What Do *You* Want To See? Sorry Steve, I didn't realize you were looking for this info. I came acroiss that a while back for my own research. My post in another thread regarding when they set their PA settings follows, you'll find that link about infrastructure in the middle there, I put it in red to stand out... Depends on what you want, as many of the other posters here have said. My thing is all about the rot. There are a lot of things that happen to modern buildings and such that will lead to a very fast downward spiral immediately after the lights go out and the pumps stop pumping. I live in Michigan, which is largely a swamp that has been clearcut and drained. The Drain Commissioner is an elected office here, and their job is to ensure we don't return to the swamp from whence we came (dramatic music swells). About 10 years after the bomb/plague/rapture/pockylips groundwater and growth will make the state look a lot more overgrown. A hundred years from now, most of the modern buildings will be toppled and the ruins overgrown. Here is a great article that concentrates on the effects to New York: http://discovermagazine.com/2005/feb/earth-without-people/ Some of this might be delayed a time by nuclear winter/shifted weather patterns that will take away the great enemy of the modern building: water, or at least minimize water's effects for a few years/decades. Now, all that being said, the Post-Apocalypse doesn't have to be Uber-realistic, so long as a setting conveys the image that you want there are any number of reasons why and how that don't really have to be explained by a group of folks that play games featuring men and women that fly and shoot lasers from their eyes. Plus, some of this could be doomsaying and hype. A lot of "official prognostictions" turn out to be hot air why not this one? (i.e. the idea that the Nuclear Bomb could ignite the atmosphere, or that gases from nearby passing comets would cause wholescale poisoning, all 'officially sanctioned' at one point or another). My thinking would be along these lines for comfortable Verisimiltude: 1-10 years for Mad Max style Chaps-with-no-pants fun, 20 years max before gas breaks down (manufacturers say gas has a 1 year shelf-life, although... http://www.alpharubicon.com/altenergy/gaslifepal.htm so I'll give 20 and still not loose verisimiltude), 150 to 250 years maximum for a good number of modern buildings to remain (mostly) standing -- particularly in dry environments. Some titanic stuff -- like major bridges -- will last a LOT longer, but they were built that way. Of course, if they saw the end coming, they might have made some more that way -- designed to last with minimal maintenance for the Long Dark to come, built with what remained of the resources they had available to them as the wick slowly burns down. Of course things like Magic, a slower downspiral of technology (i.e. interrum society does some maintenance and repair until it too finally gives way, this can lengthen the period by however long that society persists) and other elements will alter all of this.

Re: Cool Guns for your Games shhh, you do not want to call the wrath of the Tetragrammarian down...

Re: Post-Apocalyptic Hero -- What Do *You* Want To See? '45 Psychobilly Retropocylpse, daddy-o! Love it.

Re: Cool Guns for your Games American 180, a .22LR hose (extremely high rate of fire, supposidely the recoil doesn't affect the aim until AFTER the entire burst goes downrange) Ares FMG knockoff, in closed "Radio-mode" (designed to look vaguely like a protable radio, I like the antenna: nice touch) Ares FMG knockoff about three second later (according to their claim), transformed and ready for action! Go Go Gunbot. KRISS submachinegun, another high rate of fire, but with design features designed specifically to reduce recoil effects. A nice bullpup sniper rifle, based on another KelTec (I like the original design, which has nice clean lines and the same barrel length of the FAL because of the bullpup design, this one has that much more barrel length whcih is key with sniper rifles AIU)

Re: Cool Guns for your Games I have always had a soft spot for KelTec's SU16 w/ optional bayonet, their folding carbine version and their 5.56mm pistol. Darned neat to look at. BTW, love that Bushwhacker.

Re: Zoey Bartlet in my campaign

Re: Godsend Agenda D6 by Khepera Publishing Oops, my mistake, I was thinking the Mayfair DC Heroes game, never played the other one. The Mayfair game used the logarithmic scale and was a point allocation system. I like Hero better, but I did enjoy that game as well. I never played or even saw WEG version (I was already a HEROphile). Mea culpa. To get back to the thread topic though, what is it about the Godsend system that would be of interest? It looks interesting I mean, but why especially for Hero. I'm certain the original poster had something in mind (High-level gaming, dealing with Godlike entities, etc.)

Re: Godsend Agenda D6 by Khepera Publishing I presume it is their D6 system a la Star Wars. The other one was only used for DC Heroes. The log scale took some getting used to, but I actually liked it myself. The one I didn't like was the Marvel system, solely because the randomly generated powers created such vast disparities. PC 1 "I grab that builkding and toss it at someone" PC 2 "I use my microvision to um.... look at something. Something tiny. Then I make my prehensile hair wave at it..." When I GM'd I simply made PCs tell me their character concept and then gave them the appropriate powers. But back to the point, the books you list here look interesting.

Re: Cool Guns for your Games Although, I like this image of the Pulse Rifle better (I uploaded the max last time)

Re: Cool Guns for your Games My Little M-16.... The Longshot.... The Wildely gas-operated pistol... Plasma Rifle in the 40W Range... "I wanna introduce you to a personal friend of mine. This is an M41A pulse rifle. Ten millimeter with over-and-under thirty millimeter pump action grenade launcher." (Standard M41 Pulse Rifle....)

Re: Cool Guns for your Games Desert eagle (I wanted a Dessert Eagle instead, but hey they say that this one comes in .50 cal and I'm watching my weight) I'm not sure exactly what that is, might be as BB gun of some kind, I downloaded it because it had a cool look. Another one, a USP, I'm sure that is not a BB Gun Last one is a rifle, really not sure it isn't some sort of BBGun either.

Re: Victorian / Western HERO Firearms Ten buildings for $16? Yeah I saw it. Not overly interested, I have known about Whitewash city for some time but never moved on it . I have thought about buying one of their larger sets (the Whitewash city site has more choices), but never really got around to it (BTW you can find them here). I might sell someone else for that price however With a pdf sized for 1inch=2m no less Like Bloody John's Saloon... (which you might note is NOT sized here as this is a gif file)

Re: Victorian / Western HERO Firearms Cowtown Creator looks pretty good, I spent most of my time in the Doctor's office looking at it and found that it has a very nice level of detail on the cowboy setting generally, as well as some juicy details on stuff like how Prostitution works in the west and the cattle industry and that sort of thing. It points out where Hollywood has stretched things a bit (such as the 'typical' Sheriff office and the fact that the term "Bounty Hunter" was apparently unknown during the period -- "Man Hunter" was used instead). One nice ting is that it has some very rough maps of the buildings found in a western setting (some of which I will be digging my claws in and redrawing soon). Since my first look-see, I have spent more time on the Firearms Shop which gives some nice detail on weapons (reload times, etc), there is a lot of wasted space due to layout (HERO spoils us with the depth of detail and space allocation), but I'm very happy with the purchase nonetheless and still found it a good value.

Re: Victorian / Western HERO Firearms I just ordered two books from Knukleduster -- the Cowtown Creator and the Firearms Shop. I ordered directly from their website on Saturday and the package arrived on Monday. Looked inside, Not a huge fan of the layout, but on a "glance through" (about an hour) at the Doc's office the information looked top notch.

Re: Venture Brothers Hero? "I feel like Cathrine the Great..." I forgot that one. A buddy of mine is going to run Venture Brothers the next Ambercon.

Re: Points Equality I'm something of a fanatic about equal point values, but I can see the utility of the sytsem that Gazza suggests, especially if combined with some form of Heroic Action Points a la Pulp Hero (i.e. your "little guys" get more Heroic Action points, the bigger stronger sort do not). You can also suggest that some players purchase more subtle abilities but have the same total point values, those which have a game effect but are not especially showy. Skills and Super-Skills for example are really good for this sort of thing, have someone load up on them. I have also had games where one of the other players has an ability to evade damage but it only works when the special effect is something embarassing for him (think Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China, he hits the armored guy who falls on him and pins him down but it keeps him safe from harm, that sort of thing). It was actually used for great comedic effect.

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? "Too drunk to F***" Nouvelle Vague

Re: NASA Predicts Non-Green Plants on Other Planets And their women lay eggs. Which is kinda hot in a way.... what?