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Re: Judice: A world with Nitric Acid instead of Water

Maybe the planet didn't always have an acidic atmosphere? Maybe it was once hospitable with advanced life' date=' but something, either "man-made (alien made)" caused the change in the environment, killing off 99.9% of the life forms, or maybe it was a natural disaster that had the same effect? A comet made up of frozen nitric acid crashed into the planet centuries ago. If it was a "man-made" disaster, maybe it was a super weapon used by a powerful alien race a long time ago. The question then become, why did they want to destroy this planets ecosystem? Were they trying to hide something or stop something? If so, what remains hidden under the surface of the planet? And what about this super weapon? Could it be re-discovered? Replicated? If so, a lot of interested parties would be intent on getting a weapon so powerful.[/quote']

 

I like this. What if the reason they wanted to destroy this ecosystem was just to make sure the thing worked. And they're out there, somewhere...

Re: Eccentric but plausible ways a character could be rich?

Duplicator: He/she is the ENTIRE assembly line, and collects a paycheck for each position, per union rules.

Re: A Possessed House

So what happens to Hotel California when Chuck Norris looks for a place to stay the night?

He's the reason you can never leave.

Re: Judice: A world with Nitric Acid instead of Water

Yeah, the key is the concentration. If we're talking seas of pure acid and high vapor concentrations in the atmosphere, then this is an extremely hostile environment. If the concentrations are low, however, then it's a matter of building slightly specialized equipment with minimal alterations. Also remember that gold is commonly used in modern space exploration for a variety of reasons, so it's not that big a stretch to use it here.

It seems to me that this would, in geological terms, be a temporary situation under most circumstances (Venus-like planets aside). The acid will react with its surroundings, ultimately losing its strength as time goes on. Unless, of course, there is some process taking place to replenish the stuff fairly quickly.

In terms of the possibilities for intelligent life, this might be a chance to explore some possibilities in chemically based communication, among other things. Definitely an interesting setting, whether minor or major.

Re: Hero System 101: Comments sought

Prior to 6th Ed, if you had any resistant defenses, your normal defenses also applied against Stun from a killing attack.

 

6e removed the requirement to have resistant defenses - normal defenses always reduce the Stun from a killing attack.

 

Count me among those who does not see this as a significant change, as virtually every credible combatant had at least some resistant defense. Combat Luck basically was created to allow characters who had a tough time justifying a bit of rDEF to justify a bit of rDEF.

The significant change for us was when we realized that Normal Defenses applied AT ALL to Killing Attacks. We played for years with only Resistant applying. That does alter the value of KAs.

Re: Judice: A world with Nitric Acid instead of Water

Not as alien as you might think. There are not entirely dissimilar environments here on earth, including inside your own digestive tract. Not with nitric, I don't think, but other acids and bases, sometimes with fairly extreme pH values.

As to structures, gold is apparently non-reactive with nitric acid, so gold film or plating might be the best choice, depending on other environmental factors (winds, precipitation, etc). With a high enough Tech Level, force fields could be used, as well.

Re: Hero System 101: Comments sought

Um' date=' that was only true in 5th if you had at least some rDEF, it was not the default.[/quote']

 

True, but none of us (nor NPC's we used) ever had zero Resistant Defenses. Except for civilians, but we generally ignored them except for flavor.

Re: Hero System 101: Comments sought

Two things.

1) Whoa whoa whoa. Been a while since I've played 6th. Normal Defense stops Killing STUN???

That's been true since at least 5th, which I know because I've never played 6th. We missed that detail for quite a while, and it changes the value of KA's significantly.

Re: Dehydrated Water?

Rave on' date=' John Donne. Tell it like it is.[/quote']

 

Um, thanks?

Re: Hero System 101: Comments sought

Excellent introduction. That's the clearest explanation of why they changed the Attack Roll wording that I've heard.

Two notes:

1) The examples you give for Resistant Defenses are all physical and are essentially forms of armor. This might result in a new player misunderstanding the concept. I'd recommend some other possibilities being listed (force field, inherent toughness, luck, all the usual suspects).

2) In the final example, the target's PD is not given (it is his ED that is given in the previous example), nor is it made clear that non-Resistant defenses count versus the STUN of a KA. Clarifying this would make this example work better.

Re: Castle Bathory

I did go to Google Maps and zoomed in on the castle, which gave me a basic layout. It's a little tough to make out any details -- it's sort of hard to tell what's a wall and what's a footpath or a shadow, for instance. But it's a start. Thanks!

 

If anyone finds anything, please let me know!

Well, think of it this way. If it's this hard for you/us to find maps, then anything you come up with is unlikely to be challenged by the players. Gives you a fairly free hand to use another castle that you can get floor plans for.

Re: Dehydrated Water?

All depends on how efficent you can get your recycling. Which may have psychological effects as well as engineering limits. I feel reasonably safe in assuming every atom of oxygen in the atmosphere has been through at least one kidney since the kidney evolved, so we evolved drinking and breathing recycled pee, but for some people, even trained scientists, there's an "ick" factor when it becomes too obvious it's their own recycled pee.

 

I may have spoken too quickly before. Can someone check my math on this? Barring exotic isotopes for a moment, by weight water is 16/18th's or roughly 89%, oxygen, which means the remaining 2/18ths, ~11%, is hydrogen. The density of liquid oxygen is 1.14, so to yield a gallon of liquid water we would need (1*.89/1.14), or about 0.78 gallons of LOX, correct so far? Now we need enough liquid hydrogen to react with that, so we need um, just over 416 grams of liquid hydrogen, so at a density of 0.07 grams/cc that's 5.94 liters or -- over a gallon and a half? You have to react over two gallons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen to get one gallon of liquid water?

 

Did I get the math wrong or is liquid water actually the most space-efficent storage?

I have absolutely no clue. Chemistry math was always one of my (many) weak points. I do physics better. However, I believe that LOX is actually liquid O2. It would mean that every molecule of LOX would contribute to two molecules of H2O, though I don't think that that changes your equations at all.

Re: Dehydrated Water?

Both HyperMan and McCoy have it right. There are ways you can reduce the amount of water you need to bring along, but once you have that number figured out, that's the mass. Now, figure out a way to reduce the amount of water a human needs in order to survive, and you've really got something.

Re: Dehydrated Water?

I was not talking about vapor, but refering to this post

 

 

 

In which Hyper Man describes taking hydrogen and oxygen as fuel for a hydrogen fuel cell that produces water as a "waste" product.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Ask a palindromedary

Ah, I was looking at the "Gas can be compressed" comment you had made. Using fuel cells to generate water and power at the same time is part of extending the water cycle on long voyages, and a very important one. Any consumable you can get to do two or more jobs at once is a good thing. So yes, Hyper Man is absolutely correct, and I suspect he knows a lot more about this stuff than I do (fuel cells, at least).

Re: Dehydrated Water?

Another possibility is to harvest water as needed during one's trip through space. There are many sources of water-ice in our solar system: comets' date=' asteroids, moons, planets. Permanent "rehydrating" stations could eventually be set up on some of the larger bodies.[/quote']

 

That is, in fact, the plan. One of the exciting things to come out in the last decade or so is that there is water ice on the Moon. That changes the profile for an interplanetary journey enormously. Not having to lift all those kilos of water out of Earth's gravity well is a big savings in fuel and expense, and makes a permanent Lunar base a real possibility.

 

To answer Lucius' question, I don't think you can compress water vapor into a smaller volume than the same mass of liquid water. But bulk is just an engineering issue, mass is one of economics. More mass equals more fuel, more bulk doesn't usually increase your fuel consumption (at least not significantly).

Re: Dehydrated Water?

Okay, I have to get pedantic here. A molecule of water consists of two atoms of Hydrogen and one of Oxygen. This cannot be changed, altered or reduced. Even if you're carrying the Hydrogen and Oxygen separately, their combined mass does not change relative to the amount of water you can make out of them. If the trip requires one hundred thousand kilograms of water, then you have to carry that total amount of mass in Hydrogen and Oxygen.

The way to reduce the mass associated with water is to recycle it. This is the focus that NASA and other agencies worldwide have been working on, to improve the filtering and recycling of water in the systems on board a ship to reduce the overall mass that needs to be carried. Steel can be replaced with aluminum or carbon compounds to reduce mass. There is nothing you can do to reduce the mass of a molecule of water without invoking a general ability to reduce the mass of an atom or molecule (which we can't do, yet).

Re: Castle Bathory

I have been looking, but am coming up dry so far in terms of actual floor plans. The current castle is often referred to as ruins, and that may be hampering things. Still looking, though.

Re: What is Happening with Dark Champions?

I always associated DC with stuff like Sin City and, oddly, early TMNT (the comic, which was very dark at times). Blade Runner would also make a great world to run a DC campaign in, with or without Replicants.

But you're right, in that DC is seen as a cross-genre sourcebook rather than something like Star Hero or Fantasy Hero, which provide much more specific information that doesn't cross-pollenate as well as DC. In a very real way, this is because DC is a much richer and stronger source of material than the narrow-genre books. Nothing against them, but I think of DC as almost a core rulebook, whereas the others are not.

Re: Avian Aliens

Main thing for a flyer is to keep the weight down (or more accurately, the weight to wing area ratio).

 

Hollow bones, like birds, may well mean lower BODY. Large breastbones are also a must: those wing muscles need an anchor. Also for weight reasons, they're likely to lay eggs or grubs rather than have a mammalian-style pregnancy.

 

There was a meme in 60s/70s SF that flyers are unlikely to be intelligent; the brain mass is too much. I don't know if more modern research agrees with this or not, but Poul Anderson came up with a supercharger system, a series of wing-powered breathing slits which provided extra energy when flying, to allow for flying the extra brain mass. Can't remember the name of the species, but they're in the Earthbook of Stormgate collections in his Polysotechnic League stories.

 

A species from a world with a denser atmosphere but standard gravity will have an easier time of it (maybe the world has no moon, so hasn't been subjected to atmospere stripping). But the race may not be able to fly in standard grav/standard atmosphere worlds (though they may still be able to glide). A higher oxygen mix may also help provide energy while flying.

That trope is also based on the unproven assumption that intelligence requires high brain mass. The actual human part of the brain is relatively small. Most of the volume is taken up by the 'monkey' and 'lizard' brains. Numerous science-fiction explanations could be reasonably made that reduces the mass requirement for intelligence. One might be a 'dry' neuron, which is able to operate without all of the surrounding insulating tissue (jelly, fat and the like), and is therefore able to reduce the overall brain weight without sacrificing function. Could even introduce some interesting Complications for the race. (note: I am not proposing that there is any current scientific evidence that this is even vaguely possible, merely proposing an explanation for why brain mass is not a factor for these aliens)

Re: "I know a guy"

I even know an example from the Source Material:

Roy Greenhilt has the Ghost of his father as contact. With Always on.

I don't know if I'd list Roy's dad as a Contact, or a Complication - Pain in the Backside.

Re: A curse that returns?

It would be nice to know how many players you might have that want to lose their superhero powers.

 

Doc

It's a trope that works much better in a piece of straight fiction than in a game. Would any player really be that upset being owned by Stormbringer? Or work that hard to get rid of the Thing's or Hulk's powersets? Not in my experience. Characters who are trying to get rid of a curse are largely motivated by a desire to live a normal life. People playing RPGs are not.

Re: Do you run Sandbox style? and how?

I tend to improv a lot, because I got tired of working for weeks and having the entire campaign blown away in the first session. I tend to plan relatively short adventures and let the players complicate them. We usually refer to that as "urinating around" (not really, but you get the idea). We've had a lot of fun that way, and it seems to be my best mode.

My buddy Matt, on the other hand, ran a campaign once (I wasn't there for it), where he built a city and decided what was going on in it. Each game day, the characters had the chance to do pretty much whatever they wanted. If they got themselves involved with something that was going to happen, then an adventure of some kind ensued. If not, then the plot lines advanced as planned. He had various ways to get hooks into the character's hands, but it was largely up to them what they wanted to do or respond to. People in the group said it was great. But he's a planner by nature.

So, there are two completely different takes on the basic idea, both of which work pretty well.

Re: What is Happening with Dark Champions?

My Bad, we would need a bullet train though or a Teleporter.

 

Cheers

 

QM

Nah, just a really good catapult. Aim for the Columbia River and you'll be fine.

Re: template mottos

Blaster: "Craters on Demand"

Time Traveler (stealing from csyphrett) "I'm your mother, your father, your aunt, and two of your children."

Low-end evil agent "VIPER gets armor. We get t-shirts. I should have stayed at Taco Bell."

Mentalist "You are feeling very sleepy. When you wake up, I will own your @%%."

Martial Artist "Hey, Larry!"

Marksman "Dodge This!"

Re: What is Happening with Dark Champions?

Port Moody, British Columbia, Canada. About 30 minutes by Bus from downtown Vancouer, BC not Washington. Damnit.

 

How is Vancoucer, Washington, United States crossroads between the Rockies and the Prairies.

 

QM

Given that we're nowhere neither either the Rockies, Prairies or the roads that cross them, perfectly fine. Plenty of places I'd like to visit, but nowhere I'd rather live. And if you feel like traveling 300 miles to game, let me know.