Kristopher

Re: December 27, 2004: The Day Earth Survived the Greatest Stellar Attack -Ever **snrk** Yeah. I was just pointing out another example of how effective "simple" kinetic energy weapons can be.

Re: December 27, 2004: The Day Earth Survived the Greatest Stellar Attack -Ever The most powerfull anti-armor weapons in real life are still purely kinetic in nature.

Re: Another Way to Destroy a Planet: the Strange Matter Bomb IMO, we'd probably have some observational confirmation of that scenario if it were a real danger. Have any "quark stars" ever been observed, or even suspected?

Re: How to cram crew members into your spacecraft I've flown once. I will never, ever fly again. Never.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24497/ Today, Ellis and Rothman introduce a significant new type of block universe. They say the character of the block changes dramatically when quantum mechanics is thrown into the mix. All of a sudden, the past and the future take on entirely different characteristics. The future is dominated by the weird laws of quantum mechanics in which objects can exist in two places at the same time and particles can be so deeply linked that they share the same existence. By contrast, the past is dominated by the unflinching certainty of classical mechanics. What's interesting is that the transition between these states takes place largely in the present. It's almost as if the past crystallizes out of the future, in the instant we call the present. Ellis and Rothman call this model the "crystallizing block universe" and go on to explore some of its properties.

Re: Saturn’s Hexagon May Be Solar System’s Coolest Mystery In retrospect, I can't believe no one posted about that earlier.

Re: Multipower are so common, why not just cut every cost by 2 ? is not true. But his assertion that a Multipower is, conceptually speaking, a single power, makes sense. If you have enough points in the MP to run multiple fixed slots, then you just have a more versatile single power. Personally, I would never allow an MP that wasn't in some way tied together in terms of SFX, and in such a way as to explain why the character could only use one or two powers at full potential at a time. A random collection of powers with no connection would not fly, to the point that it has never occured to me to create a character with an MP that was anything of the sort. If GMs out there are allowing random-shopping-cart MPs, then I think that the original poster's objection to them as "just a big discount" actually has a bit more validity. My comment that an MP was a single power with extra spent for versatility, was in response to that assertion that MPs are just a list of discount powers.

Re: Multipower are so common, why not just cut every cost by 2 ? Mechanically, you only get to use one of the Powers in an MP at full AP at any one time, and if they're fixed slots, you only get one Power at a time full stop. The game can call it what it wants, doesn't really matter, the mechanical reality is that it's a single power, with extra points paid in HERO for the versatililty.

Re: Announcing Kazei 5, Second Edition Must... get...

Re: Announcing Kazei 5, Second Edition It sounds like it has all the stuff I'm looking for -- replicants, cybernetics, bio=upgrades, and guns.

Re: Announcing Kazei 5, Second Edition Awesome, because part of why I'm looking forward to it so much is because I want to use it as a source book for some elements of the setting I'll be running for my group this winter/spring.

Re: Multipower are so common, why not just cut every cost by 2 ? I don't consider "argument from adjustment power" to have much validity. The mechanics of the MP make it a single Power, not what adjustment powers may or may not do to it.

Re: Secret Wars Campaign Log Bump?

Re: Announcing Kazei 5, Second Edition Alternate history, I take it?

Re: Astronaut Bar Closing That's sad. I hope the photos and suits and anything else can find a museum-level home, it's where they belong if they're not there.

Re: Announcing Kazei 5, Second Edition So does this mean it's out there for order now?

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure If that's the case, then I've misunderstood, because at least some of the posts seemed, to me, to be suggesting "best practices" for structuring such a society. But you're right, and I appologize for my part in making this a debate over what should be done instead of a discussion of what might be done. Personally, I don't like what I think could easily happen, but I guess that's neither here nor there for this discussion.

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure The conscription was a good start on going bad. Other than that, he seems to have gotten out before the inherent conflict got to him.

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure And if I had actually said "In a hypothetical pure democracy, no one is ever allowed to do anything bad to anyone else", you might have a point. But I didn't. A democracy that's striving to be better than "two wolves and a sheep voting on dinner" is almost always going to be a "constitutionally limited government".

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure I expressed an opinion, which does not, by itself, force anyone to do anything. Indeed, you digressed far away from actually addressing what was in my statement that you quoted, into addressing some odd inferrence you derived therefrom. Oh for cripe's sake. It's not "putting words into someone's mouth" to assert that their posted concepts have inevitable consequences, even if they don't realize it. You + molehill = mountain, evidently.

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure I'm not actually the choir. I have... differences with the Libertarians. But enough about that. Long story short (too late, I know), IMO some things are more important than survival, and I feel very sorry for anyone born during the journey of a generation ship, with absolutely no choices but submission or death.

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure They have, even if they don't realize it.

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure And as I asked before, how does "predictability" as you describe link to the "causality" bugbear of spacetime and FTL discussions?

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure