Michael Hopcroft

Re: Building a Time Lord The "I could tell you how I got it, but then I'd have to shoot you" channel. Seriously, there is a rumor that the new series is being picked up by HBO. I don't think that's been confirmed, though. And it has been airing in Canada on the CBC.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "I've defeated Saddam Hussein!" "Congrataulations! Now you can rule Iraq!"

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "Honey, get out of the hosue! I smell sulphur! It must eb a gas leak!" "We don't have gas." NT: Signs everyone in the room except you is being mind-controlled by the Illuminati.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat The Washboard-Chested Megagirl

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "What do you mean I can't drive a tank? I'm Sailor Mercury, for crying out loud! I can do anything!"

Re: Another take on fantasy campaigns I wonder what sort of campaign people would have in mind with this kind of setting. I hope the races are not so mutually hostile that they are engaged in continual, genocidal war. that would be depressing. I'm wondering what sort of non-depressing campaign you could ahve with this setup, actually, and what else would have to be in the world to create the sense of wonder and awe neccesary for good fantasy.

Re: Missing SW-Brand Mono-Climates Is a mono-climate world even possible? I know we're dealing wtih space-fanatsy here, rather than science fiction, but it still strains credibility a bit. A planet with as little plant life as Tatonie has wouldn't have an oxygen atmosphere for very long, would it, without many plants to photosymthesize the CO2 and exhale O2? I'm reminded of the time in Doctor Who when the Docotr landed somewhere, started speculating on what planet they were on based on all the gravel-quarry-like terrain, and then discovered that he really had landed in a gravel quarry on Earth.

Re: [Humour]SciFi TV Quotes Remmeber the first McCoy epiisode, Time and the Rani? not a very good story, but the newly-regenrated and somewhat confused Doctor had some wonderful mangling of the English language in that episode. Apparenlty it was intended to be one of his Doctor's schticks (much like Eccleston's frequent use and misuse of the word "Fantastic!"), but either the producers or McCoy himself decided they didn't like it and it was dropped. It was a pity that the Rani was never used to her full potential -- a character who sought knowledge but didn't give the slightest cocnern to the conequences of her quest for it. Now, presumably, she's dead -- lost in the Time War.

Re: New-model Dalek

the new Daleks have some capabilties that are not normally associated with Daleks (they could probably always do these things, but the budget did not permit). These include: 1. A force field powerful enough to repel bullets. 2. The weapon being able to fire different types of energy blasts for different occasions, most ntoably electocity (it kills dozen of men with one shot by sretting off the spinkelrs, taking off, and firing an electroc shock into the sopping wet floor stong enough to electrocute everyone in the room). 3. Actual flight (apparently it takes a lot of power, so it could only do it for limited times, but it's a great way around the stair problem). 4. The use of the plunger as a weapon in hand-to-hand combat. 5. Daleks can apparently interface with any computer system, no matter what its origin, and absorb all the inromation in any computer the target is networked with. The Dalek was able to download the entire Internet in fifteen second. Suddenly Daleks got a lot more expensive in HERO terms, not to mention a whole lot deadlier. And if one Dalek can decomate an entire regiment of highjly-traiend solider,s what can a squad or platoon of them do?

Re: Building a Time Lord There are occasional referneces to the past, such as the head of a Troughton-era Cyberman that the Doctor finds in a museum. The Cybermen would actually be good opponets for the new-era Doctor, actually. They might not have been directly involved in the Time War, or could have deliberately sat it out, and thus could easily be a viable force in the post-Time War universe. Of course, the biggest element of speculation for fans of the new series, at least for this season, is the omnipresent references to something known as "Bad Wolf". it shows up in all kinds of places, from graffiti in contemporary London to the code name of a villain's helicopter to a commonly-noted theoretical "scenario" that is known int he far future. Someone looking into Rose's mind even calimed to see "the big bad wolf". And "Bad Wolf" will be the tirle of the second-to-last Christopher Eccleston episode. Russel Davies is doing a fine job of foreshadowing. And although I haven't seen it yet, the latest episode ("Father's Day") is apparently going to deal with a variation on the classic Grandfather Paradox that counfounds logicans and conveinces them that time travel is impossible. It is apparently going to extremely traumstic for Rose. Finally, i saw the new Dalek episode yesterday. Utterly fantastic Who, that was. The Doctor suddenyl finds himself confronting his personal demons both literally and figuratively as he faced a Dalek who is trapped not only in time but by its own nature. When it tells him "You would have made a good Dalek", the Doctor looks as if someone had just put a bullet in his stomach. And there is a great human villain too, who i sincerely hope escpaes his fate so that we can see him again. (I can just see it -- "I lost everything I had and everything I am -- because of you, Doctor. You thought I was just some rich man, didn't you? Well, let me show you what I can really do with only human inginuity...)

Re: [Humour]SciFi TV Quotes And from earlier in the episode: "Ace, give me some of that Niitro-Nine you're not carrying!" From the same episoode: Stotz: OPEN THIS DOOR! The Doctor: Sorry, seems to be locked. Stotz; I'll kill you for this! The Doctor: Not a very convincing threat, actually, since I'm going to die soon anyway.

Although this idea mainly comes from reading about the Yakuza, who began as police in areas where the feudal Japanese authorities didn't want to go, but it could apply to other "organzied crime" gropus as well. What sort of a campaign could you build around characters who are criminals, and do illegal things for a living, but who have a moral code of their own and lines they never cross -- and find themsvles opposing and oppsoed by other criminals for whom there is no such code, not to mention by the authorities? There are numeorus examples of this in fiction, from thieves who secretly support charities such as orphanges and commit crimes to ebenfit them to assassins who only go after other killers and refuse contracts to kill innocents. Such characters would frequently have to mete out vigilante justice, because turning in their enemies to the police would serve to endanger their own freedom. Another example would be the character who pretects petty criminals from the local crimelords.

Re: Azhanti Hight Lightning Fleet Intruder I've always wanted to use the Azhanti High Lightning as the basis for a Traveller Imperial Navy campaign. The problem woudl be how to avoid turning it into a version of Star Trek with the Third Imperium replacing the Federation.

Re: How to model posthuman godlike entities? If they are incapable of manipulating phsyical obects or moving around in the real world (in other words, they exist primarily as data), i wonder if buying down their Phsycial Characteristics to 0 would be reasonable? You could take a Physical Limitation that they cannot exist outside of a computer or computer network, and that they are destoryed when their machine is. An NPC is one of my on-line campaigns has gone from being a biolgoical entity to a data entity while retaining her formidable psionic abiltities. I'll have to write her up sometime and show you in case it gives you any ideas.

Re: [Humour]SciFi TV Quotes And she followed up nicely by looking up into the ceiling after closing the connection and saying "Sorry about the God thing." ivonova was jewish, although whether she was a relgiious or observant Jew is open to question. There was also, IIRC, a lot of pecualtion about Ivonova's sexual orientation and the nature of her relationship with Psi Corps operative Talia Winters. On the other hand, when Marcus gave up her life to save her and she realzied he was in love with him, she was very upset, saying "I should have boffed him at least once!" Another classic B5 sequence: Garibaldi; Want to see my favorite thing in the universe? (Talia walks out of the lift in a huff) Garibaldi: How about my second favorite thing? (His "second favorite thing in the Unievsre", which he shows Delenn later in the episdoe, turns out to be the Chuck Jones short "Robinhood Daffy", a nice touch.)

Re: Character: Inspector Allhoff (Identity Crisis tie-in) Sounds like a character that just about anyone with a shred of deceny would despise even as he admires his competence. Does he have any peronally redeeming factors at all? I can actually see him in svereal different types of camapigns. He'd be great as the nasty, arrogant brains behind a stong but dense super, for example. And a character construced along those line would make a very interesting crime lord in the tradition of Professor Moriarty, Roderick Thorne and the Kingpin.

I just finished reading Laura King's spectacularly good novel The Beekeeper's Apprentice, about a teenage girl in 1915 Sussex whose life is changed forever by a chance encounter with a semi-retired Sherlock Holmes. the heroine, Mary Russell, learns Holmes' trade and eventually becomes involved in a deadly revenge plot against the Great Detective. the novel includes a barely-coeverd but quite intriguing sujourn to 1918 Palestine, during which the two have several adventures that King decides not to desribe in detail. I was wondering how to write up Mary, and would like to know if there are any other readers of this quite long series who have ideas on the subject.

Re: Tsubasa Chronicle HERO Some other notes: 1. Mokona Midori also seems to be a sort of translator. Any dimensional traveler who si within a certain raidus of him can undertsand anything said to them by anyone. This extreemly useful since Syaoran, Kurogane and Fai all speak different langauages. (Although when they are all speaking their own tounges it is Syaoran who is portrayed as speaking Japanese, I doubt he actually is given that he has only been to modern Japan once for the span of about fifteen minutes.) 2. Sakura-hime seems to have some sort of unconscious power that prevents even evil people from wishing to harm her. or perhaps that is a function of her personality. If Sakura-hime were any sweeter she'd come with a warning to diabetics. (Incidentally the one was to piss her off is to call her "hime" or "hime-sama", as she utterly despises formal speech. of course, at this point in the sotry she might not even remmeber that she is a princess.)

Re: Anthropomorphic/Furry HERO Resources

Re: Shoujo HEROine

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat Your GM puts on leather chaps and starts waxing enthusastic over World of Synnibar. NT: Signs that your girlfriend is really a ten-year-old using magical powers to pass as an adult.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat You think "Stardoe" is the most insulting word in the English language, and your regular conversation is sprinkled with words like "frack!" and "feldercarb!"

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "When I said Coke I meant Coke, not Coke!" NT: Signs your high school football coach is out of his mind.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "About that sexual harassment policy -- is there any way i can get a waiver on it?" NT: Signs that the host of your favorite talk radio show doesn't have a clue.