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UltraRob

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Posts posted by UltraRob

  1. Re: Warrior Nymphs

     

    Some obvious questions that come to mind:

     

    1. What is the level of free will possessed by these beings? If you abuse them, will they turn against you?

     

    I think that's not really an issue. Both because of the way they're raised and their link to their tree they're effectively warrior slaves who have total loyalty and duty to their masters. However, if you had one that was raised away from the community, it would probably be a little more....spirited.

     

    2. Can they pass for human, and would they wish to?

     

    The intent was always that they look like young human women, so if the person they met hasn't met a Warrior Nymph before they would probably mistake one for a human. It's a bit like meeting a clone of a particular type.

     

    3. Are they any more resistant to damage than a normal human? And are there specific things that don't affect humans but do affect them?

     

    If I were writing them up, I'd give them a vulnerability to iron weapons because they're really just coalesced energy in solid form. (When they make themselves solid.) Except for that, treat them as normal people because they can already generate the leaf armour quickly enough and even go desolid, so it would be a bit much to make what should be a type of soldier tougher.

     

    4. What happens to them if their tree is destroyed (by accidnet, fire, careless beavers, termites or deliberate action) while they are out and about? Can a stranded nymph save herself by finding a new tree of the appropriate age and type?

     

    If the tree becomes sick and weak, they will have to spend more time "sleeping" in order to restore themselves every few days. If the tree was full-up destroyed by fire or cut down, the Nymph will live another few days, then get weak and die. They can't attach themselves to new trees, this is done on purpose to keep them as guardians to certain areas and limit their mobility. If you wanted them to be more mobile you could say they can temprorarily perform a ritual on a tree where they are and then use it to sleep in instead to restore their energy. That tree would be covered in glowing runic symbols while they're in it.

     

    5. What does society do with these warriors when there is no war for them to fight?

     

    They are warriors and guardians, their society probably resembles that of a military camp with ranks, strict order and hierarchy. They spend most of their time training under their human commanders, doing drills, going on patrols, practicing their skills. They're warrior slaves, so they don't have much sense of life outside out of the army.

     

    They were never intended to be PCs, more like the scarey elite troops of a isolationist state, but of course they can be modified to taste for your own campaigns. ^_^

     

    Rob

  2. Re: "Chinese Amazons" as a Fantasy Culture

     

    My first thought on seeing the thread title was: "Chinese Women's Volleyball Team!"

    Mmmmm, volleyball...

     

    Threadjack!

     

    Actually, my former Chinese tutor and still good friend spent her teenage years on a state-sponsored national volleyball team in China. She is HUGE, and breaks pretty much every stereotype about Asians being small/weak. It's actually funny to see her tower over her average sized Canadian husband. She's a "Chinese Amazon" in every sense of the word, including being hot as hell in the looks department. :thumbup:

     

    If there's a whole tribe of her across the strait (she was from Shanghai), I'm packing my bags!

     

    end Threadjack!

     

    Rob

  3. Re: What is a conceptionalist wonder

     

    Eosin is dead-nuts on, and I am wrong. That's why the term sounded familar to me, I had heard it before. A character whose background only exists to justify his stats or abilities and nothing else. Everything fit together in a nice neat maximized package designed to keep the GM from saying that certain things aren't justified. I've had a few players throw these at me over the years.

     

    When I first read it, I stuck on the comment about the skills, which made me go in that direction. Yes, a streetkid could have a lot of points in skills, although generally they should be of certain types. (Unless it's a cyberpunk campaign, then they could be almost anything.) The other player's comment made me wonder if there were a lot of inappropriate skills in there, but only the GM can answer that one.

     

    Rob (Who also wishes the original post was more readable.)

  4. [Note: These are loosly based on the Spirits from the new anime series Sword of Aseria, but my expanded take on them since I have only seen a single episode. These are just my brief notes, which I thought I'd share.]

     

    Warrior Nymphs

     

    Warrior Nymphs are used by a kingdom with a fairly low population as a way of surviving against the hostile powers around them. Essentially they are magical tree nymphs which appear as young women when they take physical form and have been trained and taught to act as warriors. This has several advantages, including that they neither eat nor sleep normally as people do, but by returning to their tree self. They also have some magical abilities, both dependant on the type of tree they are, and as a Nymph in general, the greatest of these abilities is that they can materialize or dematerialize at will. (Although it’s costly for them to do so, energy-wise.)

     

    There are several kinds of Warrior Nymphs:

     

    Maples: Appear as short, energetic red-haired women, they are battle mages, not strong, but with offensive and defensive magical spells in addition to their swords.

     

    Willows: Appear as pale-skinned women with (usually long) blonde hair, they are nimble ninja-like fighters who can dodge around enemy attacks and strike with scary accuracy.

     

    Oaks: Large muscular women with (usually short) brown hair, they are frontline fighters, big strong and tough. A little slower then the others, but they hit hard.

     

    Cedars: Appear as emotionless white-haired women with green eyes, they are archers, they can hit the smallest target at a distance, and excel at finding weak points in armour.

     

    When they appear, they tend to wear uniforms made of leaves tightly matted together to almost form a kind of scale-mail armour, but which of course to them weighs almost nothing. Each type has a slightly different style and colour of armour, red and orange for maples, green and black for willows, brown and black for oaks and green and white for cedars.

     

    They can withdraw weapons from any tree around them, the wood morphing into a blade as sharp as steel and light as a feather. It only lasts as long as they’re holding it, and then begins to decay after about 15 minutes into dust.

     

    The only disadvantage of Warrior Nymphs is that they must sleep inside their trees once every three days, so they have a very limited range. If they don’t do this, they will get weaker each day they go without sleeping inside their tree-self and eventually both they and the tree will die. If anything happens to them, their tree-self also dies, but usually produces a seedling which can be used to grow a new magical tree with the spirit of the original when planted. This is why they’re often referred to as Guardian Nymphs as well, and that may have been their original purpose.

     

    Each Nymph appears physically the same as her sisters of her type, but they tend to customize themselves a little in terms of their hair, their uniform or other small ways, sometimes even tattoos. They also have individual names they call themselves, usually poetic descriptions of nature scenes.(Blue Falls, Eagle Against the Sun, Whispering Grass, etc.)

     

    If a kingdom wanted to use them to invade a neighboring territory it would be possible, but it would also require their tree-selves be grown near the borders, which takes a few years. It would be a very slow invasion, at least if the Nymphs were expected to HOLD territory, however, as strike troops and special mission troops, they would be extremely effective and terrifying on the offense. (Especially since they can walk through walls…)

     

    Rob

  5. Re: What is a conceptionalist wonder

     

    He probably means that the character's abilities and background don't match each other well, at least that's my guess. A streetkid with 2/3rds of his points spent on skills could be considered a bit much, where did he learn all this stuff?

     

    Either that, or he's referring to the character being really unoriginal and uninspiring.

     

    Rob

  6. Re: Art for Asian Fantasy Games

     

    I've had a longing to play in an asian fantasy game for the longest time. Probably because I'm fairly sure I won't be able to run on. :(

     

    You might try getting your group to try out Weapons of the Gods then. :)

    (Assuming they won't do a HERO one, of course.)

     

    Rob

  7. Re: So the King is a Vampire

     

    One interesting take is the backstory of the Vampire Hunter D novels, in which ALL the leaders were Vampires! The "Nobility" as they were called, just plain took over, and in between snacking on their populations used their immortality to bring about a great age of art and science. (Which many of them used to help their human populations, if it didn't threaten the vampires in some way.)

     

    If one country has an immortal vampire leader, then in a sense other countries without one might be at a disadvantage when you think about it. Skilled and immortal leaders could conduct plans lasting human generations to bring about the downfall of other nations around them, and bring more territory under their control. They can produce legions of vampire soldiers to ravage enemy cities (which admittedly would need to be staked later, but c'est la mort) and are likely powerful sorcerers or necromancers in their own right. The guys WITHOUT the Vampire leader are probably the ones who are in trouble, assuming the Vampires are more Dracula and less slavering undead.

     

    Of course, the same logic could be used to explain settings where Sorcerer clans ruled as well...

     

    Rob

  8. Re: Genre conventions

     

    Sounds like the Coldfire trilogy. My design was more along the lines of "tie in with the existing Element of Story"' date=' which I did by granting that humanity told itself stories not just in the waking world, but in their dreams as well. That is, one individual would tell several other individuals a story in the waking world; and, at night, many individuals would each tell themselves that story (or a variant of it), which strengthened the Element even more. The stronger it was, the more likely that these stories would, somewhere, be real.[/quote']

     

    That sounds almost exactly like an old Superman comic I have somewhere in the depths of my collection. In this reality, Earth was under the control of Evil Alien Overlords and humanity was the huddled masses desperately trying to survive as they were slowly eliminated. But they started to tell stories of Superman for whatever reason, and at a certain point it reached critical mass and they caused Superman to come into existance and kick alien butt.

     

    Rob

  9. Re: Genre conventions

     

    Someone really needs to go play Final Fantasy 10. (If they haven't already done so.) It's a game almost entirely based on the theories presented here.

     

    I had similar ideas once long ago when I was working through a modern world that had magic added to it after a long period of being low-mana. Magic (in this case an overabundance of life energy) could be shaped by (highly talented) human will on the small scale (mages), but also had repercussions on the larger scale because it was being shaped by the collective unconscious of even the normal people of the setting. Thus there really was a Santa Claus in this world, because humanity's desire for one was strong enough to have created one from the ambient magic. Certain people really did become better looking as more people believed they were better looking, and others would become uglier by the same token.

     

    There's no reason why the will of the collective in any setting with magic can't be affecting that reality, whether it's to produce heros or even villians. After all, one country's idea of a hero might be their neighbour's idea of a villian, and vice versa. Suddenly you have farmboys springing out of the woodwork that are showing their godlike potential!

     

    Hmm. I think I just described Exalted, sans 95% of the fluff.

     

    Rob (Which is short for Robyn, by the way...But not the same one! :cool: )

  10. Re: Rifts HERO?

     

    Generic Ion Blaster - EB 14d6 (vs. ED) - Penetrating (x2; +1), 23 Charges (+0.25); OAF (-1), Beam (-0.25), Limited Range (395"; -0.25)

    Base Points: 70 CP

    Active Points: 158 CP

    Real Points: 63 CP

     

    Generic Particle Beam Weapon - RKA 4 1/2d6 (vs. ED) - Penetrating (x2; +1), 23 Charges (+0.25); OAF (-1), Beam (-0.25), Limited Range (395"; -0.25)

    Base Points: 70 CP

    Active Points: 158 CP

    Real Points: 63 CP

     

    One of the problems I see with making weapons this high powered is that DANG are your PCs gonna need a lot of BODY. Those weapons are doing a minimum 4-8 BODY per hit thanks to that penetrating advantage. I see high PC turnover rate in your game...

     

    Other than that, looks good!

     

    Rob

  11. Re: Okay Class: Make me a Fighter.

     

    Zee Mousketeer!

     

    Nimble: DEX: +5 (15)

     

    WF:Common Melee (2)

    WF:Black Powder Guns (1)

    The Fine Art of Swordsmanship: +3 w/Melee (15)

    My Next Shot Won't Miss!: +1 w/Black Powder Weapons (3)

    Clashing Blades: Martial Block w/Light Swords (4)

    I've Got your Back: Teamwork (3)

    I Meant to do That!: Breakfall (3)

    Ride for France!: Riding (Horses)(3)

    For the King!: PS: Musketeer (2)

  12. Re: Curve-balls and left-field stuff

     

    So, I was running this game where there was this amulet that contained a dead villain's soul I was using as a plot device. One of the PCs half figured out what it was, so they decided to turn it into the authorities. Since I didn't want it out of play, and since the character was telepathic, I said that when the character touched the gem to give it to the authorities the villain took control of the character. (There was a context of EGOs and the PC actually really did lose badly, it wasn't even a GM fudge.)

     

    I took the player aside and explained the situation to her, and she elected to play the posessed version of her PC. I though the idea of having a PC villain might be cool for a while (stupid me), and so I said okay and let her do what she wanted.

     

    What I did not expect to experience was one of the nastiest campaigns of psychological warfare I have ever seen in my entire life. While I sat there and watched, the player proceeded to screw with the entire group exactly as one would expect a manipulative villain to do. There wasn't a thing I could do but watch in horror as she took the entire party apart emotionally, and they never caught on for a second while she did it.

     

    It literally derailed the entire campaign, but actually led to a new and even better ending that I hadn't planned that resembled the end of the Dark Phoenix saga. (Death and all.)

     

    Rob

  13. Re: Curve-balls and left-field stuff

     

    *Mana-Nymphs are formed at concentration of magic (mana-pools) and have the ability to aid wizards by allowing them to draw up the Mana-Nymph's mana reserves as if they were his own.

     

    Very cool idea! Consider it..err...borrowed!

     

    Rob

  14. Re: How to end a dystopia...

     

    Remember, remember, the Fifth of November...

     

    In theory, social stresses build up, someone or something provides a spark, and pop goes the revolution!

     

    There is another possibility, of course, which is prosperity. Cheap energy, lots of jobs, or other factors listed by people above can just plain make jobs plentiful over time. The economy goes up and people go up with it, upwardly mobile people demand change and with their now power they get it.

     

    Also, how about an idea? Ideas can change society, it's happened many times in the past and will happen again. A change in social philosophy can result in dramatic change to remake the world for the better.

     

    Rob

  15. Re: Rifts HERO?

     

    But I am still curious about the idea of trying to make a game where the hype does not match the play experience; I just don't understand it.

     

    It seems paradoxical to me that these ideas mentioned as "hype" sound so cool, and yet there is no interest in having them play out in the game.

     

    Oh, they do sound cool...the first few dozen times you hear them. Kevin S. is hardly the first person to trott out a variant of "faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap..." to describe his setting's uber-men. The problem becomes, how do you separate his uber-men from the others, who have the same descriptions? ("Who's stronger, the Hulk or Superman, mom?") Hype is nice and all, and I agree, it's cool, but in the end games are about fun, playability and balance (can you tell I'm a HERO GM? :P) not just hype. I have to make this character work, and not just work, but work in relation to the rest of the setting and my PC's. Sure, I can make sure he lives up to some of the hype, and I would (STR 100X that of a normal man? Check!) because it's a pretty easy thing to do in HERO. What I'm not going to do in HERO is give him a super high SPD or DEX just because Kevin let his imagination go a little wild when describing this character. This is why Borgs don't even have hype-matching stats in Palladium, because the author (same guy) never intended them to.

     

    I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's not that I don't want them to live up to the hype, it's that I want them to live up to the hype and be balanced in-game at the same time. It's a matter of compromise required for a game, as opposed to a story. (Then again, it applies to stories too. Superman is "faster than a speeding bullet", but he's almost never written that way in the comics because if they did, there'd be few challenges for him. It's all about compromise.)

     

     

    Going back to part of your quote from above: "RIFTS was about selling his audience a new kind of power fantasy, and it worked." Why not give the gamers the "power fantasy" that was being sold to them?

     

    Well, I'll tell you the truth, as I mentioned above at one point, I don't run RIFTS HERO, I run DC HEROES:RIFTS, because in that system a character who is "hundreds of times faster than a normal person" is actually pretty average on the character power meter. I found DC simulates Kevin's hype a lot better than HERO does, so I chose to use it instead. My comments above are about compromising with the system you are using, HERO requires more compromises than DC did, so I chose to use DC to give my players their power fantasy. :)

     

    Games are tools, after all, and I found a better tool for the job for me!

     

    Rob

  16. Re: Rifts HERO?

     

    I've run into that same issue before with other aspects of RIFTS. I remember one GM trying to tell me that the descriptions of the Juciers were supposed to be mostly hyperbole.

     

    Well, you've just met someone else who agreeds with him. :)

     

    But why should a game like RIFTS have to resort to exaggeration to sound cool? Is there the implied suggestion here that nobody would be interested in playing a game where characters were really "hundreds of times stronger and faster" than a normal person?

     

    Because when it was written Kevin S. was trying really hard to emphasize the over the top coolness of his new game. It was supposed to be a very different take on fantasy/sci-fi gaming, and largely was a new direction for mainstream gaming in fact. It's not a matter of "why would he need to" so much as the in-game hype he was trying to generate. RIFTS was about selling his audience a new kind of power fantasy, and it worked.

     

    Why not have a game where the characters match up to the hyperbole? :celebrate

     

    This here is the HERO board, I might debate the point with you, but I will never tell you how to run your game. :thumbup: If it's cool for you, go for it!

    Just won't be how I do it.

     

    I'd let Borgs do tremendous running and jumping (far more than Juicers), but Juicers would still be the kings of DEX! :king:

     

    Even if you just convert their speed and jumping distance from the game (not stats, but given numbers), and do a rough converstion of Dex, they will be pretty impressive. Maybe not Hundreds of times, but up there. So them being able to run like the wind is perfectly reasonable.

     

    By the term: "how they feel in the other game," Are we talking about how Borgs are actually described, or how they play out in the Palladium system? Because I have no interest in preserving anything about the specific feel of the other game system.

     

    Well, the thing that comes to mind is that how they play out has affected a lot of the stuff written since that original RIFTS book was penned an age ago. People who have played RIFTS have an idea of how a Borg should be (myself included), we know where it feels right in the ecology of the game. Yes, some of this is from the Palladium rules, but it's also how the concept of the Palladium Borg has evolved. The rules did affect the ideas that grew out of the game, even if they didn't effect the setting.

     

    Palladium :sick:

     

    Make Borgs how they were supposed to be----HERO style! :rockon:

     

    Again, you'll get no fight from me on this. :) Palladium is a deeply flawed system, and I think HERO suits the setting much better than it does.

     

    And, to go into the other poster's question. I'd say that when you switch to the HERO system the better way to look at the RIFTS RCCs and OCCs is that those are common "types" of characters in the setting. But, beyond viewing them as common types found wandering around, they should be ignored in favor of whatever the players want to play. RIFTS is a post-apoc world gone truely mad, and beyond a few names of people and places that's the only element I'd say you need to keep to make it RIFTS.

     

    Rob

  17. Re: Rifts HERO?

     

     

    If memory serves, the full conversion borgs were described as "hundreds of times faster and stronger than normal humans."

    Obviously Borgs did not play out "hundreds of times faster and stronger than normal humans" in the totally inferior game system. But they could be made that way in the HERO system. The STR part would be easy, 50 STR would equate to 256 X lifting power of a normal person.

     

    The speed part would be harder. And, if implemented, it would probably result in Borgs which could break the sound barrier, and that concept seems kind of strange to me.

     

    I tend to look at when writers say "hundreds of times stronger and faster" in a game as pretty much them trying to say "really really strong/fast" in a hyperbolic manner. They don't really mean they're hundreds of times, if they did then the Borg would be able to run a lot fast in their real stats. (In terms of reflexes they would be the godninjamasters of the game, making Juicers look like snails.) He's just trying to say it's fast and strong in a cool way, so don't worry on it too much, just go with how they feel in the other game. They're big scary tough guys, as Nu Soard says, not really meant to be all that fast.

     

    Rob

  18. Re: Rifts HERO?

     

    150 base + 100 disad points should produce some good low-level RIFTS characters of different kinds. Assuming you're giving them equipment for free, except for special equipment and maybe borg stuff.

     

    Rob

  19. Re: Fantasy Hero Exalted

     

    Done, Done and Done, My Lord. We'll see what hornet's nest we can stir up over there with this. :P

     

    I guess HERO really is in my blood, I ran my first session of Exalted last week, and it only took 4 days of reading Exalted rules to make me think about how HERO could do it better...:doi:

     

    Rob

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