Orion

Re: The "Essay"(ESSE/UEH) Project(Warning: mature/controversial content contained her Frankly, if they aren't one-dimensionally evil, they aren't orcs. As far as I am concerned, that is part of the definition of the species. And yes, subhuman savages is a very good description of them. They aren't PCs - they are throw-away mooks.

Re: The "Essay"(ESSE/UEH) Project(Warning: mature/controversial content contained her

Re: The "Essay"(ESSE/UEH) Project(Warning: mature/controversial content contained her In the Champions campaigns I've been part of, males playing female characters was normal. A female player was extremely rare, but at least half the PCs were female. I knew one guy that refused to play anything but lesbian females. As romance was never an important part of the roleplaying, there was never a character problem. Some of the players skeeved me out though - while their female character was normal, the player was not.

Re: The "Essay"(ESSE/UEH) Project(Warning: mature/controversial content contained her

Re: The "Essay"(ESSE/UEH) Project(Warning: mature/controversial content contained her

Re: Weird ship names requested. Treat yourself to a love overdue reward - go get the entire series and read them straight through. I did this back in college, and am looking for the collected series, or at least used versions of all them, for my permanent collection. Of course, listening to Jimmy Buffett while reading them is almost required, imo.

Re: Fantasy Superheroes

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See?

Re: Religion in Science-Fiction?

Re: Fantasy Superheroes Fantasy doesn't have to have death and killing attacks. The Xena and Hercules tv shows are great examples of the "no one really gets hurt" type of fantasy. Make all the really important villains undead (lich, vampire, etc) so there is a built-in excuse for them coming back. You could also make them demonspawn, children of gods, etc. They can be killed, but only with a specific weapon that has been lost for centuries, or only under an eclipse. This death, if ever allowed to happen, would be the culmination of the campaign. Make sure all players know ahead of time that you plan this style of campaign. While interesting, I could never do it. For me, fantasy is serious. Letting the villain escape at the last second is one thing, but when my sword connects, there better be blood on the ground and death in the air.

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See?

Re: Cool Guns for your Games My grandfather had one when he was a security guard back about 1970. After that, it just sat on a shelf. Whenever I visited, I would gently pick it up, aim at the light bulb, and hold the thing a bit. At the time it seemed like it would be a better club than gun - I just couldn't understand how someone could actually shoot the thing. When he died that was the one thing I wanted, but it had disappeared. Don't know if someone else grabbed it, or he had sold it several years before.

Re: Cursed to be sexually repellant

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? You have a point, and I rather suspected that you would say this. It does confirm that you have a completely different idea of what this book should be that what I do, to the point it is now likely useless to me. I need something on creating and using deity-level beings, how their followers interact with them, church structure and history, various belief systems, etc. This all requires much text, and absolutely no stats. If it is a deity-level being, then it is a GM device in my opinion. Having the stats means they can be used as opponents. If it is just a series of character sheets, then I feel it could as easily be called Villains Volume 4. You see having stats as being valuable because you want them. I see them as being a definite loss. They can't be ignored - including them changes the book too much. Roleplaying with religion vs. grudge matches with the gods. I'll mostly drop out of the thread at this point, as I'm not the intended audience.

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? Legendary Hero would be much more interesting to me than Mythic Hero, so go for both. I strongly feel that the text description of the various deities is of far more importance than the stat writeups. Tell me who the deity is, what it stands for, and why it is worshiped. STR and EGO numbers are meaningless. I'd go so far as to say there shouldn't be any stats on beings that are true deities. If it's just another mutant with worshipers, sure, knock yourself out, but pass on Odin and Zeus. In fact, now that I think about it, I'd much prefer two completely separate books. The first treats them as powerful deities that cannot be completely understood, and certainly never fought, and the second says they are all just dudes that live on one of the outer planets. I really don't see how they can be presented both ways in the same book and be useful. What I need regarding deities for Fantasy Hero, Horror, Champions Magic, and Champions SuperHero are four different things. If you plan to target one of these, be very clear up front. Have a paragraph or three describing why Tyrannon or V'han should or should not be considered a deity. At what point does a dimension conquering entity and its minions become a pantheon? In the Gods in Gaming section, be sure to cover using them as distant and unknowable. I don't like this use myself, but most of the people I know doing fantasy gaming want their gods to be like real life. That is, there is belief and faith, but all miracles can be explained away by superstition and coincidence, and the deities just don't interfere in earthly matters. I agree that doing a writeup of the Christian god could be bad. Feel the same about doing Satan. But, please consider doing a representative sample of the angels. You are doing the demons after all, so there should be no difference at that level. If I'm trying to fight Belial, I just may need the help of an archangel, or at least a couple cherubim. Suggestions for creating a unified pantheon for us world builders would be great. Talk about the evolution from Earth Mother to a Sky Father as head honcho, and the rebirth/renewal deity. Suggestions on what happens to the spirit after death. Creation myths. Different beliefs by region and time period, and the storytelling possibilities of heretical and/or non-standard beliefs. Definitely mention that not all pantheons need to be unified, and they don't have to make sense - they could just be the more powerful of those that came out of the primal chaos and thus survived the fighting between themselves.

Re: What Non-Fiction Book have you just finished? Basic Butchering of Livestock and Game by John J Mettler, Jr, DVM and Home Sausage Making by Susan Peery and Charles Reavis The first is a primer on processing your own meat, including shooting, gutting, and cutting into portions. Learned very little from this one - turns out I pretty much know what I'm doing at this. The second is some very basic tips at making sausage, but little in the way to let you know how to use the necessary equipment. It also assumes you'll be buying 3 pounds of ham at the market to make into sausage, not a 250 pound pig. 50 pages of tips, 225 pages of recipes. They claim you can make vegetarian sausage, but to me that's like saying it's a pizza, just without bread and tomato sauce. The first is worthwhile, the second is not.

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us In my campaign, most of the galaxy uses wormholes like in the Honor Harrington books. These ships can move slowly around a solar system, but anything more must go through the wormhole, and those are rare. All the aliens wants Earth because of the wormholes nearby, not because of any interest in us. A few of the more psionically advanced races use upsilon field generation from the Metapsychic series by Julian May. Basically, you enter a gray, featureless limbo where absolutely nothing happens for some time, then pop out the other side. A couple old races have true FTL capability, but most of the universe can't understand or manufacturer it, and none of them are interested in Earth yet, so it hasn't shown up. As for the science explanations, I never bother. I describe how it is to be used, and the affects on the players, but in the long run, it just works.

Re: Layered (I think?) defenses I'd buy a small amount of resistant PD and ED, as well as some basic mental, power, and flash defense. How much would depend on the campaign world, but I'd think 10PD/ED and 5 MD/PD/FD would be okay. I'd then set up a defensive multipower with each defense as a slot so that you could allocate the amount of defense in each.

Re: How (un)realistic are Street Samurai?

Re: Transplanted Immortality I wouldn't do it, but not for the reasons others have given. I'm a pessimist and cynic. Not only do I think the world is becoming a worse place to live every year, I see absolutely no chance of that ever being reversed. having to live 150 years, rather than just 75, seems like punishment to me, not a reward. Now if I could have a new body now that fixed all the problems of my current one, I'd go for it in a heartbeat. I don't want to live longer, I just want to live better.

Re: What are YOUR character trademark(s)? I ignore the forum for a weekend, and miss out on this wonderful thread. Anyway, my trademarks are: 1. Concept and history first, and then I might bother statting them out. Statting is also usually done in the easiest and most obvious way - tweaking builds is something I never bother with. The description is more important than the stats, and takes precedent if needed. Rules are ignored or handwaved it they cannot support the concept. 2. Code vs killing is almost unknown to my characters. I'm much more likely to play a deadly vigilante than a 4-color hero. If code vs killing is used, it is a defining part of the concept. Very few are casual killers - most approach it with a soldier's viewpoint. Killing a villain is considered acceptable, and even heroic, at times. 3. They must be combat capable to be a primary character. They don't have to be the best in the group at combat, but usually are. 4. Many genre conventions are ignored, as they aren't a writer's favorite or an intellectual property necessity to protect them. No high DCV or pretend armor to model Hawkeye not getting pulped every combat, for example. Gadgeteers and martial artists are never taken, as they just wouldn't live long enough to matter. 5. As a player, I love puns and goofing off during play, but every character is serious. No practical jokers. No Spiderman-style running off at the mouth in combat. It's a dangerous job, not fun and games for them.

Re: AIs and Uplifts For AIs, are they confined to a single body/chassis/processor? If so, they can easily be treated similar to a human. If they can move their digital consciousness to another host, then there will be widespread fear of them being immortal. We cannot simply transplant a brain or memories, but this should be simple for an AI. How society deals with this could vary quite a bit between. Can multiple AIs inhabit a large network or processor cluster? If so, they could effectively have their own society that is hidden away from the rest of us. If the AI is in an immobile chassis, then who is responsible for the care and maintenance of that chassis? Parts will need replaced, and electricity delivered and paid for. What if the AI lives in an old, dilapidated network that is scheduled for shutdown because of the computer age, the building is about to fall down, no one needs that network, etc.? If it is declared sentient, then I would think the AI has to be saved, but that means someone has to build a new network for it to live in. Perhaps the AI pays for itself by processing data, controlling factories, or other similar jobs. What happens when that job is no longer needed? Do we let the AI grow old and die when it becomes so slow and outmoded that no one needs its services anymore? If AIs are treated as equal sentient beings, do we allow them to replicate themselves? Do we factory install the 4 laws of robotics, or instead let them decide their own morals and ethics like humanity does? If they can learn, then it seems to me they can possibly bypass the 4 laws. If they turn bad, who do we handle that? Imprison in a beige box with no external hookup, or just wipe the memory chips?

Re: Quote of the Week From My Life. A stash of extra computer equipment sits outside my door. I'm kinda responsible for it, because no one else will do it. Lesbian Coworker: "Can I bring my old monitor down and add to the pile?" Me: "Sure. I probably need to get some of those sent to surplus. I can't even give away a 15" LCD anymore." LC: "I know. Anything under 24" just isn't enough any more." LC: "I'm such a size queen."

Re: Seraphim Station It's a base, because you don't use it to move around. If you are taking it to Titan and Alpha Centauri, then it could be a vehicle, but floating in space is no different than being in a mall - it's just a location. As for how I'd build it, personally I'd build a base. This base just happens to have a sentient machine mind living in the base's computer network. I would then build a character with multiform or a VPP to represent all the robot bodies, and treat it the same as any iron man clone that changes the suit each week. The cost of the base and the cost of the character have no connection. Most of the time the base hums along on automatic, but if the character wishes, it can leave the current robotic body and occupy small portions of the base. If it is in the robotic body when the robot is destroyed, then it must make a roll to have transferred into a different form in time to prevent death. This is pretty close to how I run Mechanon. If you want the entire base to be sentient, and for this AI to be able to control multiple portions of the base at the same time, then I would not allow it as a PC. Handwavium would explain how it all works as an NPC. When the AI is in a robot form, the base becomes an NPC with a dumb computer in control.

Re: Foods for those that just don't care anymore This is first I've ever heard of chitterlings - I thought chitlins was the correct name all these years. Never tried them myself. I might, if I didn't have to do the cooking, but I'd never go to the trouble of cleaning and fixing chitlins (or tripe, for that matter). Greens....that's the stuff you cut off the bottom of the turnip, right? I heard it can be used for mulch around the remaining veggies, but doesn't have much other use. Fresh spinach and chard is edible in some salads, but as soon as they are heated, they become inedible to me. It's the texture, not the taste, that I can't abide.