FeralWhippet

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Spin State, Chris Moriarty "Hard boiled" detective story + "hard scifi" It was fairly highly acclaimed, but it didn't do much for me. Much better in this vein are the Takeshi Kovacs novels, "Altered Carbon" and (maybe) "Broken Angels". The author was pretty full of himself over how "hard science" it was, but the science did not make that much of an appearance. Its one of those that makes out like it is running up to a big ending, but just peters out at the end.

Re: Rocket-propelled Chainsaw No way... this is just another panel from the webcomic that the first panel came from.

Re: Rocket-propelled Chainsaw

Re: Mythic Champions

Re: Bad Powers Thus "Bystander" is born, *all* of his powers are only usable by others. How will our heros subdue a flock of innocents? Some of the crowd may be just eggshells with hammers, or they may be granted defensive and offensive powers. If Bystander is good at tactics and switching powers around amongst a group of bystanders, the heroes' can't know who may be "hiding" a power. For more fun, Bystander could be taking a cut from one or more of the ambulance chasing type personal injury lawyers, just drumming up some business...

Re: Star Hero versions of Fantasy Hero races?

Re: HP Lovecraft movies "Who Goes There", first printing 1934 "At the Mountains of Madness", written in 1931. Which one was actually first, hard to say but probably madness.

Re: Help Me Populate a Race The number of eggs is small, so that no world has more than one or two eggs. The eggs are extremely valuable artifacts, valuable enough that any world will put considerable resources into protecting them (and getting them back if stolen). In some cases the eggs are on display (a national treasure) and in some cases hidden. The competition/race is an underworld sort of thing and the word has gone out about the competition, so everyone is on alert. The eggs have to be acquire in the first place, but once stolen other competitors will find it easier to knock off someone who has an egg. On the other hand, once an egg is stolen, governments are sending agents (ships, fleets?) to get them back, so when it comes to taking them from other competitors, perhaps timing is everything. See Jack L Chalker's "Rings of the Master" series for some great setups. Whole planets set as traps with the rings as bait. Several scenarios from taking a ring by frontal assault to trying to acquire one undetected. And then at the end you find out what its really all about. From a gaming perspective taking a ring, err egg, could be a whole campaign itself (or you could have a multi-gm shared world kind of campaign, where the different groups are in competition with eachother).

Re: Exodus 2025: A campaign idea looking for input! What sent me over the top was that wretched, written for a dim 13 year old, "5th Element" movie, with the scenes where Leeloo was going over the history files. Good dog, isn't there someone out there who can be a bit more creative than that? Sorry its off topic, but why oh why must science fiction movies be either written for 13 year olds, or slow moving, filled with abstract images, "artistic" and ultimately shallow ("Aliens" being a fine exception to this trend). oh and its not "sci-fi" its "futuristic".

Re: Exodus 2025: A campaign idea looking for input! The Ares Convention was written and signed by all of the Inner Sphere states, it basically limited the scope of battle via feudal style rules of conduct. Basically, by limiting the potential impact of warfare on civilian populations it meant that wars became continuous. It was the start of "Age of War" on the Battletech timeline. I was just trying to give examples from either end of the spectrum, how adopting conventions to limit what is allowable in warfare could go either way, making our "problem" worse or better. Just what came to mind, I'm not saying they were the best examples...

Re: Exodus 2025: A campaign idea looking for input! Personally, I am tired of the "benevolent superiors making us all sing "kumbaya"" scenarios. I would rather see something with a "A Small Talent For War" kind of flavor to it But whatever you prefer: constraining humanity's warlike propensities; channeling our aggressions in more productive directions; weeding those namby-pamby peaceniks out of the gene pool; or whatever... a solution is to introduce a cultural code or codes. To limit the impact of wars as we gain greater levels of technology it could be a kind of bushido code as adopted by FORCE in the Hyperion novels, or to develop our talents for warfare without wiping us out something like the Ares Conventions in the Battletech universe, or many others. Could play into the notion that the Commonwealth needs stirring up from time to time to prevent stagnation. The cultural infiltrators could be there to guide us in a direction so that we introduce the right kind of chaos after our coming out party. The justification for starting at an earlier point in our history could simply be that at that time we are more... malleable.

Re: Role-Playing Exercise #1 Dr. Aarifa Tazief, an astrophysicist who has taken great pains to have a rather average looking career. In reality she is quite brilliant and had developed a new branch of mathematics which she eventually realized could be used to develop weapons of truly frightening potential. Her husband was somewhat familiar with her work and betrayed her by revealing some of the implications to his connections in a government "black" project. She was brought (well forced) into the project and put to work developing prototypes. Eventually she found a way to sneak out. Now she is on the run and is the only person who can complete the work.

Re: Gas Giant Resources - Got Any? "Saturn Rukh" by Robert L. Forward. Hard SF. The Rukh's are flyers/floaters about 4 Kilometers long or so. Kind of interesting, but not the best writing in the world.

gotta add: "The Mote in God's Eye/The Gripping Hand" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Post-apocalypse and recovery and apocalypse and recovery.... The main alien race has had time to evolve in space and develop gadgeteering as an instinct (and branch out into role specific forms, e.g. warrior, mediator, etc...) Contains critters evolved for life in destroyed cities amongst other things. Kind of cheesy, but a good array of critters, "Midworld" by Alan Dean Foster. There is also a second book where Flynx visits Midworld.

Re: Re: How to make a "sick" attack. and make the transform "Sticky", of course this kindda makes "Gradual Effect" more of an advantage than a limitation.

I would like to see the shape change power fleshed out. The changes seemed to be fairly controversial (going by the debate in one of the topics on the old boards).