Nolgroth

Re: The Dragon Mandarin 5th Edition.

Re: Robotech Veritech VF-1A conversion (work in progress) All in all, it seems like a solid writeup. It would be nice to see other mecha converted in order to get a sense of relative power. Not that I remember too much from the old Robotech RPG. Not enough to accurately judge anyway.

Re: Gemini Ascendant: Reborn Post Reserved for Character Write-Ups

Re: Gemini Ascendant: Reborn Post Reserved

Six Months Ago Dar'Gredick watched the dim light of Kastos spread over the tall spires of Tunag. It was peaceful in the "now" of the moment and that serenity passed itself unto his hulking form. In this state, he was able to tune his sense of everything around him, as he had been taught for the last few years. He detected the approaching servant by his aura long before he even heard the heartbeat. Without a word, he reached under the folds of his tunic and withdrew a device about as long as his forearm. A quick flip of a switch caused the glowing blade of energy to appear. Dar'Gredick studied it for several moments, enjoying the faint hum of the weapon. It felt like victory assured in just a few skillful cuts. "That is not for you now. You know this." Dar'Gredick nodded to nobody in particular and flipped the switch off. The blade disappeared, with a slight tearing sound. He placed it inside the offered box and dismissed it from his mind before he heard the lid close and latch. The servant exited with a bow and no words. That suited the Zharog Emperor's mood well. Fewer words, or none at all, was his preference this morning. "Have you sent the envoy yet?" the sole other person asked. Dar'Gredick grunted at the intrusion into his thoughts and then quickly smoothed over his irritation. "Yes. There will be peace. At least for a while. The Holdlords are a constant threat. The Ascension will throw them off guard, but not for long. And once we-" he started to reply. "Speak not of that now. It is better to not distract yourself from the Ascension Rite," the other voice said without inflection. Despite its chill tone, Dar'Gredick sensed a small bit of kindness. He grunted again, though this time out of habit. "The humans call it apotheosis," he offered. "We shall not become a god. Our khalha will join together and be more than either of us separately. Our power shall increase ten-fold, perhaps more. But we shall remain of this universe and not another. At least for a time." "Is there no other way?" Dar'Gredick asked. He already knew the answer and the other person did not answer. It had shared that knowledge a long time in the past. "If only Ta'Rang and his crew did not open the rift." Dar'Gredick mused. "Perhaps none of this would have come to pass." "Ta'Rang's actions were inevitable. I warned you that trying to destroy him would only have unpredictable results. In the end, our destiny is inevitable. It always was. All that we can do is summon our courage and face what is to come." "What is to come," Dar'Gredick echoed. "Very well then, let is begin." The Present The old woman sat with her legs curled up and knees nearly touching her chin. Little did she realize how that action mirrored that of another member of the crew. She would not have cared if somebody had noticed. Some behaviors run so deep that you are born with them. She let her consciousness wander; a dangerous thing on this world. Out of the hull of the ship in which she sat and over the icy shelf. Down through the research station and into the caverns beneath, all the way past the security checkpoint and beyond. She stopped when she drew too close to.....whatever that thing she sensed was. Carefully she withdrew her spirit closer to the Night Owl. She detected the fading aura of her pupil and the others. She stretched out again, following another path. The warbling in the khalha nearly caught her off guard. That Thing had stirred, reaching from the depths of an eternal slumber towards consciousness. The echoes of its alien mind rippled through the world. A shockwave rolled through her consciousness at the same time the ground trembled beneath her body on the ship. She felt the tunnel collapse in front of her and snapped back to her body as if yanked back. She lay there for several minutes. It took her that long to inventory herself and make sure that her body was still functioning. She picked herself up off the floor, stumbling a little bit as she stood up. She could not calm her mind enough to perceive beyond the body and she felt herself shaking. "I am on the Night Owl not in those caves," she said to calm herself. But Samantha and Ta'Rang; the crew was under those rocks that had collapsed in the tunnel far beneath her! Acknowledging that was the hardest thing she had done. Tears welled up in her eyes. Unbidden they came and for the first time in over a century, Kaylea Strom cried uncontrollably. She had tried to guide them and to save them. So much had hinged upon them and now they were dead. Despair took her. Time passed. She was not sure how long she sat in the pilot's chair, lost in her own misery. Now it was time to act. But how? She was one old woman no matter her strength in the khalha. She stood more steadily this time and reached under her robes to retrieve a cylinder about as long as her forearm and just thick enough to fit comfortably in her grip. She pressed a button, cleverly hidden amongst the scrollwork of the baton, and a beam of white light with almost blue edges sprung out to just over a meter in length. The khalha blade hummed in her hand as she assumed a stance. Slowly she began to move through a series of forms; almost a dance. With each step, each shift in her stance, Kaylea cleared her mind. Once again she stretched out down the same path her consciousness took earlier. She firmly tamped down on a moment of hesitation as she reached the rubble that now clogged the tunnel. Slowly she scanned through the rubble until she found the first positive sign. It took her only a moment to decide. She bundled all of her considerable power into her consciousness. "Wake up Ta'Rang," she called as she started feeding energy into his nearly lifeless form. It was not easy at this range. "Wake up Ta'Rang." More and more energy she poured until at last her calls were answered by a faint moan. "Wake up Ta'Rang. Your time for glory is NOW!" Gemini Ascendant: Reborn Welcome to the Gemini Ascendant: Reborn thread. After over a year on hiatus, the Gemini Ascendant crew are about to resume their journey across Frontier space and wreak havoc upon the very foundation of reality. Characters have already been established so no guidelines will be posted here at the moment. For the Players: We will be using MapTool 1.3b80. This is supposed to be the final version of the 1.3 series. We have heard all that before, but we'll give it a shot and hope for the best. Keep in mind that I have changed the macros in some very significant ways. None of these way should affect what you do, but the results will be different and hopefully faster. Here is a quick rundown: The Characteristic Builder now automatically updates the "current" values so you no longer need to hit Reset to Default right after inputting your characteristics. Added Systems Operation as an Everyman skill. The Attack Macro has been totally revamped. Instead of a box for "number of shots" and two separate multiple attack rules, I've created a hybrid of the Autofire and Multiple Attack rules. You will be able to choose up to five targets and the macro goes. In addition, the macro now automatically calculates damage, saving everybody the time it would take to hit Apply Damage. I've added Mental Attacks for Doc Caspar and whomever else happens to by psychically active. These work just like the regular attack powers, except that they have no range modifier. Since the macro already just grabs targets that your token can "see," it's just like Line of Sight for mental powers. For Everyone Else (aka What's All This About?) The Gemini Ascendant game was a Space Opera game originally based in the Star Frontiers setting a couple hundred years after the published timeframe. Over time, elements of Alien Wars and Terran Empire were tossed into the mix. Eventually, the whole setting was rebooted into a whole new one. You can see the original Gemini Ascendant thread here. Some write ups of technological items here. And some recaps of the first three "seasons" of Gemini Ascendant here. There were two more after that, and you can get some information from my Hero blog. (Start with the last page and move forward.) Thanks for stopping by.

Re: base 5 point stats? problems with that? Well to model "reality" a little better, I would agree with your friend. It tends to make your high scores really shine through. The flip side being that your characters really are Joe Normal in every other aspect. I think a few more points might make up the difference, as 30 points for Skills alone is pathetic. Add in powers too and you have almost nothing. As my old boss used to say, "It's impossible to make chicken salad out of chicken $#/@." I would lobby for a full 75+75 game or even a 100+50 point spread. Cutting down your base characteristics is already going to limit the heck out the characters, especially with the decrease in Figured Stats.

Re: base 5 point stats? problems with that?

Re: base 5 point stats? problems with that? I ran a low powered game where the stats started at 5. It quickly instilled that combat would be very lethal, very quickly. I ended up relenting and raising the starting Body to 10. All in all, mechanically it was my favorite Hero game/mini-campaign to date. It was very easy to build opposition, since everybody started out with 5 (including Body for the NPCs). A couple of other things I did was change the Skill and Characteristics rolls from Char/5+9 to Char/4+8. It seemed to add just a wee bit of granularity into the skill rolls, though I think next time I might even do it as Char/3+8 for even more variation in the skill rolls. I think I ended up giving the characters 125 or 150 points for character creation. All in all, turned out to be a fun game ended prematurely by responsibilities outside of the game. When given the chance to move forward or start another game, I chose to start something else. Not because I didn't like the campaign, characters or mechanics, but just because I didn't want to push forward in the storyline that depended too much on the other characters. I say go for it. As long as the GM makes the Everyman in his campaign the same as your characters (starting at 5), then it should be pretty fun. One problem would be if all of the bad guys were base 10. Then it is just the GM being a jacktard.

Re: "Neat" Pictures Great pic. My new desktop background.

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Fallout 3 incidental exploration music - Fallout 3 Game Score (no artist information)

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Ave Maria - Helene Fischer

Re: Tesunden Isles And to you my friend. See you online in the not too distant future.

Re: Help Needed Locating Generator

Re: Your favorite SF gear. Element Zero (Mass Effect series of video games) - While not in and of itself "gear" Element Zero is used in the construction of Mass Effect drives and is used to enable or enhance "biotic" (super) abilities. The prevalence of Mass Effect technology goes so far as to propel projectiles at extremely rapid rates, creating devastatingly powerful weapons. Bio-gel (Mass Effect) - Technically any substance/technology that allows for the rapid regeneration of cell tissue. Bio-gel is just the most obvious because I am hooked on playing Mass Effect. Cybernetic Enhancements/Replacements (multiple sub-genres and settings within the blanket of Sci Fi) - Who wouldn't want to be able to replace an arm or leg lost due to injury. Same with eyes and ears. I would personally enjoy having a Smartlink (Shadowrun) installed. Not to mention wired reflexes, muscle augmentation, and dermal armor. Cloaking Field (Predator and a whole lot of folks since)- Yup. The ultimate sneakiness gear thing. Nano Suits (Crysis) - Probably inspired by the ones mentioned in an earlier post. Allows for regenerative armor, enhanced speed and strength, and the aforementioned cloaking field. Point Singularity Weapons (Unreal 2 and probably many other places) - Creates a micro singularity which rips nearby targets to shreds before collapsing in on itself. Note that this is one of the Biotic abilities mentioned above. FTL Technology (too numerous to list) - I don't care how it is done, just that it is. I wanna see other stars and planets.

Re: Submitted for your approval: 10 too human aliens.

Re: Submitted for your approval: 10 too human aliens.

Re: Your "2010" Pet Gaming Projects Darn the bad luck. Mistyped the year it looks like. Going back, my 2010 Gaming Projects were 1. Unnamed Fantasy Hero campaign and 2. Complete Gemini Ascendant. Well I got 50% of it done twice over. I ran not just one Fantasy Hero campaign, but two. As to Gemini Ascendant, we have an official start date of the first Thursday in January. So while I didn't meet that goal last year, it only opened up the opportunity to resume the campaign. So for my 2011 Gaming Projects, I think I am going to take it easy. Run Gemini Ascendant Run Tesunden Isles from time to time. Work on refining a concept I had called Quick 'n' Dirty Hero, a stripping down of the Hero System in much the same way Instant Fuzion stripped down the Fuzion system. Still a work in progress, but I think the overall concept has been solidified. And one project that I worked on pretty steadily during the last year, I am going to hang up. I am done trying to build a MapTool Campaign File for Hero 6E. The work I have done so far has shown me that it is just too complex a system to attempt a standardized Campaign File for. At least for me to try. I will update and maintain my own campaign file for use in my own games.

Re: Tesunden Isles Update 12/16/2010 Instead of planning on anything further with the fantasy campaign, I am going to leave it at the cliffhanger. Instead, I want to use this session to get everything snugged up tight for Gemini Ascendant preparation. I feel a little like somebody who has stood in line for a roller-coaster ride and now I am about to board the ride. Excited and just a bit nervous.

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? The Fire Inside - Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band

Re: What benefit does a Familiar grant a Mage type? What good are they? The bestiary has a familiar template. It is somewhat customizable, but the biggest thing it does is provide bonuses to spellcasting.

Re: Foods for those that just don't care anymore

Re: Dieselpunk?

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Ave Maria - Beyonce Surprisingly, I like this song a lot. Most of Beyonce's other works I don't particularly care for.

Re: Dieselpunk? To the author of that linked page; pretentious much?

Re: Submitted for your approval: 10 too human aliens. In my Gemini Ascendant setting, hyperspace is a sentient entity. In a wider audience thing, I always considered the Elder Race pretty alien. How could a species that displaces personalities over time not be a little on the alien side. The xenomorphs from the Alien series of movies, books, video games, etc. are fairly incomprehensible. In fact, their driving need to destroy every other living thing around them only makes sense in the whole "developed bio-weapon" or "demon" context. I have a hard time believing that their physiology is realistic, so that leaves "demon" as the only context that makes sense (to me anyway). Most other fictional alien species I've been exposed to (fictional being the only aliens I have been exposed to - just for clarification) are just funny looking humans. I don't have a problem with that actually. Being as I think (mostly) like a fellow human, it gives me context.