AmadanNaBriona

Re: Is our approach to ' Combat Levels' fundamentally flawed

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Mary & Max a wrenchingly good claymation drama about the 20 year long penpal relationship (set in the 70's) between a homely, awkward, 8 year old Australian girl from a dysfunctional family and the 44 year old overweight, Aspergers Syndrome afflicted New Yorker she writes at random. Note... While I loved it, this is REALLY not a kids movie.

Re: Steampunk - Source Material As I mentioned on the "What SF/Fantasy book have you read recently?" Thread, I just devoured Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. Brilliant steampunk story. I like it a lot. The setting, an Alt-History Seattle devastated by a drilling machine and heavier than air volcanic gas that turns it's victims into zombies, would be perfect for a game. It's like a Steampunk version of The Big Rubble.

Re: More Blockages I'd say the idea has merit, it might be a good alternate approach for a gritty game. One way to address some of the issues might be to say that a base Block gives 2 DN physical, +1 DN for every point the blocker makes their roll by. Thus more skilled blockers take comparatively less damage on the average. Oh and swords can take damage from successful but not exceptional blocks, it's just the sword (Focus) that takes the damage, not the wielder. I've broken more than one sword midblock in my day.

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... To follow the Steampunk recommendations, I just finished Cherie Priest's Boneshaker, an Alt-History steampunk yarn set in an 1880 where the Yukon Gold rush occurred just as the California Rush was faltering, and thus Seattle got itself boomtowned 30 years earlier than in history. The Russians, afraid their selling off a valuable resource, offer a prize to anyone who could design a machine that can bore out gold under glacial ice. One design, the Boneshaker, won the contest, but in 1863 on a maiden test destroys the downtown district and releases a corrosive volcanic zombie gas up from beneath the city. The civic authorities contain the heavier than air gas behind, eventually, a 200 foot tall wall surrounding the contaminated region. The book, set 17 years after the disaster, is the story of the inventors son running away to seek the truth about his father inside the blasted zombie infested interior of what was once the urban center of Seattle, and his Mother's quest to find and rescue him. Don't want to say anything more, but it well worth reading. Mad Scientists, airship pirates, a Gasmask clad Zombie fightin' soldier of fortune with a sonic cannon named "Daisy"... Yes, it was good. I'll actually give it five gears

Re: Steampunk - Source Material That's a pretty common angle in the Steampunk community, actually, but it sounds like a very groovy steam culture is building up down in those parts.

Re: How to balance encounters A point to consider... a fairly common rule of thumb for rough conversions from D&D to Hero is that each D&D level is around 25 points. So a 175 character could be reasonably expected to perform something like a 7th level character. Pit those same goblins or skeletons against a 25 point Hero (Competent Normal, not dissimilar from a 1st lvl C) and you'll see results closer to what you might expect. Also bear in mind that most of the "Lesser" foe writeups in the various books tend to reflect an average member of the culture. A Normal, as it were.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings I was complimented on my costume twice today. I wasn't wearing one.

Re: Genetically engineered leaders? More a musing on the topic than anything else. I ponder the scandals associated with voting machines, then contemplate how you could ever trust wholeheartedly in the benevolence of the creators of our new masters.

Re: Genetically engineered leaders? Who do you trust enough to design your future ruling class?

Re: Highwayman/Highlander Hero?

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Take On Me- Reel Big Fish (Ska-punk cover of the A Ha classic)

Re: Presti's Weapon Rebuilds Not bad, tho I'd personally disagree a wee bit about your specific Claymore example. Watching someone fighting with a greatsword in a halfsword grip is illuminating and scary.

Re: Presti's Weapon Rebuilds Yeah, as I was coming up with this I was realizing that integrating DN at such a basic campaign level was sort of a systemic paradigm shift, but I think it would work well. It'd integrate well with Size/Scale problems as well (to tie into the One Man Versus a Starship thread). I'm sort of digging this. I agree about your approach to varying defenses, I've been considering the same. Another idea I've been toying with is building armor padding as 1/4 Stun Only Damage Reduction when worn in conjunction with armor

Re: Complete Newcomer to the System

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Drunken Sailor -Authority Zero

Re: One person versus a starship?

Re: One person versus a starship?

Re: Presti's Weapon Rebuilds Rebuilding a post that got eaten by the interwebs last night... I agree that swords should generally as a class get the best OCV bonuses. Swords climbed to the top of the weapons pile for a reason. I've read statements to the effect that swords are the only major weapon type that is solely purpose built to be a weapon of war (as opposed to hunting). Almost everything else started as weaponized tools. Speaking of tool weapons, something I've been pondering would probably be a good fit here. The way heroic level armor is handled could be a lot more detailed. If we're willing to add some added work, we could build mundane armor with a variety of Defensive Powers. The big one that's been on my mind recently has been to use Damage Negation to represent "structural strength" as it were. So Steel Chain and Steel Plate of the same weight/thickness might well have the same DEF, but the plate would also have a few levels of pDN to represent the way that rigid armor can just shed some attacks that would be felt by someone wearing the same weight of flexible armor. The structural model could/should also carry over into the environment, thus explaining removing any confusion over the Real Weapon questions. If a door has 4 DN then most swords aren't gonna do much against them, but an axe or a pick with... uh... Negation Reduction? That's not right. Blimey, I can't remember the name of the counter to DN. Anyway, THAT would give hafted weapons their place

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? I've been spending my lunch break listening to different covers of 99 Red Balloons Trying to decide if I prefer Goldfinger's version, or Reel Big Fish's. Hard call.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Went and saw Resident Evil AfterLife today. Weakest member of the series, so far IMHO. Sad, too, because most of the individual elements of this move were good. The cast was good, the action sequences well choreographed, the visuals were great, the cinematography up to the series par... but.... but... it just didn't make any frickin' sense. and The Umbrella Corporation no longer even pretends to have motives that make sense

Re: Musings on Random Musings Yeah, pretty much. That and the semi-nomadic historical re-enactment/pagan festival subculture will likely produce an abnormal quantity of survivors, depending on the nature of the Apocalypse. This one was custom made for us to thrive Haven't gotten deep enough into the books to get to these bits yet. Pretty sure I'm not in there, but that would be... even stranger.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings Picked up S.M. Sterling's Dies the Fire a couple of days ago. What does it say about your life when you buy a Post Apocalypse novel and recognize one of the main characters as a fictionalized version of one of your old friends?

Re: Cool Guns for your Games

Re: Cool Guns for your Games gotta hook up a camera to capture the expression on the burglars face when he realizes that you're shooting at him with a frickin anti tank weapon