AmadanNaBriona

Re: A Thread For Random Links

A few awesome latex outfits

http://fashionablygeek.com/costumes/skin-tight-stormtrooper-latex-dress/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+fashionablygeek+%28FashionablyGeek%29&utm_content=FaceBook

Re: A Thread For Random Links

10 brutal historical weapons of war

Yaaaaaay! My baby came in at #2

Re: "Neat" Pictures

Yes. I've worked with poured structures and the more I study this method' date=' despite the short rise, the more I think that tying it together will give me peace of mind.[/quote']

 

have you looked into basalt reinforcing mesh? lots of tricksty things you can do using that stuff....

Re: More space news!

"20 meters above the surface' date=' it lowers the rover on a tether that is 21 [b']feet[/b] long." [emphasis added]

 

Anyone else having Climate Orbiter flashbacks?

Re: Killing Damage in 6e

It has occurred to me, on occasion, to consider re-doing the Hit Location tables with the Stun Mod replaced by Stun X bonuses and penalties, so you'd still use the d3 Stun roll, but with a -1 to +2 depending on the location roll. So a Head hit would give a effective Stun range of 3-5x, f'rex. Probably fiddle with it if I ever really get serious about a 6E game.

Re: A Thread for Random Videos

Nice! Using cossack sabers too!

Indeed. I suspect she may be one of these folk....

http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/modern-amazons-in-the-ukraine.html

Re: A Thread for Random Videos

Found this in the immediate links from the 'tother I posted above.

Man, I freaking love Polish winged hussars. Top of my heavy cav favorites list

Re: A Thread for Random Videos

This made me very happy, and is almost exactly how I built the fighting style of my battle raven cultists for my FH setting

Re: Paladin Martial Art?

Might be of some interest....

Unfortunately, the quotes are all in German, but there is a TON of related material available on the web.

Traditional European weapon arts are a huge, fast growing subsector of the Martial Arts world

I concur with the "Who are they training to fight against?" question.

Most of the heavy armored martial arts I'm familiar with in the real world are all sort of duel focused, that is to say, largely training to fight someone with a similar level of training and gear, probably because any lesser equipped troops generally had great problems dealing with full plate harnessed troops in close quarters, so the specialized training would be against what they considered the main credible threats.

Re: 1st edition Fantasy Hero: other changes in later printings?

Not really that epic a story, but a sad one to any gamer who has moved around a fair bit.

Due to a really screwed up sequence of events (mostly on the part of the Post Office), the billing card on my storage unit got denied, and the warning notices they mailed were redirected to a different address. By the time I learned bout the error, my storage was GONE, with most of my classic gaming stuff (All my 1st & 2nd Ed Runequest stuff, all my pre 4th HERO stuff, most of my Warhammer minis, all my old Traveller digests, and all my Car Wars stuff *sob*), as well as both of my longbows, all my yearbooks and mementos, and my redwood burl and sheepskin throne my favorite uncle gave me.

Re: More space news!

From watching the video, my guess is that the final burn is carrying extra fuel in case of unexpected problems, so they want to get the disposable part that could go boom away from the expensive payload

Re: Killing Damage to Normal Damage

Yeah, when we were putting together the campaign specs for a X-Men style mutant campaign, we quickly decided upon contemplation that the X-Men campaign rules used much higher caps than HERO's recommended Standard Supers.

Wolvie's not the only one. They pretty much all have pretty high order powersets. Workable versions can be built within standard caps, but take some Fragile World ground rules and/or lots of Power Stunts to accomplish many of the things shown in the comics.

Re: Killing Damage in 6e

Before I adopted the 6e d3 Stun Multiplier' date=' I used the Hit Location chart solely to provide a bell-curve for the Stun Multiplier; none of the other effects of hit locations were used (and you couldn't call shots). It worked pretty well.[/quote']

 

yeah, I agree, it does. We did that for a while in our Champions campaign. Just leaving off the Body Multiplier column also works well for a Cinematic/Superheroic feel.

It's hero, people.... I find the defenses discussion kinda funny.... because if you're playing with Hit Locations, then you're also generally playing with Sectional defenses. Motorcyclists wear helmets for a reason, as do city watchmen and Riot cops. Brain buckets are a good investment if you're using hit locations.

IIRC, our PA guy had 1/2 Damage Reduction, Physical only on his head.

Actually, Damage Reduction was a pretty common defense, partially because of the possibility of a massive hit. We used DR as our campaign's version of what is now Combat Luck. Lots of limited DR builds.

We also generally frowned on abusing piles of cheap Targeting Skill levels. The gentleman's agreement was to keep Targeting levels at a max of 4, and get better through CSL's.

Our campaign's Deathstroke analog, Recoil, was employed once or twice to hammer home the message that he who lives by the headshot dies by the headshot

Re: Killing Damage in 6e

That was a different time, a crazy time. Everyone did things they shouldn't have. There was lot of experimentation.

Word

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

Actually, it isn't as much a derail as it seems.

Women have been the fastest growing market for Porn since the Internet made it possible for them to consume porn without having to go buy it at skeevy dives. If you've noticed, production values have begun to change. Less (obvious) faking it, more realistic (often improvised) dialog, more facial closeups to show flashes of strong emotion, more pre and post play interviews... lots of little things all reflecting the gradual removal of the exclusive masculine focus porn used to follow.

Re: Killing Damage in 6e

I think that was workable, and the most "toolkit" of all the approaches, but also the most complex. These options might make good fodder for APG III if such ever comes to pass.

I suspect this would fill me with glee.

More Tools for the Toolkit!

(Blood for the Blood God!)

Re: Killing Damage in 6e

That predictability is why I prefer Normal attacks ... I like being able to think to myself, 'I can expect THIS' to happen, both as a player and DM. It makes it much easier to create balanced battles.

 

As far as 'not like the real world' goes ... that's simply not a priority for me. I don't really want to model the real world in my gaming; I want more cinematic reality, for lack of a better term. I play superheroes and high fantasy or high science-fiction (Star Trek or Star Wars stuff). The more 'realistic' the game world/system is, the less interested I tend to be.

This is why my core Hero group, way back in the day, settled on pretty much ALWAYS using Hit Locations (even for Supers) and standardized in our heroic games (90% of what we played) using the roll under half/max damage criticals. As 've mentioned before, it alters the way you have to design your campign, but is no less predictable. In fact, it's actualy kinda MORE so, because when looking at averages, KA volatility means you can only sorta-kinda expect an average roll (except in larger sample sizes). whereas designing with max damage in mind gives you solid benchmarks.... if a particular attack will penetrate 4 cm of steel plate in the real world, it becomes easy to reverse engineer from the Def/Body. Crits become "A solid hit that imparts all it's energy" non crits become slightly off target hits.

It's a paradigm shift for most HERO players (mainly in the way the design characters) but it works really well to impart that gritty hardcore and potentially fatal game style that you occasional see in games like Morrow Project, Fringeworthy, or Phoenix Command, all of which played better in the Hero System.

Re: Killing Damage in 6e

If you want more volatility, use the hit location chart. Oddly, while the Stun Multiple has been an issue in Supers games, the Hit Location table seems to have been much less an issue, if at all, in heroic games. I attribute this to two things. First, defenses are typically lower in Heroic games, so damage is getting through. In a Supers game, very high defense targets are often routinely stunned by KA's when a normal attack could not hope to achieve such a result. Same cost for a more effective attack fails my definition of "balance". Second, hit locations also augment normal attacks - a head shot with either KA or Blast is enhanced in effectiveness.

This was the core of my Volatility arguments in the early days of the SEATAC KA debate (before my life imploded and I stopped having the free time to debate game axioms). by adding a multiplicative factor to Normal Damage as well, it increased Normal Damage Volatility to the point where the Stun Lotto was suddenly much lessened.

I recall suggesting something like this in SETAC, and the response was a near-unanimous "Oh hell no!"

 

Every solution that was not "reduce the STUNx to 1d3" was either soundly put down or opened up a large can of worms. There were some doozies, too: reverse the normal and killing mechanics; get rid of the killing mechanic altogether and use normal dice with various mods. I think someone even suggested the I Ching at one point.

 

This was really the least-worst of all solutions and the reason for ghost-angel's signature quote.

Reverse?

Gods, I hope my proposal wasn't THAT soundly misunderstood.

My suggestion was that Low Volatility games use the Normal mechanics for both types of attacks (with some tweaking like Hugh mentioned to balance effects to taste), and High Volatility games that'd use Killing mechanics, also with adjustments (IIRC, my base idea was to give normal attacks an integral +1 Stun to make up for the "Reduced Penetration" type effect that is the inversion of the Partial AVLD effect you get with KA's.)

In any case, I fully understand how this came to be, I was there, too. At least to start

Re: Killing Damage in 6e

That predictability is why I prefer Normal attacks ... I like being able to think to myself, 'I can expect THIS' to happen, both as a player and DM. It makes it much easier to create balanced battles.

 

As far as 'not like the real world' goes ... that's simply not a priority for me. I don't really want to model the real world in my gaming; I want more cinematic reality, for lack of a better term. I play superheroes and high fantasy or high science-fiction (Star Trek or Star Wars stuff). The more 'realistic' the game world/system is, the less interested I tend to be.

Aye, which is why (before I bailed on the Great Seatac KA Debate) I was pushing for variable levels of Volatility as part of 6th.

Different strokes and all... I don't wanna call anyone's HERO experience "Badwrongfun", but I prefer my toolkits to not have such blatant built in assumptions. Hero has been moving away from such assumptions, slowly but steadily, for decades and I feel that the choice made for KA's in 6th overcorrected and thus established a NEW system based assumption.

I don't begrudge anyone their choice to play Silver Age, I just dislike having to retcon the system to do Iron as well.

Re: 1st edition Fantasy Hero: other changes in later printings?

I occasionally get very sad when I consider the poor fate of my play test edition of FH.

Re: Killing Damage in 6e

On the other hand' date=' no more StunX Lotto. That's a good thing, IMO.[/quote']

 

I do realize I was in the minority among posters here in that I never minded the Stun Lotto.

I've always thought the predictability/lack of volatility in Normal Attacks was the real problem.

Multiple dice generate a bell curve. The more dice, the more difficult it is to hit the ends of the curve.

Damage in the Real World is unpredictable.

I've been Impaired and/or Disabled by Body damage from Normal attacks before, none of which would have done so according to the default system. I've also taken Body from (what would be) Killing Attacks, with effects ranging from "I got cut?" (Bad Stun Roll) to "I'ma goin' into shock, now, guys!" and falling over (really high Stun roll) on approximately the same severity of wound.

Re: Killing Damage in 6e

The Hit Location Table hasn't changed between editions.

Which is, IMO, a good thing.

The nerfing of KA's in Standard Superheroic games really, really feels, to me, like a significant step backwards in the Universal Toolkit nature of the system, entrenching Silver Age Cinematic reality as the default "Basic" combat system. Without hit locations, Killing damage weapons no longer seem to have any close parallels, effects'-wise, to their real world counterparts. The benchmarks no longer seem to match experiential data, so Heroic level games that don't use Hit Locations become like Sunday Morning Cartoons or the A Team.

I really think 6th tipped the scales too far, but that is admittedly my opinion.

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

I don't hate nude models as a rule. I just find it tiring that partially nude, sexy models seem to be the "Default" way that women are portrayed in the hobby. On top of this it seems that most models portray women as ultra skinny with huge hips, narrow waists, and huge breasts. There is only one company that I know of that produces women figs that are of a larger body type (Hasslefree Minis). Though he also sculpts many barely dressed women figs too (also some nudes that seem to be somewhat tasteful). When it comes to body type, I know that men are also portrayed as being Adonis. Though it can be argued that that portrayal can be part of the male power fantasy.

 

So what should we do about all of this.

 

Make sure that we start to make noise about this. Making sure that people know that this kind of stuff isn't acceptable. Perhaps then some of you nice guys will shut down the jerks (when we don't do it ourselves). Speaking up on forums like Reddit, RPG.net etc and telling the jerks there that acting that way isn't acceptable. If there are enough people shaming the jerks they will at least stop posting their bile, and perhaps make some of them think.

 

Not only not buying models that we find offensive, but also writing letters (emails) to the companies/ studios that make such figures telling them why we aren't buying their stuff. Respectfully asking for and then buying models that are good expressions of a strong female wearing clothing that makes sense.

I would be amused to see a line of Nude/mostly nude male fantasy figures with their sexual characteristics as exaggerated as most of the females figures, but honestly no one would stock a series of "Amazon Harem" figures with peens bigger than their forearms, hanging down well past their knees.

I't'd almost be worth a small production run jut to pull a Candid Camera routine at a few game shops to record the responses by the standard "gaming public"

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

Ok

 

Out in the lands of Warhammer 40k there has also been a discussion of sexism in the wargaming circles (which is frankly far worse than it is in RPG circles). Also, the discussion has moved toward the subject of "Sexy Models" ie miniatures that depict people but mostly women in a sexualized fashion. Thanks to the popularity of http://www.Coolminiornot.com there has been an explosion of companies that offer nearly pornographic nude models. There has always been a trickle of intensely sexualized female models from nearly all companies that make miniatures. Lately there has been an explosion of these kind of figurines. I see this discussion as being akin to discussions here about the Depictions of Women in RPG artwork.

 

it started with this review of models (Warning Nekked and partially nekked painted and unpainted figuring might not be safe for work). The comments are where it all began:

http://www.houseofpaincakes.com/2012/06/sexy-models-need-i-say-more.html#idc-container

 

Then a ton of blogs commented on their own sites.

http://warpsignal.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/the-other-sexy-models/

http://www.tentakelgames.com/post/25494912136/sexism-and-miniatures

kind of wraps up here with a ton of links to other blogs that talk about the miniatures and the way women are treated at gaming places.

http://warpsignal.wordpress.com/2012/07/13/sexism-in-gaming-art-final-words/

 

Enjoy

Thanks for the linkage, interesting reading

I admit I LOLed at the Betty White quote someone posted in a response (spoilered for language)

Re: The cranky thread

I hate suits.

 

#$#$ing hate them.

Right there with ya, buddy.

I don't own one anymore.

I have more'n plenty of black clothes