AlHazred

Re: How to create alien language? It occurs to me, rereading this for the first time, that I was unnecessarily cryptic and uninformative with my seemingly unrelated post. I find many homebrew "alien languages" don't really work that well. I've started to use sound effects more in my games. I was thinking, when I restart Traveller Hero, I will take snippets of Simlish conversation (Simlish is the "language" spoken by the Sims in The Sims game franchise). Simlish is designed to sound like an actual language, while actually containing many gibberish words. This allows the player to think at a meta level without being distracted by a conversation taking place in the game; it also allows the computer to simulate actual conversation without sounding as weird and stilted as most conversation-simulating programs usually do. Because it has the right cadence and structure for language, I think it will make an excellent "background blabber" for starport scenes, planetary locations, and so forth. Plus, it should be easy to extract conversational snippets from Sims videos people have posted online, or generate my own with a (cheaply-purchased) older copy of one of the Sims games. Added bonus: EA games has paid many recording artists to rerecord their tunes with Simlish lyrics instead of English (or whatever the original language was). Since they pick a few popular tunes and many more that are less well-known, I should be able to find some Simlish songs to lend added verisimilitude to the background chatter. There are also attempts to construct a Simlish dictionary in various places online. Since the game's authors make an attempt to keep some gibberish consistent, this actually works fairly well without allowing huge (game-dragging) levels of detail.

Re: Drakine pics (and other ones also) You can always try to look through the D&D images online. Search for "Dragonborn" which are the 4th edition dragon-like race. Like this guy: [ATTACH=CONFIG]38164[/ATTACH]

Re: Atlantis found... For gameable bits, I highly recommend Atlantis: The Lost World, from Bard Games back in the day. Great stuff - Stephen Michael Sechi basically put Atlantis, Tartessos, Mu, Lemuria, and almost all other reputed "lost civilizations" together in one setting. I've always wanted to run an Atlantis campaign, but who has the time?

Re: How to create alien language? I'm considering using Simlish snippets as background conversational noises when my Traveller Hero game starts up again.

Re: From the Tesla files... Tesla makes a great character because he was a showman. All engineers and scientists from that era have a strong egotistical streak, and many were more than a little boastful when it came to taking credit for inventions, but Tesla had panache. Sitting there reading a book while great arcs of lightning shoot around is just the sort of thing to entertain people. Besides, Tesla invented the Atomic Robot. That puts him one up in my book!

Re: I need cheap(-ish) liftoff. If you want really cheap transport of goods to orbit, you gotta go beanstalk. Build interplanetary craft in orbit and you don't have to worry about the kind of propulsion you'd need lifting the whole thing off the ground in one go.

Re: Nostalgia: Anybody Else Covert Old Gaming Material? It would be easier to forgive you for that if you didn't bring it up! /Too soon!

Re: Nostalgia: Anybody Else Covert Old Gaming Material? I'm glad it's not just me! It occurs to me, I converted much of the old SPI DragonQuest magic system to 6E Fantasy Hero. I've completed about 14 of the magical colleges (first pass) and should really get around to finishing them off, and then giving them all a second pass for consistency.

Re: "real" Magic resources My favorite explanation of the VM is that it's a faux manuscript supposed to come from Bacon's New Atlantis. Sadly, it's been more or less debunked, but I hold out hope that somehow it turns out the VM is a newer work written in an older manuscript.

Re: Nostalgia: Anybody Else Covert Old Gaming Material? I should mention I thought of this topic after seeing my work converting Larry DiTilio's Cerilon articles from Dragon magazine. He published two articles covering aspects of his home campaign world of Cerilon (about runes and poisons) and then never went on to develop anything further. In fact, after writing the Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign for Chaosium, he went on to write He-Man scripts for quite a while. Googling him brought me this interesting tidbit: I intended to convert the published Cerilon articles to Hero, and got started under 5th edition, but the material has lain fallow and incomplete for years. I should get back to it sometime.

I've been going through some of my old gaming files, and came across a bunch of articles from gaming magazines that I copied in the 80s. It brought to mind all of the Hero System conversions I've ever considered doing. There's a lot! Far more than I ever actually completed. So, what classic gaming material have you considered converting? And did you ever finish?

Re: "real" Magic resources Thread necromancy is a ritual I've never seen covered in a book. And the Voynich Manuscript is not a grimoire or spellbook of any kind.

Re: Tyche To my mind, Tyche occupies the same Solar System that contains planet Vulcan, Venus' moon Neith, Saturn's moon Chiron and Themis, the planet Phaeton (or possbly Planet V or the Fifth Planet) and Planet X. This is a distinct Solar System from the more fun one usually shown in movies and on TV.

Re: From the Tesla files... I read the first sentence in the article as "The sorcerer-electricians who have for years been trying..." and instantly became more interested until I saw I'd misread "scientist". Thanks, though! Now I have a new idea for Fantasy Hero!

Re: What would you do as GM when our intrepid . . . . . . I've thought about it some more, and disagree that an 18 rolled on a Survival skill should have equivalent effects to an 18 rolled during combat. My reasoning goes like this: combat in Hero is not very abstracted. You roll an average of fifteen times per minute in Game Time. Given the huge number of dice rolled, we can expect 18s to come up with frequency -- that one-in-216 chance seems more likely to occur every session or two when you're rolling several dozen times each game session. On the other hand, Skill Rolls are extremely abstracted. You roll once, and the result determines the success or failure of a hunting expedition that might last anywhere from an hour to six hours in Game Time. You probably won't see more than one or two of those 18s for any particularly common Skill Roll during the course of a campaign. Therefore, the 18s rolled in Skill Rolls should definitely have a more serious impact than a similar failed roll during combat.

Re: Why We Should Go Into Space I agree with that guy! Mike, I got to use that quote one of these days, and I'll be sure to attribute it to you! We can't give up now! Where's the spirit? Where's the guts, huh? Did we give up when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? No! Did we give up when the Mexicans killed those other guys at the Little Big Horn? No! We got to go there, man!

Re: What would you do as GM when our intrepid . . . . . . I figured the Dark Feral idea adds plot, gives meaning to a critically failed die roll, and isn't inconsistent with Survival Skill. I also figured the failed roll didn't "create" the dark mirror, so much as lead the character to the "worst" prey.

Re: D&D 4E Powers as Fantasy Hero Powers I assume what you're going for is something like this? [ATTACH=CONFIG]37983[/ATTACH] I've got a HD package deal for it here.

Re: D&D 4E Powers as Fantasy Hero Powers I deliberately slowed down the progression since you guys were starting out as Very Powerful Heroes. You can easily do something to give a feel more of level-based progression -- give the PCs 4-5 XP per adventure. If you get 12-15 points saved up, you can pick up significant abilities rather quickly. Running a game based on WoW, you're going to have to plan for a really, really high level of power at the end of the campaign. Plan ahead -- build the packages the characters are going to buy early.

Re: D&D 4E Powers as Fantasy Hero Powers

Re: Resource: Starship Schematics Database Channeling TQM... Star Wars deckplans: http://deckplans.00sf.com/Index.html http://www.colonialchrome.co.uk/Pages/Root_1_Ship_Menu.html http://the-holocron.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=36&func=select&id=1 http://www.swagonline.net/user/444/gallery Transhuman Space: http://nemtos.ouvaton.org/ General: http://www.delicious.com/hackbarth/deckplans

Re: What would you do as GM when our intrepid . . . . . . He ends up stalking something that stalks him as skillfully as he stalks it. Then suddenly they come upon each other, him fighting with his weapons it tearing at him with tooth and claw. Play out one Phase of combat, where the wound he inflicts on it inflicts damage to him as well and vice versa. Then turn to the other players at the camp and ask what they're up to. Have them roleplay through some camp stuff. Then, they suddenly hear the most horrible howls and screams echoing from the woods. Dark animals and... other things... break from cover around the camp and flee away from the sounds of fighting. Intrepid characters who try to investigate rapidly become lost in the brambles and thickets that choke that part of the woods; the trees overhead completely block out all light from the stars there, and only luminescent moss lights their way. As they try to find a way to penetrate the thicket, the sounds cease; after a pause of a few seconds, the insect noises begin again. Then bring the hunter to another room and reveal that the that his prey turns out to be the Darkly Feral version of himself. Play out the combat. It should have the same number of points as him, but no weapons -- just claws and fangs, and a fiercely intelligent hunting/fighting style. If he wins the battle (and it should be dramatically tough), tell him he thinks its hide looks especially valuable. Should he skin it or take other souvenirs, they should be worth something -- a small one-time (or extremely limited use) bonus to Survival or Tracking, or a single charge of Moderate poison damage. If he loses, he passes out. When he comes to, both the hunter and the area the battle took place in are completely covered in blood and gore. He's down to 1 BODY (or half his BODY stat if healing is not readily available) and he feels terrible, but he's alive. Secretly, you know that the hunter and his Dark Shadow have merged. It will slowly try to turn him towards feral nature and away from civilized society. There are benefits to be had (let him buy Tracking Scent, and give him +1 bonuses to OCV or Survival once in a while) but always at a price -- if he takes advantage of the gifts he slowly submerges his higher self into the primitive urges and savage fury of the shadow. Should be worth a subplot that runs for at least one season or so of campaign.

Re: Hero System Grimoire - and a magic system to go with it. I used Resource Points for my High Fantasy game for magical and mundane equipment and it worked reasonably well except for certain caveats. Potions and scrolls didn't fit right, for instance. If you're going to expand the definition of the Resource Pool to include spells, then you're better off forgetting about it and just tacking the extra 70 points or so onto each character; tell them they have to buy a Resource Pool VPP, and then stringently define the limitations to reflect what you want for it.

Re: Zero-Point Energy Field Manipulator [ATTACH=CONFIG]37979[/ATTACH]

Re: D&D 4E Powers as Fantasy Hero Powers I'll go. I'll assume Hero System 6E for now, but 5E suggestions are also welcome: The restoring END ability is merely the second part of a Compound Power, an Aid END. In D&D 4E, most abilities that inflict Conditions on people (such as Silenced) would be "save ends," which means at the end of every round the creature gets to roll a d20 and on a 10 or better, the Condition ends. So, some effects can last all encounter, while others last one Phase. That looks like some sort of Requires A Roll limitation; since ordinary D&D 4E abilities should be modeled without a Skill Roll (i.e., they always go off when used) this is probably worth a -1/2 bonus. Also, in D&D 4E, you have to target each creature in a burst separately for most attacks; this is the Nonselective modifier to an Area Of Effect. So, this power looks like this: That would take the above power and replace Darkness with a Blast. This is a typical ability for leader character classes in the new D&D. This is similar to the Inspire Talent in Fantasy Hero. One important point: in Fantasy Hero games, I almost always build Mind Control powers with the Can Be Dispelled limitation, as it's much closer to what we see in fantasy stories. If you did that to begin with, this is just a special Dispel Power. Note that this means your Fear powers and Sleep spells need to be built as Mind Control. This is just a (particularly gruesome) Expendable Focus limitation for an Aid END, Only To Aid Self. Encounter Powers in D&D 4E last until the end of the encounter or for five minutes. This makes it easy -- buy the Fantasy Hero powers with a 5 Minute duration and call it a wash.