AlHazred
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Posts posted by AlHazred
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Re: Submitted for your approval: 10 too human aliens.
Isn't this an RPG message board? Let's see some stats for these entries!
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Re: Need help with the middle of my Traveller Hero plot.
Well, based on the little bit of information on canonical Milagro, you have a number of options. The extremely high Law Level makes it easy to justify why it might not be possible for PCs with their own ship to go directly there, or even investigate thoroughly -- that level of control probably precludes getting the proper orbit to do a thorough search of the planet's surface for anomalies.
If you're trying to emphasize the dehumanization, then there are other possibilities. When the PCs arrive at the Milagro Downport (with E-class facilities, there's not going to be a highport), the landing procedures undoubtedly include registering their manifest of cargo and passengers. When the woman's name is sent to Milagro's government, it sets off an alarm -- her father's luggage is still waiting at the depot to be picked up, and has amassed a high amount of demurrage fines. Naturally, some greedy local official will probably try to get this money from the woman; maybe he's initially ignorant of her father's disappearance/possible death, but even when he finds out he insists she pay the fines as "that's the Law."
Another possibility would be the Milagro government keeping tabs on all non-citizens. Even at 1970s tech level, it's feasible to keep tabs on the Forinians, which is undoubtedly something the conservative Milagran political elements would want to do. So, the PCs can probably find the guy through some judicious bribery of relatively low-level government officials.
It appears somebody on the Citizens of the Imperium boards has been doing stuff with Milagro as well.
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showpost.php?p=355937&postcount=55
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showpost.php?p=356229&postcount=57
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showpost.php?p=356229&postcount=58
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showpost.php?p=356229&postcount=59
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showpost.php?p=356229&postcount=62
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showpost.php?p=356229&postcount=67
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Re: Indiana Jones World Map
And the poster is already sold out, I see. Not surprising considering the limited run of 255 total!
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Re: Long tours-of-duty on industrial/mining ships
Doesn't really count since the crew spent the vast majority of the trip in hibernation (according to some of the supplementary material' date=' a requirement for their (quite slow) FTL drive).[/quote']Man, I loved the Aliens Technical Manual. The little throwaway bits in there are pure roleplaying gold! -
Re: Vehicle: The Marauder
its an interesting design... nice work except I think the armor rating is a bit too high for a vehicle of this type' date=' they are mostly designed to stop small arms fire and shell fragments, I would probably halve the overall rating, except vs mines and IEDs[/quote']I worked up the rating from comparison of the stats of a Hummer, and working out the damage from 7kg of plastic explosive. I may have to reexamine my numbers. -
Re: Vehicle: The Marauder
I like that it forms a middle-ground vehicle between the size of the Hummer and the size of an APC. I plan to use it for my Traveller Hero campaign.
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The Paramount Group's Marauder mine-proof military vehicle was recently featured on Top Gear, where 7kg of plastic explosive detonated directly beneath failed to do more than dent the trim and blow out one tire. I thought it was interesting enough to make a conversion, especially with the various configurations on the website.
HD character file is here.
News article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2008398/Top-Gear-finds-worlds-unstoppable-vehicle.html
Home page: http://www.paramountgroup.biz/en/products/land/marauder-mine-protected-vehicle
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marauder_%28vehicle%29
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Re: Zero-G Martial Arts
My favorite zero-G martial art is Zero-Ball from Adventurer's Club #24. It's for 5th edition instead of 6th' date=' but the changes are minimal and it's accompanied by an excellent little discussion of how zero gravity adjusts the effects of some Maneuver Elements.[/quote']Christopher added the info for the standard zero-G martial art from HSMA, so I'll just add the info for this.On page 38 of Adventurer's Club, Issue #24 (Summer 1994), they describe Zero-Ball, a sport played on space stations and aboard starships. Extremely violent, it's developed into a full-contact martial sport. The extensive Explanation of Maneuvers section covers a lot of detail on changes the effects of Maneuver Elements due to zero gravity. For instance, "target falls" makes no sense in zero-G; the effect on the target is the same as a fall, however - half-DCV until the target takes a half-phase to reorient himself.
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Re: Zero-G Martial Arts
There are actually a couple of zero-G martial arts styles that have been published.
The "standard" zero-G martial art is in HSMA (not sure of the page reference without my book here at work). Basically, it's supposed to represent a ship-board combat style for military personnel used to zero gravity.
My favorite zero-G martial art is Zero-Ball from Adventurer's Club #24. It's for 5th edition instead of 6th, but the changes are minimal and it's accompanied by an excellent little discussion of how zero gravity adjusts the effects of some Maneuver Elements.
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Worked this up last night as a preliminary set of ideas, and thought I'd drop it on here for feedback. I haven't worked up the Active Points for any of them yet, so I'm not sure what the Alchemy Roll penalties will be yet.
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I'm working up some stuff for a low-fantasy campaign and I figured I'd use the alchemy system from the old Darklands computer game, released by Microprose in 1992. (I might port the Saint system over as well, but one step at a time.) I was shocked, shocked, to find out that it apparently hasn't been posted to the Boards! Has anyone ported this? If not, I might try my hand at a conversion.
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Re: Usable maps of Pangea
I like this one, but I can't figure out how to manipulate the "layers" they speak of.
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Re: Favorite Real Scientist Sci Fi writers, and stuff you have cribbed from them.
See, for my current Traveller Hero campaign, I've been cribbing ideas from Frederik Pohl; even though he's not a scientist of any stripe, his science ideas are interesting and fun. Of course, the science he used for his biggest "Wow!" moments has been discredited, but I've figured out ways to make them work.
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Re: How do I get started in making a cruiser sized ship?
A couple of points:
- It's not clear from the description, but if the ships being carried by Space Fold have to be "docked" (essentially the vehicular equivalent of "Grabbed") and they fit under the weight limit of the vehicle's STR, then I believe there's no need for the Usable Simultaneously Advantage. I mean, you don't need it for the Lifeboats, you don't need it for any similar ship contained "within" the mothership.
- Basic Hero System Vehicle construction is more or less "cinematic" in flavor. You have enough room for exactly as many staterooms or other chambers as you need for narrative logic (compare the ship interiors of the U.S.S. Enterprise with the Serenity).
- As a highly customizable system, you can change the Vehicle construction system to pretty much match whatever you want. Shadowcat's system is intricate, and is perfect for people who like that sort of thing. I used to be one of them.
- It's not clear from the description, but if the ships being carried by Space Fold have to be "docked" (essentially the vehicular equivalent of "Grabbed") and they fit under the weight limit of the vehicle's STR, then I believe there's no need for the Usable Simultaneously Advantage. I mean, you don't need it for the Lifeboats, you don't need it for any similar ship contained "within" the mothership.
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Re: Distinguishing Normal Charcteristics
- As far as STR goes, there are optional rules to provide more granularity for damage, weight-carrying, and other purposes. Check out the Advanced Player's Guide [6E] or The Ultimate Brick [5E].
- Higher DEX allows you to go before people of a lower DEX. This makes each point of DEX important.
- CON determines how easily you're Stunned. A single point can mean the difference between losing a Phase and not. And since normal people have a lower SPD, this is an even bigger deal than for superheroes.
- INT is the only stat where there's not (yet) a real difference in a normal game. If you're in a Psionic game which uses INT in place of DEX for mental combat (the standard system uses EGO) then what I said above under DEX applies.
- In a psionic game, EGO determines so many things, each point of it is important. Order of a action during a Phase, how easily you can be manipulated by Mental Powers, and so on. In 5E, your Mental Defense is calculated based off of it.
- PRE has a similar effect to CON -- when you are Presence Attacked, you can lose half-actions or whole Phases with a particularly potent Presence Attack. Each point counts.
In 5E, where there are Figured Characteristics, these minor distinctions can also carry weight, although that only counts as far as the "break-points" for most characteristics (13 and 18, specifically).
- As far as STR goes, there are optional rules to provide more granularity for damage, weight-carrying, and other purposes. Check out the Advanced Player's Guide [6E] or The Ultimate Brick [5E].
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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.
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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]
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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?
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Re: How to create alien language?
I'm considering using Simlish snippets as background conversational noises when my Traveller Hero game starts up again.
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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!
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
Long tours-of-duty on industrial/mining ships
in Star Hero
Posted
Re: Long tours-of-duty on industrial/mining ships
Don't know if the entire Medial and Security staff could be called "Scaling," since I imagine the 345 "Critical Crew" need medical care and regulatory enforcement.