AlHazred

After rereading Star Hero and The Ultimate Vehicle, and giving Terran Empire the once-through, I have come up with my one and only quibble with these excellent sourcebooks; my hope is that this will be addressed in The Hero Vehicle Sourcebook.

Each of the aforementioned books contains a vehicles chapter with dozens of spacecraft. The first two, in particular, have a wide variety of starships and bases to suit just about anyone's campaign. I say "just about" because it seems to me that the low end has been ignored. Now, I realize that most people who buy Star Hero aren't going to need it, but that just means it should have been in The Ultimate Vehicle. I'm talking, of course, about modern space craft: the Space Shuttle, Saturn rockets, etc. Or even something a little more primitive: a Solar Sail yacht, an Ion-engine freighter, whatever. Not that I can't make them on my own and post them here, I just wish one of them could have made the book. Anyway, keep up the good work!

P.S.: So, Steve, when will we have a Hero products subscription service, so that you send me new product when it comes out and automatically bill my checking account? It's inevitable that I'll get everything anyway, and that way I save on gas...

I use a really simple yardstick for aliens. After doing preliminary design on an alien, I try to find a single terrestrial analogue as a nickname for it (like "cat-men", "caterpillars", "spider-bears", etc.) If I can't, then I figure I'm doing my job.

Personally, I think too much thinking leads to unconvincing aliens. There has to be an organic, intuitive process involved, since there should always be unexplainable elements in any species (just look at our own, for instance). I highly recommend the alien-oriented works of Wayne Douglas Barlowe (Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials, Expedition, and to a lesser extent The Alien Life of Wayne Barlowe) as inspirational material. Barlowe's folks taught him proper anatomy and ecology, since they're Audobon-style illustrators. His stuff has a very natural feel as a consequence.

I think that's related to Bob's point in TUV that vehicles don't need Environmental Movement for an environment it was designed to work in. If it can handle multiple environments, then you should figure out the primary environment, and buy Environmental Movement for the other environment(s). Nothing is said about Life Support, except that, obviously, it doesn't have to pay for Usable by Others to apply it to occupants.

There's a page with Hero System Farscape characters somewhere, but the page escapes me at the moment. Time to Google...

Originally posted by Chuk

It has way less flight than that. It didn't acheive it's current velocity under it's own power -- it only has a little flight so it can turn.

It's true that it couldn't have relaunched itself if need be; the boost needed to escape Earth's gravity was provided by regular chemical rockets, which were provided in three stages. I'd count that as a 1 Continuing Charge, Charge Doesn't Recover, that lasts as long as needed to reach that speed, and has Side Effects (the exhaust) and probably Vehicular OAF. For greater realism, you could find out how long it took to reach that velocity and work backwards from there.

Attitude control jets would be a separate power, maybe 1" of Flight, Cumulative to a smaller max than the rockets, probably with No Turn Mode, and consisting of a single Fuel Charge.

My favorite GURPS books are Illuminati and Discworld. I've been looking for Fantasy II so that I can get the Madlands stuff, but that's a tough one to find.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. I've got dice old enough to vote, and I've ripped off... pardon me, borrowed... a large number of ideas from many sources. For many of these ideas I had heard only the vaguest description and was forced to come up with my own interpretation. In those cases where I did that, I've often found my interpretation to be more interesting to me than the interpretation given by the original source.

Out of intellectual curiosity, I wonder how much it would cost as a vehicle...

Hmmm...

Description of the Spacecraft

 

Measured from its farthest ends, from the horn of the medium-gain antenna to the tip of the omnidirectional antenna, the Pioneer spacecraft is 2.9 meters (9 1/2 feet) long. Its widest cross-wise dimension, exclusive of the booms, is the 2.7-meter (9-foot) diameter high gain antenna. Pioneer weighs 270 kilograms (570 pounds).

Let's see. That's a little more than Size Category 1 (200 kg, or Motorcycle size) but much less than Size Category 2 (400 kg or Chariot size). Size Category 1 translates to 1.25 game inches (2.5 meters) long and .64 game inches (1.3 meters) wide. Size Category 2 translates to 1.6 game inches (3.2 meters) long and .8 (1.6 meters) wide. I'd call it Size Category 2, but with a weight of 270 kg.

Since attitude control took a long time, I'd say it had a SPD of 1. With a velocity of 32,400 mph, that comes out to 86,886" noncombat. 10" of Flight with 13 doublings costs 80 Active Points and comes to 81,920" noncombat, or 30,548 mph. Alternatively, 5" of Flight, with MegaScale to the 10,000 km level costs 22 Active Points and, with the Extra Time limitation, comes out to 50,000 kph, or 31,250 mph. For those using the "more realistic" optional Cumulative Flight advantage, 5" of Flight with the x16,000 multiple has an Active Point cost of 45 and leads to a top speed of 80,000" or 29,832 mph.

I wonder what sort of Enhanced Sense powers it would have...

[Edited to add:

On consideration, I'd use the standard Sensors VPP option from Star Hero to simulate most NASA probe sensors. Those geniuses at JPL have been able to pull quite a few rabbits out of quite a few hats by correlating individual elements from the eleven instruments carried aboard...]

Originally posted by Supreme

Hey! Can I get those too?

Sure. When the UNTIL Superpowers Database hits the shelves...

In relation to my last post, I found this today. Wonder how my brain conflated this with Mavnn's post...

The Shattered Sky

1st ed by Paul Lucas (1997) Propaganda Publishing

A science fantasy RPG set in the shards of a Dyson Sphere which was broken 5000 years ago, with distances measured in "Earths". It includes aliens, centaurs, talking dolphins, and orcs: all created using genotech and "uplift." The magic is ostensibly based on nanotechnology. The system is percentile-based.

 

Propaganda Publishing

Cape Girardeau, MO (USA)

Former makers of The Shattered Sky (1997): science fantasy in a broken Dyson sphere. In 1997, they announced that they were making Aun J'nu, a manga-based roleplaying game by Alison Stroll (unpublished?). Later they licensed with Gold Rush Games to produce the DarkTown: The Apocolyptic Cycle RPG. Headed by Philip Reed.

Anybody out Missoura way? Is this company still around?

Okay, you forced it out of me: Blackmask Online. It's got all kinds of etext goodies segregated by category. And one of the biggest categories it has is Pulp.

Keep in mind from the description of the power, that "You can force a particular event to happen again." (Emphasis mine.) It's not limited to Attack powers only. Your ally does a Full Move but is still in radius of the AE Dragon's Breath, you can use this to give them a second phase of movement for free. This is an extraordinarily powerful ability, ideal for a console computer game where you're limited to a set of pre-defined moves, but not very well adjusted for a tabletop RPG where anything is possible...

That said, I'd do it as a VPP to cover all the bases...

Used to be, you could find all that stuff in the Discussion Board archives. I hope someone saved the info...

Originally posted by Greenstar

"Heiro's Journey" By Sterling Lanier. A surprisingly good read, too, though more thna a bit over the top. The world just *begs* to be made into an RPG, though.

There was a sequel called The Unforsaken Hiero which came out in 1983. The first book came out in 1973. I remember being excited when I found the sequel in the stores, and thinking, "Wow, just have to wait another ten years and he'll come out with the last one in the trilogy." How could I realize that was wishful thinking?

Unfortunately for gamers, Gamma World is considered the "baseline standard" for post-apocalypse game settings; I say unfortunately because GW is a really high-fantasy, wierded-out setting, and it shouldn't be the baseline for these things. It is basically a rewrite of the older Metamorphosis Alpha rules with some adaptations to make it similar to AD&D, which had just exploded on the gaming scene. Other games have been produced in the setting, but GW is the most popular - it's gone through four editions from the first in 1978, to the latest one in the early 90s. With the demise/transformation of TSR, it's really unclear whether it will ever be redone.

A list of post-apoc RPGs would include: The Morrow Project (Timeline, Inc., 1980/1983 - probably the best post-holocaust game), Aftermath (FGU, 1981), Living Steel (Leading Edge, 1987), After The Bomb (Palladium, 2001), Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (GDW, 1990), and the famous Tribe 8 (Dream Pod 9, 1998).

Games I've heard of but never seen include: The End (Scapegoat Games, 1997), Mutazoids (Whit Productions, 1989), Age of Ruin (Cutting Edge Games, 1990), 9th Generation (Jeff Siadek Enterprises, 1986), and Blood Dawn (Optimus, 1996).

[Edit - I forgot one of the first such games, Twilight: 2000, which has also gone through a number of editions and spawned a spinoff game, Traveller: 2300. Better late than never.]

Oh, Lord, where to begin.

The Flux and Anchor series (more correctly the Soul Rider series) by Jack Chalker comprises five books: Spirits of Flux and Anchor (1984), Empires of Flux and Anchor (1984), Masters of Flux and Anchor (1985), The Birth of Flux and Anchor (1985), and Children of Flux and Anchor (1986).

Mr. Chalker has been quoted as saying, "SOUL RIDER is probably the best saga, and the most complicated thing I ever did, but it was very controversial and you either got it or you didn't." That's putting it mildly. Many people put him in the same category as John Norman and Piers Anthony as a writer of fiction aimed at pubescent young men; he's somewhat stronger than Anthony, but not as out there as Norman.

Definitely not the sort of thing I recommend to female acquaintances who ask for Sci-Fi recommendations, although the men don't really come out much better in most of his books.

Where Chalker differs from the other two is that he has some really good, eminently game-usable ideas in most of his series.

Haven't been able to find the "Shattered World" background yet, even on the best remaining Fuzion sites I could find. Maybe it was called "Shattered Sky?"

Originally posted by Thag13

Don't forget G5 and his air aces.

I believe that's G-8 and his Battle Aces. That's another interesting one, much more supernatural in orientation than most of the Pulps.

Doc Savage is nice, but very often he goes over the top; I tried to stat him out for my Golden Age/Pulp game, but he came in at way too many points to be a good "role model" for the players to base their characters on.

Slightly more equivalent to a starting PC's power level is The Avenger, also by "Kenneth Robeson". His team is much more useful and interesting, and he is not unbeatable.

In that regard, The Shadow (book version, not the radio Shadow) can be built on 250 points.

Others I haven't managed to read yet are The Spider and Operator 5. Have to haunt eBay until these guys show up...

Originally posted by Mavnn

Hope this sparks some ideas

Sir, I believe it was your post I was remembering.

My brain coughed it up when I was talking with a friend of mine who runs GURPS. We were lamenting the fact that players tend to get stuck in a rut, and were brainstorming ideas. We basically pooled all the most over-the-top, unusual, interesting campaign ideas we could come up with, with the goal of stringing complementary ones together to form something very different and unique. This is the idea that got us going.

Many thanks for the inspiration!

Roland

Could very well have been your posts. I remember there was a lot of development of the "services-oriented technology" idea. I'd be interested to hear more...

And that campaign was called...?

I don't care who wrote it, really... It's all good...

Can't beat that one, but I can come close...

[Edit to remove unattractive gloating. Ego Attack - 2 points!]

My father has an old 1928 World Atlas. The thing is chock full of details like industrial production, exports, etc., mixed in with the color maps. I check it every time I visit my dad in Florida, just to soak up the period...

I recall someone mentioning something about this on the old boards, but most of the details have been lost in the dim recesses of my atrophying brain...

I remember a description of a campaign setting. It is the far future. People inhabit the shattered (?) remnants of a Dyson Sphere that has been constructed around the sun. Some people seem to have strange magical powers, but this is due to still-functioning ancient technology, involving nanotechnological robots that respond to genetic (?) markers; if one of your ancestors bought a "service contract" with the company that made one kind of nanotechnological robots, then they would do certain things for you if you wanted them to.

That's it. Memory fades. Can anyone tell me what this is so that I can rekindle the guttering spark?

I'd foprgotten about that project!

Since you jogged my memory, I'd like to add the Automobile Green Book, which you can find periodically on eBay or other auction sites. This is a reference work put out by the Automobile Legal Association during the 20s and 30s. Billed as a Road Reference and Tourists' Guide, it contains what amount to detailed directions (called Routes) between various cities. Since signs were scarce or nonexistent in that era, references like these gave drivers the info they needed to get where they were going. It's full of old gems like period advertisements for restaurants and hotels, maps, etc. If you're going to be running a wide-ranging campaign in the era, see if you can find a copy cheap; I got mine on eBay for five bucks...

Originally posted by BobGreenwade

[Excessive humility snipped.]

 

So, while I'll gladly take credit for 55% of the text in the book (which is about the percentage I got paid for, and rightly so) I have to give Steve at least 75% of the credit for how great the book is.

It definitely fits in superbly with everything published so far, displaying a unity and cohesion to the Hero System rules that has been sorely lacking. I am gratified to finally see some of the stuff I remember you talking about years ago (like the stuff about towed vehicles and the detailed Sailing rules) and am glad examples are given that illustrate very well the proper usage of the rules.

Give yourself a pat on the back between floggings...