Tom Carman

Re: The original War Wheel 1917 I understand that the Japanese weren't so concerned about nuclear power, but were really worried by another odd-ball idea: bats carrying incendiaries. The idea was that they roost under a building's eves for the day, and burn it down when the bombs go off; the US military lost one or more warehouses (not the intended targets!) testing them.

Re: James Blish's "Cities in Flight"

Re: Space fightercraft in RPGs. Yeah well, that's kinda the problem, now isn't it? We're all far more willing to trust (our own) military's target parameters on the assumption that (our own) autonomous drones won't be actively deployed anywhere near where we are. Remove that assumption and everyone gets a whole lot more antsy about trusting those well-armed AIs. For an alternate bit of space opera fun, try this: AI-controlled space fighters, only the AI is a copy of a human's (or other type person's) mind. It's ever so much nicer that the "just put someone's brain in the fighter, it's much easier to protect from G-forces that the whole body" trope. Lots of possibilities there: fly a mission and then get wiped, with maybe a memory packet returned to the source-pilot; crippled pilots vicariously "living" through their AI duplicates; survival instincts kicking in when a drone gets damaged and disconnected instead of destroyed, or if the carrier gets hit and the source-pilot killed.

Re: Is there a semi-plausible way for battlesuits/powered armor to do HVAC?

Re: An effect that overwrites a focus as a different version of the item How about using Summon (pre-defined weapon), requires Focus of Opportunity (existing weapon of same type)?

Re: Increasing Damage Attack Do you mean that the attack does increasing damage per phase? Or do you mean that it keeps damaging the target after the initial hit roll, aka Continuous?

Re: One Sun, Many Sungods? Check out Aaron Allston's novel Sidhe Devil for an interesting take on the gods. The gods are a fundamental force but also take on different personas in different regions. The more personified the god you are appealing to, the more likely you are to get results but also the less absolute power that god wields. Conversely, you can get a bigger effect if you appeal to a more "generic" god, but it's much harder to pull it off. The book's villains, the "Reinies", were custom-designing a sun-god persona to fit their prejudices and ideology: hatred of the "impure" darker races.

Re: Submitted for your approval: 10 too human aliens. Didn't notice that they were particularly sentient in the book or movie. Animal-level intelligent, yes. Not aliens, either, in the original book: they were somebody's genetics experiment, cultivated because of their useful products. While moderately dangerous, they weren't a serious threat... until a meteor shower set off somebody's Cold War secret weapon and blinded most of the world.

Re: Stealth in Space Given the practical considerations, I suspect that stealth in space would be not so much a matter of concealing your position as concealing your identity. Sensors that can detect that you are THERE likely have a lot more range than ones with enough fine discrimination to determine that you aren't who you say you are.

Re: Magical Knick Knacks No, Cones of Silence.

Re: Solar Hero timeline

Re: Magical Knick Knacks Necklace of conical black beads (Always On, 1 hex Darkness to sound) (also Usable as Attack if slipped over a mage's head)

Re: I amay have asked, but... Atlatls???

Re: END Reserves in 6e - why bother?

Re: Complete Newcomer to the System

Re: Is 6th Edtion worth the money?

Re: Portals Ah, a variation on the ever-abusable "Dimension Door Catapault". I heard of an accidental variant called the Washing Machine: a flood of water was coming down the stairs the player characters were on. A mage tried to use Dimension Door to protect the party and divert the flood past them... of course the water already between the doors kept cycling from the bottom one back up to the top!

Re: Diesel-punk Q-Branch

Re: 6E What happened to HKA?

Re: Alternatives to the internet? This model has its downside, believe me. My parents' home is a bit remote for a location on the US East Coast: cable service stops several miles down the road and no cell towers are nearby. Their landline phone service is currently down. My mother has a cell phone to call out, but she only turns it on when she wants to make a call because the phone will burn its charge trying to pull in signal. I forgot about that the last time I was down for a visit, and my phone died before suppertime.

Re: Help with Old West Weapon design 4th Edition Western Hero is a good investment. I don't recall is it made much use of the Real Weapon lim, but there were plenty of optional rules: how fast you can reload a cartridge revolver, Activation rolls for jams and dud rounds if you don't keep up your gun maintenance, gun parameter tweaking (long barrels for range mods, short ones for a faster draw). For Civil War and earlier games, there are rules for cap-and-ball guns; those were much slower to load, of course, but cap-and-ball revolvers were usually designed to swap out the entire cylinder.

Re: Looks Like a Spaceship, Don't It? Actually, this is a hotly debated trade-off at current tech levels. Turbojets/ramjets/scramjets get their oxygen supply in gaseous form. It is very low density, and how it looks to the engine varies widely depending on speed and altitude. LOX is dense and always the same to the engine. There is a strong view that scramjets (which still haven't been proven to work effectively) aren't worth the effort unless you plan to cruise in atmosphere at hypersonic speeds (a very hostile thermal environment). This view says to forget about the weight penalties of an extra set of engines and just run rockets all the way. If necessary, some small LOX drop tanks can be added. A possible half-way solution is a ducted rocket: a ramjet-style tube around the rocket picks up some air to heat as extra reaction mass, and you can maybe get some afterburner action if the rocket is run extra fuel-rich. For technical reasons, rockets are always run somewhat fuel-rich.

Re: Where Pulp Is Now I am reminded of Tom Smith's "The Last Hero on Earth, a comic opera". I need to remember to buy that one... # What If? # Mad Scientists United # The Sinister Cavortings of Sir Wilfred P. Huffelbaggins III # Warning: Wimbledon! # The Sinister Sixty Strike # Enter The Waffle # You Never Call Me By My Real Name # Boulevard of Broken Genes # Tears of the Kill-O-Tron # Pirate Ninjas From Dino Island # The Terror of Sis Boom Ba # The Romance of George and Al # A Million Light Years From Home # Divided Royalties # Behold the Crossing Guard # When Strikes the Clock # Rules of Enragement # Hey! Didn't You Die? # The Rise and Fall of Sir Wilfred P. Huffelbaggins III # With Great Power Comes Great Power Bills

Re: Zeppelins Ah yes, the "Bayside Blimp" (an old Digital Hero article). Despite the alliterative name, it was a rigid-frame airship. And the casino used solid gold chips for the highest denomination (the value in metal was less that the chip's value, but some customers liked them as souvenirs).

Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated We have some games pretty regularly in Princeton, at least during the school year.