Basil

Re: Answers & Questions

A) Slick as a thistle

Q) Why do you saying I'm "rough around the edges"? I'm charming, good-looking, and really, really slick.

A) Excalibre, for example.

Re: I need a name for a society of adventurers

Great catch' date=' and repped.[/quote']

 

Ditto, and ditto.

Re: The Empire Club: recruiting drive!

Unfortunately, Allen Pinkerton (founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, the first private eye company) is before the Pulp Era.

Buffalo Bill Cody didn't die until 1917. Three months later "Diamond Jim" Brady died (millionaire, trencherman, and man-about-town).

Mustafa Kemal, founder of modern Turkey.

Aviator (and member of the US Army Air Corps) James H. Doolittle.

Charles Leonard Woolley and Howard Carter, UK archaeologists.

William Randoph Hearst, muckraking publisher -- some PCs might work for him.

Charles Atlas, of "97-pound weakling" fame.

Hugh Lofting, author of the Dr. Doolittle books. Since all (IIRC) of them were adventures in far-away lands, perhaps some of them are "real" places?

Re: The Empire Club: recruiting drive!

Not really contributing any. But I was thinking it is getting to be a England/America thing perhaps too much. A suggestion might be more of other places if it is to be international. Course I am drawing blank, but just trying to help with suggestions.

 

Surely, there would be a Frenchman or 2.

Jules Verne, of course.

Roald Amundsen, Umberto Nobile.

Wilhelm Messerschmitt and Juan de la Cierva can discuss Aeroplane design.

And back to Anglo-Americans: A. Marmon Wasp---won the first Indy 500, in 1911. Plus Hiram Bingham, who 'discovered' the Inca city of Macchu-Pichu in the same year.

Re: Subway Cars

Just in case you aren't cruising by those boards' date=' I have posted my Zepplin living area plans in the Pulp area. Who knows what will strike my fancy next? (I actually have a train half done that I have wandered away from)[/quote']

 

I have indeed copied the Zeppelin plans, and I thank you for them.

 

If you have other things you might post, let me recommend you set up a thread specifically for them. That way, we your fans would not have to prowl through the boards looking for the latest goody.

Re: Magic Items Thread

Potion of Youth

{snip}

Reverse Aging: Major Transform 5d6 (Human into Human 10 years younger, Normal Healing (Accelerated by contact with sacred ground/temples/churches)), Partial Transform (+1/2) (112 Active Points); OAF Fragile Expendable (Extremely Difficult to obtain new Focus; -2 1/4), Independent (-2), 1 Charge (-2), Limited Target (Humans only; -1/2)

Real cost: 14pts

Why Normal Healing? That's not going to be too useful, nor too popular. I'd go for an all-or-nothing healing. Say, if BODY, STUN, or END Drained. Or if subject to accelerated aging.

Just a suggestion.

Re: Answers & Questions

A) Impervious Vulnerability.

Q: What's the name of that band all of whose members are Superheroes?

A: But then the janitor showed up, and everything went to hell.

Re: Answers & Questions

A: It will be good sleeping weather today.

A: Now that's a tongue twister!

Re: Problem with creating a FH spell.

Who says it does not work mechanically? Flight is normally not applied to other peoples' movement' date=' either, but UAA allows you to do so. UBO bought as a Naked Advantage is simply a Power that acts on one of your Powers. Why can't UAA make it act on one of someone else's Powers? Maybe I'll pose the question to Steve Long, but I don't see why it doesn't work mechanically. [EDIT: Guess we'll see what the official ruling is: Stealing Powers With UAA Naked UBO; I'll probably keep using it either way, but it'll be interesting to see what Steve thinks. ]

That's not an answer, that's sales job.

:tonguewav :tonguewav

Re: Answers & Questions

A) A sock note.

Q: If you try and play your footware as a musical intrument, what noise do you make?

A: Somewhere near the Orion Nebula

Re: Answers & Questions

A) Fields of Coi

Q: If you could get carp to grow with their tails in the dirt, what would you have?

A: Well then, did I come in sixth?

Re: Pulp-era resources, if anyone is interested.

Oh, by the way, I've been doing some research on copyright matters, relating to offering this material, and learned something surprising.

The ©1926 PhysChem Handbook had its copyright due and properly renewed. This means it is under copyright until 2021.

So, all I can do is offer imformation gleaned from it, but presented in a different form (and I have to be careful about that). Sorry for the bad news.

In good news, I'm finding more and more stuff from the 30's and 40's around here. I'm thinking of scanning &/or OCRing some of this stuff, and making it available on a website (probably Freewebs). What do people think of such an idea?

Re: Secret decoder

5-8-25 25-7-11 3-23-23 3-1-8 12-7-1-24-8-14-14-18-17-24 14-7 11-15-8 14-5-8 20-7-4-8! 14-5-3-14'15 19-11-15-14 16-23-3-18-17 2-1-7-17-24!

Re: Answers & Questions

A. You'll have time' date=' baby, you'll have time... 'cause you're gonna die.[/quote'] Q: I say old bean, before we charge those Huns in their machine gun nests, will we have time for a spot of tea?

 

 

 

A: Three pairs of identical twins, a gallon of chocolate syrup, four pints of strawberries, and padded ankle braces. But no midgets.

Re: Problem with creating a FH spell.

Oh, MAN!

 

I am _so_ stealing that! That's hillarious! (obviously, I'm not going to use it for explosions and such, but think about a Flash, or a character who's suddenly found himself in a darkness field that covers the city intead of the room? heh heh heh heh----

 

You, Sir, win the Evil GM's Seal of Approval! Much Rep!

 

say---

doesn't the FH sourcebook say something about 'areas of increased mana' where the effects can range from 'additional endurance' to 'additional spell strength' to 'gains x advantage,' etc? It seems the groundwork for such a construct has already been laid....

Hey, you're right! There's already an excuse for the construct. Cool!

And Basil---

how'd you do that 'quote within a quote?' I've been trying to do it for a bit, and have never managed to make it work.....

You need to copy what you want to make into an inner-quote, paste it where it should go, and put a {quote=whateverhisnameis} in front and a {/quote} after it. Of course, you use "[" and" "]" instead.

That is, you form it up just like the auto-magically made quotes, entirely inside the primary quote. Oh, and use "preview" to make sure you got it right.

Re: What's in a Name?

Lets try Hound Dog

"I'm a were-WHAT??!?"

"Um, a were-basset."

"OH NO!!!"

It's not easy being a lycanthrope of any type, but some are worse than others. Poor Richard Cardman has perhaps the worse fate: he's a were-dog. Not a German Shepard, not a Doberman, but a basset-hound. Luckily, Richard is resilient, and has adapted to his fate. He's decided to go for a hero (he just can't see being evil), and he tracks down crime as Hound Dog, Nose For Good!

That is, when he can overcome his embarrassment.

Next up, The Book Lover.

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

True - the tracer rounds were often used just to correct aiming of automatic rounds.

 

But airship were mainly going to be used for commercial, rather than military uses, weren't they?

Most of the work done with RL airships was by the military. Commercial use was secondary.

Re: Pulp-era resources, if anyone is interested.

I have an heirloom at home that I have used as both gaming and teaching resource. It's a turn-of-the-20th-Century "Contractor's Handbook", about a thousand pages of on-the-verge-of-modern construction and raw materials information, for the practicitioner on the job site. Literally an heirloom (it was my great-grandfather's) with raw data of all kinds of utility.

 

I would have to look and see what it says about concrete and so on; I never thought to look at whether it would have things to say about constructing 1900-era fortifications.

Actually, the '26 PhysChem Handbook has a surprising amount of info on building materials; strength, modulus of elasticity, and such. Not as much as what you're talking about, but a useful amount.

I think you should scan all this information into PDF format and send it out to everyone who asks

Problem with that is scanning it all. I'm not prepared to do that unless I have reason to believe there will be interest. Are you saying you would be? If so, anything in particular? I'd hate to scan the whole book, if all you want is one page.

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

That's something for the Mythbusters - can bullets ignite Hydrogen?

 

Personally, I'd make it very unlikely that a spark is created - they are lead, in general, after all. And the bullets don't get hot enough from friction.

Bullets come out of the gun more than hot enough to set off a well-mixed hydrogen-oxygen mixture. I'm not sure how far downrange they stay hot enough; it would depend on the firearm.

Incendiary bullets are known in the pulp period; that's how most WW I barrage balloons were destroyed.

Re: The Empire Club: recruiting drive!

Ah' date=' if we're going with real people, that's a whole 'nother ball of wax![/quote']

Well, FenrisUlf in the first post did say, "My question is, do any of you have any ideas on just who (using both the real world and fictional people) might belong to the Club?" So, RL people are fine.

 

Gilbert Grosvenor, long-time president of the National Geographic Society

Wiliam Beebe, oceanographer

"Diamond Jim" Brady

Hoagy Carmichael and Duke Ellington, assuming musicians might be members

Charlie Chaplin; not only an actor, but (due to doing stunts) something of an athlete.

Clarence Darrow; after the Scopes trial he was a bit of a celebrity

Mary Harris Jones (aka Mother Jones), major labor leader and organizer.

Margaret Mead, anthropologist and explorer.

Alexander Fleming, biologist, discoverer of penicillin.

Knute Rockne

somehow I don't think Mahatma Gandhi would accept membership.

Robert LeRoy "Believe It Or Not!" Ripley would have a fund of stories to tell.

Pierre de Frédy, baron de Coubertin, leader in creating the modern Olympics.

Let's not add Aimee Semple McPherson. :sick: :

 

 

More later.

Re: Problem with creating a FH spell.

After thinking about it, I'd have to disagree. 5th Ed., p. 176, says "Usable By Other This is the typical, or default, Usable On Others Advantage. It means the Power is usable by any one person the character targets -- in other words, the character 'gives' a Power to another character."

 

The way I read that, the character who has the Advantaged Power can decided to give, or not to give, control and use of the Power to someone else. I don't think you can stretch the idea to forcing the owning character to give the power. That, to me, sounds like something much more significant.

 

Bear in mind I made the Usable by Other naked advantage Usable as Attack. The caster of the illusion stealing spell has complete control over how the naked advantage is used. That's what Usable as Attack does, it confers the attacker total control over how the power it applies to is used, and the power in this case is the naked advantage Usable by Other.

 

This construct, of course, still bends the rules (in at least two ways that I can think of), but not for the reason you state. As I said before, that doesn't bother me too much. Sometimes you have to bend the rules to get where you want. The Fantasy HERO Grimoire books by HERO Games' own Mr. Steven Long are full of spells that bend the rules for convenience and state as much in the spell descriptions.

Oh, I saw where you're coming from, I'm just not sure it's book-legal, for the reason I gave. Of course, that's not a huge stumbling block when it comes to Hero.

Let me see if I can be clearer using an example of a different power/advantage. Suppose I buy "Increased Maxiumum Range, for up to X points of EB" as a Naked Advantage, and buy "Usable As Attack" for said Naked Adv. I don't think it would be legit to claim I can now make Dr. Nasty's henchmen miss me by forcing them to shoot past me.

That is, I think there are some Advantages that are, inately, a matter of choice, and forcing (with Naked Adv. "Usable As Attack") such an Advantage on a Power should not give you the ability to control the underlying Power. This is particularly a problem when the forced-on Advantage is "Usable By Others" and you claim you can force the caster of the original spell to give you control of the (now modified) spell. That comes too close to mind control.

Now, I agree, the basic idea of "Naked Adv., _______, Usable As Attack" is a perfectly legit build, and doing it so the person 'attacked' has trouble, or even danger, from using the underlying power, is a neat idea. I just think that it's not a viable method of taking over complete control of the underlying spell. Still, YMMV.

BTW, a really nasty example of "the user is now in a heap of trouble", imagine a foe with a power with AOE or Explosion, and forcing "Megascale, 1 hex=1 km, for AoE/Explosion on a power of up to X Active Points" on your foe's AOE/Explosion power. He attacks a target outside his usual blast radius, and POW!, does himself in.

Re: Pulp-era resources, if anyone is interested.

You might get more responses when more people have got "Pulp Hero" and are planning their own campaigns. Period maps and information on populations might be useful. I will certainly want to ask a few questions of you once I can get hold of a copy of the rules and start planning my campaign ! Thank you for the offer.

Populations, huh? Well, there's the 1942 World Almanac I've got, though that's a little on the late side. The 1940 Britannica will also have some info along those lines.

Maps: the Britannica has some basic maps, and there's some from the National Geographic I can access, though most of those will be post-Pulp, I'm afraid. Unless there's some other stuff around here I'm not calling to mind.

Anyway, you and everyone else are welcome to ask and suggest.

Re: Not good is my Google-fu....

Great sites, but not what I need.

 

I am in the process of building deck plans for use in PulpHero. I am trying to round out the roughs for two. One will be a trans-Atlantic liner. One of the smaller ones that can be adapted for world wide use. The other is a Passenger Rocket for SSatSPoA.

 

Coming up with crew and watch stations for a warship isn't hard. And it really wouldn't be that bad to make up those for a passenger liner. But I would like to get as close to authenticity as I can. Especially with the passenger handling part of the crew. I'd really like to be able to see the ratio of service crew to passenger.

I've tried looking through the 1940 Encycopaedia Brritannica with no luck. The only relavant info I can find is some passenger&crew info for airships. Now, commercial airships of the period are more like small liners than like airplanes, so this might help with some ballpark numbers.

The Graf Zeppelin's first transatlantic flight had 20 passengers, some freight and mail, and 40 crew. Across eight years of service, it averaged 25 passengers, and had a crew compliment of 40 throughout that time.

Re. the Hindenburg, from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster

"It could carry 72 passengers (50 transatlantic) and had a crew of 61."

Oh, here's one re. ships:

http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/Wrecks/kristianiafjord.htm

This is three lists covering all the crew of the Kristianiafjord, a ship that hit rocks off Newfoundland, but had no-one die. Note that the lists cover the crew as passengers on another ship. If you miss that part, it gets a little confusing.

From the same site, re a ship hit in 1905:

http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/Wrecks/ParisianCollision.htm

" The Parisian had 740 passengers made up 440 in the steerage, 281 in the second cabin and 29 saloon. Her crew numbered 163, making a total of 903 souls on board. She had 300 tons of cargo for Halifax and 800 tons for the road. She had 268 bags of letters and 152 packages in the parcel post."

Indeed, the whole of:

http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/Wrecks/index.htm

has a list of wrecks and such, more of which may have passenger and crew numbers. Most of the wrecks are from before the Pulp era, but could prove useful after all. In fact, some of them have a list of the names of those lost or saved.

Well, here's another:

http://mariners.records.nsw.gov.au/shipdate.htm

This is a bunch of lists of crew and passengers in ships in Australian waters in the mid and late 1800's. It lists each crewmember's job, which you might find very helpful. Unfortunately, you have to go through quite a few layers to get the information. Still, I think it might be part, at least, of what you need. For instance, http://mariners.records.nsw.gov.au/1884/03/010kat.htm tells us that in March 1884, the Katoomba had 39 crew (ranging from the captain to "donkeyman" and "lamp timmer") and 54 passengers (10 "saloon" and 44 steerage). I'll leave you to go prowling through the other lists.

One last one:

http://www.nzmaritime.co.nz/r4.htm

History of a passenger/ferry ship from New Zealand. The number passengers and crew that could be carried varied through a long and interesting career. The page may be TMI for your purposes.

Re: Magic ammo suggestions?

Oh' date=' and what limitation should I have on changing slots? full phase action?[/quote']

 

Are you asking how much the Limitation is worth? I think it's done like Extra Time, so a full phase is -1/2.

 

Or are you asking if a Full Phase is the right length of time? It sounds about right to me.

Re: Magic ammo suggestions?

OK' date=' I am done with most rounds except one. I want a bullet that Dr B can fire and forget, but it travels forward in time to strike the target later. What is that? Delayed effect? Time Delay? None of the above?[/quote']

 

Time Delay. AKA "set the timer and run."

 

Delayed Effect is for doing lengthy preparations well in advance, and carrying the spell around "ready".

 

 

BTW, how about Dispel vs. Summon, to get rid of those pesky summonned demons?

 

Or even Suppress vs. Magic, Triggered, must have done BODY with RKA, with either Charges and Uncontrolled, or Continuous and Uncontrolled. You shoot the bad-guy mage, and make his magic stop working.