Basil

Re: Harrington Center: A multi-purpose public building

Thanks for the explanations.

BTW, this is terrific stuff! Many thanks.

Re: Magic Items Thread

Chain of Storage

This is somewhat like the Dimensional Bag described earlier. However, it is in the form of a light golden chain with clasps on each end. Clasping the ends together activates the XDM which is, as with the Bag, to a VERY small plane. Large enough, however, to serve as a room for a human being (or a few rooms, if the GM wants).

Unlike the D-Bag, "intelligences" can pass through, so it is possible to enter the other plane. Note that since the OAF does not, itself, pass through, it is impossible to "close the gate" from the mini-plane; if the owner tries to retreat from danger, that danger can follow him.

Also note that if the unclasped chain is tied in a knot, or a fed through a ring/medallion/etc., that clasping the ends will not activate the power. This makes it possible to disguise the Chain of Storage as an ordinary piece of jewelry (this is taken as a -0 Lim, Not If Disguised As Jewelry). Also note that the "perimeter" is distinctly larger

Chain of Storage: Extra-Dimensional Movement (one location); Usable as Attack (+1), Zero END (+1/2); Independent (-2), Can only move object that can get through a "perimeter" of 175cm (-1/2), Gestures (-1/4), Not If Disguised As Jewelry (-0).

Basic/Active/Real: 20/50/11.

Note that some GMs may require it to take Trigger (+1/4). If so, then the costs become:

Basic/Active/Real: 20/55/12.

Re: Magic Items Thread

So, uh, you can't store your hirelings and followers in there?

 

Too bad.

I've always wanted to do that. Just toss food & water in, and you're set for life.

Anyway, I'm not sure such a thing could be opened from the inside. Be a pain to go into your little hidey-hole, and not be able to leave.

I have the ring thing rather than bags of holding only because I don't have a multiverse of dimensions in my setting

NP. Set up your campaign the way you like.

Re: Nanotech!

Oooo . . . ! , tkd!

 

Catchier name? Hmm . . .

 

Anyone?

N-tubes?

NT-sheets?

Oh, and Curufea, getting rid of waste heat depends on surface to volume ratio. If shape is kept the same, the smaller a thing is the faster it radiates heat.

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

Ah - but this is for a Pulp game. Real science just shouldn't be contemplated.

 

If you put reality into a pulp game, you get a "dark champions" or "noir" game.

 

Give me sandbag counterweights and rolling stone deathtraps leading to nazi archeologists any day

There's something to what you say. OTOH, plausibility is important, and "a machine that produces helium" is so implausible it doesn't suspend disbelief, it hangs it by its neck until dead. At least, IMO.

Since hydrogen can be produced by known science and technology, why go to all the hoorah of producing helium from a rubber science machine? And potential problems with hydrogen are another plot hook for the GM.

And, if you put the helium in an inner envelope, with potential loss "buffered" by an outer envelope holding hot air, you can hand-wave away the problem of replacing the helium.

...until it's time to use "We need more helium!" as a plot-driver.

Re: Harrington Center: A multi-purpose public building

"R" is the employee restroom. "E" is the freight elevator to the basement level.

Please tell me what "L" and "F" are. Thanks.

Re: How can you feed this many people?

Grain? Plowing? Bread?

Sheesh. These folks sound like they're good at orchards and such. Let 'em live on fruit, suplemented by fish and the occasional bit of venison.

Sounds simplest to me.

For a little more complication, make them herd pigs (who were not let into the wild and hunted up later. They were herded into and out of the forests, supervised as thoroughly as sheep were). Or, keep them in sties. Or go for chickens, ducks, sheep, goats, etc. No big-scale agriculture needed.

Re: Magic Items Thread

Dimensional Bag

Extra Dimensional Movement (one location); Usable as Attack (+1), Zero END (+1/2); Independent (-2), Always On (-1/2), Can only move object that can get through a "perimeter" of 90cm (-1/2), Will not allow "intelligences" to pass to the other plane (they land up in the bag in this plane) (-1). Basic/Active/Real: 20/50/8

This looks like an ordinary cloth sack, about 60cm deep with a mouth about 45cm wide. It leads into a very small plane (or dimension), but no "intelligences" can go through. In other words, a person could stick his arm through to rummage through the stored goods, but could not stick his head through to visually search; his head would end up in the cloth bag.

You could add a Limitation based on volume &/or mass that can be stored. However, IMO the Lim should be small --- if an amount similar to a full backpack can be stored, I'd call that a -0 Lim. YMMV.

GM's can come up with a large number of variations: bags with Charges instead of 0 END, ones that aren't Independent, ones with Incantations &/or Gestures, ones Triggered by the presense of the owner, even cursed ones (Linked HKA, or similar; Activation so it doesn't always go off). You can also have ones with Activation or RSR and a Side Effect "Same Power, But To A Different Plane That Can Never Be Reached Again"

Re: Magic Items Thread

I don't know if you actually need to express explicitly how side effects function. Just a description will do' date=' rather than making them rules compliant.[/quote']

 

Ah, but what SCUBA Hero described is not a question of "how" or "what," but of "when."

 

From the old Rules FAQs, http://www.herogames.com/SupportFAQs/rules/POWER%20LIMITATIONS.htm

 

Q: When do Side Effects affect a character? Could a character define a Side Effect as occurring when he stops using a power?

 

A: Typically Side Effects occur (or are rolled for) when the character activates/uses the power. With the GM’s permission, a character could define Side Effects as occurring after use stops, but only if the Side Effect always occurs. In the GM’s discretion, this may reduce the Limitation by 1/4 less Limitation value, since it’s not quite as restricting as a Side Effect that occurs when the character activates or uses the power.

 

So yes, stating out the "after the power ends" bit is important.

Re: Anonymity vs magic

Also' date=' can anyone think of any other magical methods of finding someone that I havent thought of?[/quote']

Detect, Person Who Cannot Be Detected By Any Of My Other Spells.

 

Or, less munchkin-y, Detect, Person "Invisible" To Clairsentience.

 

Unusual Detects : Easy enough... just buy invisibility vs them.

Do you think you can think of every possible Detect someone might invent? Do you want to keep buying new Invisibilities every time someone pulls a new Detect on you? That's going to run to a lot of points.

Re: Thoughts on using 1d20 instead of 3d6?

Hmmm.

There's a point The Souljourner made that caught my attention. Using my own words here: with 3d6, in any one particular roll the situational modifiers (e.g., taking more time, bad lighting, etc.) have a non-linear effect. I.e., adding +1 to a 12- roll is less effective than adding +1 to an 8- roll, but more effective than adding +1 to a 14- roll. This does seem a little odd, when you think about it.

However, the bell curve does do a good job of modelling how in RL most people learn most things: getting started is hard, improving moderate knowledge is easier, but achieving full mastery is hard once more. Thus, the amount of improvement increasing your base roll by 1 goes well with a bell curve. Also, it is true that in a number of RL situations, a linear increase in "effort" (for lack of a more general term) does not always have a linear effect on the likely results.

Seems to me you (generic usage) have to decide which works better for what you want. I do know I'd hate to have to try and rework Hero to use a d20 (or any other flat curve); I suspect it would need (A) intense study, ( deep and prolonged thought and © most important, a hell of a lot of play testing. Still, The Souljourner, if you want to try it, go ahead. I'd be interested to hear how it goes.

Oh, an idea I had, that might combine the best of both methods: do the "stat" side of things as at present (buying +1 increases the 3d6 roll amount), but in play, replace the usual number by its probability (to, say, 4 or 5 decimal places), and use +/-.05 (or so) as the base level of situational modifiers. That is, some with a Familiarity would, on his character sheet, have "8-", but in play would base rolls on .25926, and would receive, e.g., +.05 for taking extra time, but -.1 for bad conditions, and would be trying to roll .20926 or lower. Also, a natural .99538 or higher is always a miss (coresponding to rolling higher than a 17). Of course, this requires buying a bunch of d10's, but...

OK, so it's a weird idea. Like I said, I'm trying to combine the best of both systems. Perhaps someone can refine my idea?

Re: Atmosphere

 

{snip}

Of course on a planet with 1/15 Earth gravity...A reasonably strong person will be able to bench press a modern car.

`Tho don't forget that that he can still be crushed if he drops the car: 1/15 gravity doesn't reduce its mass.

However, damage from something one is holding and drops on oneself depends on weight. Damage from something thrown at one depends on velocity and mass.

Re: Alternate History

If anyone wants to read some alternate-history fiction, for inspiration and to "get in the mood," possibly the best writer in that sub-genre is Harry Turtledove, who has done a number of books, each in a different "timeline".

Eric Flint's "163x" books are also quite good.

For those who are Usenet savvy, look over alt.history.what-if and soc.history.what-if. I've never subscribed, or even sampled, so I have no idea how useful they'd be.

Re: Help with formulas Arrrggghhh!

I am working on ships and deck plans for the SSatSPoA Pulp setting. I whipped up a little spreadsheet to give me volumes for various deck sizes. Basically 6.5 foot slices of the Rocket. Plugging in the formulas for cones and cylinders is easy. But the truncated cone formula I have isn't working.

{snip}

I see Captain Obvious caught your error and fixed it for you.

In case you decide you need to know the surface areas, here's the formulae for those.

For a cylinder: 2 * radius * pi * height

For cone: pi * radius * squareroot(radius squared * height squared)

For truncated cone: pi * (radius1 + radius2) * squareroot(height squared + radius1 squared - radius2 squared) {assumes radius1>radius2}

Using those you can find out the surface area of the entire ship, if you're interested in space for sensors, how much heat the ship radiates, and stuff like that.

BTW, if you ever want to Google for more info, it may help to know that a "truncacted cone" is properly called the frustum of a cone.

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

A few thoughts.

First, I see someone beat me to the Hollow Earth idea. Dang!

Second, IRL the limit to cruise time/distance of zeppelins was the need to vent gas and drop ballast now and then. When out of either, the airship had to land. You could have the philanthropist, or the designer he hired, come up with the helium-bag-in-a-hot-air-bag trick that wossname used to get a balloon across the Atlantic a few years back. This would mean the airship needs very little ballast, and almost no spare lifting gas (only enough to replace leakage, and that can be carried compressed.) Not historical, but totally plausible.

Also, one problem airships had is that, as they burned fuel, they lost weight, and had to vent lifting gas to compensate. One method, used IRL sucessfully, to counter this is to cool the exhaust from the engines, and recover the water vapor. This does not recover all the "lost" mass, but a large fraction of it, enough to allievate the problem.

Now, about the lifting gas---first, mixing hydrogen and helium does little good; if oxygen gets in contact with the hydrogen and a spark is applied, the helium does nothing. Helium is onlly useful in making it harder for the oxygen to mix in well enough to cause a fire. Once the mixing starts and goes on for a while, which happened in every air-ship fire in history, helium does nothing.

Second thing about lifting gas; you'll have to use laughably rubbery science to have a machine "produce Helium". In reality, you can get helium from four places: holes in the ground, very large astronomical objects, the radioactive breakdown of some elements (principly uranium), and fusion reactions. All helium presently available comes from a few oil/gas wells that drill through salt domes; the salt domes have, across millions of years, trapped the very, very, very slowly produced alpha particles (helium nuclei) given off by breakdown of uranium and such. The geological conditions that make this possible are extremely rare. Note that the PCs couldn't live long enough to make waiting for radioactive breakdown feasible.

I don't think you'll want your PCs able to go to Jupiter or the other gas-giant planets to pick up a load of helium.

And, I'm sure you don't want them to have access to controlled fusions reactions (much less uncontrolled ones) that they use for no better purpose than making a little helium. And, it woud be a little helium.

All in all, I'd say either go with a hydrogen/hot-air craft (replacing hydrogen requires water and electricity, which is pretty simple), or figure out how the PCs can keep getting helium; perhaps the philanthropist has supply depots set up all around the world? Of course, the airship can always depend more&more on hot air as time goes on, so it needs new helium only rarely. The fun with that is, when the lift is largely from hot air, running out of fuel to heat it with could becomes a major problem.

Let me end by saying I think your overall idea is SPECTACULAR! I love it, and wish I could play in it. But then, I think airships are wonderful, marvelous, and I wish like all hell they hadn't been tossed aside by people pushing those stinky, noisy aeroplanes.

BTW, did you know a zeppelin can, in still air or gentle breezes, take off and land straight up and down? Those propellers were able to swivel through 180 degrees vertically, and 45 degrees or more horizontally. If the wind were right, they could go sideways, relative to the ground.

Re: Exotic Names and Exotic Locations

I actually like the Everlasting Book of Names (EBoN)' date=' a free online utility for generating names. You can generate enough names as a player without paying for it; registering gives you the ability to create more names at once and make your own name lists.[/quote']

You don't have to pay to be able to make your own name lists. I made one myself (for v2.1.0, not the latest) which I did by taking names selected semi-randomly from the phone book of the nearest large city. Interesingly, the names it generates, while they don't sound "real life" do not (IMO) sound all that weird or "fakey".

 

I just whipped up 5 first names, and here they are:

Relles

Kanny

Rald

Phert

Juns

 

And 5 surnames:

Bynnon

Blund

Tack

Callick

Heser

 

Other than "Phert," I'd say they all look passible, though not in a real-world setting like many Pulp Hero games would have. If there's interest, I could post the .ebn file to a freewebs website or even c&p to a post here (since they're simply a text file).

Re: Subway Cars

Excellent work, and quite useful.

As others have said, some more of your maps and diagrams would be very, very appreciated.

Re: Clown???

I love CLOWN. My favorite team from HG!.

I wish Mr. Long wasn't such a wet blanket. We really need CLOWN brought up to date.

I once wrote up (for my own amusement) a history-after-the-book timeline for CLOWN. Added in some new characters, dealt with Skate Kate and Marbles growing up, and so on.

"We'll be pie-fighting in the streets....Will be a fool again!"

Re: What's in a Name?

"Stay calm, honey," her dad always said.

"Calm, cool, collected," was her mother's chant.

Ashley Tanner was the daughter of Count Storm, infamous superhero/-villain, a man who wanted to do good, but whose temper was always getting the better of him. Her mother was Alimorinia, the sea spirit, a superpowered woman infamous for her temper. With such parents, it was clear Ashley was destined for superpowers. Her parents, repenting their youthful misdeeds, hoped Ashely wasn't destined to have a raging temper. They sought to teach Ashley the calm control they had learned with such difficulty.

They got their wish --- a little too thoroughly. Ashley can charitibly be described as even-tempered. More acurrately as cold. She isn't unkind, nor indifferent to suffering and need. She's just too unflappable, too neutral, too "calm, cool, and collected."

This has effected her powers. Though able to control the winds (like her father), water (like her mother), and the general reactions and emotions of natural, animate creatures (more than either parent can do), she can only do so to impose calm conditions. She can decrease, or even still, winds up to hurricane force (though only within a few kilometers), still waves up to moderate tsunami force (again, only within a few kilometers), and ease emotions such as fear and hatred in animals and humans.

Interestingly, she also has the powers of flight and extremely good (and nearly tireless) swimming.

Knowing something of legendry, Ashley has taken the name Halcyon, a bird (identified with the kingfisher) that the ancient Greeks believed able to calm the waves of the sea. She has the image of a kingfisher on her costume, both the front and on her cape.

Next: Miss Mistletoe

Re: Teen Champion Cover!

 

To me she'll always be Seuss-girl.

 

Oh, and where's her three-fingers-and-a-thumb gloves, and her heart-shaped glasses? Hmph.

 

 

 

That version is non-CU. Her name is Mittens.

She's in Champions, doesn't that count?

Re: Atmosphere

Well, it will take some time for the pressure loss to drop to dangerous levels.

 

whooshTime = ( gaspFactor * vol) / holeArea

where

gaspFactor = 1.4 for 80% pressure, 4.3 for 50% pressure, 29 for 1% pressure.

whooshTime = time for cabin pressure to drop to specified fraction of initial value (seconds)

vol = volume of air in the cabin (cubic yards)

holeArea = area of the breech (square inches)

 

So if a posh passenger cabin of 20 cubic yards has a one square inch hole blown in the bulkhead by a wayward meteor, the inhabitants have an entire 86 seconds (about a minute and a half) before the atmospheric pressure drops to one-half.

To go metric, use cubic meters, square centimeters, and multiply by 0.203.

BTW, a hemispherical dome with a radius of 8km will give a ground area about that of Hudson City. It'll have a volume of 1.072 * 10^12 cu. meters. A hole with a radius of 100 meters (which is pretty damned big) will be about 3.14 * 10^ 8 sq cm. This gives 762 seconds (12.7 minutes) to hit 80% pressure, more than 49.5 minutes to hit 50% pressure, and more than 5 1/2 hours to drop to 1% pressure.

Getting everyone out in 49-50 minutes would be hectic, but not impossible if the people train in emergency procedures. And as others have said, the place would be sure to be compartmentalized. I don't see "dome collapse" as something to worry about.

Re: How Dense Is A Nebula?

The solar wind at about 1 AU out is 2 - 10 atoms/sq. cm, travelling about 400 km/sec.

The average interstellar dust is about 1 grain in a cube 100 meters on a side.

Throughout the galaxy, the average density is 10^-15 grams/cubic km.

Hmm...

Sorry, I thought I had more-useful information.

Re: Teen Champion Cover!

Her name is Cantrip. I assume that is her character portrait that is being used on the cover.

To me she'll always be Seuss-girl.

Oh, and where's her three-fingers-and-a-thumb gloves, and her heart-shaped glasses? Hmph.

Re: Character: Dr. Moreau

Why a 13? Because while very smart and possessing advanced skills in surgery, Moreau doesn't come across as a "quick" thinker, per the HERO rules on INT. I almost gave him a 10. See Mr. Cavor for another 13 INT "super"-scientist. On the other hand, The Time Traveller has an 18 INT because he does seem to grasp things quickly, think fast on his feet, and deduce new plans of action in a short period of time.

 

(Hm... I have the Invisible Man a 23 INT... that might be a bit too much, although he is also a very brilliant and quick thinker.)

Well, it has been years since I last re-read the book, but as I remember it, Dr. Moreau was quick witted---it was part of the reason he had trouble with authority was being so much smarter and quicker than most. I think Dr. Moreau's eventual problems with the beast-men was his inablity to admit they were getting out of his control, which seems more of a Psych Lim than a merely moderately intelligent INT.

Still, it's only a matter of interpretation.

Thank you for doing this work, and sharing it with us.

Re: Astrum Quadrivium Explorers

It is Latin and translates to "Star Crossroad"

I don't mean to lecture, but...

It is a word-for-word "translation" of the English "Star Crossroad". It isn't, though, a translation into Latin as such.

First: in Latin, in most situations, a modifier follows what modifies. Hence, "Quadrivium Astrum"

Second: astrum has more the sense of "constellation" or star-shaped object. "Stella" might be a better choice.

Third: in Latin a noun in apposition is used when one is giving a different term for the same thing. E.g., "That's my sister Julia." --- "Julia" is in apposition to "sister", and agrees with it in case (not number, gender, etc.). In your phrase, "star" is not another name for "crossroads." You should, therefore, put stella (or astrum) in the genitive case; literally "crossroad of the star".

Thus, you ought to use "Quadrivium Stellae" or "Quadrivium Astri". Or, if you think the plural sounds better ("crossroad of stars"), that's "Quadrivium Stellarum" or "Qaudrivium Astorum".

Hope this helps.