Basil

Re: Astrum Quadrivium Explorers Excuse the digression, but what the heck is the title to this thread from, and what's it mean?

Re: Character: Dr. Moreau Only 13 for his INT? I'd make it 18, easy. YMMV.

Re: Pulp archtypes. Ah. OK, thanks. Unfortunately, my library doesn't have it. The site's synopsises make it clear what it was like, though.

Re: Pulp archtypes. Never heard of that. Is that a book title, a short-story title, or what a series is usually referred to as?

Re: Pulp archtypes. The incredibly smart PI who never leaves his house; he just sits and thinks through to the solution. Of course, he needs... The wise-cracking leg-man, who goes out and gets all the info (and the gal, usually), brings it back, and the genius figures everything out. Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin is the pre-eminent example; less well known is The Dead Man and Garrett (from Glen Cook's excellent Garrett Files series---pulp fantasy done right!) Of course, the first "immobile genius" is Mycroft Holmes; the whole Foreign Office is his "leg-man".

Re: Looking for an example of a Dragon Lady character from TV/Movies for a Pulp campaign. For a humorous version, check out Angie Dickinson in "Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen"

Re: Super humans populations in cities Well, all the 'mundane' explanations for supers-in-cities have been covered, and a few interesting ideas re. non-mundane explanations as well. I've got an idea for a non-mundane explanation I'd like to toss out. It's because of belief. Superpowers exist because people believe they're possible. It's not the belief of the possessors, mind you, but of everyone around them. Further, all superpowers are powered by this belief. It doesn't matter what the power-source seems to be, the real source is generalized belief. This applies even to techno-gadgets; the reason comicbook-y "super tech" gadgets, gadgets that far exceed known and expected tech is they aren't really run by "undiscovered principles" but by being believed in by folks. Obviously, the denser the "field" of belief, the more power can be tapped. Thus, the tendency of supers to congregate in cities. Interestingly, this also explains why there are fewer supers outside "western civilization" --- belief in and understanding of superpowers is a lesser part of the culture. Of course, that's just one (silly) idea; use, alter, or ignore as you wish.

Re: Teleportation, really that different? It seems to me the crux of the matter is the complete text of the "increased Mass" adder. Let me quote it in full. Let me repeat one line, with (I believe) warrented additions that should make things clearer. It seems to me that what is being said is: (A) You can Teleport mass above 100 kg, with this Adder. ( You can use this Adder on more mass than you can lift with your own STR. © You have the special permission that you can Teleport this 'extra' mass by merely touching it. (D) This special permission does not apply to involuntary persons (E) To Teleport involuntary person using this special permission you must also buy Usable As Attack I don't see Teleporting an involuntary person without using the special permission as thereby requiring Usable As Attack. Perhaps imposing the requirement that the involuntary person must not only be Grabbed, but also lifted bodily off the ground, might alleviate fears about game balance. Actually, that strikes me as a good idea as Teleporting an involuntary person should require more control over his body than merely pinning him --- IMO, of course.

Re: Teleportation, really that different? I pulled out my copy of 4th Ed. and gave it a good look. Both on p.87 (under Teleportation) and p.98 (under Usable Against Others) it's clear the writers were only thinking about touch-and-send-away type Teleportation against a target. Neither touch-and-take-with nor Grab-and-take-with type Teleportation against a target were considered. So I'm afraid the ruling on 5th Ed. p.150 (under Increased Mass) is not, *strictly speaking* a change; it's more in the nature of an addition.

Re: Time - Acceleration - Distance (and Velocity) I don't have anything that can use an Excel document, but no worries. There are four variables: time (T), distance (D), acceleration (A), and instantanious velocity (V). Given any two (in seconds, meters, m/s/s and m/s repectively), you can find the other two. The formulae (grouped by which you want to find) are: V = AT = (2AD)^.5 = 2D/T A = V/T = V^2/(2D) = 2D/(T^2) T = V/A = 2D/V = (2D/A)^.5 D = (V^2)/(2A) = (VT)/2 = (A(T^2))/2 BTW, this assumes constant acceleration in one direction, with no "outside" forces.

Re: 10th Muse RPG

Re: Minor Magicks: VPP 20 + 20 control cost My FrED isn't available, so I'm not sure of costs. Float: 6" Flight, 0 END (18 Active Points); Only Upwards And Downwards, Can Only Ascend At A Maximum Of 1 hex/Phase (-1), Gestures And Incantations, Only To Start (-1/2). Total Cost: 7 Points. The caster of the spell can slow his descent, hover in place, and even ascend slowly. Note, though, that if he casts the spell after jumping/falling off a cliff, he can only counteract 6/2=3 hexes/Phase, per Phase, of his falling velocity; there's no guarantee he'll stop before hitting the ground, hard.

Re: Shapeshift accuracy Having read the whole thread, I've got to say one thing: you're all off on the wrong track. What the OP needs is Multiform. One Multiform for the usual forms, and another inside a limited VPP for the "just a face in the crowd" routine. Or, make a half-a-dozen "Joe/Jane Nobody"s and use just one Multiform. Since 5th Ed. so-called "Shapeshift" is a broken POS, avoid it whenever possible.

Re: What do you do onboard a starship? All of them? Would be a good idea, even if there is a habitable planet, to maintain an infrastructure in the Orrt cloud and asteroids. But how long do you think they will have lived off Earth? Maybe 10 generations in the Belt, another five on the ship? Double that. 30 generations since they lived on Earth, compared to how many lived on a planet? I think a significat minority of the colonist would live on a planet if they could. 30 generations ago (assuming 20 years/generation) was circa 1400 CE. Do you want to live in the miserable, primative, non-technological conditions of that time? How do you think planet-bound life will look to those who have had the "freedom" of outer space for dozens of generations. Of course, that's using what I think is the only likely scenario for interstellar expansion (absent FTL); the inhabitants of the Kuiper's Belt/Oort Cloud "drifting outwards." YMMV.

Re: Religious that won't emigrate The ones that couldn't adapt to 10+ year trips from Saturn and its moons, (and even farther out) to Earth and back. Seriously, the problems you raise would've already been addressed well before the "encapsulator" would be built -- at least, that's how it looks to me. Now, since one of the pillars of Islam is to *try* to make Hajj, while bathing in the Ganges and "next year, in Jerusalem" are more guidlines, I'd see it being more of a problem for Muslims. However, as others have already said, there are degrees of "hardlineness" in every religion. The religions I'd see having less problems with JAFAL/NAFAL would be Buddhism (you can achieve nirvana anywhere), Confucianism/Taoism (right conduct is right conduct), and many forms of Christianity (esp. mainstream Protestantism)(god is everywhere). All IMO, of course.

Re: Maps of Mars, Venus, and Luna Absolutely gorgeous stuff. Thanks for letting us know! Bookmarked and repped.

Re: What do you do onboard a starship? Bravisimo! Not only amusing, but full of home truths. The planets, and the major sattelites, are not going to be much use to humanity in outer space. The carbonaceous chondrites, the other asteroids, the comets, and (eventually) the planetesimals of the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud are going to be SO much more important.

Re: What do you do onboard a starship? A few side-notes on this idea: This brings up a problem I have with this and similar scenarios---the assumption such a ship would leave Earth, having been built by Earthlings. Frankly, it would almost certainly be "launched" by inhabitants of the Oort Cloud (or maybe the Kuiper Belt). After all, they've already stopped using planets, and the sun to them is just a gravitational anchor---it's too far away for "solar power" to be of use, and they've got plenty of hydrogen (for fusion) in the planetesimal they've colonized. There would be no reason for them not to simply "cut the cable" and continue on outwards, heading for a different Oort Cloud. Actually, more likely still is one group after another splitting off from the parent group, and simply colonizing outwards, into the area where it's hard to say which star (e.g., Sol or Proxima Centauri) a particular planetesimal is orbiting. Though admittedly that's a tough meta-setting to generate an interesting campaign setting from, it's how I imagine it's most likely to occur IRL---assuming we silly humans ever get off this planet in any numbers at all. Specifically, regarding McCoy's statement above: The colonists will care very, very little about "a planet with a breathable atmosphere." So long as they can get oxygen and nitrogen from somewhere, they can make their own breathable atmosphere. Current scientific thought puts Oort Clouds around all star systems (save a few that've had near misses with other star systems), so volitiles will always be present; a colony will need only a very little amount of other resources, so "no usable resources" won't happen. The colonists won't be interested in terraforming, but in building air-tight big ol' cylinders to live in. And yes, the light-lag will effect communications; however, having lived a light-year or more away from Earth to begin with, they'll be used to it. They'll also be used to the signal-to-noise problem that such long-range communications involve, too. At least, that's how I see things: no Earth-lauch-STL ship, but Oort-Cloud-colonies gradually drifting farther and farther out. EDIT: A few things in response to others: In my version, you don't have to worry about "what will they do?" They'll do what they were doing before the "launch" As well, no psycho-problems; the culture/society has been in essentially the same situation for generations, so there's no "adjustment" needed. BTW, even if the "drift outward from the Oort Cloud" meta-setting is not to your taste, if you assume a society that's settled the asteroid belt for a few generations, and they are the ones launching the STL ship, then most of the problems don't arrise -- they've already dealt with "what does everyone do" and "I feel isolated from Earth" already, and done so for long enough to come up with working solutions. BTW, here again it will be more of a settled colony moving outwards, than a specially designed and built ship. BTW, re. Dr. Anomaly's (I think it was) idea of putting everything on manual --- not needed. "Ship" technology will become more and more complicated, and need about the same number of people to run it (this is especially true in the colonies-moving-outward scenarios).

Re: Picture if You Will... As has been pointed out, this requires losing a good deal of kinetic energy. However, mutual collisions within the ring of gas will lead to this happening, slowly but surely. Though the term "stream" wouldn't fit. If you had the technology, you certainly could do that and more. However, parking "Haven" at the L4 or L5 point would be much simpler. (*) Closeness could cause the whole moon to break up (if it's within the Roche Limit), but I don't think that's what you want. (**) There's the problem of getting the liquid off the moon; this requires enough energy to accelerate a useful fraction of the liquid to the escape velocity. Despite the increadable power of Io's volcanoes, only a minute fraction gets off of Io.

Re: 5ER to 5E Page Numbering Thanks for doing this, zornwil.

Re: Astronomy/Physics question This formula is wrong on two counts. First (which I admit is somewhat of a quibble); one does not speak of the radius unless the orbit is a perfect circle. For an ellipse, one uses the "semimajor axis" (half the distance between the farthest-apart points on the orbit), which is symbolized "s" *. The semimajor axis is also the average distance, averaged across the whole length of the orbit. Second, and much more to the point, the formula is: s = G(M+m)/v² where M is the larger, and m is the smaller mass. The formula SirViss gave is a useful (and often used) approximation when M is much larger than m. However, it is an approximation. As you can see from the complete formula, any change in M or m will change the semimajor axis; specifically, a reduction in m will reduce s. Note, though, that this is a change to the average distance. The distance at the moment of removal will not change (unless there's more than a Teleportation going on). Thus, the orbit will "dip" more towards the Earth than if the removal had not occured. If the removal is at perigee, apogee will be reduced, and the orbit will be less eccentric. If the removal is at apogee, perigee will be reduced, and the orbit made more eccentric. Between those two points it gets more confusing. *BTW, the semimajor axis is sometimes symbolized "a". As well, "r" can mean the distance from the orbited body at a particular point in the orbit.

Re: Flash: Inner ear/ Sense of Gravity/ Sense of Balence This sets off my "Detect Troll" sense. Oh, he did that to mine quite some time back. I finally tossed him into my Ignore List when he redefined "Straw Man Argument" to be the same as "Red Herring." A Straw Man Argument is where one makes a statement or serious of statements and falsely claims it/they are the same as, a rewording of, or a example based on, one's opponent's statement(s), and then disproves the statements one made rather than one's opponent's. As far as I can see, atlascott has made no post in this thread that is not riddled with, or composed solely of, Straw Men. For that and other reasons, I am bowing out of this discussion. I think nothing more can be served by continuing; I have, IMO, made a good case for including Balance as a Sense, and for considering doing so for Kinesthesia. I have seen some posts raising interesting points in contradiction, but far fewer than the number of posts showing malice and blind worship of "The Rules As They Are Written."

Re: Horror Hero rant Great Minds Think Alike? Pre-zactly!

Re: Mind swapping

Re: Mind swapping Actually, the write-up (which is on the next page) doesn't say which Power the Side Effect is. In fact, it looks like "Imperial Fiat" to me. IOW, no Power is used, it's just "Something That Happens." Of course, perhaps that's the best thing to do in this case.