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.

To "Basil" Oops ! 'St B's" quirky memory is playing tricks again !

http://www.action-tv.org.uk/guides/manroom17.htm

This is the linkfor the show "The Man In Room 17" that I was trying to think of. It was British and ran for two seasons (1965-66)

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.

"The Men In Room 19" would fit a similar archetype to Nero Wolfe.

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

I gues that Wolfe' date=' or Mycroft would be most useful as "contacts" for the P Cs rather than having someone play that type of character.[/quote']

Point; though it might be fun playing the wise-cracking legman.

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.

Increased mass: This Adder allows a character to Teleport more than the normal amount of mass. For each +5 Character Points he can Teleport 2x normal human mass (100 kg) (thus' date=' for +5 points, 200 kg., +10 points, 400 kg., and so forth). The character does not have to be able to carry this additional mass; he only has to touch it. If the additional mass is additional persons, those persons have to want to be Teleported; involuntarily Teleporting someone requires the [i']Usable As Attack[/i] Advantage.

Let me repeat one line, with (I believe) warrented additions that should make things clearer.

The character does not have to be able to {physically} carry this additional mass {with his STR}; he only has to touch it.

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?

{snip}

I don't even know if TheEmerged had it on his excellent list of 4th to 5th changes.

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)

Years ago at the request of another poster, I cobbled together a quick calculator where in if you had two of the variable (T, A or D) you would get the third. Very useful for 'hard'ish sci-fi. How long does it take to get to the moon? Simply enter the distance, and acceleration in Gs (or fractions there of) and voila.

 

Well I updated the file last year and realized I had never reposted it. So here it is. TAD 2.0. It is a Excel 2000 spreadsheet.

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

There are five new posters in this thread. Each has made only one post' date=' and only to this thread, all to praise the product. It may not be spam and sock puppets, but it has the smell.[/quote']

 

More than the smell.

 

If it walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is a duck.

 

As we all know, spammers duck --- err, suck.

And spammers are stupid.

 

EDIT: As per Ben's announcement here:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/announcement.php?f=12

I've PM'ed him to let him know about this. As he said in that announcement, he'd appreciate not everybody writing him about any given spam.

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?

So let's say that we start out with 8000 in the P generation' date=' each woman has two children instead of four, population increases to 48,000 then levels off, hopefully without having to euthanize anyone who lives past 120. How would this change what specalist you would want to include in the P generation?[/quote']

Why this concentration on specialists? What a colony that far from help will need is generalists.

 

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialisation is for insects." -- Robert Heinlein

 

 

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.

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.

 

You can state that for a fact? I agree that most stars will probably have an Oort clound and other useable resources' date=' but need to have a contengency plan in place for if your chosen destinaton star does not. But let me revise that. They should be able to detect the presence (or absence) of an Oort cloud 20 years out, on the cusp between the F3 and F4 generations, so if needed they can go to the Zero Population Growth option.[/quote']

Dr. Anomaly has already covered this, but I'd like to add to it. After umpteen generations in the Kuiper's Belt, I'm sure humanity will know which nearby (out to, say, 100 light-years) star do or do not have Kuiper's Belts/Oort Clouds. We are already finding super-Jovian planets by their reflected light; with a century or two of technology and a 500-1000 AU baseline, there' no question we'll be able to see planetesimals. And thus we can stop worrying about the colonists arriving only to find no Kuiper's Belt or Oort Cloud.

 

BTW, it is now thought that the mas of all objects in the Kuiper's Belt is anywhere from 10 to 25 times the mass of all the planets, moons, asteroids, and other minor stuff. The mass of the Oort Cloud is considered 100x to 500x that of the Kuiper's Belt. Lack of materials is a non-issue.

Re: Religious that won't emigrate

G'day

 

{snip a bit}

Some of the colonies may be set up by religious separatists, others by religious utopists.

 

But it strikes me that some religions will be likely to send out colonies, and others less so. For example, no muslim who goes out on this emigration will ever perform the Hajj again, nor are his descendants likely to do so. No hindu who thus goes forth, nor many of their descendants, will ever again bathe in the sacred Ganges. No jew who thus goes forth, nor any of his descendants, will ever worship at the Third Temple.

 

So: which religions are unlikely to establish separatist or utopist colonies under these conditions?

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?

I agree. In fact I built my satirical SF campaign with that premise:

By the year 2151, humanity has flung itself boldly into space. This should surprise no one, as humanity is prone to flinging itself boldly at anything in its line of sight. Astride a vast nuclear armada mankind set out to land upon every flat surface in the solar system. But our idealistic socks soon trod the cold puddle of reality as we discovered that most of the flat surfaces, namely moons and planets, weren’t hospitable enough to bother with the roaring gravity wells that surrounded them. Why should a cosmopolitan species like us crawl down these time-space sinkholes to live among acid clouds or liquid methane bogs or sunrises that melt lead? The planets, it turned out, were appallingly anticlimactic.

 

"No trouble," said Mankind after changing its socks, "we’ve already solved this business of living in space. Let’s add a few rooms on the back and stay right here." And so began our modern era of space habitation, in which humanity has not only flung itself into space, but also countless flat surfaces upon which to land. Space platforms erupted into space colonies which exploded into gigantic space cities. In fact we're so blasted comfortable in space that we're already looking for something new at which to boldly fling ourselves -- interstellar space. The unending desolation looks more than slightly harrowing, but the only other direction is into the Sun, and that's not exactly a day at the beach.

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:

Imagine a STL multigeneration ship. One thousand humans will start out from Earth' date=' their descendants will reach another star system in a century. Population will increase to 25,000 during the trip.[/quote']

This has a major problem: the rate of growth needed is much too high.

 

In such situations, to find the rate of increase we assume continuous compounding. The formula is:

r = ln(ending amount/begining about)/time

Or:

r = ln(25,000/1,000)/100

Thus, r = 0.032189

 

In a population where there is no net migration (certainly true in the middle of outer space ), the rate of increase depends on two factors. (1) the number of female children who themselves bear children, that the average woman gives birth to: this is called "F". (2) The average age of a woman at birth: this is called "G" (from "generation time"). Here, we use the formula:

r = ln(F)/G.

Which gives ln(F) = r * G

 

Assuming an average woman might produce children from 18 to 40, (thus G = 29), and r = 0.032189, we get F = 2.54333. If exactly one birth in two is a female child, and all female children grow up to themselves produce children, we find the average woman must have 5 children to get the level of growth required.

 

I can't see it, absent some major change in current technologically-savvy societies.

 

Note also, that 1000 people is a minute gene pool.

 

Ship can support 50' date='000 safely and comfortably.[/quote']

Then why not put 50,000 (or at least 40,000) people on board in the first place? Bigger gene pool, and the average woman need only have 2 children so as to maintain the population.

 

It is possible arriving at the new star system they will discover a planet with a breathable atmosphere. It is possible they will discover no usable resources (in which case they will use a gravity slingshot around the star to head to a different system. It is most likely they will find an Oort Cloud, and asteroid belt, and planets that can be terraformed in 100 to 1000 years. Communications will be maintained with Earth, and through Earth any sister ships, but speed of light lag insures these will be monologues rather than conversations.

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...

Imagine that there is a large planet with a moon that are reasonably far from their sun. The moon is made of mostly elements like Oxygen and Nitrogen' date=' but frozen solid.[/quote']

That would hang my disbelief, rather than suspend it. Oxygen and nitrogen, sans ammonia and water would have a vanishingly small chance of accumulating in moon-sized chunks. Absent organic processes---forget it.

 

However' date=' the moon is so close that the gravitational forces continuously knead the moon causing it to:[/quote']

It is not mere closeness that would cause this (*), but an elliptical orbit, which requires explaining. Another moon? The planet's own orbit is highly elliptical, and the sun perturbs the moon? A "lock" with another (probably larger) planet? Only the first strikes me as at all likely.

 

a. liquify then boil the core of the Nitrogen/Oxygen moon' date=' the resulting vulcanism expels massive amounts of super-hot nitrogen and oxygen[/quote']

Wouldn't need to reach boiling point at all---once the liquid is expelled into space (**), it will boil off rapidly.

 

b. said super-hot gases are then sucked down in a continuous stream to the larger planet below

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.

 

Obviously, the moon wouldn't last long. However, by human standards a million years (let's say the moon was recently acquired) is quite long. Could you, if you had the technology, set up some kind of floating city in that stream of cooling nitrogen and oxygen?

 

I call it "Haven".

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

I would ,like to point out that the mass of an object has no real bearing on where it would orbit. I had too get my astronomy book out, but the radius of an orbit is calculated thus:

 

r = (GM)/v²

 

r -> Radius of the orbit

G -> Gravitational constant

M -> Mass of the planet orbited

v -> orbital velocity

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

You are an infantile monkey with a speech impediment if you do not agree.

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

I've seen the above twice now. What does it mean?

Great Minds Think Alike?

Pre-zactly!

Re: Mind swapping

Using a Multiform VPP that requires the successful use of a Transformation attack on the target might not be a bad way to go. Physically switching places could be handled with a teleport. Price-wise' date=' it might more accurately reflect the value of the power.[/quote']

Hmmm...

 

OK, I think this is the best way to do it. Transform him have your body, Multiform yourself to have his; VPP so you can Multiform to anyone. Neat and straightforward.

 

Thanks, Oddhat; I think you've got it.

Re: Mind swapping

The same guy who created the rule "You can't transform yourself" also created the exception for Mind Switching on page 156 of the USPDB.

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.