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tinman

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Everything posted by tinman

  1. Re: Populations and Genetics Thank you all for some very thought-provoking feedback. The point of it all is so that in the campaign world various factions (governments, superhuman advocates/supremacists, human rights/interest groups, etc.) can base part of their stance concerning superhumans on this potential threat to long term human existence. I think the route I will take in-game will be to treat it like global warming. Some believe it's a very real crisis, others dismiss it as junk science and most don't care enough to worry either way. Whether it actually comes to pass will be beyond the scope of the campaign, it is enough for it to simply be a credible long-term possibility.
  2. Re: Populations and Genetics I forgot a rather important detail. Full posthumans are effectively immortal (lifespans extending to tens of thousands of years) and the human-posthuman hybrids typically live two to four times as long as normal humans.
  3. I'm hoping for a little guidance from any HEROphiles out there with any knowledge of genetics and population growth statistics. I'm setting up a new campaign with the following premise: During WWII an event triggered the emergence of a couple of thousand super-powered posthumans. It was later discovered that these posthumans couldn't reproduce with each other, but could create viable offspring with humans (with a success rate about 1/20 that of normal). These (lower-powered) hybrid* offspring were further able to reproduce with each other, normal humans or full posthumans with varying levels of success to create either hybrid or posthuman children. The pattern (with human/human thrown in for a baseline) is as follows: human/human=human (100% normal success rate) posthuman/posthuman=non-viable posthuman/human=hybrid (5% normal success rate) posthuman/hybrid=posthuman (1% normal success rate) hybrid/hybrid=posthuman (10% normal success rate) hybrid/human=hybrid (25% normal success rate) The reason for this convoluted setup is that I want the long-term survival of the natural human population to be an issue if posthuman and hybrid populations are allowed to grow. I'm assuming that over a long period of time humanity will eventually be supplanted by hybrids and ultimately only non-breeding posthumans will be left. This potential outcome is meant to be a major source of conflict in the campaign. So I'm wondering if my assumptions are correct, or if I'm failing to account for a critical principle or factor. I also don't really know what sort of time span would be required for this to happen given six billion humans and a couple thousand each of posthumans and hybrids (as of 2006). Would normal human population growth simply be too rapid for the hybrid subgroup to become a significant proportion? *(I apologise in advance to those forumites who may be sensitive to even unintended references to the infamous gaming "system" )
  4. Re: US Military .45 Pistols The amount of energy generated by a (12g) shotgun going off vs a (.45 ACP) pistol is night and day. The former launches a ~0.03kg object at ~450m/s while the latter fires a ~0.015kg object ~270m/s. If you held a shotgun tightly against your collarbone and fired it, I'm sure you'd have a similar experience as your friend. Long arms are intended to be held against the soft pocket of the shoulder. I doubt very much the few inches of distance was much of a factor.
  5. Re: US Military .45 Pistols For that to be true the person firing the pistol would experience a similar impact to their hand from the recoil. Clearly that doesn't happen. There's a huge body of superstitious hooplah floating around about firearms and the effects of bullets on the human body. For anyone who would like to learn about wound ballistics, here is an excellent starting place: http://www.firearmstactical.com/wound.htm
  6. Re: 1d6 1/2 vs. 2d6-1; your thoughts It depends on whether it's for a PC, NPC or something like a normal weapon. For PC's I try to work with them to get rid of nasty 1/2 dice in their attacks to streamline combat. Sometimes this means advancing them a few XP to cover costs. For NPC's I just build to avoid them. For weapons (I tend to tweak the published stats anyway) I use +2 instead of either 1/2 or d6-1. Just my 1 pip.
  7. Re: W W Y G M D ?? I'm "always a GM, never a player" so I'll answer in that role. I tend to watch out for these kinds of powers, lest the character find themselves pulling full-time duty as a world-fixer and become unplayable. I don't actually forbid the powers, but I strongly discourage them. If you can cure disease and heal injury, what could be more important than spending your time doing so? So much for adventuring... The authorities leave the safeties off around the PC's as it is, if they actually went rogue it would quickly become an international fight to the death (the PC's are very high powered, it would take military mobilisation and WMD's to stop them). Of course, if greed were the motivating factor, that would be easy - the government would put them on salary.
  8. Re: HERO 5th LARP? One thing the HERO System has that would be golden in a LARP is the Speed Chart. Nothing like being able to call out a segment and start counting down DEX to keep combat organised. Really, I would just use the system as-is with a tacked on resolution mechanic to replace dice rolling. Karmakaze's suggestion about playing cards would work really well. A set StunX for KA's would speed things up, and END/BODY/STUN could be tracked using a small pencil and a card with little boxes printed on it (maybe the reverse side of a compact character sheet). I think the biggest factor in whether it works well or not is how familiar the players are with the system. If they are already HERO players, then I think it could go very smoothly. I remember the biggest problem I had when running a Vampire LARP was that large numbers of players would never bother to learn the rules properly and would have to be walked through every task, even after years of play. Now you just need a venue with a floor painted in a two-meter hex grid...
  9. Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical" I think a backlash among the survivors against the civilisation that destroyed itself would be the biggest impediment to the restoration of that civilisation. After such a horrific event, it would be very easy for people to equate high technology and large scale societies with apocolypse. After a generation or so no one would remember the old life, and it would be easy for it to become a cautionary tale. "Don't get too fancy with that contraption boy, it's fiddlin' like that what brought the end times. Best to leave well enough alone and trust to hard work to get things done." edit - it pays to read the thread before posting, looks like keithcurtis brought this point up on page one and threw in some excellent literary references to boot
  10. Re: Musings on Random Musings Every time a controversial discussion like that gets locked I am forced to consider the effect it has on those who participated in it. There were some rather interesting points being raised, and to be honest, I found myself putting a lot of thought into some of what I was reading. It was clear to me that the majority of those involved were making an honest effort to examine the issue and keep the antagonism to a minimum. So I guess my question boils down to this: does everyone who posted get XP for the Slaying of a Thread, or only the last one to post in it? 'Cause I never seem to get the last word in and I really need to buy down some of my Psych Lims...
  11. Re: How to Overthrow the Alien Overlords: Reboot Rather than resources or living space, the motivation to set up a colony around another star might simply be to get all the eggs out of one basket. Maybe their home system is uncomfortably close to an unstable cosmic phenomenon (or one they fear will become unstable). This means that the invaders could believe themselves to be acting for the good of their entire species and not just for their own survival. As for why bother with a planet once they have the capacity to travel between stars, there could be any number of reasons. Perhaps they have a spiritual/religious connection with 'land'. Perhaps their psychology requires large spaces and open skies or they become claustrophobic (the voyagers having been selected for a high tolerance for enclosed spaces). Perhaps they spend much of their time apart from each other (a habit suppressed during the voyage with drugs) and need large personal territories. Perhaps they have physiological processes that don't work properly outside of a gravity well and they have a heightened sensitivity to the coriolis effect which makes even a large spin habitat a miserable experience for them. Perhaps they have no desire to 'use all available resources and fill all available capacity', but simply to exist as a small but healthy population on a ready-to-own large space habitat like Earth. Perhaps they're ship is of the Apollo program variety, a leap forward in capability that they have not yet grown into. In other words, they may have simply bent their collective will towards building a huge ship and stocking it with supplies and equipment, without having a truly mature spacefaring technology base. And as to how they deal with Earth's supers, well, they may not have space-opera-tech but there's no reason to believe that they aren't each built on 350 points worth of powers and characteristics (wow, that yellow sun sure does give you zip in the morning). Keep in mind that this scenario was suggested simply to explain why they might not have an entire fleet of reserves to call in, or why they would even be interested in a backwater planet if they could build space stations that can be mistaken for small moons. It sort of casts the invasion in a 'make or break' mold.
  12. Re: How to Overthrow the Alien Overlords: Reboot What if the aliens weren't at the super-tech stage at all? What if they had identified a suitable planet for their first interstellar colony, built and launched a slower-than-light generation ship, only to suddenly start receiving radio broadcasts from their destination years into the flight (remember, they might have launched in the mid 1800's or even earlier)? They can't turn around, they can't keep going on past, and they can't live in their ship forever. The colonists have to set themselves up on Earth or perish. They have a few decades to come up with a plan for what to do, and based on the broadcasts they are getting it is clear to them that humans are a xenophobic and extremely violent species. So they use their onboard manufacturing facilities to make weapons and prepare for an armed invasion. They might even go so far as to try to bombard the earth with discarded pieces of their ship (or if they have the capacity, small asteroids) to soften us up first. They have limited resources, limited personnel and limited technology (quite advanced compared to ours, but not space-opera advanced) and rely heavily on the element of surprise. Their primary goal is to shock us into submission while they gain a foothold and can establish themselves properly. After that they can either fully subjugate us or exterminate us at will. So the campaign takes place in the critical time after they have crippled our defenses and made their landing, but have yet to fully consolidate control or build their colony. In the midst of the carnage there is also the chance that cooler heads on either side might be able to work towards a possible coexistence (like in Alien Nation) as well, depending on where you want the campaign to go.
  13. Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game The END costs are a concern, but I have Stamina and I slot an END Red in each of my toggles. So far with Manoeuvers, Invincibility, Unyielding and Temporary Invulnerability all running I can go through two to three mob fights before I need to Rest for END. Hopefully that will improve significantly when I am able to put SO's in Stamina and my END Red slots. Last night I played on a group of 4 where 3 of us had Manoeuvers stacking. The missions were +4 to me and ranged from +3 to +5 for the rest of the team, and I really noticed the difference in our Defense. Unfortunately I don't notice that difference when I'm the only one with it active.
  14. Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Thanks
  15. Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Looking for advice: I have no experience with the Leadership pool, and I was wondering if it was worth taking for a Tanker. I don't use Taunt and so in addition to other aggro management techniques I'd like to have something that helps the group through my mere presence. Is the radius of effect large enough to be worth it for a front-line fighter? Are the buffs worth the slots? Would it stack if someone else also had Leadership?
  16. Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game FWOOSH! ZOOOM! (sound of my natural Scrapper vigilante skulking around the skies of Paragon City with his jetpack )
  17. Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Thanks! Shame about no hover-dancing though...
  18. Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Okay, another dumb question: I see characters occasionally putting down a boom box and dancing. How does one do this, and can it be done in conjunction with Hover?
  19. Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game
  20. Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Yeah, I've already seen how much more efficiently a scrapper can mow through a group that I seem to spend all day hitting*. On the other hand, I wanted to build the classic caped marvel character, and the scrapper just doesn't have the right feel. Maybe a brute would, but I want my main character to be a hero. Meh. I'm having fun. *It probably doesn't help that I've been spending my enhancement slots on Hover instead of attacks or defenses since hitting 7th
  21. Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Still active?
  22. Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game The Hero System?
  23. Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game I think the thing that draws me to playing a tanker is that it just feels like the generalist of the archetypes. Scrappers could be argued into that role as well, but my style of play makes defense more valuable than offense. Plus, that second power in the Invulnerability set makes my character look like Miracleman
  24. Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game So what's your new favourite archetype?
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