Dave Baum

Re: Astronomy/Physics question It has been a long time since I took Physics, but I thought that orbits are when the centripetal force matches the gravitational force. Since both of these forces are proportional to the mass of the orbiting object, mass cancels out and orbital distance is determined by the velocity of the orbiting object and the mass of the center object. Removing mass from the moon therefore should not change its orbit. Am I missing something? Dave p.s. I'm assuming that instantly removing the mass also means instantly removing the kinetic energy associated with that mass. Otherwise, to maintain the same energy, the reduced amount of mass would have to move faster, and that means a larger orbit.

Re: Hooray for Newbies! why are you suddenly here? Why am I here? I was running a d20 campaign and it was getting very tedious, so I wanted to try something new. I wanted a flexible rules system, and was thinking of running something in the Sci-Fi genre. I had it narrowed down to GURPS and Hero and was already leaning towards Hero, but what sealed the deal for me was the quality of the Star Hero book. This was about a month ago, and so far I couldn't be happier with the Hero System. Dave

Re: Hero Designer in a Star Hero Campaign? Thanks for the advice. I wound up purchasing Hero Designer. Pen and paper would be fine for the stuff I'm creating so far, but I really like the idea of keeping everything organized on my computer. Dave

I'm trying to decide if Hero Designer is worth buying for a Star Hero campaign. I am planning on using the Terran Empire setting, so I'll primarily be using the aliens, equipment, etc from that book. Since this is my first time running a Hero campaign, I really don't know how much item/alien/NPC creation I'll be doing. I can see where Hero Designer would be very helpful for a Champions campaign, but I'm not sure for Star Hero. It seems like most of my generic NPC creation would be starting with one of the alien packages, filling out the characteristics/skills, and adding equipment. For major NPCs, the big work would be the non-rules stuff. In short, I don't see that I'd be creating lots of powers. What has everyone else's experience been? Is a lot of your prep time spent creating characters, equipment, ships, etc? Has Hero Designer been a real time-saver for you (or alternatively has it enabled you to create a richer game)? Has anyone used the character packs (for Star Hero and/or Terran Empire/Spacers Toolkit)? The web site is a bit brief in their description. Do the packs include all of the equipment from the books as prefabs? Thanks, Dave