Bucky

Re: An odd question

Re: An odd question

Re: What's the most useless supplement you'd actually like to see?

Re: I need a certain type of catastrophe I don't think I made my case very well, so I am going to try again. On Decemeber 26th of last year, there was a massive tsunami that wiped out about 272,000 lives. The USS Abraham Lincoln was dispatched to the area immediately afterwards to begin rescue and aid operations. The Abe Lincoln is a nuclear carrier, that is equipped with helicopters which are uniquely suited to move aid material to remote regions. There is a LOT of electronics involved in all this. Lets say you did an EMP burst that burned out all the CPUs aboard that one ship. The power plants are now dead. (The reactors will shut down, or "fail safe". But without the CPUs in its instraments and control equipment, those reactors are inert.) The ship is adrift. All your helicopters are grounded. (hopefully this happens before any aircraft have taken off.) What you have now is 97,500 tons of useless metal, inhabited by about 6,000 people. Without power, its adrift. Without power, its refrigerators and water desalinization plants are dead. While the sailors still have sextants and know how to figure out where they are, they have no means of communicating with the outside world, (except by sight) or controlling their ship. Any frozen stores are going to spoil, and they will have to break out, or construct barbecue pits for cooking. It gets real dark in inside a naval vessel when the power goes out. It gets very difficult to even communicate from one side of the ship to the other, (They still have sound powered phones. But that would be it.) Now expand this to a world wide EMP like event, that wipes out all microprocessor based technology. All American cars built after about 1980 no longer work. That makes getting to work difficult if not impossible for most of the country. All trucks, trains, and planes likewise are inert metal objects. All powerplants are offline indefinately. All water filtration plants are dead. No phone, no lights, no motorcars. Technology makes it easier to do things, like feed, clothe, house, employ and entertain 6 billion people. The harder you make it, the fewer people will whatever is left be able to support. Remove such a key and vital technology like microprocessors, and you end up with a LOT of dead people. It is just too hard to support everyone, and too few of us remember how to do subsistence farming, or provide for our basic needs without all the high tech tools we have available.

Re: Hypothetical Axis Amerika 2005 It would depend on the effectiveness of German propaganda post Kristalnacht. It has been said that if Hitler had died before November 10th, 1938, he would have been seen as a great hero, not only in Germany, but throughout the world, because of the turn around he instituted in Germany. Economically and militarily, Germany was devastated after WW1. But throughout the 30s Germany appeared to be doing very well. While part of this was propaganda, there were some real surprising gains made in both areas. If you could avoid Kristalnacht, (which would make the Nazis less repugnant) the rest of the Nuremberg laws could be viewed as a model or an abberation. And some politicians might want to institute many of the same reforms to combat the Depression here in the US. But you also have to prevent or delay Pearl Harbor. Perhaps a more appeasing government would avoid or delay the confrontation over Japan's desire for resources.

Re: I need a certain type of catastrophe

Re: An odd question

Re: Hypothetical Axis Amerika 2005

Re: (somehow) realistic Secret IDs

Re: A Xmas present The only thing I could find in the FAQ was this line Maybe I ain't looking in the right spot. BTW, daughter got a IPAQ for Xmas as well, but she is more of a White Wolf player. Thanks Tabor for the link, will look at it

Re: Stargate Hero At that level of training and discipline and most importantly, intelligence which comes with age, such a Jaffa would be a threat. They might start thinking they can take on God himself, which if you are system lord, is not a good thing to deal with. So as system lord, you send him on more and more difficult missions, against greater and greater odds, until he dies in your service. Instead of a potential rebel, you have a martyr to your service. If he fails and survives, you kill him. If he fails and dies, you use his death as an example to your troops to keep them fighting for you. If he succeeds and lives, you send him out again and again until he does not come back. I guess Apophis got sloppy, which naturally comes with arrogance.

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

Re: (somehow) realistic Secret IDs

Re: Hypothetical Axis Amerika 2005 All this speculation is fun and all that, but I have to say, I still don't think it would work. It is more than a matter of numbers, its a matter of philosophy. To put it bluntly, the race philosophies of the Nazis don't work in the real world. First off, there are more non-Aryans than there are Aryans, by a very large factor. Does the name Custer ring a bell? Second, there is a whole series of things that would have had to go right for Hitler (and Tojo) for it work out that way. Operation Barbarosa should not have been started until AFTER the UK was defeated, and Hitler was dictating terms in Whitehall, and even that assumes the Brits would have listened. Midway cannot happen in this alternate universe. And neither can Pearl Harbor, which really cheesed off the Americans, and motivated it to puts its industrial might behind the war effort. But critical to all this is the belief structure. The simple fact is that group identity is purely a mental construct. Skin tone don't mean a thing, it is a matter of character and values that determines what a person does, how he lives his life, and most importantly, whether he is successful or not. Character and values are partly the product of culture, and not related to skin tone at all. And the American values such as independence, freedom of thought and expression, freedom from excessive government intrusion is too firmly ingrained in its pysche to be dislodged easily, even under the threat of nuclear warfare. It is those values and ideas that led to Americas industrial might, its political principles that led to its economic success, and still fuels it today. It is that economic might that allowed America to put more men, and material, more ships and tanks and bullets in the field than the Germans or Japanese could ever hope to possess. It is exactly the Nazi philosophy of racial superiority that led them to reject "Jewish physics" which prevented them from gettting the bomb. It was American's "who cares whether it was a Jew or not" philosophy that gave us the bomb. It was America's more tolerant attitude that led it to employ the services of the code breakers that led to victory at Midway. Despite the fact that the lead code breaker wore bathroom slippers while in uniform. Free people have a strategic and tactical advantage over those of a totalitarian government. A free people are better able to employ more brainpower to a problem, whether it is develope a new product, or defeat the Nazis. That advantage comes directly from the culture and values that freedom produces. Was America racist prior to the war? Sure, but it was less racist than either the Nazis or the Japanese. And what racism existed was untenable and in conflict with the stirring words of the Declaration of Independence. As such, it was simply more 'fit' to survive the conflict intact, more fit on the battlefield. America did not win because the Nazis were unlucky. (Heck, in the early days, it could be argued that American won DESPITE the luck of Hitler's Germany and the incompetence of the Allies. [Kasserine Pass]) I would recommend Victor Davis Hanson's work "Carnage and Culture" for a more thorough exposition.

Re: An odd question

Re: PBEM ad: "And the dead shall walk..."

I got a Palm Pilot (Tungsten T3) for Xmas this year, (okay last year for you pendatic ones)and have been looking for software that I could use for gaming. I have found several dice rollers for D&D, but none for Hero. Does one exist? If not, does anyone have a clue as to how to write such software? What I am looking for is a dice roller that will 1) show the individual rolls and the total. 2) figure stun and body automatically. Perhaps even hit location, luck/unluck etc.

Re: Firefly HERO Website Up

Re: An odd question There is one caveat I should mention. To change the world politically, would mean having some serious political power. To do so coercively means ruling the world, governing it. (Government, by its very nature is coercive. Kill a person, you go to jail, if not the gas chamber. Therefore a lot of folks will not kill, just to avoid the risk that the threat of punishment implies.) To me, that is a lot of paperwork and tedium that would prevent me from enjoying my life. Once you fix one problem, you got two more. Once you satisfy this group, that other one wants a special favor, or decision or something from you. And as ruler of the world, with super powers, you have to deal with that, whether you want to or not. In essense, a world leader no longer belongs to himself, but the rest of humanity. His life is filled with dealing with other folks problems. (And lets face it, most people can solve their own problems themselves, as long as they are granted the independence in action to do so.) But nobody but hired sychophants to deal with his problems, his issues, and things that are important to the Leader. A coercive leader has to constantly deal with whether the people working for him really like him, are doing what they are doing out of agreement, or trust. Or whether they are just going along till you fall, waiting, even hoping, that eventually you do fall. Plus you have the entire information problem that Hayek talks about. (Frederick, not Selma) All in all, world domination may look pretty, but damn.

Re: An odd question

Re: Angel, the worst original character concept ever?

Re: HERO 5th Revised While I see where you get this, I have to disagree a lot. D20 is not the devil. (And considering the views of some religious groups when D&D first came out, the comment did make me laugh.) The new editions, 3rd edition and 3.5 will bring new players into gaming, and some of those will leak out of the D20 confines, to discover other games. Second, while D&D is great for fantasy type adventures, it does not do as well in other genries. Despite their best efforts, Traveller T20, by incorporating the D20 class system, ruined a perfectly good game (IMO). D20 Modern is not a sales leader, and D20 Futures, well, I don't think it is even being marketed. So if you want to play something else other than Lord of the Rings, you are gonna need a different gaming system. Like Hero, or Gurps. I have not upgraded to 3.5, after using D&D and D20 system for most of my gaming life. It did seem to be too much a con, and not worth the money. (Besides, it was around this time that I got invited to play the Hero system for the first time, so...) That alone makes me doubt D20 and WOTC will become the next MTV, or Microsoft. Yes, I am just one guy, but I find it hard to believe I am the only one to bail when 3.5 came out. I understand the desire for "One rulebook to rule them all" philosophy, and it is something that I would personally support. But it ain't gonna happen. Different folks like different things. Some folks want to get under the hood, design a character instead of just roll them up. Some folks prefer the automatic handouts that go with garnering levels in D20. People is different, and I don't think that is going to change. Simply because it does not have to be. The fact that Hero may sell less than D20 really does not mean that much. Its still a viable gaming system and the rules are pretty good.

Re: Balancing Magic

Re: Fate systems As some of us are refugees from D20, we get confused as to when we need to roll low. Sometimes, (very rarely) our GM has allowed rerolls, to make up for "pyschic confusion".

Re: Firefly HERO Website Up