Midas

Re: [Campeign Creation Project] Pirates of the Naebbirac Astroid Belt A few things I thought of. RE FTL: Suppose there were two classes of ships, "sloops" and "galleons" (think Serenity vs those floating cities that the Inner Planets had). The kicker is that only the galleons have FTL. Thus an insystem boat would use the space taken up by FTL engines for more cargo. They would haul a few tons to "Aciamaj" and sell it on the Free Market ("Nobody 'ere cares where you got it, Matey"). Then the galleons would take their hundreds of tons out to wherever they could go FTL. These things would be too huge for any pirate or fleet to attack.* Weapons: Stunners; 6d6ap stun only. For either when the prize has a ransom aboard, and want to take as many targets alive as possible; or when the Piracy Patrol catches up with you. You can claim mitigating circumstances: You won't be executed right away, or after court, but will be held until somebody else's privateers can be exchanged. Tanglers: (various kinds, with different adv/limits). Same general idea. (I guess I am going for a lighter hearted buccaneer game here). Re Boarding: Do you want to have docking (like Star Wars ep IV), boarding ships (like the villians in Star Crash** or the Magog from Andromeda), or just jump across as in the earlier post? Re economics: Space 1889 has a system for selling privateer loot. It was expanded in the Karocoram (sic) supplement. The latter was billed as "The Casablanca of Mars" where a PC could meet the more famous captains, and develop rivalries, friendships, and intrigues. Re Firefly: The crew of the Serenity weren't pirates, but they were scavengers, and did get hit by pirates at least twice. I don't see the ships in this mining system carrying passengers, so the "Mrs. Reynolds" scenario should be quite rare, as should a target worthy of ransoming. But hey, it happens often enough that a scion of a rich family should slip their leash and disappear into some anonymous crew slot. Wreckers (also from "Our Mrs. Reynolds") should be a possibility. In that episode, the wreckers used something like a huge EMP mine. This wouldn't work in this campaign because of the FF, but something like a magascale entangle might. The "webcaster" would have to be huge, like only on microplanets or galleons, to prevent this from becoming the preferred space weapon (unless you like the idea). Has anyone done up rules for a tethered entangle? Midas *Though of course you would have a legend of some captain or pirate admiral who did just that, and succeeded, once... **A friend of mine commented on that movie: "See! THAT'S why you don't put bay windows on spaceships!"

Re: Let's keep cruising the Pacific! Next stop, Nan Madol! Haven't read Floating Island, but that sounds very like the setup for Ghost Ship (2002). (Not to be confused with an early 80s flick about a "living" Nazi floating interrogation ship) Oddly enough, IMDB doesn't have that one listed at all, though I've seen it in video stores dozens of times. Midas

Re: The Planet Ophidies - PLUS PIRATES? Background? Who are the Auron? What is the PCs origin? Do they come from Auron or Ophidies? Are you setting up an interstellar gang war, or an untouchables campaign, or something else? Midas

Re: The 4400 Now you know how the BSG fen feel. The problem is the "soap factor" I mentioned earlier. Like on soaps and in comic books, no plotline is ever entirely settled; no villian ever stays totally defeated. If the suits want her back, her not-midichlorians will regenerate. Or they might go with the "what does a retired super villian do in her spare time?" arc. Or they could decide that Isabelle's run is over, and she will quietly disappear -like the Kyle going to college subplot. Midas

Re: The 4400 Just watched the season finale. Was. I kinda figured Richard was going to do it, but the TK thing caught me by surprise (Yes, that is why I usually play a brick ). Kinda sad to see the force is no longer with her. I was sure Tom had made it permanent. What is up with the Spanish 4400? Does anyone else goof and call the Mad Scientist's girlfriend "River"? Midas (Who thinks a lot salary negotiations are going on, looking at the last ep).

Re: The 4400 OK, no, I don't know that. I just always assumed that the recent shows were run that way. It isn't really a *poll* per se, but having drones hang in the right newsgroups and forums will tell the producers where the fen want the show to go. About Isabel. I am on dialup, so I haven't been to "read Isabel's journal" site they always plug. But the main thing with her is that she is really two years old underneath. They are playing up the free choice angle a lot. Did enjoy where Lord Palp...I mean the English guy got Vadered. Midas

Re: The 4400 Really, I find that they found Riley to be quite refreshing. The thing that maddened me about X files, and totally distroyed my personal suspension of disbelief, was that Smoking Man was walking around the FBI building, sitting in on discussions -and nobody knew who he was! They didn't even know his name, for chrissake! That our heroes could actually track down the bad guy was heartening. That they couldn't touch him was a bit unbelievable, but I accepted that as a starting premise. I think they are hitting the viewers over the head with the Jesus Thing. I was all but expecting -during the hands gauntlet- for someone to lay down palm fronds. He seems to have mellowed from his J R Ewing phase, but I don't know if that means he is now going to be a "humble hero" or a new villian. Side note: Something I hate about the new poll driven series: Even the writers and producers don't know what is going to happen. If the audience doesn't like the New Collier, he will either become a villian or be written out. If they do, he will stay a hero -at least until TPTB decide that he will still be pleasing to the audience as a villian. Midas Show seems to have a Hero audience of two.

Re: The 4400 Hadn't really thought about it, but you're right. But where do you put Isabel in the mix? I'm still trying to get my cards in order on who is on which side, how many sides there are, etc. I keep getting an x-files vibe. We have a nefarious, amorphous group playing mindgames with NTSC (nominally the good guys). They might be military, or political, or a financial group, or even a third temporal force, but Tom and Diana are having fun chasing their little plots, what can be seen of them. At least T & D are doing better at the procedure end than Mulder and Scully. Just my 2c, Midas

Re: WWYCD: The Crossover from H E Double-hockey-stick There have been seven deaths under suspicious circumstances, and two missing persons over the last two years. Two suspicious fires. Two insane asylum commitments, two strings of Breaking & Entering. There are two convicted criminals living in the area. And that is only the tip of the iceburg. Welcome to Wysteria Lane. Midas (Who thinks even Batman would give up trying to figure out who did what to whom)

Re: Converting

Re: Pulparize It!

Re: Rarity of Magic? That would be depth. Not being smart alecky, that really does sound like depth you are describing. Midas Well yeah, I do like to be a smart a$$, but I wasn't, here.

Re: Genres HERO GAMES may want to avoid (intended to be humorous) XXX Hero, the British edition? Midas:celebrate

Re: Greatest Post-Apoc Film of All Time The protagonist's name was Dylan Hunt. The villians were transhumans bent on enslaving mankind. Midas

Re: Dealing with Anachronism Theatre of the Mind Enterprise (TOME) did a few early Call of Cthulhu scenarios. One of them had a professor and some students sent to Arizona to collect a batch of meteors. These meteors turned out to be something like the Green Ball in Heavy Metal. It's been years since I read the book, and I don't remember the exact details, but after seeing what the mutagenic effects are, the characters are either allowed to make "waldoes" and operate behind a lead mantlit, or have them ready made. Just poetic license, or did somebody have something similar back then? I'm thinking something like the WWII "coal scuttles" to collect fallen fire bombs. Midas

Re: Character: Lance Dulak, Private Eye Lance Link, wasn't it? Oh, I agree. The outstanding example is Dogged Reporter Chick, who somehow never noticed that when Testerone Dude showed up, Nerdboy at the next desk was missing. OTOH, we are really talking about a SI here. What would happen if someone does the Holmesian detailism: "Walks like he is wearing a suit of armor, moves of a fencer, with that name...hmnnn..." Of course, in the Holmsian universe there was no magic, so he'd have to spot something intriguing (the famous MacLeod "Oh, the wound wasn't as serious as it looked" comes to mind). On the third hand, this could be an example of hiding in plain sight. Most people even spotting the name would shrug it off as coincidence. What famous person in hiding is going to go around introducing himself by name, after all? Then again, it could be a coincidence. Suppose someone familiar with the Arthurian cycle got involved in a messy divorce, then tangled with a Rhymes-ith-witch who totally soured him on romance. He takes the name of a classical hero with a similar past, and goes to The City to start his life over. Anybody who did a background check would find this out, and drop it. The kicker is that he really is Lance D'lake. He was ready to start a new "younger" life, and he pulled a Doc Savage a few years ago to background it. He found an unhappy couple who were looking to end the marriage, and made a deal with them to follow a certain script in return for his help in ending the marriage. He then found a carny fortune teller who was looking for a bit of "image" and set her up as being able to cast real curses. That's just a thought stream. I leave it to more capable hands to figure out why a love triangle is a better divorce than whatever the couple's real problem was, for instance. Midas

Re: Character: Lance Dulak, Private Eye Actually, this is an excellent character concept. The only change I would make is to give him a little more obscure of a name. OK, the usual lowlifes that a noir PI run into won't know any classic lit. But what happens when he runs into a Doc Savage, Holmes, or Moriarity clone? A little bit of digging (think of the girl in Highlander 1) and his secret is loose. Midas

Re: Magic System Question #1 LOL Anyway, here's a couple of ideas to consider. "Painful" have the spell caster lose say a point of body: Then to balance it out, give the player a two point rebate with the spell cost. If you have metagamers who will simply take the two point rebate and buy a point of body with it, lower the NCM by one for each spell learned. (No, I don't know how to work that in Hero terms -1/4 generic limitation?). Then the first 10 or so spells are "free" if the player wants to spend his rebate, but the 11th on is gonna cost four points to bring the body back. Also, I don't have a problem with spending money as well as cp on a spell. You don't think your instructor is working for free, and you can't exactly give him your cp's can you? I think of money as a kind of naked VPP with the ind limitation. Consider, you trade in your last haul on equipment, why can't you send some of it to the sages guild instead of the smithy? Midas

Re: Pulp A-team Code vs killing. Strong in PCs (either for heroic reasons or enlightened self interest), Common in villians. A villian might shoot someone, but only if they *really* needed to. The A Team would beat a tactical retreat before they started shooting to kill. Then next time they would lead with a really violent presense attack (blowing up a few barrels of gasoline outside the badguys hideout for example), to remind everybody that it doesn't need to accellerate to fatalities. Or you could just take the "reluctance to kill" rule and apply it strongly. Midas

Re: Future Sci-Fi I would say that, in a "hard" SF future with merely more advanced stuff that we have already, the popular reading would be higher tech SF or Space Opera. For example, take the current Battlestar Galactica. In their spare time on Mudball (New Caprica) they have come up with a cycle of stories about an alterate Galactica where the Colonial Warriors had energy weapons ("They look something like this ", the Vipers were armed with lasers instead of machine guns, the Cylons were lumbering dorks with tiny energy rifles that never hit anything, whenever things got too desperate a "Ship of Lights" would show up and provide a way out, Baltar is a scheming weasel (well OK, that wasn't a stretch)... Midas

Re: Pulp A-team

Re: Old Testament Hero This brings to mind a thread a couple of months ago, dealing with a certain type of incompatable player. The general tone was "Will you quit cracking jokes? We're trying to have fun here!" Many people totally lost the irony of their stance. At my mother's funeral, I made an off color joke. My nephew took me to task for it. I almost really lit into him. He and I were raised in the same church, with the same teachings. The building isn't God's Temple, it is the planet, no the whole universe, that is God's Temple. So if God was going to throw a lightning bolt at me for making a Bill & Monica joke, it didn't matter whether I was in a building with a steeple, or not. Same deal here. If you think God will be PO'd that you are being irreverent, it doesn't matter whether you are rolling dice while you are at it. You don't need to buy a D20 supplement to mock or disparage ancient Judean Holy Books. That said, I find Testament a fascinating read. Lots of stuff in there that they never discussed in Sunday School. And a lot of current archeology and ancient history worked in as well. Some of the interesting debates about what really happen'd in the area have been dropped in favor of one True Timeline, but that is *my* only problem with it. Midas

Re: DC inspired by TV Supernatural: Route 66 meets Xphiles. Dead Like Me: Some people don't move on, when they die they become Grim Reapers, responsible for escorting the newly dead onward. Surface: Some *thing* is now at the top of the food chain. It's big, it's unkillable, and it's hungry. Sabrina: You've got Charmed and Buffy, why not? How far back are you willing to go? Bandit: Show running on alternate weekends with Hercules. Allien nation the Series Kung Fu: The Legend Continues Highlander: Pick any of eight universes The Immortal: A HL "Homage" but if you ignore the Highlanderisms, an interesting show. Medium & Ghost Whisperer Joan of Arcadia, Wonderfalls, Tru Calling (would like to see the characters from Tru Calling meet Dead Like Me sometime). Full House & Friends (Mind Control: Induce Nausea, always on, inherent). Midas

Re: Just thinking. A possible enemy of zombies.

Re: The Professions of Arms For the assassin: The assassin has almost the same skills as a detective. He might be lucky enough to be standing in an alley when the target walks by, but more likely he needs to be able to unobtrusively observe the target for a time, determine where and when to strike, then have a trap set or plot a getaway. A knowledge of alibi production would come in handy if he wasn't trying to gain a personal rep with the kill. For the Bodyguard, a skill like "resist distraction" would be helpful. A professional bodyguard, unlike the run of the mill guards, would not be distracted, rather alerted, by the common gamut of distractions. The sound of a pebble on the wall just around the corner? Call for backup, don't just wander over and investigate. A tipsy wench with a wine bottle; "Heh shold'r, haffa drin' w' a lady?" A pro would be insulted by the obviousness. Midas