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!

How about this:

 

As many know, in the early years of this, our 20th century, the immense vessel, Standard Island, often referred to as a ‘floating city’, was lost. The cause was a revolt by either Luddites or Bolsheviks. The passengers, multimillionaires to a one, were either killed outright or thrown into the sea to die. The revolt was led by 2 shadowy figures, Jem Tankerdon and Nat Coverly who, by the clever use of mass psychology, managed to split the ships population into two groups and then ferment a civil war. What truly happened to them may never be known. But the vessel has been found, floating in a fog bank just south of the Cook Islands. The vessel is still thought to contain, within its vaults, the millions in bullion, bearer bonds and stock certificates which were the property of the passengers on this original ‘millionaire’s paradise’.

 

The Adventurers club is sponsoring a visit to this immense behemoth of the seas to find out what really happened. Those wishing to join should place their names with the Hall Porter. We shall depart forthwith.

 

Regards

Sir Joseph Lytton-Hall, MBE, GCMG.

General Secretary

 

 

(See The Floating Island by Jules Verne)

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

Man, oh man, I so hate season finales...now I gotta wait a year!!! for season 3? dammit

 

I'm kinda sad that Isabelle got de-4400'd, she was just starting to really delve into a solid personality. She was about to become the ultimate Wildcard that gave Riland and NTAC and Collier a common enemy. Oooooh so frustrated.

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.

Scary having a 2 year old with world shattering powers. She's getting VERY cocky as well. Riley has her as a body guard and still wants to pursue the super soldier program and her only response: "If it'll make you feel better."

 

She's a bad-ass fer sure, but she wholeheartedly believes she can destroy all of the 4400 singlehandedly!

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

They're determining the show by a poll!? Ah, crap...

 

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

It's a damn good story. My wife and I are completely addicted.

 

Isabel is damn scary and Anne and I are still trying to decide who the good/bad guys are in the whole deal. The what if factor is huge when you start trying to figure out who the good/bad guys are in the future.

 

At first it was "easy", 4400: good. Government: Bad. NTAC: Poor slobs caught in the middle. Now that Collier has the Jesus thing going on but is acting more like David Koresh, it would seem his assassination was a good thing and his ressurrection a bad thing.

 

Riley could have made a great Smoking Man if they had kept him more in the shadows after the Nova Group tried to knock him off.

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

While I find the links useful' date=' I was mostly looking for a discussion on approach to conversions rather than the conversions themselves. [/quote']

 

Are you trying to convert characters, races, scenarios, or magic systems? And from what systems?

 

Assuming you are doing races, from DnD, I use an "eyeball" approach. Say an Ogre (4hd, ac4). I make a guestimate of stats (high physical characteristics, low mental ones, very heavy leather armor), then just add say 3 levels with all combat(for being three levels above 1st level). For stuff that is closer to Hero, like GURPS or BRP, I just do a straight 'port, then adjust the die rolls to something similar to the chances in the origin system.

 

(Yes, I know that Hero uses a log scale and the others are straight lines, but that really only matters once you are talking about huge critters -and you don't really *need* to stat Cthulhu out, do you?)

 

For example, I am trying to convert an old Call of Cthulhu scenario to HERO, for which the villain is an undead. He has a POW of 25, which would be about an 18 in Hero terms. However, the text states that he has been hoarding and building his POW for 300 years, so I think an EGO of 25 is fine.

 

Midas

Re: Pulparize It!

The Tundra is a Harsh Mistress: "Populist" Huey Long won the 1936 Presidential Election' date=' and has managed to impose a uniquely American -- and uniquely ivicious -- form of facism on the country. The Terriroty of Alaska has been transformed into a penal colony, with criminals and dissidents alike sent to the northwern wastes to never be heard from again. But the Kingfish has made a fatal mistake: among those he has sent north are gifted sceitnists and technicians. with their aid, the prisoners of Alaska are going to save America from itself -- or destroy it in the attempt....[/quote']

 

 

Wye Knot?

 

Minor problem: How would you work "Adam" the Babbage Machine?

 

Midas

Re: Rarity of Magic?

We need a third axis for the part you're talking about: how integrated and necessary magic is, the difference between magic being a nice thing to have, and magic being absolutely necessary to the functioning of the world.

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)

Hopeless Fanboy HERO

 

 

The Ultimate Bum.

XXX Hero, the British edition?

Midas:celebrate

Re: Greatest Post-Apoc Film of All Time

I seem to remember a Gene Roddenberry(sp?) show pilot that was made into a TV movie about an astronaut who is put into suspended animation and wakes a few hundred years after WW3...Genesis II or something like that?

 

 

Matt "Fuzzy-memory-and-all" Frisbee

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?

I would put this into the category of "script immunity' date='" unless there's some likely reason for the NPC to do that digging. This is [i']pulp,[/i] darn it, not a Nitpicker's Guide.

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

Wow!

I didn't expect uncontrolled adulation for this character concept, but enough people have viewed it without comment that I am beginning to think it must not be nearly as cool as I think it is.

 

I was cooking dinner when it came to me, maybe the heat addled my brain or something.

 

I just started thinking about the whole Sir Launcelot concept, and then thought about a hard-boiled detective, and something clicked.

 

If he somehow had managed to survive, perhaps through a curse, what would he be like?

 

Eventually, he would probably want to leave Europe behind and get a fresh start in America.

 

He would also have the typical, hard-boiled, "Dames are nothing but trouble, but I will risk my life to defend them" thing going on, based on his past history.

 

For some reason it just seemed right for the wierder edges of the pulp genre.

 

KA.

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

I'm trying to figure out how to do the A-team in Hero. Pulp seems like the best genre considering how the show worked. My big problem is how to treat guns. The A-team didn't kill people' date=' they shot at people. Would this be a PRE attack or some varient on STUN where the bad guys surrender when their damage ran out?[/quote']

 

Yes, definately pulp. I have a question that you prolly have considered, but I would like to know how you will handle it.

 

"What do we do with the prisoners?" Hero is designed to knock an opponent out, not kill them, in line with its Champions origin. In Fantasy Hero the rules suggest that any extras simply die so that heroes don't have the unheroic task of executing unconsious orcs, bandits, etc.

 

Say your A Team takes out the generic band of toughs. Now what? Leave them tied up and hope you've put enough distance behind you when The Forces of Law & Order show up?

 

Midas

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.

That could work well with Nekhbet' date=' the Egyptian vulture goddess, depicted as a white vulture representing purification.[/quote']

 

Just had an absurd vision: Tolkien meets George Romero. The Battle of the Morannon: "The vultures are coming! We're saved! The vultures are coming!"

 

More seriously, do you know much about the relationships between Egyptian dieties? I prefer Set, but Anubis is a viable choice, as lord of ghouls. A war between the ghoul people and the vulture people would make an interesting addition to a weird pulp campaign. "Ghouls only come out at night because vultures attack them like flying pirana."

 

Dragging this back to the original topic: In at least one Call of Cthulhu scenario, it was presented that a necromancer has difficulty controling both ghouls and zombies. The ghouls consider zombies to be a walking deli bar, and will attack the zombies the moment the Boss's back is turned.

 

Midas

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