Midas

Re: Victorian Women's Art of Self Defense http://www.heliograph.com/trmgs/trmgs2/adventuress.shtml For everyone's consideration. Midas

Re: Anita Blake beta writeup Quibble: Other than the BOD being a bit high: 5' 3" 110lbs doesn't quite go 15 to 18 BOD, IMHO. Keep the combat luck, damage reduction et al though. I think she might have a superheroic speed, start at 4, at least 5 by her later adventures. Possibly super dex? I guess you have to decide if she is a heroic or super character. By the lastest books she is really a super, but then Hamilton is gearing up for a god level show down by the last book I read. My first thought was "where's Edward?" Glad you got him in the followup posts. Final question: Is this writeup designed for a game set in Hamiltons Vampire World? Or is the idea being able to have a "Summon ungodly capable vampire fighter" spell? Midas

Re: Pulparize It! On the Shakespeare thing: Four teens are in love, but not with each other. Girl 1 is in love with boy 1, who doesn't know she exists. He only has eyes for girl 2, who is only interested in boy 2, who isn't interested in anybody in particular, but his parents are pushing him to get hitched. They hop in their jalapy and head off to see an amatuer performance of Romeo & Juliet off in the hinterlands... sidenote: I thought about a drive in, but did they have those back then, or is that more a 50's phenom? Midas Who dislikes being confused with Bottoms: "Just the ears, not the whole head!"

Re: Firgate Class Starships Interesting idea. You need to define "vehicle" here though. I think your gun rule is to cover big guns like those on WW II battleships, right? OK, so is an airplane a vehicle? It would get its armor, and no negative DCV. Kinda the opposite of what you are going for. Just 2 cents from the hoard of Midas

Re: 4th Edition supplements?? NO. Being that weird menace is my fave setting, I've found it to be an interesting book. 4th ed had a new -and unwieldy- mechanic for spirits. That mechanic was replaced by the far simpler "inherent power" rules in 5th ed. Basically it was a whole new set of rules for one variant of desolid. So that section is useless, and the large section of monsters -interesting and otherwise- needs a complete rewrite. It contains three campaigns, a Gothic set post US Civil War, a pulp horror set in the early 20th cent, and a magical conspiracy set in the late 20th century. The first thing I will say is the the campaigns are *HARD.* The players are normals, and the villians are devious, entrenched, powerful, and have the backing of hell itself, a quasi Cthulloid, and an evil demigod respectively. If you don't have good characters or lots of breaks handy, it can devolve into a Sandy Peterson killfest pretty quickly. I also found the third section to be "flat" somehow. All three campaigns are atmospheric with 1) Blood and Brimstone 2) Raven monster hordes, or 3) shapeshifters taking over the planet. So you have Hardbitten Cowboys vs Satanspawn, Noir PIs vs Voodoo masters, and ... Guys in Flannel Suits watching other guys doing mysterious things? Midas

Re: Pulparize It! Hi all! Re Firefly: Wouldn't it work better if the crew were say White Russians? Somebody who had lost a war recently, and were trying to avoid the winning side. Or if you prefer, anti imperialists of some sort who were politically in favor of shutting down the European empires of the times? Re Avengers: Purdey was always my fave of the Fem sidekicks. Why is Venus Smith so determinably forgotten? McNee doesn't even mention her. (And I've only seen 2nd season Avengers once, I just found it interesting that there was another sidekick, never mentioned). A couple of my suggestions: For the anime folks, you forgot one...Young Serena, determined to go about her business of getting out of school as little as possible, is contacted by talking cat Luna, who informs her that she is the reincarnation of the Moon Princess, and she must save the world from terrible invaders. If she and her friends don't stop them, in the near future Imperial Japan will make a disasterious alliance with European powers... Um..."Here be spoilers" for the just finished season of Surface. A few lines of space just in case... Surface: Strange animals have appeared in the oceans. The protagonists, "chosen" at random, must defeat a deathless mad scientist who has created monsters capable of causing earthquakes, tusnami and munching the survivors. A huge "Noah's Ark" has been built holding "frozen" samples of all life on earth. (In the series, DNA samples for cloning, I suppose, Pulp era weird tech). Some GREAT ideas in this thread, Midas

Re: Fantasy Adventures Or Why are we always underground...again Re Handwavium. Depends on what is happening in the campaign. If it is immaterial to the campaign, not a problem. But I can think of two situations where it is critical. First, suppose someone has a wagonload of food for sale to a Dwarf hold. Do the Dwarfs turn it down, because food magically appears anyway? (OK, in some games, that is exactly what happens). Second, consider that Dwarf city from Dragonlance (again, I cannot recall the name, and all my DL stuff is in storage). The entire history of the area was centered around a famine. The Dwarfs closed their doors because they had only enough food for themselves, and none to spare for charity. So how did they survive the 400 years until the Heroes of the Lance reopened the city doors? In reference, I'm trying to develop a Lovecraftian world, where Handwavium and Unobtainium are only available as Star Metal, brought by Cthulhu from Xoth. Everything else requires some kind of explanation. Midas

Re: Women in Pulp adventures? Patricia ?Holm? Simon Templar's GF at the start of the series. She disappeared somewhere around book 12, when the author decided to go with the new flame per story trope. Another character class, not necessarily a particular person, is the Adventuress. You can read up on this type of person in Space 1889, as she is more well known from Victorian times, though she has appeared much later. Basically the adventuress is a woman of independant means and not too many scruples, who is out to make it any way she can in a man's world. The best example I can think of off hand is Amanda from Highlander. Others might be Margaret from Lost World, Jade from the original Johnny Quest, possibly Jane from the WWII comic strip (if you want to go lighthearted and "spicy").

Re: Fantasy Adventures Or Why are we always underground...again Anyway, there is at least one type of huge dungeon: The underground city. Think Hurculaneum, Myth Drannor, any city of Tekemel; or for that matter any Dwarf or Orc metropolis. (thinking of Moria or that Dwarf city in Dragonlance). Yerright: Feeding is always a question. It's been discussed to death for decades, anybody ever come up with a solution? Mushrooms? Giant Earthworms? Really big lakes full of cave fish? In the case of orcs, other orcs? Midas

Re: Third Magic System (Please Help) There's battlemagic from Runequest. It is a weak but easy system. The adventurer has paid a local temple to teach him a rune, which he inscribes on the back of his shield for example. Whenever he concentrates on that particular rune, he can use its power. So if he concentrates on the "shield" rune, he gets a few points of resistant PD. If he conscentrates on the "flameblade" rune, he gets a DC of flame damage added to his sword damage. Midas