Midas

Re: Star Trek: Rebel Generation "How little?" Scary accurate, IMO. I always found TNG to be at best -unsettling-. I won't go quite so far as to say I loathed it, but I refuse to play ST RPGs post Kirk, just on principle. HA! I knew there was a reason I thought DS9 was the best of the ST franchises. I loved the: "The Federation is here! You are all saved!" Massive "We are SO not impressed." from all the other races in the sector. Even the Bajorans took a "Well they're better than the Cardassians - usually." Attitude. Clonus, rep if the rep guard allows it. Midas

Re: My Elves Are Different! Decades ago, someone ran a DnD world with humans, elves, dwarves, and orcs. The backstory: A Federation ship with a crew of humans, Vulcans, and Tellerites crashed on a planet with after a duel with a Romulan ship. Guess where the "orcs" came from. To me, the ?Vorta? the Changling's administrator race, were a lot more "elfin" than the Vulcans. Ears and rangely build not withstanding. (Which brings us back to the "how do *you* define an elf question.) Re the "few human" question: In original DnD, Gygax was forthrightly humanochauvinist. "In MY SYSTEM! MINE! you can play a member of the important race, or you can be one of the sucky marginal people!" Talk about paging all contrarians.

Re: New and updated 3D starmap Now that is amazing. I could only follow half of that, but I admire the grunt work involved.

Re: Kingdon-Level Napoleonic Setting The problem is that Hopcroftland didn't have the logistics to launch a campaign through The Florals. Tabletopia was a pacifistic nation though, and probably would never have geared up for a war if they hadn't been forced into it by the Coffee Stain Affair. BTW: I pronounce it table TOPE ia, does anyone call it table TAHP ia? Midas (Sorry it's taken so long to reply, dratted TRW always screwing up priorities)

Re: ...If I End Up In an Urban Fantasy Novel

Re: Kingdon-Level Napoleonic Setting

Re: PCs owning slaves: Do, or Don't? Dif?

Re: LOTR thoughts You could subscribe to the MERP yahoo group, that is where I first heard of it. But that said, IIRC (a very weak recall mind you) this 1/2 Maia was a somebody's campaign Big Bad, that became almost canon. The idea was in the To Cool Not To Be True catagory.

Re: Tyche That's pretty much the Nemesis Theory (a brown dwarf in a cometary orbit around Sol), which TPTB debunked a decade or so ago. Interesting that it has made a comeback. Midas

Re: What would you do as GM when our intrepid . . . . . . Since this is fantasy/HORROR, I presume that script immunity isn't much of an issue. "Anybody can die at any time." Thus: It depends on whether the forrester has made any comments about whether to get the witch to the monastery or not. If he's of the "let's perform our mission and get her to the monastery" he's got a Special Save (the witch will pull mystic strings because she wants to get there herself). If he's made "lets just off her now and go home" remarks, well, effectively he's tripped a hunted he didn't know he had. Seriously. If the DM is following the script, living or dying depends on how much effort the characters put into performing the mission. If he's trying to get her to the monastary, then the Blair Witch/Hellhound pack just rustle the bushes menacingly, maybe with the wasp swarm noted above. If not, he's probably looking at being surrounded by a pack of demon wolves, and even if the rest of the crew comes to the rescue, he personally is toast. Midas (Who'se seen that one)

Re: dennis the menace Why not, You and the Palindromedary are multiposters to a single post. Seriously, I thought about my earlier post and decided a psy crock "only pretends to be annoyed by Dennis, secretly enjoys the little pest's company " would work.

Re: dennis the menace Like I said, "Force of Nature" characters are hard to work with, he either sparks a plot or he doesn't. (considering a post on the Champions forum: "How to run a Force of Nature character concept"). Love the write up, though. Esp the Combat luck and the neg rep. What for the unluck? EDIT: Must spread rep.

Re: Pulp THIS! Whats the story behind the image? Now THAT would have made a great theme song for Season of the Witch.

Re: dennis the menace I guess, though it is a bit more complicated: The reason I suggested DNPC/Hunted was that -as much as Wilson grumbles- he really *likes* having Dennis put some energy into his routine. With a strict hunted, Wilson would just avoid Dennis, telling the Mitchells to keep their brat out of his hair, but he doesn't. Dennis is with it enough to know when he *really* isn't wanted and when Wilson is just being a grump. Re the OP: Dennis is a force of nature, sort of a junior Hulk. He's not really hyperactive, but his schick is inducing chaos by his very existance (not as deliberately as his British cousin, which is another story all together). How does one make a viable Force of Nature character in roleplaying terms?

Re: Fantasy game props Also, you just missed the after Christmas sales of "Chrismas Village Decor." I've bought many props at 50%: Trees (pine, of course), roads,RR & street signs. It is rare, but I have seen Easter Village props. If you want to skip the life size rabbits and egg shaped houses, there are still things like fences, etc.

Re: Historical Late Medieval Period RPG What do you mean by late Medieval? I'm guessing post Crusades (I'd call that era "High Medieval" myself), and pre Tudor (which I'd put as about the start of the Renn period). So Pirate, Swashbuckler, or Conquistador sourcebooks would be too late for what you have in mind?

Re: dennis the menace There are two of them y'know. A British artist came up with and published his own Dennis strip within days of Ketchum's one. (I'm presuming, you being in Delaware that you are refering to the American one. ) Going with the US one, what would you do with the character? He's really kind of a hunted/watched/dnpc combo for Mr. Wilson. What would the character do, in a roleplaying sense, as a lead character?

Re: Define [steam/diesel/whatever] - punk? Beck writing fiction Haven't read either (allergic to message heavy text - I'd probably agree with Rand, but my inner lit student would constantly interrupting the flow with "What did the auther really mean by that?" interjections:eg:). Maybe Heinlein?

Re: poison I'd say you are looking at a Sleeping Beauty type of transform. ie instead of the target waking up when kissed, the target wakes up ten days later. The more math happy way to do it is to hit the target with a stun drain with extra recovery time, so that the target's stun doesn't stays below zero for ten days. The really math heavy way is to pair the stun drain with a REC drain, and have the REC return at ten days, and the stun follows soon thereafter.

Re: Define [steam/diesel/whatever] - punk? Sort of a tautology there. Yes, the goth subculture and the punk subculture are different, but not by much from the outside POV. Or does this refer to gothic as in 19th century Deserted Castle on the Moorland genre? Steampunk without the steam?

Re: Define [steam/diesel/whatever] - punk? Sure. Interesting project, but who would you label as your alienated group? As genre fiction, it's been done to death - megacorps anyone? In the real world, the US has shifted about as far left as it is politically possible (ie the Obama administration is center left, contrary to the howls from my side of the political spectrum) so, tecnically, the alienated group would be...the capitalists?

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Legends of the G'hardians The Owls of Cthulhu (mis-overheard in a conversation today)

Re: Define [steam/diesel/whatever] - punk? almost what amanojaku said. I've never noticed the metameaning of underclass alienation that he writes of, though. My definition of "-punk" is a tvtropes-Crapsack World with the elements of nihilism and dystopia lampshaded. A bit like Noir, only moreso. An example of Magicpunk? I'm currently reading a popular series of novels where the protagonist is stuck in a Kafkaesque situation of arbitrary punishments and rewards* with little clue how either is administered: A person can be sent to a hellhole prison by Disappearence - no need of a trial, and said prison is guarded by soul sucking Ringwraiths without even the product codes filed off.

Re: Planets of SF Author Hats Disney: This planet has a severe population deficit. This is caused by two factors: First, children appearently appear by spontaneous generation, since no one has any idea of the existance of the sex act. Secondly, mothers tend to die off before their daughters reach puberty. While few animals are capable of speech, many are fully intelligent, and usually smarter than the humans. The planet has been placed under quarentine due to the alarming incedence of sudden onset diabetes in off planet visitors.

Re: Fantasy uses for the North Pole The Call of Cthulhu campaign Walker in the Wastes climaxes at a fight at the North Pole. It takes place in a giant castle that appears only at the Winter solstace (why? no one knows). I've been tempted to have the heroes helped out by volleys of arrows from dark corridors, if I ever ran that campaign. (Note that I would run it more as a standard pulp than a Lovecraft adventure - Nick and his helpers are a last ditch defense keeping Ithaqua locked up).