DShomshak

Mass transformation of people into a different species.
 
Example: In an issue of CAPTAIN AMERICA years ago, Marvel villain The Viper transformed the population of Washington, D. C. into berserk snake-people. I don't remember why she though this was a good idea, but as best I recall she's kind of nuts.
 
Marvel villain Stegron the Dinosaur Man wanted to turn people into dino-humanoids like himself. He expected he'd rule the altered humanity.
 
In a recent adventure, the PCs in my campaign fought a mad villain from a doomed future in which humanity was almost extinct after a massive nuclear war against the and between megavillains. A group of survivor scientists mutated themselves into grotesque but nigh-unkillable and radiation-resistant creatures (sort of like D&D Umber Hulks). They realized, however, that they were too few to form a viable breeding population. They sent the villain back in time to get a heaqd start by mutating a bunch of people before the war starts, whether the people want it or not. Reconstructing the process with available tools required experimentation, though, resulting in ferocious mutant creatures in the city sewers and subways -- including victims of not-quite-successful human experiments. CHAMPIONS dungeon crawl!
 
Dean Shomshak

Ships connected by string relativity paradox worked out, perhaps comprehensibly

Mass transformation of people into a different species.
 
Example: In an issue of CAPTAIN AMERICA years ago, Marvel villain The Viper transformed the population of Washington, D. C. into berserk snake-people. I don't remember why she though this was a good idea, but as best I recall she's kind of nuts.
 
Marvel villain Stegron the Dinosaur Man wanted to turn people into dino-humanoids like himself. He expected he'd rule the altered humanity.
 
In a recent adventure, the PCs in my campaign fought a mad villain from a doomed future in which humanity was almost extinct after a massive nuclear war against the and between megavillains. A group of survivor scientists mutated themselves into grotesque but nigh-unkillable and radiation-resistant creatures (sort of like D&D Umber Hulks). They realized, however, that they were too few to form a viable breeding population. They sent the villain back in time to get a heaqd start by mutating a bunch of people before the war starts, whether the people want it or not. Reconstructing the process with available tools required experimentation, though, resulting in ferocious mutant creatures in the city sewers and subways -- including victims of not-quite-successful human experiments. CHAMPIONS dungeon crawl!
 
Dean Shomshak

Immanentize the Eschaton.
 
Dean Shomshak

Stranger Things is like one long narrative so yes, it is worthwhile to see Season 1 before Season 2.
 
That said, as the library only has season 2, go with that, and ask if they can get season 1 in for you — maybe interlibrary loan. if yes, watch season 1 first. 

STRONGLY suggest watching Season 1 as S2 will be very confusing without doing so.  It also the best season, although the latest S4 comes close.  As Bazza mentioned, it is one long narrative arc with each season closing off a main story thread while leaving open many subplots.
 
If you are a fan of sci-fi/fantasy/horror (and 80s nostalgia) you won't be disappointed.

As CV3 mentions, the villain Alchemica really isn't veryt bright (or possibly sane) in using her transmutative powers to rob commit crimes when there are so many ways she could make lots of money legally. Waste disposal is one of them: Transmute radioactive or chemical waste into something harmless, or even useful. No matter what she was paid, it would probably be cheaper for the company or government than mundane disposal costs.
 
One of my friends ran an adventure where the enemy was super-powered raccoons. A supervillain had hired a waste disposal company to dispose of the chemical waste from the experiments by which he gave himself super-powers. The trucker was crooked and just dumped the barrels of chemical waste instead of taking them to a licensed disposal facility. A few years later the barrels broke open...
 
Dean Shomshak

Browsing through the dictionary, "Franklin" appears to be another English term for a free but not noble person. The dictionary definition sounds like it could be equal to either yeoman or gentry. Since I am not going to go haring off on historical research, I suppose you could declare it equal to yeoman.
 
"Freeholder" still sounds best to me, though. My dictionary actually lists that as a synonym or definition of "yeoman."
 
Dean Shomshak

I had a favor to ask about this actually. I enjoy the world creation draft enough that occasionally I talk to people on Reddit and so forth. It made me wonder how it would be to put the game into a format that could be readily shared, like a pdf.
 
So I made one.
 
The favor is, could you review it?
Fantasy World Creation Draft.pdf

From one of the articles linked by Cygnia:
 
The leaked images also show the rules state "Races in SFNG [Star Frontiers: New Genesis] are not unlike races in the real world. Some are better at certain things than others, and some races are superior than others. We get into this later on in the manual." More eugenics from the white writer who can't form coherent sentences.
The leaked manual also describes the Black Lives Matter and Anti-Fascist movements as radical - because being opposed to racism and not liking fascists is apparently extreme.
 
It seems pretty clear the writer is avowedly racist, not merely clueless.
 
Dean Shomshak
 

This has been around for a while, but I don't seem to have posted a link to it.
 
NASA Exoplanet Archive
 
Lots and lots of info there.  Designed for the pros, it may take a while to wrap your mind around everything there.

Blot the Day: Change Environment 8” radius, -4 to Normal Sight PER Rolls, Long Lasting (1 Day, +20 pts) 0 Concentration (initial 0 DCV; -½), Extra Time (initial 1 Turn; -½)
 
 
 
UMMM... How is this affecting the whole planet?

You could just be totally anachronistic and sanitize it like it was still the early days of political correctness...
 
Yeoperson
Yeopersun  (to avoid "son," as also masculine, I kid you not)
 
If you have multiple races in the setting 
Yeobeing 
 
Or like D&D did with Lizardmen
Yeofolk
 
Or not-draconian-we-swear
Yeoborn
 
You could work from Freeman the same ways as above, or to Dune-ish Fremen, which still contains "men", so hey, Fremyn could be fun.
 
I've read novels were the used Freeholder and shortened it to "Holder" that seemed to flow pretty naturally. 
 
You could make up a word with no etymology, at all, too.
Wir'rin
Voldhn
Quaeoi
Nye 
 
 

Whatever you pick is probably fine. Speaking from my 40+ years of experience as a GM and worldbuilder, I can say your players probably will probably neither notice nor care about your choices for such details... unless they get in the way of a PC getting what the player wants, in which no amount of internal logic will prevent complaining. So don't stress about it.
 
In fact... it might be more interesting to try this exercise: Write down the domains you want available on slips of paper, Put the slips in a bag and shake them up. Pull out three domains at random. See if you can make up a god for that set of domains, no matter how deranged the combination may seem. With a little work, you can probably come up with a myth to justify why the same god deals with, I don't know, Death, Light, and Travel.
 
I also recommend the World Creation Superdrafts threads in the Non-Gaming Discussion forum. A game of competitive shared world construction, in which each participant takes the role of one of the gods making that world. There've been six so far, I think, in which people came up with amazingly creative gods In the last one, I went rather conventional with a God of Love; but other people produced gods of Metal, Colors, Moons, Doors, and a truly terrifying God of Tyranny -- among others. I guarantee these will broaden your horizons when it comes to designing gods.
 
EDIT: Here's the link to the last one. Enjoy.
World Creation Superdraft 6: May 2022 - Non-Gaming Discussion - HERO Games
 
Dean Shomshak

Like others, I would have to wonder at the sanity and intelligence of anyone who would fake up my existence, by whatever method. I've failed ad darn near everything, and not even in an interesting way.
 
If it's an entire simulated world, my existence is substantially unchanged.
 
Whatever the mode of my putative unreality, I would continue taking care of my mother, to the extent I can do so. I take my obligations seriously, even if it turned out that I didn't have a mother because I wasn't real. Once that obligation was lifted, I think I would go mad from the revelation that the world was nothing like I thought it was, and devote the rest of my fraudulent existence to finding the Simulator and making them suffer for it.
 
Dean Shomshak

I wanted a major new villain for my latest Champions adventure, who for reasons of plot had to be an alien. Here's what I came up with. I liked him enough to make an illustration and then format it as a pdf, just to see if I could remember how to do it. Having gone that far, I might as well share the result. I hope you can find a use for Nightfall in your games. He's written for 5th edition because that's what my gaming group still uses.
 
Dean Shomshak
 
EDIT: This link deactivated. See below for the new link.
 
Nightfall-Corrected 5e.pdf

Rig up a way to extract useful power from this modest-scale but infinite energy source.  Duh.

An axis mundi connecting the mortal world to the Sky Realm of the spirits. Or the spot where the Old Ones can re-enter the worlds when an eclipse happens directly over the spire.
 
Rocky shell over an ancient superweapon/defense system, like in the ST: TOS episode "This Side of Paradise."
 
Phallic symbol, site of rituals the mods probably wouldn't let us describe.
 
The hill where the giant Dobre-Kaleha shouted defiance at the gods and was turned to stone for his blasphemy.
 
I could go on.
 
Dean Shomshak

An axis mundi connecting the mortal world to the Sky Realm of the spirits. Or the spot where the Old Ones can re-enter the worlds when an eclipse happens directly over the spire.
 
Rocky shell over an ancient superweapon/defense system, like in the ST: TOS episode "This Side of Paradise."
 
Phallic symbol, site of rituals the mods probably wouldn't let us describe.
 
The hill where the giant Dobre-Kaleha shouted defiance at the gods and was turned to stone for his blasphemy.
 
I could go on.
 
Dean Shomshak