Dale A. Ward

Re: Firefly Yes, that was one of the big draws to the reruns for me. I despise Fox for what they did to this great series. As for the unaired episodes, I was watching the DVD set and loaded in one of those episodes... and realized that I had, in fact, already seen it. At least one of the "unaired episodes" is mislabelled as such.

Re: Nanotech! ~sigh~ And, let us ne'er forget the horrors of Dihydrogen Oxide!!

Re: Nanotech! To quote Lucy Van Pelt when Schroeder finally played Jingle Bells the way she wanted it... That's It!!

Re: Magic Items Thread In reference to the Dimensional Bag... You say that no intelligence can enter the bag. Thus, if you stick your head in it, you die? Also... could you put your entire body in it if you leave your head sticking out? Inquiring minds want to know!!

Re: Good News For Time Travelers! ~falls out of his chair laughing~ You say that every time...

Re: Astrogator's Handbook Cool!! Thanks, Basil!!

Re: Astrogator's Handbook The only date I see says "Copyright 1998". And, thanks so much for the equation!! According to my slightly wonky memory, that's exactly the one. Just fill in the XYZs and turn the crank! (( As an aside, can someone please explain the reputation system on these forums. I feel that Cancer should receive some for posting that equation, but I don't know how to give any or how much I should give. Thanks. ))

Re: Nanotech! I'm of the opinion that it has the alternative beat all to heck and back again... But, that's just me.

Re: Good News For Time Travelers! After reviewing the previous discussion from my vantage point here... outside the normal time stream, I have decided to let you all know what really happens when you travel back in time and change things. It's really quite amusing when you watch it happen to someone else. The writers of the paper are correct when they say you can't cause a paradox... at least, that's the way it looks on your side of the clock. Actually, when you change something in the past, it causes EVERYTHING to change... including your memory of what originally happened! Thus, from your POV, no change occurred. You will, of course, have no knowledge of my telling you this if you ever decide to go back and change something. Time is funny that way.

Re: Good News For Time Travelers! My biggest question is... Who would want to kill their grandfather in the first place?!? I mean, both of mine were pretty likeable old coots!! My maternal grandMOTHER, on the other hand... ~grrr~

Re: Nanotech! As I recall, Robert Heinlein wrote about a similar discovery about 50 years ago, in his Future History series of novels. I can't recall the names of the two characters who invented this thing, but it was the start of a major technological revolution. This thing was a panel that produced light when an electrical current was applied (big deal, eh? a lightbulb does that). but, what made it interesting was that, if you shined light on it, it produced electricity! Sort of a hybrid between a photovoltaic cell and a lightbulb... doesn't sound all that impressive on the surface. But, it was the gateway to a whole new world. Heinlein has been dead for almost 20 years, and he still amazes me.

Re: Astrogator's Handbook I was digging around in my old files yesterday and I found a .PDF file from SCI FI-ARIZONA entitled Astrogator's Handbook - Practical Astrogation for Science Fiction Writers by Michael McCollum. This is/was a freely-distributable e-book, and I would be happy to send it to whoever would be able to host it on their website. This book has star charts for a 50 LY cube centered on Sol, with a listing of 272 stars within that cube. The list table shows all the data about the star, including its X-Y-Z coordinates. If any of you mathematically-inclined folks happen to know the equation for determining the distance between two points in three-dimensional space, you could use those coordinates to find the distance between any two stars on the charts. BTW, if you know that equation, please post it here. I know its on my Universe map, but that's in a box under my bed... and I just DON'T GO THERE ANYMORE! Hell... I just noticed that this is the file that started this thread... forgive my stupidity...

Re: MM&M as a Star Hero resource About 20 years ago, I was a GM for two different gaming groups... one playing AD&D and the other playing Traveller. Since my time was at a premium, I had to share resources whenever possible. I had a world map for my AD&D campaign, which I was able to use in my Traveller campaign by using an old Judges' Guild product. I can't remember the title right now, but it contained write-ups for many alien races from SF literature. These write-ups included very detailed physical descriptions, and I went through them to find the closest SF analogs to various fantasy races. For example, I believe I used Fuzzies (from H. Beam Piper's novels) for halflings. Sorry I couldn't give more details but it's been 20 years, and my memory isn't what it used to be... I think. I keep forgetting.

Re: Alternate History

Re: Question for you Traveller fans. ~grin~ Who needs reprints? I still have all of my originals!

Re: How can you feed this many people? Greetings! In this situation, I look to literature for inspiration. In particular, I look to Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern. In that series of novels, you have a group of people (very much in the minority) that provide a valuable service for the rest of the world. This service takes up so much of their lives that the rest of the world contributes to the survival of this group. Perhaps, the population of your small coastal town provides a similar service. Maybe, they are a monastic society that protect a great artifact, or they're all wizards that maintain a magical sleep spell over a world-devouring creature that lies at the bottom of the ocean just off the coast. Whatcha think?

Re: Astrogator's Handbook I dug around in my old game bag and found it. The title of the game is indeed "Universe", and it was published by SSI. If you can find one in used condition (with the map intact), it's worth buying for that.

Re: Firefly And, some men!

Re: Campaign Paradigms 4. A nickel shy of two bits.

Re: Firefly

Re: Doc Savage Write-up? Since my only acquaintance with Farmer's Wold/Newton works comes from my reading "Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life", I would sincerely appreciate it if someone could PM me with the punchline to this in-joke. And, maybe some "Suggested Reading" lists, as well...

Re: Firefly Hero Actually, I was reading on a "Firefly" fan site (or, was it a Traveller fan site) that Joss Whedon had been told about the marked similarities between his scripts and the things that happen during Traveller games. I hear that he had someone get him a copy of the The Traveller Book, and he liked it. That was probably the seed of the idea that led to the licensing of the Firefly game.

Re: Firefly I'm sorry if I gave you that impression. The episodes themselves are quite complete. They merely took the "plain vanilla" intro that was common in the last 5 or 6 episodes and applied it to all of the episodes. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the intro that has only the theme song... I just miss that opening monologue. By the way, a note of interest... one of the bonus tracks in the DVD set is the original mix of that theme song, sung by Joss Whedon himself... to his own guitar accompaniment! Not bad, really... but don't quit your day job, Joss. ~grin~

Re: Astrogator's Handbook A few years back, there was a RPG entitled "Universe" (published by one of those game companies that put out very complex strategic games). It was mostly unplayable as an RPG, but it had one playing aid that made it worth the money to me. This was a large, fold-out poster map of space, showing every star within 50LY of Sol/Terra. The main feature of this map was that it was based on actual astronomical data, and it showed the X-Y-Z coordinates of each star with a mathematical formula which would calculate the distance between any two stars. I got quite a lot of use out of that map in my Traveller-based Near Earth games.

Re: Firefly Greetings! I watched most of the original series when it was being aired on Fox. I was fascinated, but confused by the apparent lack of continuity. Then, I discovered how Fox had done Joss a dirty trick by airing the episodes out of order. When the series came out on DVD, I jumped at the chance to get them and I've finally watched every episode in its proper order. It's amazing how much more sense it all makes now. I only have one regret about the DVDs. When the shows were originally aired, they started every episode with a monologue. At first, this monologue was spoken by Capt. Mal but, in later episodes, they gave the job to Shepherd Book. It was kinda like Capt. Kirk's "Space... the final frontier." speech in that it contained a lot of background information about the setting... then, they'd segue into the opening theme song. I really enjoyed that monologue. I was very disappointed that they didn't include it in the DVD set... they could have, at least, put it in the bonus tracks. Just recently, I saw the trailer for the movie... I've been pumped ever since! If I can locate the link, I'll post it here for anyone who's interested.