Inu

Re: Irksome players

Re: Irksome players Players who are out to 'beat' the GM. I'm running a dozen NPCs at once in some scenes, plus keeping villain actions and motivations in mind, and the environment. I'm bound to slip up occasionally. I need a certain level of trust from my players, and I need to put trust in them. The trust I need from them is to not be out to do them down. So if the players come up with a clever scheme that exploits a mistake the villains have made, I first have to look at it and say "is this valid, or is this silly? Is this mistake the villains have made a valid one, or is it me just overlooking something?" If it's the latter, then I modify things. "Sorry, I like your plan, but the situation is slightly different." Some players feel ripped off like that, like I'm changing things just to screw with them. At the same time, I let players do some of the same. If they completely overlooked something that the characters should have realised, I allow a certain level of take-back. Depends how long ago it was, how much has happened since, how much the retcon would change. If the answer is 'shortly, not much, very little', then no problem. I just run my games cooperatively with the players. If my players are going to assume that I'm out to ruin their plans, then I can't run for them. If I'm going to be held to a standard I can't reach, in juggling my villain actions... I can't run for that group. I understand that style of gameplay, I just can't put up with it myself.

Re: Irksome players Makes me wanna play a duplicator!

Re: Age of Sail: Sailors and Officers Skills

Re: Teleportation as a WMD And any long-range teleporter would need to impart velocity. Teleport from one side of the world to the other... suddenly, you're going at 2000kph against the earth's roatation! Double the splatter.

Re: I'm in the market for a house.... I'd charge points.... OR money. It depends on the situation, really. Buying a house in town, it could be gotten for money. In the country, that involves negotiation with the local lord, or granting of land, or a heap of issues. So the PC can roleplay through that, pay the megabucks... or just slap down five XP and say 'I inherit it'. Clean and simple.

Re: Age of Sail: Sailors and Officers Skills Or ADoM. Mmm. Bloody pork.

Re: Living Hollow World Hollow World was pretty neat. I've actually always been a fan of Mystara. Got a game running in that setting right now, as a matter of fact. The individual nations are pretty rockin', they need only slight modifications to be great game worlds (population sizes are one area where they're way out). The world as a whole is a bit much of a collage rather than an actual crafted realm... but I haven't thought of a good enough solution for that, so I'm just gonna leave it be. Hollow World at least had a reason for being crazy like that. I guess that's why it worked out so well for the setting.

Re: Cyberpunk / Dystopian Adventure Formulas Stranded: your elite team/gang/military outfit/shadowrunners/thieves have been dumped in the middle of nowhere/enemy territory/south american jungle/desert and have to find their way back. Particularly common in cases where the expected pickup is cancelled or blown up.

Re: Cyberpunk / Dystopian Adventure Formulas Oh! Then there's the 'caught in the middle' plot. Two gangs/corporations/small third world armies/etc are tearing up the place. You're in the middle, and have to survive. Courier: transport object from point A to point B. Survive many deadly ambushes on the way. (Opposite of Ambush). Survival: similar to 'caught in the middle', but more pointed. In revenge for an attack against, them BigMegaCorporation4 has dispatched killers to destroy the PCs. They have to survive the hitmen and strike back.

Re: Cyberpunk / Dystopian Adventure Formulas Despite its emphasis on elite criminal action and violence, cyberpunk is also more flexible. I like my cyperpunk very noir -- so one of my favorite character types is the private investigator. In which case, investigation is a major plot type (some crime has occurred, or a person has gone missing. Must track them down. May be combined with raid/heist/crash/sabotage/etc, but may also exist on its own). Investigation can also be done by characters who aren't in that profession. Buddy turns up dead. Must track down who did it, so that they can pay. Often a lead-in to raid/heist/crash/sabotage/etc.

Re: Tome of Magic Conversion That could prolly be adapted, yah.

Re: Tome of Magic Conversion I found Shadow Magic fairly uninteresting, but the system was pretty cool. Same with truenaming. What I did really like was binding. It's not actually summoning -- it's joining with a spirit (a 'vestige') and gaining power from them, becoming a gestalt entity, rather than summoning it wholesale. It allows for a character who can change their skillset daily, since they can bind with different vestiges each day. In HERO terms, a multiform that can only be changed once each 24 hours, with side effects (mental influence) in case of a failed skill check.

Re: They wont die Heh. YEah, they were emblematic of Trek's problem of escalation. They didn't know how to have incremental escalation. Wasn't enough to have a new race who just had a couple of tricks that let them outmaneuver and destroy the Borg. No, they had to be so incredibly powerful that they could UTTERLY ANNIHILATE the Borg. Therefore, I never found them the least bit interesting, even when they were kicking butt. It was just too easy, betraying scriptwriters with no flair or style. I think mine was in 'shattered', where the old-style 7 of 9 takes out a buncha raiders quick-smart. Walks in, soaks up a phaser blast, punches 'em all out. Rapid, no-nonsense, classy. Turned the tables in a few seconds. Actually, I really liked that episode for a whole lotta reasons. It was the first good Voyager episode I'd ever seen, and made me realise that such an oxymoron was possible.

Re: Favorite Sci-Fi Weapon The one that flew towards the target, then popped up and hit 'em on the top of the turret? I liked that one too.

Re: They wont die Not only that, but they won't see you as a threat until you actually atack them. Strike that. They won't see people moving inside the cube as a threat. Ships outside the cube they'll happily chase and assimilate. People inside the cube? They let 'em wander around, plant their bombs, until they accidentally trip a wire and the drones come after them. Now, the scenes of them sneaking around a cube were very scary. The first couple of times. It's a tactic that should have worked ONCE, with some kind of explanation (say, harvested borg transponders, so the hive intelligence thought they were drones). After that, never. Next team to try it should have been assimilated on the spot. And I also dislike the whole 'big threat able to be taken out byd estroying the McGuffin that holds them together'. My own Borg wouldn't have any kind of central broadcaster/'Vinculum' thingy. If you have two drones in proximity, you have a hive intelligence. That's all you need. The cube is transportation and a home and regeneration pods, and there's no central thing you can destroy to take down the hive. The Borg are the living embodiment of decentralised processing... putting in any sort of centralisation is against that. Definitely, the problem was they were too nasty to destroy, and so once solid war starts, they have to be made less scary... is a pity. Borg were SCARY when they were first introduced. The managed to remain scary through much of First Contact, though that was really the last hurrah. Voyager Borg were boring. The worst offence was bringing back the Borg Queen. (I can see a point to her in a limited way... not so much queen as spokesperson, and a separate intelligence that can scan the rest of the hive and, say, prevent infections from getting too far. First Contact left this open as an option. Voyager made her everything she shouldn't have been.)

Re: Favorite Sci-Fi Weapon Oh, very much. The Colonial Marines Technical Manual did a nice article on the smartgun. Had a nice quote, with one soldier saying that the auto-targetting was just spooky, and TOO good. That most of the bad guys dropped in one engagement looked like they'd been shot exactly once... with all the bullets going through the same entry point. And as with most of the tech in Aliens, it's more than just pretty or a nice idea... it's fully thought through. The mount's mobile enough to lift up to fire over cover, and it can even fire while prone, though that's a little tricky. Increases firepower while decreasing movement only minimally. I LOVE the tech in Aliens. Great-looking, functional, inventive. Improvements over real-world tech and logical extensions of it at the same time.

Re: Favorite Sci-Fi Weapon

Re: Real World Ballistics Test For Ceramic Plates Very cool! Sounds like it should also have the advantage that if one plate cracks/breaks, the vest is largely still operable, yeah?

Re: How not to fire your weapon in Dark Champions... 1) A lot of these guys will be young, almost all of them uneducated. They care about appearing tough as much as anything else. That much is clear from the pictures, and from studies of armed gangs in general. 2) Intimidating your opponent is almost as useful (and sometimes more effective) than killing them. Doesn't matter if you know what you're doing, if you're facing people who know only as much as you do, and you LOOK like you know what you're doing, it's scary. 3) Some of these pics may be staged. Might explain some of the bystanders with no reaction. Otherwise, it could be evidence that gun battles are about as common as jaywalking, and they're just used to 'em (and are aware that hardly anyone gets shot). That, and none of the guys seem to actually be firing. I'm not sure how much muzzle blast would be visible in daytime, but some of those grips are NOT suited to withstanding recoil. 4) Yeah, they're easy targets for mocking. Oh right, black with guns equals hip-hop, definitely. Because all black people are the same, listen to the same music, and are members of the same violent culture. (The author of the captions did NOT impress me.)

Re: Star Wars: Empire at War It turns it into a game, instead of a coordination exercise.

Re: Time Wars by Simon Hawke Is that the series where they jump back into various literary settings? "The Pimpernel Plot" and other stories? Loved them, had forgotten who'd written them. Haven't seen 'em since I was in school.

Re: Ridiculous things in comics that you don't mind.

Re: Captain Atom? The 'explode when ruptured' thing might also figure into the Superman fight... when gauging his toughness levels, remember that (even though unstated) it's always possible that Superman was holding back in order to avoid the chance of rupturing the suit. As I said, unstated... but it's reasonable enough to say that his level of PD may be lower than the scene may indicate.

Re: Captain Atom? Is he the one who got killed in Kingdom Come and wiped out Kansas? That's one heck of a disad. Explains why he went orbital in JLU episode 1, when his suit got breached. (Side effect, affects environment, occurs upon taking BODY, something like that.)