Ranxerox

Re: Defying Gravity TV Series I've found this very frustrating. ABC has stopped showing it (not real surprising since they gave it a bad time slot and put virtually no effort into promoting it), but they are still having the having the CTV block internet viewing of it to US viewers. I'm so mad about this that I would boycott watching ABC over it, except Defying Gravity was the only ABC program that I was watching already. If anyone has suggestions on how I can get around the internet block, I would appreciate them.

Re: Supervillains and Philosophy Well, the guy is the fictional embodiment of man's attempts to use science and rationality to supplant God. It your can't rub a few philosophical sticks together about a guy like that, you aren't trying.

Re: Urban Champions: Jade Monkey I like her origin. It's short and to the point but leaves plenty of room to expand out the character and to tie plot hooks. I would probably give her another level of combat luck just to be on the safe side, but I've never considered dice to be my friends so I work that way.

Re: Defying Gravity TV Series They don't need help determining there position or calculating trajectories, but they very conceivably could use engineering help. AJ Sharma was their on board engineer and he is not part of the crew anymore, and while the computer may have all the Antares' facts and schematics it probably can't always tell them what facts and schematics are relevant to the problem at hand. After all, it has only been tested in orbit which is ultimately very different than live in a six year mission. So, it's expert systems for troubleshooting at times are going to be worse than useless. As for stocking the crew with mentally ill people, I think that the doctor should not be onboard period. The two Mars survivors placed their by the "Alien Space Bat" but I think only Donner (just noticed the reference to the tragic Donner Party, sometimes I'm real slow) doesn't belong. Ted has experience and when the ASB isn't messing with it his head is on pretty tight. All the rest I think are mentally healthy as astronauts in general. They just don't seem that way because we aren't seeing a NASA PR approved version of them, but instead are getting a candid look of them as the flawed human beings that they are.

Re: Defying Gravity TV Series Ugh! I hadn't noticed that goof-up, but of course you are right -every message should have 200 second delay as it has to earth and the reply has to come back. Now everytime I see a real-time conversation between ground and the ship it is going to bother me. I'm liking the series more and more on its own terms as a drama, so this isn't a deal breaker for me. Still it is going to be annoying from now on. Maybe if that get fan mail complaining about it, they will appropriate time delays in the second season - should there be a second season that is. Yes, but restriction aren't always bad in art. Take haikus, for example; it is hard to imagine a more restrictive medium of poetry. That hasn't stopped people from writing countless haikus that ranged from the beautiful to the funny to the profound. In the world of TV many sitcoms have been done almost exclusively on single sets. This did not stop All In the Family, I Love Lucy and Roseanne from being very funny. Potentially, a lot of drama could be had from having realistic delays in communications between the Antares and flight control. The increasingly long wait times for replies would psychologically reinforce the crews feeling of isolation and the flight control's feeling that they were slipping away. Also, the crew of the Antares might find themselves needing information from flight control on a RIGHT NOW basis and being unable or nearly unable to get it in time.

Re: Nikola Petrovich Well, he could take several dice Unluck defined his powers behaving inappropriately - making stuff break and what not. Since the character has little control over his power, he could buy everything with an Activation oll or requiring a skill roll. Also, the player might want to buy some or all his powers with the Side Effect limitation, perhaps a Dex drain or Unluck roll if he fails his Activation.

Re: Superheores with Disabilites, a thought experiememnt That really depends on how dirty your mind is.

Re: Defying Gravity TV Series Just watched episode 4 on my computer. I liked this episode a good deal. The ratio of action in space to action down on earth seems to have gotten better, and I like the fact that the main focus of the episode was solving a engineering problem. Also

Re: District 9 These might be problems in a movie (not having all my questions answered didn't bother me, but it seems to have bother a lot of other people), but in a Star HERO campaign they good things. These unanswered questions become mysteries for the players and try to solve, and the eventual solutions become plot hooks for latter adventures. So, they aren't bugs; they're features.

Re: District 9 That is a good point. The District 9 scenario could make a potentially fascinating backdrop to a cyberpunk campaign. Alien tech, evil multinationals, a persecuted minority, lurid black markets, and a vicious Nigerian mafia, what's not to like?

Re: Defying Gravity TV Series Another episode of Defying Gravity came on last night. If you missed it you can watch on ABC's site. To be honest, I'm pimping the show mainly because science fiction tv series with realistic science are as rare as chicken lips, and if we (science fiction fandom) does not support them when they come along they are likely to stay rare. So, even though I wish that DG's story was moving along quicker (had I been writing it, I would have started the series as the Antaris was coming into orbit around Venus), I plan to go on watching it.

Re: Defying Gravity TV Series I liked it, and plan on watching it again next week. It exceeded my expectation, though admittedly I set them pretty low. IMHO, you have to reasonable about things. Nyrath groaned about their clothes pulling people toward the floor thus imitating gravity, but otherwise they would have had to spend their entire budget simulating weightlessness. So, I gave the magical clothes a pass. The same goes all the personal interaction scenes. Scenes like these are cheap to do which saves money for episodes big special effect moments, and personal scenes provide a point of connection for non-scifi geeks that might be watching. As a plus point, it doesn't hurt that the characters at least have the decency to (for the most part) be half interesting. I for one really like the character A.J. Sharma, and hope that they keep him in the story even though he is no longer on the ship.

Defying Gravity starts tonight on ABC. It is to be about a near future manned mission to explore our solar system. The mission is to take 6 years and a lot of the plot is to about interaction between the crew being stuck together all this time so expect some soap opera. Still, based on the premise alone, this is must-watch tv for me.

Re: Harry Potter Characters *shrug* An MP would be fine too. I just went with VPP as a personal preference thing. Since spells are things you learn in the Potterverse, I wanted to tie them to the skill system. This made them good candidates for VPP to me since VPP are usually based on skill rolls. However, you can also make MP which all the slots have a Requires Skill Roll limitation so this isn't that big of an issue. Also, VPPs tend to be cost effective versus MPs of ten or more slots and I see full grown wizards in the Potterverse as knowing a lot of spells (just mostly ones not related to combat). However, since the MP would entitled to several limitations against it pool cost, this would likely be one of the those occasions the MP remained more cost effective even with a large number of slots. So, I guess you can just chalk it up to me liking VPP.

Re: Hagar the Horrible Good point about the combat luck. So I guess my argument boils down to him being large, but like I said I'm quibbling.

Re: Harry Potter Characters Rather than buying spells individually, I would do it as a single VPP controlled by multiple power skills. So the character would have to make a roll against their curse skill for most offensive powers, a Transformation skill role to change an item into something else, a Charm roll to give something a magical property, etc. Alternately, the VPP could be based on spells bought as 1 point familiarities. So Accio would be one familiarity and Reparo. This would make the characters less versatile than the skill based VPP but more reliable since if they have the 1 point skill, their wand, and time to make the incantation they automatically succeed at the spell. I prefer these VPP solutions because Hogwarts students learn new spells all the time, and I don't see where they are getting 6 or 7 xp to pay for each one.

Re: Hagar the Horrible OK, I apologize for quibbling, but given that Hagar is a large guy, and he regularly shows up at the doctor's office with multiple arrows sticking out of him with no lasting effect, I think that I would give him more than 10 Body.

Re: Champions 6th version Bah humbug! A discussion board ultimately moves a lot more product than simple online ad space, so running the boards isn't exactly charity on the part of DoJ.

Re: Justifying Playable SPD Diamond's in the rough. Maybe the process of handing out super powers isn't as random as it seems. Maybe you already have to be special to acquire super powers. Otherwise, that accident that gave you your super powers kill or maims you instead, your super gadgets don't work becuase they violate rules of science, etc. In the CU the ultimate explanation for all super powers is magic, but if you want you can call it latent psychic powers, a meta-gene, alien experimentation, whatever. The important thing is the characters didn't just get their super powers; fate picked them for greatness because they were already special. Part of this specialness might include have an abnormal ability to make decisions under pressure - IOW, a high SPEED. Think about it. If you had a 5 SPEED in a world designed for and by 2 SPEED people would you necessarily even know? You might spend your entire life slowing yourself down to fit in with other people. That is until something extraordinary happens which forces you not to hold back and only then find out your true potential. Alternately, you might figure out that you could think 2 and half times faster than everyone else early on. Think of how arrogant and entitled something like that could make a person. You might make a good candidate for becoming a supervillian if something happened to further set you apart from the bulk of humanity such as acquiring actual super powers. Of course that is just one option, and if you don't want heroes chosen by destiny that would be perfectly understandable. It is your world after all.

Re: Marvel to HERO BODY and REC seem out whack compared to write-ups for official CU characters. For example, Grond (CU's Hulk stand-in) has a BODY of 30 and a REC of 28. Spider-man should not have a REC greater than than the Hulk. Otherwise, it seems like a good table.

Re: The Bartender I like him. Good work. Have some rep.

Re: Planets of SF Author Hats Butler's World: Formerly a patriarchy, but since disastrous decisions by the ruling males came close to eradicating life on the planet, it has become a matriarchy. Faced with grim prospects for survival, the citizens of Butler have come to view anger, pride and even cultural identity as overly expensive luxuries; the virtues of the day are perseverance, adaption and forgiveness.

Re: Not "Secret", not "Public", just "Identity" Dude, you are making too many assumptions about my GMing. I give new players plenty of information about what they can expect in one of my campaigns both at the outset and as they work on making their characters. Also, I tend to drop pretty strong hints when they are about to cut their own throats, such as, "Hey are you sure you want to do that? You aren't in your costume and a number of people can see you right now." Not sure how I was implying that a zero point Secret ID would not work in any campaign. I said "in worlds that I GM" and "My campaigns ... focus"* so I don't see these statements as generalizations meant to apply all campaigns. Still, I will say it explicitly now, zero point secret and public IDs are totally appropriate in some campaigns and should be available on a case by case basis in others. * - emphasis not original post added for clarification here

Re: Not "Secret", not "Public", just "Identity" My spidey sense tells me that your tongue is in your cheek, but I am going to answer this as though it were a serious question. DNPCs are a totally separate disadvantage from public or secret ID. Whether the character has a public or secret ID, he or she going to have to jump through hoops to keep them safe whenever the disadvantage comes up. So they earn there points one way or another. That being said, whether a character has a Secret ID or Public ID does effect how he or she interacts with his or her DNPCs and how the rest of the world does too. It is the difference between Lois Lane getting herself into trouble vs Lex Luthor taking her captive to bait a trap for Superman. The latter situation is generally much worse, and that is why those pesky hunted are worth more points when the character has a public ID. The worst situation though is a secret ID that is blown and now public. The consequences for this have to be so bad that all the work and lies and embarrassment of maintaining that secret ID now seem like a bargain compared to the consequences of letting it slip. Essentially all DNPCs are now in play whether they rolled for that adventure or not, and non-DNPC acquaintances of the character can start acting like DNPCs. Also hunted that weren't rolled can also come up, and other nasty things arise such as scathing exposes, lawsuits, etc. Fortunately, all my players have known me well enough not test me on the Secret ID thing, and none of them have outed themselves.