Cancer

Re: Most Feared Disadvantage

We take Unluck, but buy it off quickly, for a strange reason ... our GMs don't take advantage of it often enough. To me, that means you're just "storing up trouble" and when it comes home to roost, the screws will be applied in a long, slow, powerful way.

We have one guy playing a really weird character whose main power is a variable-effect Aid, bought with a Berserk disad. It's a really low-threshold Berserk, too, so it is common for him to wig out and keep buffing up the same friendly character in the same way for big chunks of a fight.

With our GMs, for me, it's Vulnerability. Guaranteed, it'll show up every time it matters, and when it does, forget it. You might as well turn your back on the table and play Minesweeper, or do a run up to Canada to buy more good hard cider. Or deliberately try to get your character killed so you can create a new one that won't get turned into a boat anchor every adventure.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER

Unfortunately, the powers that be in control don't like spending money on "frivalous software that may never be needed" note that is their words not mine.

 

When I was hired I came from teaching IT, databases, and programming for 7 years, and 12 years overall of computer experience. They hired me from a very large list of candidates for my knowledge and expertise, but as soon as I started talking about changing things, they told me no. I learned to keep quiet and do what I could until stuff like this happens and then I get to step up and make more suggestions. Unfortunately they don't always see things past the dollar amounts. Oh well.

Just between us, I would recommend you start putting resumes out there. An outfit that cheap cannot afford your level of expertise. If they could, they'd take your advice and come out ahead in the long run.

Also, that sort of goobers are ripe for the first fast-talking offshoring representative to walk in the door, and that's an even better reason to give the exits some serious inspection.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER

Symantec has officially informed us that the fix for the virus we have is to rebuild the servers!!!!

Yeesh! What infection was this? Crap, if you have to do that, you need to start firing people for getting your system infected. (I've worked in places where that was done.) And go to air gap security.

Re: Exponential VS Linear ?

As a matter of principle, if you have to keep track of effects of vastly different magnitude -- which is approximately always true in superhero situations -- then doing it without the use of log scales is hopeless. (I prefer the word "logarithmic" to "exponential" to describe this kind of manipluation, but I also know that a lot of people -- my students, anyway -- consider "logarithm" to be either a direct invocation of Satan or an auto-sexual act of the vilest sort.)

When it comes time to compare grossly different values, well, an example: you start needing to keep track of how many zeros are in the brick's lift capacity versus anyone else's.

... but whether you realize it or not, counting zeros like that IS the first step toward a logarithmic scale. So accept the math, make your system work that way. Life ... well, actually, RPGs, but that's more important than life ... gets a lot easier.

Re: Fumbled Seduction Roll

I think an 18 roll is carte blanche to do what you want. But there's no point in getting too creative with an NPC; it's just a situation-specific botch.

In this situation ... evil NPC femme rolling an 18 on Seduction of an intoxicated male player character ... I think she gets vomited on, he passes out immediately (and has no memory of the event) and she cannot wake him up, and one of the inn staff [assuming that's a relevant feature for the campaign setting] happens by and asks what's going on, draws conclusions that she's not a person one wants in one's establishment, and ends up escorting her off the premises.

That's assuming that rendering him unconcious wasn't what she wanted. If it was, well, something else happens. Make it up; that's what you're paid the big bucks for, right?

Re: Musings on Random Musings

When Lemming says "Life is good", I am inclined to put in the same bin as when I hear someone declare, "Life sucks."

Got a new girlfriend named Life, eh?

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat

NT: Jerry Springer and Martha Stewart got married...elaborate!

"Today we'll describe a recipe I got from my new hubby ... Nymphet on Green Jello with Truly Unspeakable Slime Sauce."

Re: Best Section Header *Ever*

Funny. I don't find the word "yak" all that much of a non sequitur from standard game setting parlance.

In Shadowrun, "Yak" is cut-down slang for Japanese organized crime (yakuza), and in the WW2 and post-WW2 era there were a number of Soviet combat aircraft which were Yak-something, where something was a number (in the same vein as Mig-21, etc.). Either one is perfectly in place ... in its genre.

In fact, when I first glanced at the thread, I assumed that "add more yaks" meant that the standard bad-guy NPCs were Japanese crime figures, and if the fights weren't challenging enough, just increase the number of opponent mooks.

Re: A Thread For Random Links

Things to do tomorrow

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER

Vancouver' date=' which is in Canada and not Washington, is a really nice city... [/quote']

 

No argument. There is, however, a city of Vancouver WA, which is right across the Columbia River from Portland OR. I have been to Vancouver BC a number of times and love the city, and did not for a moment confuse the two. I don't think it's quite as bad to compare Vancouver WA with Vancouver BC as it is to compare Paris TX with Paris France, but ....

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER

Well, this is a great birthday I'm having...

 

I'm at work dealing with f$%^ spyware/viruses that infected our servers. Our servers!! That isn't supposed to happen. I want to take every virus/spyware writer and repay their kindness... Grrr.... Anyway, I'll be offline for a while.

If you've never heard of it before, spywareinfo.com is a HUGE help for the "mere mortal" side of the population. Probably not so much so for the sysadmin types. Still, it might be worth checking out.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER

We have NGD members who live in Washington state, right?

 

I ask because my sister's residency is in Washington somewhere (can't remember where, exactly), and Josh and I are talking about flying out there to visit sometime. Not for a while, though; we need to make sure we have enough money to meet basic living expenses first.

WA is large enough that there are substantial differences across the state. Seattle's pretty pricey, especially stuff like rent, real estate, etc. They deny it vehemently, but Tacoma can be thought of as an outgrowth of Seattle. Spokane is very different and cheaper. I would not advise any sentient being visit Yakima. I know nothing about Vancouver, and I have only very limited knowledge of Richland/Pasco/Kennewick.

If you can let us know where in particular, and we can provide more detailed guidance....

Re: The Last Word

Heat death.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings

Why in the **** do we do the things we do. Why do we do anything at all? In the end, it usually ends up biting you in the ass anyway. I work hard and do my best for me and those I feel responsible for. You have to do what you have to do.

 

But, in the end, it just isn't enough or not done, 'Just Right'. I'm sick of it.

Vector sum = 0.

Re: The Last Word

Is lack of reality transitive? Is there a deficit of true character?

If there is a character which is fictional even in the context of the fictional story in which he/she/it appears, is that character real in our reality?

Now, swap the words "character" and "reality" in the above (and turn "real in" to "characteristic of") and re-parse.

Add anchovies and toss. Serve with warm bread, white wine, and a side of existentialism.

Re: The cranky thread

If nothing else' date=' Cancer, you can always fail him. But it sounds like there will some sort of punitive action taken against him, if you've got proof, and it sounds like you do.[/quote']

 

Yeah, he sent me a grovelling apology email last night, so he recognized that I had him. I haven't decided whether any further action is required of me. Summer's here, and I don't want to think about it if I don't have to.

Re: The cranky thread

Grr.

I'm adjunct faculty at a local university's Physics Department. This term I taught a survey-level astronomy course. Yes, Solar System astronomy.

I give an observing exercise. Very simple. It takes about an hour to do from a standing start. You have to observe the moon. (We really need a moon icon in the smiley set.) I give it the first week of the term, collect it the last week of the term, and I threaten the students weekly and let them know that doing it is their responsibility, weather be damned. In 2.5 months they will sure enough get the hour they need.

I don't care so much what answer they get; the procedure, by its nature, is flawed, so only under ideal conditions (which aren't actually that hard to come by, but never mind that) will they get the correct answer. It's the performance of the exercise that counts. I never mark people down for the wrong answer, just for doing things incorrectly.

But ... when someone dry-labs it, fakes the data, makes it up ... and I catch them at it ...

Although the principle for academic honesty penalties is more or less the same everywhere, the details are always different, and the details matter. So when I found the idiot who faked his data on Sunday evening, it chews up about half a day of my life as I figure out what i's I have to dot and what t's I have to cross before I can toast his lazy, cheating ass to the maximum extent the school regs allow. Because if I have to waste a half day or more of my life to penalize some guilty-of-incestuous-rape low-life, I sure as hell am going to ask for more than a slap on the wrist for my trouble.

Unfortunately, no one's regs allow things I want to give ... the pit of starving rabid weasels ... the hornets' nest enema ... re-entry from low orbit with only a vacuum suit ...

Grr.

Re: So why do you play Hero?

I will repeat the flexibility theme ... anything that motivates me enough to start assembling the power/character/whatever, I can build it in Hero.

Also, I GREATLY prefer peaked probability distributions. D20, with its flat p.d.f., drives me absolutely batty. I can live with critical failures, but not every f---ing time I turn around. Gimme nd6 any day.

Re: Finding Invisible Woman

A trick that works for protecting places (like evil villain fortresses) against characters with high-end Invisibility powers is have air in the entry routes weakly doped with a mildly radioactive gas, or perhaps dusty with (again) a weakly radioactive substance. Nothing that will trigger defenses against radiation damage, show up as a poison, or anything like that. This isn't all that useful for finding invisible types in a fight, but for handling the ninja-type ultra-stealth intruders doing spying, burglary, or perhaps assassination, it's an inobvious but effective way of doing the burglar alarm function.

Especially if you ingest it in any way, that low-level radioactivity will show up easily to pretty standard radiation counters. And it takes quite a while to get it all out of your system. The underlings staffing the inner parts of the fortress either live there full-time, or have to spend a week in the cooling-off area before returning to their duty stations.

So when the secret ninja assassin penetrates into the sensitive parts, then the counters pick up the presence of an intruder easily.

Re: Devious Idea that may work once....once...

For tech items, the answer is obvious, thinking about how corporations and governments control their hardware even nowadays. Give the focus a password. Authorized user gets the password with the hardware. But, the password needs to be changed at least every 60 days. You need the old password to set the new one. If you are so ditzy that you let the 60 days expire, then it locks out all other function waiting for password reset (so while waiting for the password, the focus is a boat anchor). Flub the old password 3 times, the focus self-destructs. That last could be as harmless as a memory wipe (turning the thing permanently into a paperweight) to the archtypal explosive or incendiary charge. An HKA with the same number of active points as the effect of the focus could be interesting. Of course, if it's a suit of powered armor that goes catatonic with the character in it, getting the character out of it could be an adventure in and of itself.

The password update message box could be an annoyingly persistent Mental Illusion that won't leave your field of vision until you complete the procedure. All those annoying messageboxes ... but they're inside your head ...

Now, a possibility is that the original owner is as careless about passwords as most real-life people are now. E.g., the armor has the old password scribbled with grease pencil on the back of its left hand. Roleplay that right, and the player has a chance to keep his toy. But if the scribble is in an alien language (remember that handwritten characters often don't look much like their keyboard equivalents), or if the focus has seen a month of hard use and the password has got smudged, that makes it a lot harder.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings

That is very very cool. So now that you're all svelte and sexy' date=' when are you going to post bikini pics?! hehehe[/quote']

 

Now I'm going to wait for Alice to post a link to pics of Rosanne Barr in a bikini. (Shadowpup didn't ask her to post pics of herself, note.) It'd serve all these lech-goobers right.

Re: Two Game Master's

Our group does the two-GM thing quite often in a number of campaigns. In fact, in one campaign it's even weirder than that: two GMs do "tag team", each yanking the plot in not exactly the same direction, and when one is GMing the other is playing their own character! We started doing it when the group got larger than one GM could conveniently handle. Also, the group practices this often as we do a regular team-GM event at a local con each summer.

In my opinion, two GMs can work extremely well. The only really adverse case in our group's experience is the one time I was one of the co-GMs, and a main plot architect ... from which I've carried away the lesson that on a scale from one to sucks, as a GM, I'm closer to the sucks end than I'd prefer to be. (I have lots of interesting ideas, but that doesn't have to translate into what others find to be an interesting, playable campaign, as I found out.)

The biggest single criterion for success, I think, is that the two GMs have to be in sync in terms of what the plot and the campaign atmosphere are supposed to be, and you both have to understand and agree on what your players enjoy in your game. If you don't have those things well worked out between you, then you will confuse your players and send them unintentionally mixed signals. That is a rather worse thing to do than you may imagine... it can get everyone confused and even hostile.

On the other hand, two GMs are great when you are trying for convergent action lines with a split party. Run the two groups simultaneously, keep the pace fast and furious, and all they hear from the other group will be chaotic, interesting snippets, and when the subgroups reunite they will have interesting experiences to tell each other.

Re: Class in Fantasy

Class also wasn't strictly a matter of ranking. I haven't noticed in this thread anyone referring to the clergy in the feudal system, which was approximately a parallel structure which the clergy tried hard to keep out from under the authority of the lords/kings. At least officially, it was also non--heriditary. Yes, there was a coupling between the clerical heirarchy and the secular feudal one as lords could buy offices for their relations (though technically this was the sin of simony), but joining a clerical order was both a way out of the rat race (that is, a place for a noble to retire to) and a way for a bright lower-class lad to rise by work and ability, at least nominally free from secular authority. There were plenty of ambitious clerics, and many of them lacked a noble pedigree.

Those with technical skills of clear worth always have been able to get (often grudging) acceptance from their social "betters". Miners were always despised, but no one abused the mine foreman who produced a regular flow of silver (or tin or copper). Shipbuilders and bellmakers also were valued; since bellmakers were the people who first cast artillery pieces, at the right technological era, they could rise drastically in the social order.

Re: Alternate Fantasy "Earth"

My group and I have decided to develop a fantasy world which is a topographical carbon copy of our earth with a few exceptions which include but are not exclusive to the following.

 

....

 

5. Three moons, one at least which is habitable orbit it.

For fun, put one of the moons, a tiny one, in geosynchronous orbit. A geosynchronous moon has the same effect as a pole star for navigation purposes. As most people know, observing the pole star gives you latitude (assuming you're on the hemisphere that can see it). Observing a geosynchronous satellite can give you your longitude just about in the same way (again assuming you are on the hemisphere that can see it). Having a moon like this will make transoceanic navigation MUCH easier, so that intercontinental civilizations are possible without use of magical means. That way you don't have to be a wizard (or use wizardly means) to go from Europe to North America, which makes ocean-going barbarian raiders a more common threat.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings

In another identity, I teach part-time at a Jesuit university. The end of the term approaches, and today was the last real lecture (there's one more lecture period, but I reserve that for review, the obligatory course evaluation, and so on). The course being an astronomy course closing with the topic of life elsewhere in the Universe, today I talked about Habitable Zones, SETI, the Fermi Paradox, and a few of the unanswered questions having to do with extraterrestrial intelligence.

I had a student -- a philosophy major -- shake my hand and thank me at the end of today's lecture.

It's been a good quarter.