Old Man

Actually that's the relativistic mass, not the actual (invariant) mass. Which is a consequence of being able to increase momentum without being able to increase relative velocity. Otherwise it would be possible to create a black hole simply by accelerating an object sufficiently. Anyway... yeah, we don't need this level of detail in the game.

The cleanest true-vector-based space movement I've seen came from, I think, Triplanetary? Anyway, your ship had two counters, one that represented the ship and another that represented where the ship would be a turn from now. When it came time to move, you put your ship within (thrust) hexes of the "future" counter, then moved the "future" counter such that it was at the hex that was opposite from the hex where the ship used to be. Fortunately, I don't think facing mattered in that game. However, for purposes of practically all popular SF this movement scheme is lame, because in all he movies and TV shows, ships fly through space as though they were aircraft (Star Furies being the one exception that springs to mind). At some point the whole thing has to be abstracted, and Hero is just not as far down the "gritty and realistic" scale as, frex, GURPS. Which is a good thing.

We used to deduce specific head locations from the armor chart in 1st ed. FH. That chart had location 3-eyes/face, location 4-neck, location 5-top/back/side of the head. For the most part it's all just x2 BODY x5 STUN, but we used to play with extra bleeding for location 4 and potential blindness for location 3. As for called shots, I think we defined the maximum called shot penalty to be -8 or -10... the practical limit is around there, otherwise the minmaxers just take high shots which give them 50% odds of hitting 3-5 at, what, -4 OCV? Something like that.

What's funny is that the usual body/def figures don't work too well in fantasy. It's trivially easy to do 2d6K with a sword in FH, which gets you through a standard oak door in one or two swings. It's one of those places where the superhero origins of the game show through. And I can't think of an easy solution that doesn't involve radically increasing the BODY of certain everyday objects.

I was all set to buy it until I read that last line. I avoid windows for a reason. Oh well, that's $5 they won't get from me.

You could apply the Standard Effect Rule to either of the armors to avoid the chance of bad rolls. p 72 FREd. The Dispelling Armor would dispel any magical power of 36 points or less. The Supression Armor would reduce any magical power by 30 points.

The biggest problem I've encountered in detailed worldbuilding is a chicken-and-egg issue. How do you determine the place names of a place without developing a history for it? How do you develop a history without having named anything? How do you work the history backwards from where you want the story to take place? The most success I've had so far was to start with a really vague 3-way map: cultures, races, and climate, determining in a general way where I wanted them to be in relation to each other. Then, with some idea of what languages I was going to have, I went ahead and just started writing down names for all kinds of common stuff in the various languages. (This is the hardest part for me, because I'm just not good at pulling good fantasy-sounding names off the top of my head.) Armed with the general map and a partial lexicon in each language I am then able to flesh out the histories and cultures. After that it's just a matter of keyboard time. Once you reach a certain critical mass it gets pretty easy to put down more stuff.

Isn't that GURPS? It's a good idea, but I don't see an elegant way to retrofit that onto the existing system. HERO is just a bit more abstracted than that.

We need to give maces some distinction too. I thought about giving them reduced pen, but that would make them useless. So is the +1 stun mult that usually goes to the hammers. Maybe some kind of permanent plate armor/shield damage? That's my understanding of how they were used. Say each hit with a mace takes off X DEF from the armor, where X is equal to the amount of 'normal BODY' rolled on the dice? So if I'm swinging for 2d6K on average I'd take 2 DEF off your platemail when I hit, in addition to any damage I happen to do to you. The biggest problem I see is that this drops sharply in effectiveness if hit locations are in use.

You might could do it with entangle, since it now allows you to create things. I'd just handwave the table and chairs and stuff. The only potential problem is that for 75 points it'd be hard to make one that's as resilient as the original sounds.

Didn't Starbuck wind up stranded and abandoned on some desert planet, left alone with some woman? Was that the last episode? I remember it was a real downer. But somehow he wound up with the A Team so it all ended up okay.

You know that wouldn't work. Have you seen the way gun hobbyists argue about kinetic energy and wound ballistics and energy transfer and hydrostatic shock? It makes the nastiest arguments here look like an episode of Teletubbies. There is no test in the world that will stop those debates.

The problem is one of balance among the players. One point of SPD is about the most effective possible way to spend ten points. At the very least it gives the SPD 4 character +3 DCV and an extra half move versus SPD 3 opponents. As a result, the SPD 4 character sleepwalks through opposition that remains dangerous for the characters who spent their 10 points on strength or dex or levels. That's what makes it hard for the GM--giving the SPD 4 character a hard time without killing off the rest of the group in the process.

That's a pretty good deal. An H&K PSG-1 costs somewhere in the realm of 10-12K$, last time I saw it listed, which would have been over a year ago, maybe two. Um, how do you go about checking something like that? Did the guy just happen to have his chainsaw with him?

I think that's kind of what he means. In spite of his limiting efforts, the players had a tendancy to "unload" on whatever it was that was threatening them. Then they would take time off to "recharge" and then move on. To counter this without cranking up the danger level too high I would recommend that the monsters play smart. Like the raptors in Jurassic Park. The send out individual scouts and the scouts call for reinforcement when prey is spotted. Another way to do it would be to have one of the critters get away in order to get help or draw the party into an ambush. The longer fight while not being overly deadly will quickly drain magical resources. Just don't do it all the time.

Because then you get weak characters that cannot go desolid and cannot get full life support

TK says that you can grab, throw and manipulate objects. I was wondering how fast the object in question moves. Meaning that after you grab something, how fast can you get it from one place to another. ex: transporting a team member from the ground to the top of a building.

Hey, every new campaign has to start with a bar fight. It's not just a good idea, it's the law.

I've heard secondhand of a "hobbyist" out here who constructed a single-shot bolt-action .50 BMG pistol from scratch. From what I understand it performed reasonably well, although the muzzle flash was about as lethal as the round itself. The story goes that the BATF came down and asked him a couple of pointed questions, e.g. "That's the last gun you're going to build in that caliber, ever. Right?" I have no idea where he gets the ammo.

Betazeds should probably have Mind Scan and Telepathy. I don't know if they really ought to have reduced by range since Deanna was always capable of reading emotions from one starship away, or on a planetary surface from orbit. Then again, it seemed like she was best able to read the emotions of someone who happened to be on screen at the moment--maybe you could work that in. Deanna, at least, never seemed to be capable of reading much more than surface emotions; whether that's some kind of limitation or just low points in the power, I don't know. I don't remember Vulcans as having telepathy at range--they always seemed to have to put their hands on whoever they were trying to read. But they were capable of far more with their telepathy, including invasive mind reading, suggestion, and backing up their own minds into someone else's. That, coupled with their ability to lift heavy things and get really mad, makes them much cooler than betazeds.

Actually there's three books left after this one. Book 4 was supposed to be "A Dance with Dragons", but it got pushed back to 5; Feast for Crows is up next. I forget what the other two books are supposed to be called. In other words, the series probably won't be finished until 2009, assuming GRRM maintains his current pace and doesn't see fit to add any more books. This is why I usually don't buy in to fantasy series that are yet unfinished... but AGoT was sooooo gooooood...

Might not be as easy as it sounds--there's a hell of a lot of intrigue and politics in that series, and a distinct lack of non-human foes south of the Wall. But if you've got intelligent players who actually don't have to be led around by the nose, this wouldn't be a problem. Also, while it's been low magic so far, there are hints that it isn't going to stay that way. But then again the guy averages one book every two years, so your campaign might be over before you have to worry about any of that. Excellent, excellent books. Wish the guy could write faster, but I won't mind as long as he eventually finishes with no drop in quality...

I think the distinction with the new S&W .50 is that it's a .50 magnum. I don't see how a normal human could fire one without snapping their wrist, but whatever. The same article mentioned that they're also producing an alloy .44 magnum revolver that weighs 1.5 pounds. See my wrist snapping comment above.

So something like the magik'd culture in Harry Potter. They took a lot of magical items and beings for granted.

That sounds like a comment from someone who has never played FH. The 5e weapons chart is so totally broken it turned my stomach. Why would anyone ever use anything other than a spear in the 5e world? It boggles the mind. It brings up all kinds of bad AD&Dv1 memories, where the only weapon you ever saw was a longsword. I was hoping Steve was drunk or stoned when he wrote that chart, but I guess not. If it's not fixed in FH, then that's one less FH book that will be sold. I'll just play out of 1st ed.