bigdamnhero

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Now if it was regarding the appearance of a hero, there might be issues. bigdamnhero “Having great purpose isn't all it's cracked up to be. I've had great purpose and I've had no purpose. And I have to say, no purpose is a lot easier. Expectations are low. People don't ask you for anything. Count your blessings.”

Re: Natural Disaster Resources If by that you mean "How would I model the disaster itself" the answer is I probably wouldn't. Unless I'm playing Galactic Champions (I'm not) my supers aren't super enough to actually stop, say, an earthquake; they'll mostly be in disaster response mode working to save lives and property. So why do I need to know how many d6 the quake gets. (I'm not trying to be a smart@$$; that's meant as a serious question.) On a slightly more helpful note, FEMA's website also has some great resources: http://www.fema.gov/hazards/ bigdamnhero “Is this the human value you call friendship?†“Don't give me any of that 'Star Trek' crap. It's too early in the morning.â€

Re: Real-Life Hyperspace Theory?

Re: Resource Question Doesn't just about every d20 book have base & prestige classes? bigdamnhero “Why are you doing this?†“I don't have a choice; I'm a puppet. The universe just sticks its hand up my butt, and if I don't dance, people get hurt!â€

Re: Real-Life Hyperspace Theory?

Re: SciFi Colonists Yeah, if reverting to iron age tech is the probable scenario, good luck getting people to sign up. bigdamnhero “They say that verbal insults hurt more than physical pain. They are, of course, wrong, as you will soon discover...â€

Re: System Generation You're thinking of a fictional galaxy, independant of the published TE/AW settings? That sounds interesting and might be doable. But if we wanted to have any sort of consistency we'd have to first have a long conversation to agree on ground rules (how "hard" is our science, how common is alien life, etc). Probably several conversations... bigdamnhero “My life, when it is written, will read better than it lived.â€

Re: SciFi Colonists And of course it would only be all-female until the first male child was born. Then you've got yet another all-new cultural experiment. Best to limit oursleves to "just" the problems involved in colonizing an alien world without destabilizing our own society any more than we have to.

Re: Space combat: how big is an inch, how long is a turn? Yes, much depends on the assumptions you make about weapons strength vs defenses strengths. There are many historical precedents for situations where things were unbalanced in one way or the other -- either heavily favoring offense or heavily favoring defense -- and I imagine we could postulate future tech that goes either way. But for gaming, it's good to have a balance IMO. As with any other RPG genre, realism is a fine thing...taken in moderation. bigdamnhero “Well… here I am...â€

Re: Don't Buy Everything In a Good Story (Topic: Supers and the Law)

Re: System Generation Thanks. bigdamnhero "Huh?" "Huh?!" "Huh."

Re: System Generation

Re: Space combat: how big is an inch, how long is a turn?

Re: SciFi Colonists While the American Colonies analogies are fine (and probably the best historical precedent we have), some differences to keep in mind: 1. Depending on how far away we're talking about, our colonists may be far more isolated that the early Americans were. There's a big difference between being a couple months travel from home, and a couple years; sending home for supplies may not be a viable option. 2. The environment the American colonists were going to was "untamed" but not fundamentally that different from where they came from. (Sure, Virginia is warmer than England, but not significantly warmer than Southern Europe.) 3. Perhaps the biggest variable is the presense/absense of intelligent native life and civilization, not to mention how they're likely to react to the arrival of the colonists. Without drifting too far OT (and without excusing or justifying anything), the Spanish colonies in Central & South America had to be far more militarized than the British colonies in North America for the simple fact that Central & South America had culturally-advanced militaristic societies which opposed their presense, while North America did not. 4. On the converse, if you have no intelligent native life to worry about, you can't expect any help from "friendly natives." Of course, given different biologies, having friendly natives show you what foods are safe to eat may not be a big help anyway. And then there's the question of the availability of a local labor supply. (Historically, slaves; I'm just naive enough to think we'll do better next time.) 5. Make sure you bring plenty of Doctors and medical lab techs. All those nasty diseases the American Colonists brought to the New World that wiped out 90% of the native population? Who's to say it won't go the other way next time? bigdamnhero “I'm not a liar. Not in this instance anyway.â€

Re: Space combat: how big is an inch, how long is a turn? Thanks for the input! Exactly my concern. From a technical standpoint that makes perfect sense, but from a storytelling standpoint it's not what I'm looking for. Of course, good ECM adds to the fog of war considerably: are those 12 cruisers coming towards me? Or 12 destroyers trying to look big? Or 12 dreadnaughts trying to look small? By the time you're close enough to tell the difference, it may be too late to refuse action, especially if you have vector movement and realistic accel levels (ie no inertial dampers). You could probably write a whole "combat" system around the sensor & countermeasures battle, where the outcome is decided before the shpis ever get into weapons range of one another. [sigh] One of these days, I'll get around to doing some actual playtesting... bigdamnhero “Well, my days of not taking you serious are certainly coming to a middle.”

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Still, I always thought the "Mom always liked you best!" had become iconic, even if people didn't know where it came from. bigdamnhero

Re: SciFi Colonists Decent combat skills, to fight off the inevitable hostile life forms. Ability to drive/fly really fast. Lots of interesting phsycological limitations and phobias. An inability to follow anything resembling a chain of command. ...Oh wait, did you mean in reality or in your typical RPG? I always get those two confused. bigdamnhero “Seasoned? That’s a hell of a thing to say to a man!â€

Re: HERO combat - somewhat abstract or entirely specific? For melee combat, I always tend to visualize it a little more abstracted: jab-jab-feint-WHAM! where the wham is the actual attack roll and the preliminaries are the effects of OCV/DCV/CSLs/etc setting up the money shot. For missile combat, the system doesn't make too much sense if you really think about it. So I try not to think about it too hard. That's what suspension of disbelief is for. I figure there's a bit more movement and ducking-behind-cover in between shots. But really, all that is SPFX. In terms of mechanics, one roll per shot/punch is the only way that works. [Edit: I somehow posted this without seing there was a second page of posts, and now realize everyone's already said this. Oh well.] bigdamnhero “I said it was our only chance -- I did not say it was a good one.”

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Last night in a dark fantasy game, set in a city that has a fairly large undead population. Our characters had just recovered the dead body of the guy we'd been trying to find, and delivered it to his family & fiancee. Between the bite marks on the neck and the fact that we recovered the body in the "Dead Quarter" from a bunch of people with long, pointy teeth, it's pretty obvious what happened. We try and convince the family that they need to burn the body ASAP, but they insist the body must be laid out in state overnight, and go off to their seperate rooms, refusing our offer to stand vigil/guard over them and/or the corpse. Me: "I can't believe we're getting Sculley'd by people who live in the City Of The Undead." At which point everyone burst out in their best Galaxy Quest voices: "Didn't they ever watch the show!" Later, when we burst in to find the finacee in the arms of her newly-returned-from-the-dead lover: Me: [roll dice] "I fail to exhibit surprise." bigdamnhero “There's no such thing as Silicon Heaven.†“Then where do all the calculators go?â€

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... "Mom always did like you best." The odd thing is, the GM (who I'd guess is 30s-40s) had never even heard of that classic Smothers Brothers line. bigdamnhero “Holy mother of God and all her wacky Nephews!â€

Re: Simplification of Combat That's pretty much how I try to use it, as a bridge to buying new powers. If a player comes up with a clever use of the power skill -- great, no problem. But if they do it more than once or twice, it's time to pay points and buy the actual power. bigdamnhero “I feel that if a person has problems communicating the very least he can do is to shut up.â€

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Something just made my brain click onto this exchange from a con game a few months back. As we go into the final battle, the Master Villain is revealed to be... my character's Evil Twin Brother! Naturally, we square off. As we close to HtH range: Brother: "Dad always thought you were better than me!" Me: "Dad was right!" After which, he crit'ed me across the room, and I spent the next couple turns digging myself out of the wall bigdamnhero "When someone asks if you're a God, you say Yes!"

Re: CHAR: Wonder Woman

Re: System Generation I've used it, and it works pretty well. (ie - far better than anything I could cobble together myself.) The major limitation is that there's no feature for changing the assumptions used. But it sure beats hand-jamming them. If you copy the output file into an Excel spreadsheet, you can even use it to create simple (2D) starmaps. bigdamnhero “You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you!â€

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Just not when he's driving... bigdamnhero "This is my BOOM stick."