bigdamnhero

Re: Natural Disaster Resources

How would you build Natural Disasters in Hero System Game Mechanics?

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?â€

“Don't give me any of that 'Star Trek' crap. It's too early in the morning.â€

Re: Real-Life Hyperspace Theory?

Of course! This is for a space opera RPG' date=' not reality.[/quote']

OK, thought we were talking reality there. I'm told I get those two confused sometimes.

 

Daleth Effect: great book. (And due for a re-read, I would say.)

 

 

bigdamnhero

[twack!] “Message for you, sir.â€

Re: Resource Question

Doesn't just about every d20 book have base & prestige classes?

bigdamnhero

“Why are you doing this?â€

“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?

I hate to admit it' date=' but if this drive pans out, it would lend itself to that stale old science-fiction gag of mounting a spacedrive in a submarine to make instant spaceship.[/quote']

Not my specialty, but I would think that since subs are designed to handle high-pressure outside, that wouldn't necessarily be the same as handling no pressure outside...?

 

What bugs me is that humanity is going to make it to the stars with all our current "thinking' intact. We won't have time to straighten out our problems with each other' date=' and despite the near-infinite resources of the universe, we'll still be arguing over sand, skin color and religious outlook.[/quote']

At the risk of going all Mr. Spock here, humans will always be human. Our hatreds and prejudices change over time, and over the long haul I think we do improve. Gradually. But I've read way too much history to believe that humans are going to evolve into utopian angels anytime in the next few millenia. If you're waiting for waiting for us to reach perfection before we go to the stars, we've got a long wait. (Sorry - I'll get off my soapbox now.)

 

 

bigdamnhero

“He's not the first psycho to hire us nor the last. You think that's a commentary on us?â€

Re: SciFi Colonists

I'm going to assume they are not starting out blind, that there are robot probes in the target system that have transmitted data to Earth and will continue to transmit to the shipin transit.

 

Likewise I think it would be wise to plan for a fall back to iron age tech as a worst case scenerio, but don't think that will be the most probable scenerio.

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

Would a galaxy wiki be a good idea? People just adding system information whenever they want to enlarge the galaxy?

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

Oh' date=' and to those discussing the analogy to the colonization of the New World; The environment they came to was not exactly "untamed wilderness." North America's Eastern Seaboard had already been farmed for a long time; it was relatively empty largely because, even before the colonists came in, explorers and adventurers had exposed the population to European diseases, which wiped out whole villages. The "settlers" essentially moved into abandoned farmland.[/quote']

Good point. I should have said "relatively untamed" Thanks.

 

Not to mention that transmission of culture is not an insignificant factor to plan for. An all-female culture would be entirely new in the history of mankind. The colony already has enough risk factors without adding one that big.

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.

 

At the very least' date=' the generation ship would orbit the planet for several years to make climate studies to ensure they didn't land someplace in the path of frequent hurricanes or typhoons. That would be a bit of a pain. "Yay, we traveled several hundred light years to get here, now we get to wait another decade while we study the planet." But its better than being bug food. [/quote']

Good point, but I had assumed that would already have been done by survey ships before anyone invested the time & resources into sending a colony ship? I have a hard time seeing a group of people boarding a ship for a years-long voyage to a planet they don't know anything about.

 

 

bigdamnhero

“I had a plan…A good plan. Smart. Carefully laid out. But I got bored. All that watching, waiting. My legs started to cramp.â€

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.

The more I think about 'realistic' space combat the more I would prefer to play in a space opera setting if combat is regular feature of the game. Consistance rules where a person can lose and still live is good for an RPG.

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)

As to returning to a "normal" standard' date=' in a world with Supers having some Supers turn criminal is normal. The only way to return to a no-Supers standard is to find out whatever made Supers possible in the first place and, if possible, get rid of it.[/quote']

Just for purposes or discussion: say that all superpowers come from one source, and someone finds a way to shut that source off. What about all the super-through-training masked heroes? Is Batman going to give up his war on crime just because Superman loses his powers? (I don't recall any reference to non-superpowered heroes in Incredibles, but they exist in most supers campaigns.) So you might have a return to Pulp-era masked heroes, but no true supers.

 

I believe the government insured against heroic damages. When Mr. Incredible was sued' date=' that led to countless other suits which forced the government to say we can't spend this much money any more, stop helping us.[/quote']

That's my memory as well.

 

IIRC, the movie seemed to imply that the majority of superhero work was preventing disasters, plane crashes, and the like. Plus, just having super-movement might have allowed them to get to the scene of "mundane" crimes much faster than the police. True supervillains may have been rare in the Incredibles universe.

 

But it does seem odd that the world has gotten along just fine for 20 years, but the minute the supers come out of hiding here comes the Underminer!

 

 

bigdamnhero

“As the days go by, we face the increasing inevitability that we are alone in a godless, uninhabited, hostile and meaningless universe. Still, you've got to laugh, haven't you?â€

Re: System Generation

Link Below. I have never used it but I am thinking about it.

 

It's Full of Stars

Thanks.

bigdamnhero

"Huh?"

"Huh?!"

"Huh."

Re: System Generation

Visually impressive' date=' but the controls are clumsy. It's Full of Stars is a much easier to use program, and has much of the same functionality.[/quote']

Link please?

 

 

bigdamnhero

“It is sobering to consider that when Mozart was my age he had already been dead for a year.â€

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

I've long been tinkering with a system/setting more like the stuff presented in the Aliens Colonial Marines Technical Manual' date=' a third-party supplement detailing all you need to know about the CMarines. It had some nice space combat stuff, placing the Sulaco into context. It said that space combat was about two things, and two things only: stealth and detection. If you could see the bad guy before he could see you, you could launch your nukes first and blow him up.[/quote']

I love that book! (Time to pull it out for a re-read.) That would certainly give a very different feel to space combat than what we're used to seeing/reading. My concern would be that all-or-nothing combats are problematic in gaming, where the GM (unlike an author) doesn't have absolute control over what all characters do. Better hope the Bad Guys are in a prisoner-taking mood, or the first time the PCs make one stupid mistake or blow a couple rolls they're dead.

 

OTOH, if your campaign wasn't built around space combat but just had it there for background color, you could handle it all in "box text" and just narrate what happens to get the PCs where you want they to be. Want the PCs to make it out of the system? "You sneak out of system, narrowly avoiding detection." Want them to get captured? "An enemy cruiser has just detected your presense; do you surrender or let them vaporize you?"

 

Basically' date=' submarine warfare in space. To make it more submarine-like, I was considering adding in 'terrain' effects. It's well-known that there's no such thing as a true vacuum... the average density of interplanetary space is a few atoms per cubic centimetre, and I'm not sure how much we know about interplanetary space at the moment. But it leaves open the possibility of 'terrain' -- some areas might have more matter than others, which could throw off scans. Ejecta from comets might provide a 'ridge' to hide behind... or if you wanna get really scifi, space could include various folds that could even simulate the thermocline of submarine warfare.[/quote']

I can't see particle densities high enough to affect movement or firing, but enough to throw off scans? That might be plausible, `tho I would think it would be rare. Anyone more knowledgeable want to weigh in?

 

In such a setting' date=' fighters are all but useless... except possibly if they're stealthy sensor vehicles or the like. But certainly, no dogfighting, no 'pitched capital ship combat'. A few nukes is all it takes to end most engagements.[/quote']

Another good reason to keep the range open. Seriously, wouldn't it depend on the tech assumptions you make about missile guidance vs anti-missile defenses? For example, in the Honnor Harrington books, missile duels are fought at distances of thousands-to-millions of kilometers. At that range, a "near-miss" is still a long ways away, even for a nuke. Point defenses are good enough that it's very difficult to get "old fashioned" nukes close enough to an enemy ship to destroy it. So the primary missile warhead generates bomb-pumped lasers to give it a larger burst radius. But ships are big enough and tough enough to survive getting hit by a few lasers. So even nukes are not necessarily one-shot-one-kill weapons.

 

 

bigdamnhero

“I think I'm going to be unwell.â€

“Ladies are unwell, Stone. Gentlemen vomit.â€

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!

I'd pick a hex-scale of about 1 km so that I can multi-hex capital ships and star-bases and could abstract planetary atmosphere as a straight line.

Another consideration per offline conversations with Cancer... In a regime where FTL is possible and engagement ranges are small, a majority of combat will consist of getting into sensor range, assessing chances of winning and then the side that looks like it will lose running away at FTL velocity before engagement occurs. Only in the situation where the smaller side has no choice will there even *be* space combat.

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?

Imagine the alternative. You have a six-gun, simply as the prototypical focus with charges. You fire in your first phase, again in your second. In your third phase the hammer clicks on an empty chamber.

 

"What happened to my other four bullets?"

 

"They were implied to have been fired, off panel, between phases."

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.â€

“Then where do all the calculators go?â€

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

Brother: "Dad always thought you were better than me!"

Me: "Dad was right!"

"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

Agreed.

 

Though I do have to say it's a great justification for purchasing those new powers and or advantages for powers.

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

Now' date=' can you make her on 350 points? [/quote']

Sure... if you're talking about the Lynda Carter TV version.

 

Actually, I did just that years ago for a "Silly TV Superheroes" game. One of the more ridiculous games I've ever run, and that's saying a lot.

 

 

bigdamnhero

“There's not enough beer in the world, Spleen, sorry.â€

Re: System Generation

Well there is the Sector Generator in the Free Stuff section. Its the last file on the page the link is to. It says that it generates each system using the Star Hero rules. I have never used it though since I am not running or playing in a Star Hero game.

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...

"If you can't see the future, it's because you're not driving fast enough!"

 

Now THAT's a man I want to buy a beer for!

Just not when he's driving...

bigdamnhero

"This is my BOOM stick."

Re: Costume fixation (Get your mind out of the gutter)

Another vote for red & blue Spidey-wear. Also possibly the only superhero costume that looks as good on the big screen as it did in the comic.

I also used to love Dr. Strange's get-up, with the cloak and the Eye of Agamotto or whatever.

As for women, one of my favorites was always Ms. Marvel's blue-with-lightning-bolt-and-red-sash.

Worst costume? I gotta vote for the X-Men's yellow spandex. U. G. L. Y.

bigdamnhero

"You got somthing against gutters?"