bigdamnhero

Re: Original Fantasy Hero The original FH was probably my all-time favorite game; the new version is just as good and in some ways better. The core game system hasn't changed much from the original FH, but they've added a LOT more detail. The magic system is still just as flexible; they've added more sample magic systems and spell "colleges" if you want them, or you can make everything up from scratch if you'd rather. Yeah, I think a lot of people get scared off that way. I second arcady's recommendation to try Hero Sidekick (if you can find it, it's currently "between printings" and kinda hard to find.) bigdamnhero "There's no such thing as Silicon Heaven." "Then where do all the calculators go?"

Re: Nuclear Physics Made Fun! Believe it or not, I once memorized and could sing "The Elements" all the way through. "There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium/ And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium..." Eventually, I got a life. bigdamnhero "Will someone get this walking carpet out of my way?"

Re: Firefly I think that line originally comes from Rodenberry or one of his Trek successors, but it still cracks me up. As a writer (unpublished so far) I think that answer makes perfect sense, and it certainly matches the feel of the show. But as a gamer, I like to have a little more detail so the players understand WHY they can/can't get to Persephone in time. Especially since I tend to game with a lot of engineers who want hard answers to things (especially in sci-fi, as opposed to fantasy or supers) and don't like being told "because I said so, that's why." Different strokes, folks, etc. Personally, I think Star Hero goes a little overboard in some areas. But that's the beauty of it - just cuz the details are there doesn't mean you have to use them. Thanks for the review - I definitely plan to buy the first copy I see, `tho probably just for source material. bigdamnhero "If people see you are unarmed, they'll never hurt you...nine times out of ten."

Re: Feints

Re: Firefly

Re: Feints Classic example of a real-world feint: two of my friends are sparring in the dojo. We'll call them Sensei and Student. Student is clearly outclassed and getting his butt kicked, when he looks past Senei's shoulder towards the door and says "Hi Trish Ann!" (Sensei's wife.) Sensei turns to look in spite of himself... Pop! ...and combat skill had nothing to do with it. bigdamnhero "Rasputin, bring in the bucket of soapy frogs and remove his trousers."

Re: Feints I agree that, in general, feints are part of the OCV/CSL package. But I also like to reward players who think of ways to use non-combat skills (sleight of hand, acting, or just PRE) to augment their combat skills. Plus, it's another way to prompt players to embellish their attacks, rather than just "I hit him" over and over. Personally, I'd prefer to see feint as a maneuver, rather than a skill or talent. I've normally run it much as others have described: come up with a clever idea, roll some appropriate skill, quick PER roll for attacker, bonuses or penalties handed out based on who rolled what. Actually, now that I'm writing it down, didn't there used to be a feint maneuver in the original Fantasy Hero? Have to check my book when I get home. (Unless someone beats me to it, of course...) bigdamnhero "Holy mother of God and all her wacky Nephews!"

Re: Broad category skills At the risk of jumping on an already crowded bandwagon, I'm another one who allows fairly broad uses of PS & KS. I have sometimes allowed mid-game skill additions, but try to avoid it as it can easily become a "squeaky wheel gets the grease" thing. (My players are already squeaky and greasy enough, thank you!) But I really like the Retro Skill concept [Repped!] as it makes it a game mechanic rather than an exception. Point taken: a 2-point PS should not serve as a substitute for 10 points worth of skills. But then, 2 points is only the base cost, right? If a player feels that his pilot "should've taken" navigation skill, you can always reply that "with a PS of only 11- you must not be a very well-rounded professional pilot; you just know how to fly a plane." Or the other fallback: “You remember taking that class at the Academy, but you haven’t practiced it in awhile…†On the other end of things, I have seen GMs allow characters to buy skills at reduced (or no) cost if it's something that is pertinent to character background, but not likely to get much actual play. One example was a game where we played historical characters transported into a sci-fi future; the GM let each of us pick 10 points of “useless†skills – horseback riding, archaic weapon familiarities, lock-picking (mechanical), etc. – for free. Some of them wound up getting used once of twice, but mostly they were just for color. As a tangential thought, how do most of you handle “untrained†skill checks? For example, even if Climbing isn’t an everyman skill, most any character (physical limitations permitting) can attempt to climb something. My usual method is to give a non-proficiency penalty of -3, for a base roll of 5-. Yes, I know that’s less than a 5% chance of success, but it allows them to attempt easy tasks (which might give bonuses of +3 or better, which a skilled individual could do in his sleep) with a reasonable chance of success. bigdamnhero "Zathras is used to being beast of burden to other people's needs. Very sad life. Probably have very sad death, but at least there is symmetry."

Re: Genetically engineered humans Now that's just...evil! I'm looking for a way to play devil's advocate here and think of some way I might allow this, but I really don't see it. At most I might waive the normal characteristic maximums, but if you're already in a supers game you're probably not using them anyway. The way I normally handle players who want to get something for nothing is to remind them that "a limitation that doesn't limit the character isn't worth any points." Your player has thought up a plausible explanation for how his character has a 30 STR, but it's just SFX unless it limits him in some way compared to another character who just really works out a lot. As far as "genie" package deals, some thoughts on disads: - Vulnerability/Susceptibility to _______: especially if the technology is new, and they haven't quite got all the bugs worked out yet. The player may not even know what the ____ is at first. - Dependance: if some kind of regular "supplements" are required to keep the enhancements working. - Enraged/berserk: if the technology screws with a character's head. - Psych Lims: ditto. - Physical Limitation: if the technology screws with the character's body in some way. This could be anything from colorblindness or loss of sense of smell, to selling back some inches of running, to more severe limitations. - Social Lim, subject to discrimination: if there's prejudice against genies in your world. - Distincitve Looks: if there's something obvious about all genies, like bulging foreheads, green hair, or whatever. - Hunted/Watched: if there's some society, gov't or otherwise, that specifically monitors or hunts down genies. Obviously, I don't know what would fit in your campaign, but it seems like there are plenty of ways you could run with this. bigdamnhero "We're gonna die!" "Think positive!" "We're gonna die quickly!"

Re: Astrogator's Handbook

Re: Dinosaur Planet Another consideration: notice how basically all of the surviving big mammels are in Africa? The theory is that as early man got better and better at hunting, African mammels had generations to learn to stay away from us. But when our ancestors crossed into N. Am the bison, et. al. underestimated us -- "Aw, it's just some little monkey with a stick - Aaagh!" -- and we hunted them into extinction before they could adapt. I'm not clear what you mean by this. All the existing species will presumably be from the current era by definition, right? If you mean some evolved earlier than others, I'm not sure how much that matters to anyone but a biologist. For example, sharks evolved to their current form ages ago, whereas horses have changed dramatically in ~recent millenia. But to the guy on the ground, what matters is that I can ride one while the other will try and eat me. Could also be limited by climate: tropical creatures simply aren't going to migrate to the frozen tundra. IIRC from Guns, Germs & Steel, flora & fauna both tend to spread much faster on land masses that are oriented horizontally (ie - Eurasia) than on landmasses oriented vertically (ie - North America). That's one reason why almost all of the domesticatable plant species evolved on Eurasia - more variety, more cross-breeding.

Re: Dinosaur Planet Wherever you want them to? Hmm...now we're getting further into the realms of fantasy. Not saying that's a bad thing, just saying. In our world, carniverous plants are rare, small, and harmless to anything bigger than a housefly. I can't imagine how to "realistically" make any kind of man-eating Venus fly trap on an Earth-like planet. For one thing, scaling up to that size would make the plant far too heavy to move itself under any moving-plant mechanism I know of. But then, who says we need to be constrained by reality? In many ways your carniverous plants are going to end up closer to animals than to any terrestrial plant. But that's okay too - there's no reason to assume that Terran taxonomic divisions would be meaningful on Planet X anyway. So give them some sort of muscule system to control the movement. Maybe some kind of segmented bark, like an insect's exoskeleton, to allow movement. Something fulfilling the function of a mouth, `tho it needn't look like one, with some digestive juices. Then the only question is how it senses it's food. Vision might be taking it too far (for me, anyway); maybe they sense air displacement? As far as what role they fulfill, even with everything we've postulated I still hve a hard time seeing such plant monsters competing with dinosaurs for food. Most animals will simply learn to avoid them. (Maybe they impersonate more common, non-carniverous plants?) So I would see them as primarily carrion eaters, which means they wouldn't normally be much of a threat to active people. Until your hero unknowingly camps too close to one and wakes up to find himself half-wrapped in tentacles... That's all I've got for now. Anyone else? bigdamnhero "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the road less traveled by and they CANCELLED MY FRIKKIN' SHOW. I totally shoulda took the road that had all those people on it. Damn." --Joss Whedon

Re: Comics are getting too steamy... I've got no problem with sex when it advances the plot or character development; I'm opposed to it when it's just shameless pandering. Actually I feel that way about a lot of things: violence, death, resurrections, political/religious commentary, cross-overs... The other thing to remember is that comics aren't really marketed at kids anymore, and haven't been since... well, since most of us were kids. Didn't I see something the other day that the average (maybe it was mean) age of comic readers is pushing 40? 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."

Re: Dinosaur Planet

Re: Astrogator's Handbook By the way, has anyone heard of a book called "Proximity Zero, A Writer's Guide to the Nearest 200 Stars" by Terry Kepner? It's out of print, and I've been hunting the local used bookstores for a copy. But now that I've got all the freebies this thread's handed out, I'm wondering if it's worth the effort. bigdamnhero "In a sense, this is really *your* movie. So if it sucks, it's *your* fault." - Joss Whedon Serenity premieres September 30th

Re: Silly question, How much damage do nukes do For those interested, the US govt has a number of declassified nuke videos for sale at $10 a pop: https://www.osti.gov/opennet/forms.jsp?formurl=films/histfilms.html The only one I've personally seen is "Exercise Desert Rock," which is one of the above-ground tests they did in the 50s involving US soldiers. The video is essentially an Army training film made after the exercise. The only problem with it (apart from the obvious problem!) is that they don't give any actual numbers for yield, dose rates, etc. Was it the "Davy Crockett" back in the 60s that was sortof a nuclear bazooka whose range was considerably less than its blast radius? Only time I ever actually used a nuke in a game, it was a plot device. Heroes shoved it through a dimensional portal to nuke the big demon. It did [exactly-as-many-as-it-needs-to]d6. bigdamnhero "They tell you never to strike a man with a closed fist, but it is on occasion hillarious."

Re: Firefly

Re: Firefly

Re: Firefly To the best of my knowledge, SciFi only has syndication rites; Fox still owns the original rights to the show. (The new Serenity RPG, as I understand it, only contains material from the movie, not the show, because they didn't want to have to get approval from both Universal AND Fox in prder to print anything.) So don't expect new episodes any time soon. bigdamnhero Zathras is used to being beast of burden to other people's needs. Very sad life. Probably have very sad death, but at least there is symmetry."

Re: Astrogator's Handbook Nyrath, didn't you used to have a Excel spreadsheet for the Tuffleyverse (the "official" but optional background for Full Thrust, for those unfamiliar) that calculated the distances between all stars within something like 15 parsecs of Earth? I can't find it on your website. bigdamnhero "Have you ever considered piracy? You'd make a wonderful Dred Pirate Roberts."

Re: Earth's core Well, I'm glad we've got *that* bracketed. bigdamnhero “Your brain is like the four-headed man-eating haddock-fish-beast of Aberdeen.†“In what way?†“It doesn’t exist.â€

Re: Book suggestions? I second most of Nyrath's suggestions. (The one's I've read so far.) I hesitate to recommend Stephen Donaldson's "Gap" series. Like everything Donaldson writes, it's beyond dark -- rape, torture, general nastiness. But it also has a very interesting and original vision of space travel and combat. First book is called "The Real Story." I'm not a big fan of Saberhagen's Berzerker Wars, but I know a lot of people who swear by it. And though it's mostly about the ground pounders, definitely give Heinlein's Starship Troopers a read if you haven't already. bigdamnhero “I use the word “man†in its broadest possible sense. For as we all know, God made man in his own image. It’d be a sad lookout for Christians throughout the globe if God looked anything like you.â€

Re: Dinosaur Planet Either would work, but IMO more variety is always better. Maybe by the time the cataclysm came, the differences between the different species was enough that they could no longer interbreed? The Xenovores are mostly in Alien Wars, `tho there's some material on them in Terran Empire. The Mon'dabi are in Terran Empire. bigdamnhero "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the road less traveled by and they CANCELLED MY FRIKKIN' SHOW. I totally shoulda took the road that had all those people on it. Damn." --Joss Whedon

Re: Dinosaur Planet Glad I could help! Just curious: if you want him to have "magic-seeming powers" via psionics, why so fussed about giving him technology? Seems like you could accomplish much the same things either way. Or is it just a style thing? Just don't forget the shotgun and the chainsaw... bigdamnhero "Alright you primitive screw heads, listen up. See this? This is my BOOM stick."

Re: Atmosphere In my games, terraforming is normally for worlds you want to colonize (ie - have people live and raise families on). Domes are mostly for: 1. A relatively quick and cheap interim step to terraforming, or 2. Worlds unsuittable for terraforming -- too small, too far/close to sun, etc -- but that still have some good reason for people to live there (scientific outposts, small mining settlements, covert military bases, etc). Of course as with most such things, a lot depends on your assumptions about how many Earth-like and/or life-bearing planets are out there. If there are a lot of worlds that can sustain human life without terraforming, then there won't be much need to terraform any more. `Tho don't forget that that he can still be crushed if he drops the car: 1/15 gravity doesn't reduce its mass. bigdamnhero “I use the word “man†in its broadest possible sense. For as we all know, God made man in his own image. It’d be a sad lookout for Christians throughout the globe if God looked anything like you.â€