bigdamnhero

Well that was fast! Thanks!

That's odd; IIRC my notifications were all set to OFF by default. (This is not a complaint BTW.) Maybe it had something to do with what your settings were before the upgrade and they got converted imperfectly?

Apologies for pimping my stuff, but I'm selling a set of the original 6-issue Champions miniseries (Eclipse, 1986-87) on eBay, and I thought some people here might be interested. Issues include game stats as well as maps & scenarios. They're in pretty good shape, I'd say Fine to Very Fine. The auction runs until 11/20/17. Thanks.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/172973708198?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

On 11/5/2017 at 9:39 AM, Simon said:

Look in the Activity Streams for that -- and note that you can create your own activity stream if any of the presets don't work for you.

Works perfectly - thanks!

8 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

No, not officially or specifically, but the Iron Man film definitely implied that by the reaction of people.  There was no "not another one" or "he's like (insert previous hero)!"  Just "wow, who's that, its totally new!"  Its a minor quibble, I just have a personal dislike for retconning.  I could stand Captain America because its such a classic concept and it was far enough back people wouldn't have him in mind.

OTOH Stark also denies being "some kind of superhero" or words to that effect, which implies at least that the concept of superheroes already existed in that world. And given that basically everything Stark did was already front-page news before he outed himself, the press' reaction could also be interpreted as "Holy shot, Tony Stark is a superhero now!"

I'm not saying that was their intent at the time, of course. But I figure it's close enough to pass.

On 11/6/2017 at 12:43 AM, tkdguy said:

I hadn't originally planned on posting here, but I found a couple of videos relevant to this discussion:

...and now I have a new favorite YouTube channel! Thanks!

On 10/31/2017 at 6:17 PM, Lucius said:

Don't stop there - do the player characters go to the fey world or what?

They did, a couple times actually. Tldr...

In an early adventure, they had saved a couple of kids from a pack of wolves; it turned out the kids were fey, so it earned them some Faerie Karma Points.

Several sessions later, they were on the run from the Antichrist's forces outside of Rey (modern-day Tehran), ducked into a cave to hide...and came out in Faerie. (Faerie Karma Payback.) They spent a few days in a nearby fey village recovering from their wounds, made some new friends, and underwent a few friendly challenges: an archery contest, a swords duel, a footrace, and a story-telling contest. They also volunteered to find The Lost Swords Of The Fey somewhere in the world of men and return them to their new fey friends. Oh, and they killed a couple fomorians, as you do.

One of the PCs took his new fey girlfriend as a Contact, so she has popped up a few times since then.

Several sessions later, they managed to recover the two McGuffins swords and return them to the fey - which will have consequences down the road a bit. They also accidentally started a war between the fey and the fomorians, which will also have consequences down the road!

Our last session, they needed to get from Ireland to Italy in a hurry, so they decided to take a "shortcut" through faerie. It remains to be seen how that's going to work out for them...

On 11/6/2017 at 1:22 PM, slikmar said:

If I might ask, what is Disney doing to piss off theaters?

They also banned LA Times film critics from advance screenings because the LA Times did an investigative piece on some of Disney's business dealing. Other papers & outlets said they wouldn't write advance reviews of Disney movies until the LA Times ban was lifted, and Disney just backed down.

https://www.avclub.com/amid-pressure-from-critics-disney-ends-its-ban-on-the-1820227467

Slightly OT, but I was thinking the other day that even tho there are a lot of shows I'm theoretically watching, with the near-death of the traditional TV season model and the advent of binge media drops and so forth, I'm really only watching 2-3 shows at any one time. Sure, I'm eagerly waiting for the next seasons of GoT, Westworld, I Zombie, Legion, and all the Netflix MCU shows. But the only shows I'm actually watching at the moment are Supergirl, The Gifted, and The Orville. Nice to have stuff spaced out more throughout the year like that. Add in the fact that most of those shows are only 8-10 episodes per season, and it doesn't really turn into that many hours of television per week.

23 hours ago, zslane said:

I'm not sure I'd place much significance on those numbers. The traditional broadcast marketplace is dying (maybe transforming is the more accurate term). Ratings have become virtually meaningless as they are a vestige of a business model that is becoming hopelessly outdated.

True, except AFAICT the whole business of selling commercials (ie keeping in business) is still based around traditional ratings. So ratings may mean nothing in terms of actual popularity, but they still mean (almost) everything in terms of perceived popularity, and therefore marketability.

I'm not saying this makes any rational sense, mind you...

Overall I'd rate most of the changes as either Better or Different-But-Not-Worse. And it sounds like a huge improvement on the back end, so that's cool.

The only complaint/question I have is regarding the Manage Followed Content page. I used to use the My Content page as my entry point, as I could see in one glance all the topics I'm following or have commented on and which have updates, with the most-recently-updated thread at the top. The new Manage Followed Content - Topics page mostly does the same thing, except:

1) The threads sort by Last Created rather than Last Updated, so old threads with new updates are buried, and

2) The Go To First Unread Post dot-link seems to be missing.

I don't know if either of those are things that can be changed, either on my end or on yours?

Thanks for all your hard work!

Some good ones from last night's FH game:

Welshman: “Songs will be sung of our deeds!”

Priest: “Mostly dirty limericks, but...”

Alchemist: "There once was a Priest from Rome..."

Pilgrim: “What if [bad thing] happens?”

Priest: “God isn’t enough of a dick to do that to us.”

Pilgrim: “You haven’t ever actually read the bible, have you?”

Traveling through Faerie, the Irish warrior decides to make a small sacrifice to the land asking for safe passage, so he spills a little wine on the ground symbolically.

GM: “Wait, the Irishman just spilled alcohol?”

Italian Priest: “I thought we talked about the dangers of alcohol abuse.”

Irishman: [shrugs] “It’s just wine, doesn’t count.”

Italian Priest: “Whoa whoa WHOA! You did not just say that!”

The Heroes encounter Aletcien, a Fey huntress they met once before, and with whom the Welshman had a tryst. But since their last meeting, the Welshman has married another woman. (Background: in my world, the Fey have something resembling marriage, but they don’t really get the concept of monogamy.)

GM: (to the Welshamn) “Aletcien runs over and leaps into your arms with a squee.”

Welshman: [sigh] “It’s truly wonderful to see you again.”

[Aletcien tries to drag him off into the woods for a quickie, but he resists...reluctantly...]

Welshman: But I must tell you…I’ve gotten married.”

Aletcien: “That’s wonderful! I’m so happy for you both! I can’t wait to meet her!”

Welshman: [relieved] “That’s great…”

Aletcien: “As long as she doesn’t mind sharing, amirite?”

[Aletcien resumes trying to drag him off into the woods]

Welshman:  [groaning] “No, no… you don’t understand…you see…my religion says I can only be with one woman.”

Aletcien: [thinks for a minute] “At a time?”

Welshman: [OOC] “Yeah, that’s it. I go with her. I’m not even going to try and make that EGO Roll.”

Later…

They  come back out of the woods picking leaves out of their hair. The Welshman walks over to the Priest.

Welshman: “Indulgences are still a thing, right?”  

Priest: “Last I checked.”

Welshman: [drops a bag of gold] “Bless me Father for I have sinned.” [walks away]

On 10/31/2017 at 5:44 PM, DShomshak said:

I never imagined Gordon was actually pointing at Sol. I thought he was just giving the kid something to look for.

Even if he was pointing at the right star, that would take one heck of an astrogation roll to locate a system based on "some guy once pointed at it."   Besides which it doesn't sound like the Federation Union is exactly hiding, so I doubt the location of Earth is much of a secret.

On 10/31/2017 at 5:44 PM, DShomshak said:

The Orville is just a little too serious sometimes to watch just as a comic romp, but just a little too goofy sometimes to treat as a serious attempt at SF.

That was my trouble at first too, the tone shifts are a little jarring. But once I got used to that, the show became more enjoyable.

Just because a discipline is a proper science doesn't mean that the scientific method is fully at play, or that in the context of the setting that all or even many of the modern aspects of the science are included.

 

Yeah, Astronomy in the context of the accurate measurement of heavenly bodies is a very ancient discipline, and while entangled with the philosophy of interpreting those measurements, can be gamed as a separate skill, just as any two related skills can. My personal take is to combine them in Astrology, since pure measurement for its own sake without interpretation is a pretty modern thing and largely dates from the telescope era; having them separate feels a bit like having different skills for measuring and interpretation in Navigation (i.e. PS: Sextant Operator and PS: Navigator).

 

Tycho Brahe was as much Astrologer as Astronomer. Copernicus and Kepler were looking for God's plan rather than hermetic wisdom, but are still mystical in the general sense. Newton was an outright Hermetic.

 

Astronomy may help discover what is out there, but it won't determine causes or underlying reality. Just because the science skill exists in the world does not mean that the world conforms to the currently established reality. It may well be perfect circular motion of crystal spheres, moved by the Will of God. SS: Astronomy will allow you to determine the "perfect circular motion" part, but not the rest.

 

Conversely, in a fantasy context if Astrology is real, it may be amenable to rigorous scientific testing! Twin studies would be especially useful!

I wasn't implying that either astrology or medieval astronomy were rigorously scientific by modern standards. My point is that they were regarded as separate, distinct fields of study even by people who believed both were real. Plus in early medieval Europe the basics of astronomy were known and studied centuries before astrology was introduced from the Muslim World. And as I mentioned before, many of the most prominent astronomers of the Islamic Golden Age challenged or outright rejected astrology on scientific and/or religious grounds, to include Avicenna, al-Biruni & Alhazen.

Remember astronomy had many practical uses completely separate from alleged astrological influences, such as knowing when to plant crops, navigating at night, and particularly for Muslims knowing the correct times to pray, the direction of Mecca, proper orientation when building a Mosque, etc. Not to mention things like, say, predicting eclipses or knowing when there shouldn't be one...

Now, in game terms whether it's better to combine them into one skill or keep them separate depends, as always, on the nature of the campaign and how they're likely to come up in play. In this campaign, one character wanted to know astronomy but not astrology, so making some distinction between the two was required right there. And the astrologer character/player saw astronomy as complimentary to astrology, with the latter built as Deduction rather than an SS. It's worked quite well, and them have come up separately enough that I thing the division is justified. If that doesn't fit your campaign, then you're certainly welcome to combine them.

Let us hope against all hope and plausible chance that he is a golly gee-whiz little boy in a superman's body instead of grim and cynical.

Casting Levi in the role only makes sense if “little boy in adult body” is what they’re going for. Dark he ain’t.

At the time period in question, there was no such distinction.

I’m not sure that’s completely correct. Astronomy was the study of the stars, planets, etc. Astrology was the effect those bodies had on Earthly lives. They were of course closely related, and many people regarded them as equally valid, but they were still distinct fields I believe. In fact IIRC several of the great Muslim Astronomers of the age rejected astrology as pseudoscience. I’m on my phone so I can’t find the reference tho.

OK, I gotta admit the show's growing on me. Once I got over the "So...it's a ST-TNG cover band? But with potty jokes?" factor, it's actually becoming fairly enjoyable. Not great, by any stretch, but entertaining as long as you don't think too hard.

I did like last episode's opening scene--Bortus and Klyten were having a domestic squabble, which sounded like Michael Dorn as Worf arguing with himself.  Then Klyten settled in with a big bowl of rocky road ice cream to watch The Sound Of Music, and Bortus emerges from his wardrobe with a look on his face like, "Are you kidding me?"

Yeah, I laughed. Apparently some stereotypes (gay men + show tunes) really do transcend species.

I was still too attached to TOS to respect or enjoy TNG, I guess. The lack of military precision/protocol on the bridge was a real sticking point with me.

I enjoyed TNG, but that bugged the hell out of me too. (Not least because I was in the military at the time.) I get the whole "The Federation isn't really a military organization" thing, but TNG went too far in trying to have it both ways. Kirk was a soldier who could play explorer & diplomat, very much like Age Of Sail naval Captains were expected to be. Picard always felt to me like someone had given Jacques Cousteau command of the Navy's flagship. Which would be fine if the writers had shown they understood the difference, but they clearly didn't.

Of course, Enterprise-D's crew were models of Prussian discipline compared to the Orville's; but then that's part of the point of the show. (And from the most recent episode: while I never had to explain to my commanding officer why one of my troops had been arrested for publicly dry-humping a statue, some of the things I did have to explain weren't much further out there!)

I was never sold on Denise Crosby as the ranking security officer

I thought Crosby was great. (And not just because I had a massive crush on her.) I just hated that the Chief of Security spent most of her time opening hailing frequencies...
 

Moreover, Q struck me as just a poor man's copy of Trelaine (no offense to John Delancy, who is a great actor)

I always assumed Q was from the same species as Trelaine, or was possibly even the same character. I'm still surprised they never explicitly made that connection. I thought Q was okay, but like a lot of TNG's tropes he got overused.

The Orville is clearly fantasy with a science fiction coating. Dark Matter storm. Yeah. And axion particles. Uh huh.

I have to disagree. Rubber Science does not equal fantasy. Star Wars is fantasy because it follows fantasy tropes, just substituting blasters & spaceships for swords & horses. Orville follows SF tropes; they just have a lot of questionable technobabble. As has every Trek series. (And nearly every TV/film SF series, for that matter.) It's a semantics point, but I think a significant one.
 

Gene Roddenberry once said that westerns (which were much more popular on tv at the time than they are now) were not about authentic 1870s characters, but about characters with the same values and traits of contemporary viewers. Which is correct. Just like the crew of the TOS Enterprise didn't act like people from two hundred years in the future--they were basically contemporary humans from the 1960s.

 

THAT'S where the jokes are in The Orville. It's people like us--or, at least, people like Seth MacFarlane--plopped into a Trek-style universe. They make the same stupid jokes people now would make. They watch the movies and tv shows we would recognize, even if they call them oldies. It was more jarring at first because you don't expect that from characters in a Star Trek show, but this _isn't_ Star Trek. It's an homage, certainly, but with less refined and genteel characters

Exactly. TOS was very explicitly meant to be "20th Century Humans In Outer Space." (At least before Roddenberry went full-on utopian idealist with TNG.) Orville just takes that idea to its extreme by giving the characters fully-contemporary mannerisms & speech. It bugged me at first, but then I came to think of it like A Knight's Tale. No, medieval peasants didn't do We Will Rock You before jousts, but they had their own similar rituals & traditions that served the same functions.

Huge amounts of TK - only works on moons

I think it depends on what is actually causing the eclipse (or eclipse-like phenomenon). If the spell is physically moving the moon, then there will be other more catastrophic side effects, so you might want to avoid that.

Thinking about this some more: 560 STR of TK would definitely bust the campaign caps, even before I throw LOS on it. But just for purposes of discussion, if I wanted to handwave all that as Plot Device Power, what would be the other side effects of "nudging" the moon into a slightly different alignment? (Let's assume the moon is already on the right side, so it "only" has to be moved a couple degrees.) Obviously it would alter the tides dramatically and would I assume cause some major tidal waves in the short term. And of course force all the astronomers & astrologers to redraw all their charts. What else?

Your lips to Steve's (or whoever the author of the next edition is) ears. Under RAW, using Change Environment to create light is explicitly forbidden. (I started a big discussion thread ~6 months ago on Light spells.) If you want to use CE, I think it would cost 2-3 points per -1 penalty removed.

Yeah, I sortof get the idea that CE can only add penalties, not remove them, and I'm sure Steve could articulate all the ways that could lead to excessive munchkinism. But...

I think you mean Astronomers. Astrologers have never understood anything except how gullible the uneducated masses are.

Heh. Of course this being fantasy, the astronomer is also an astrologer. (Built as Deduction, complimented by Analyze Target's Astrological Profile.)

I'd do it as a plot device and if attempting to dispel it, the difficulty would be the active max of the characters.  So if your spell casters are throwing around 60 active attacks, the points to dispel would be 60 minimum or possibly 80 to make it difficult.  However, that's just what I would do.  YMMV.

That's pretty much exactly what I did during the game. Took the Priest a couple tries to roll high enough, but he got there.

But now I feel like overthinking it.

Behold, I Blot Out the Sun!: (Total: 56 Active Cost, 12 Real Cost) Change Environment (-4 to Sight Group PER Rolls, -1 Temperature Level Adjustment, Long-Lasting 1 Hour), Area Of Effect (16m Radius Explosion; +1/4), MegaScale (1m = 10 km; +1 1/4), Cannot alter scale (-1/4) (56 Active Points); OAF Arrangement (candle snuffer & candle; -1 1/4), Extra Time (5 Minutes, Only to Activate, -1), No Range (-1/2), Incantations (-1/4), Gestures (-1/4), Concentration (1/2 DCV; -1/4) (Real Cost: 12)

I like this a lot! Tho -4 might be a bit too high for an eclipse, maybe -2?

Limit a Power w/ "Only During An Eclipse" & set the condition circumstance to (rarely if ever limited; -0).

 

Thus usually there is an eclipse.

It depends a lot on context. In a fantasy or mythical setting, moving celestial objects around may not have the same consequences as they would in a superhero or science fiction one. Does Newtonian gravity or any kind of "solar system" even exist? (Even the term "solar system" is quite a modern term - appears to have been first used around 1704).

Totally valid question. In this case, the campaign world is 11th century Europe (plus magic). Muslim astronomy was actually relatively advanced during this period, and one of the characters with SS Astronomy is a Muslim, so she understands the basic concept of a geocentric solar system. (Tho I didn't realize the term was a later addition, thanks.)

I suppose. But Darkness feels like the more direct application of Hero's design-for-effect philosophy since darkness is ultimately the effect desired.

That was my first thought too, but I don't want total impenetrable darkness, just a little shade.

I also thought about Images, basically the opposite of Create Light. But the +/- X to the PER Roll with Images is supposed to be a measure of how realistic/believable the Image is, not how bright/dark it is.* (Mental Illusions wouldn't work, as you noted, unless the Susceptibility is really a Psych Lim.

Creating a floating Force Wall disk to filter out the sun is a great visual, but in this case it sounds more like the sfx rather than the mechanical effect.

So yeah, I think CE works well, and doesn't even bust the campaign limits. Thanks!

* This actually has me rethinking the standard method of using Images to build flashlights & such - seems like CE might actually be the better choice?

That's the default.

 

Unsure about 5e, but 4e and 6e both allow one way walls using modifiers (+½ or +1 advantage - depending on what is allowed through - in 6e).

Yeah, I knew 6ed had a One-Way Transparent Adv, but I didn't see it in 5ER.

Eclipses are a fairly common trope in fantasy and other fiction. In my current FH game, there are a lot of dark creatures that have Suceptibilities to daylight. I wanted to have them attack the PCs in the middle of the day by causing a total solar eclipse. Two of the PCs actually have SS: Astronomy, so they understand what actually causes eclipses, and would've known if a natural eclipse was predicted, so causing an "unscheduled" eclipse was meant to be a big show of power. I didn't really think too hard about statting it out as a power, because it was meant to be a plot device. But then the priest wanted to Dispel it, and I had no idea how many AP it was worth. No big deal, I handwaved it and went with what worked best for the story.

But it did get me thinking about how you would create that as an effect? I have a few ideas, but I'm curious to see what y'all come up with.

[i'm using 6ed, but don't let that stop you...]

One further question for clarification, though, that came to mind (I gave forewarning about being detail oriented). "A character with Force Wall can create a defensive wall." So Versus Sonic Only, if a sonic attack is launched, the people within the Force Wall are protected against it. What modifications need to be made so that no sonics within the Force Wall reach outside, as opposed to any sonics originating from outside the Force Wall reaching the people inside?

Force Walls work in both directions. "A Force Wall acts like a real wall - attacks won't penetrate in either direction until the damage exceeds the Force Wall's appropriate defense." [5ER p179]

I did something like this in a modern fantasy/monster hunter game many years ago. Any time you threw around a lot of magic there was a chance the extra dimensional Big Bads would notice. The base chance of being noticed was low (5% IIRC) but increased by 1% for every 10 AP over 30 AP used. So you can use a lot of low-power stuff without worrying about it too much, but a lot of high-power spells will eventually get you noticed. I built it as a Side Effect, but it was mostly just “how magic works” in that world.

Of course that assumes there’s only one entity/group capable of noticing. In a more traditional fantasy setting, it might work better to say everyone with magesight (or whatever) a PER Roll to notice magic being used, with bonuses based on the AP involved, and scaling range modifiers to whatever distances you like (ala Megascale). Someone with Discriminatory/ Analyze can also tell the difference between Gandalf vs Sauruman.

If you handle it that way it becomes a two-edged sword, because the PCs can also tell when powerful magic is being used. I’m not sure I’d even bother statting it out as a Side Effect, since it’s likely to help as often as it hinders, but YMMV.

I'm a detail-oriented person, so oftentimes my posts are regarded as too long to read...

Yep, you'll fit in just fine here.   Welcome aboard!