novi

Re: Space vs. Atmosphere Movement My first question for you is how important is tactical ship movement to your game? Are ships going to be fighting other ships on a regular basis? Or are they just a means to get from one adventure site to another? (Yes, I realize this also depends on the players, but no one can account for player action.) If the later, you don't need detailed ship specs. If the former, you need to work out who will be fighting what where. Also, you need to consider how realistic you want to be, and what the movement really represents. For example, in many [disclaimer]but by no means all or every sci-fi story[/disclaimer]* space battles, the relative speed between opposing ships is roughly what the example ship speeds are. Look at the Battle of Endor. The fleets were in a rough orbit of moon, giving them a speed of several kps relative to the planet, which is moving several kps relative to its sun, which is moving many kps in orbit around the center of the galaxy, etc. Yet that is not important, as the two fleets weren't moving faster then 1 or 2 kps towards each other. SO I guess my answer is megascale flight between planets, but when ships fight their movement is rated relative to each other. *I've put up a disclaimer! You can't say that I forgot your favorite sci-fi story that does it differently!

One of my players in my game, a boy-genius gadgeteer, just had his main weapon switched on him. There was dimension-jumping and silly player choices, as usual. Originally, that his double had a different weapon was just for flavor, but when they jumped dimensions at the end of the session, they still had their weapons switched. His former weapon was one of those ring Frisbees modified to deliver a high-voltage shock on impact. His new weapon is a three-bladed boomerang, also modified in an as-yet undetermined way. While his character is quite capable of just rebuilding the weapon with some downtime, the player rather enjoys the concept of being stuck with a different weapon for some time. So I need to figure out what the new weapon does and how to build that. I'm open to suggestions, but my thoughts were that each blade of the boomerang would have a different special effect, and that which effect it was is determined randomly upon hitting. I'm not sure whether it should be a multipower or just the variable special effects advantadge, and what the appropriate value of the randomness limitation should be. I appreciate any help I can get on this matter.

Re: How to end a dystopia... It seems to me that part of the issue is defining the conditions of the question. Historical examples have been compared to hypothetical futures, with mixed results. And fictional narratives have been compared with actual reality. I'm not sure one could develop a general solution to the general question of "How to end a dystopia?", but specific solutions could be devised. The original question was how does the CU get from a Cyberpunk Dystopia to the Interstellar Age. The problem is only if you imagine that there has to be an enormous disconnect between the two. This need not be the case. The corps will still be there in the IA, and for that matter they're still there in Galactic Champions. It's just that conditions have changed and it's no longer necessary to keep the dystopian conditions around. The dystopia comes about only because there is a finite ammount of resources and ruthless, greedy people will stoop to any means to get a bigger slice of the pie. It also makes an easy scapegoat for having restictive laws, because of all the crazy poor people. When cheap space travel shows up, there's more for everyone. The corps and the rich will still get their larger shares, but everyone is going to get more, and the poor will see a larger relative improvement, effectively ending the dystopia. Another important point to remember is that we're discussing genres. It's an important part of cyberpunk that the corps are evil and that the characters spend their time amongst the downtrodden, marginalized masses. Space games are about travelling the space lanes and the adventure there. They are in the same universe in the same way that Gotham and Metropolis are in the same universe.

Re: Firewing vs. Gravitar? Actually, near as I can tell is that Kirby is complaining over her 54 PD/ED, coupled with a high CON. Yes, it's at least a little cheesy, but I take it as a sign that defeating her with conventional attacks is supposed to be very unlikely.

Re: Macroverse and Microverse? Ummm... I don't haaavve to say that. The Macroverse, and for that matter the Microverse, are a way of handling what happens when the amount of Growth (or Shrinking) required becomes unwieldy. Once a character is a mile tall, or about 95 points of Growth, they're not interacting with the world in a normal matter. Their fingers are 40 feet in diameter at that point! So, from a certain point of view, they're in a different reality from normal sized characters. So no, we're not talking about moving galaxies, or even planets, since there isn't anything to stand on and push against. Unless you've got Flight.

Re: What is Munchkin? To me it represents a player who is concerned only with the acquisition of power coupled with a complete lack of concern for character development. The type of person who would describe their character from a D&D game by listing class and equipment, and then when asked to describe the personality of the character goes "Um, well..." because that's not a detail that occured to them as important. I was at one point a munchkin, but I was 16 at the time.

Re: Help with Slick from the Ultimates Depending on how you think about it, you may want to run it as an Entangle vs. DEX, as suggested in Digital Hero 5. It still doesn't feel quite right, but that's got a lot to due with the nature of friction control. Entangle isn't quite the right way to describe it, but it is the closest effect.

Binary Man is built with the model that the duplicate also pays for the cost of Duplication. Saba Devatao is built with the model that only the original character pays for the cost of Duplication. They are both duplicators who only make exact duplicates of themselves. My question is that while both are legal according to the rules, which one is the prefered method for building a character?

Re: THE ULTIMATE METAMORPH -- What Do *You* Want To See? A discussion on the use of entangle vs extra STR, only to grab, to represent the classic stretchy guy wraps around the character power. I have no problem using an entangle for that, but a lot of people do.