Zeropoint

"I heard you liked blades, so we put blades on your blades so you can stab while you stab."

I wonder if anyone actually carried those things into real combat. The monk's spade looks pretty usable, though.

On 4/3/2019 at 3:46 PM, DShomshak said:

Heard on the radio a few days ago that the upgraded LIGO is returning to service. I wonder what it'll discover next?

Probably a bunch of nerd stuff.

Which is cool, because I'm a nerd.

Were you the group down in Timberline with the Lego building? I thought about poking in to say hello, but it looked like y'all had your hands full.

On 3/31/2019 at 2:41 PM, Chris Goodwin said:

I keep bringing up editions, but!  I could have run the exact same game under 6th edition, and it would have gone about the same.  Maybe not quite as smoothly, as my DI old hand was a huge help, but mechanically for sure

I really appreciate the consistent "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach that has been applied to the various incarnations of the Hero System. Other than that whole "Fuzion" thing, I feel like it's been "the same game, but better" with every new edition.

Lookin' at you, D&D.

On 3/31/2019 at 2:03 PM, dsatow said:

 

2)  Is it best to start with pre-gen characters?

I don't think so.  Character creation is a big plus in the game for players.

I absolutely agree that character creation is a big plus--in fact, one of the greatest strengths of the Hero System is that within point budget limits, you can pretty much create ANYTHING you can imagine, if you know how to work the system.

There's the rub, though: new players don't know how to work the system. New players will understand what the numbers MEAN a lot better after a session with a well-crafted pregen.

That pole-hammer looks very practical. I could see my Cataclysm: DDA character carrying one in the zombie apocalypse.

Looks like the skull of some sylvan spirit beast.

I just enforce the Normal Characteristic Maxima rules, making Speed above 4 cost double. No one who understands what they're doing will come to the table with a Speed of 2, and on a Standard Heroic point budget, paying 20 points to go from 4 to 5 is too expensive. Thus, you naturally get characters at 3 and 4 Speed. That works fine for me, because my take on the interpretations of the numbers is that Speed 3 is typical for people with combat experience/training, and Speed 4 represents those people who are either highly trained/experienced, or just naturally very fast. My interpretation of Speed values is something like this:

1: Below normal; this character is either non-human or has a medical problem

2: Normal but untrained human; someone who isn't used to combat and tends to hesitate or freeze up

3: Trained and competent but unexceptional soldier/warrior/police/etc.

4: Beyond basic competence; a special forces soldier, or someone else who stands out among competent professionals

5: Faster than "normal people" achieve but not superhuman; Jackie Chan in his prime

6: Almost unbelievably fast; the characters that Jackie Chan played on screen

7+: Literally superhuman; NO unmodified human being is this fast.

On 2/27/2019 at 9:29 AM, Spence said:

Good idea, but mini's as a whole have dried up at my FLGS.  Mostly due to people are just unwilling to commit to games that center on compulsory purchases.  They have poisoned the well locally even for mini's like Bolt Action or Microarmor.  They have opened direct purchase before, but am hesitant to run another one up the flagpole for just me.  I there were a few more committed maybe.

I'm interested in miniatures gaming, but the fact that they're typically set up to be huge money sinks is keeping me off of them. Proprietary minis, piles of books . . . I just don't want to spend that much on a hobby that I won't be even be doing every week. I've been trying to find a good, quick-playing generic minis game. Right now I've got my eye on the Savage Worlds spinoff "Showdown" but I haven't found the time to read it in detail or try it yet. I'd be quite interested in any recommendations that people might have.

May I recommend Blender? It's a very powerful 3D modeling (and animation) suite which is open-source and absolutely free. You can get it directly from the Blender Foundation's website at blender.org or get it through Steam (still free) for automatic updates.

On 3/20/2019 at 12:24 PM, Pariah said:

My wife's family are fond of "Son of a motherless goat!" from The Three Amigos.

Same here! It's got that sort of "blasphemy-adjacent" quality that makes it satisfying.

On 3/19/2019 at 7:56 AM, Christopher said:

Star Trek pretty much just copied the concept of Bulkheads from seagoing vessels. And updated it to Automatic Emergency Force Fields.

Thereby making it worse: steel bulkheads don't go away when the power fails.

On 3/18/2019 at 11:22 AM, archer said:

I'd have automatic doors on sensors everywhere in a habitat that was outside of an atmosphere. That's one thing I think the original Star Trek series got mostly right.

I'd also keep as many of the airtight doors shut at all times as I could get away with, to be opened only when someone is passing through and then closed immediately.

2 hours ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

This doesn't actually address the question, though.  When do you draw the line and look Normal Limbstaur's player in the eye and say "Extra Limbstaur can do that, but you can't."? 

I say that any time Average Joe Centaur wants to try to carry things with his legs, and any time he wants to manipulate the environment with his legs, beyond kicking or nudging things (e.g. things a typical human wearing shoes could do with their feet).

When Average Joe Centaur wants to move down the dungeon corridor holding a tower shield in his left hand, a bastard sword in his right hand, and a lantern on one front hoof, I tell him, "You try, but you're wobbling too much to keep the lantern on your hoof" or at best, "This setup is super awkward for you. You're at half DCV and any time you do anything athletic like running or fighting, you'll have to make a DEX roll."

When Extra Limbs Larry says he wants to do the same thing, I remember that he paid points for the ability to have more than the usual number of manipulatory appendages, and I say, "Okay, your extensive training allows you to carry the lantern on your hoof and move more or less normally." If Limby McHandsy here wants to sit on his haunches and use his front legs to turn dials on a stereotypical dungeon puzzle, whilst keeping his weapons in his hands . . . you know what? Once again, he's paid for that ability, so the answer he gets is, "Okay, you look really silly doing it, but it works." When Two-Hands Tony tries it, he discovers that he just doesn't have the coordination to do that.

Edit: I wouldn't let a centaur have Extra Limbs without "Limited Manipulation"--with just one hoofed digit on that limb, you are NOT going to have the dexterity of a hand with four jointed fingers and an opposable thumb.

18 hours ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

The beliefs that drive things like that are inhuman, and I agree with Old Man that this-- this monster

I fully understand and appreciate why someone wouldn't want to be associated with someone like the shooter. However, I wonder if it's really a good idea to give in to the impulse to pretend that such people are other than human, or somehow qualitatively different from us. If we forget that "people like us" have the capacity to commit atrocities, we run the risk of failing to carefully consider the ethics of our own actions, ceasing to police ourselves because we know we're not "one of those people."

I strongly suspect that such thinking is a part of the mix that produces these atrocities.

It's clear to me.

Cybertronians are naturals for heavy metal.

Hmm, I should make myself a Shockwave costume for Gamestorm.

27 minutes ago, DShomshak said:

Like, Trumpists aren't bombing Democratic party offices

They tried, though!

Hey, I've played enough computer games to know that maps wrap around from top to bottom and from right to left. The world is OBVIOUSLY a torus, because a sphere doesn't give you that kind of topology.

On 1/20/2019 at 6:24 PM, Duke Bushido said:

Presuming there is an ample depth of snow about, and you are able to brave it, build a reasonably thick berm of snow under the vehicle to prevent wind blowing under it. If possible, bank snow up next to the car and even on top of it.  Snow has some insulation value.  Not much, but much better than thin sheet metal.  Further, wind passing along that thin sheet metal makes a super-effective heat sink.  Again, presuming you have the material to do, use an attention-getting device like a red flag or something else while you prepare to wait out the night.

This is great advice that I hadn't previously heard of thought of!

For the record, snow has an insulation value about that of wood . . . not very good insulation, but when you have snow, you often have a lot of it. A foot of snow has about the same insulation value as a typical house wall with fiberglass insulation. It's never going to be much warmer than freezing in your snow cave, but with multiple people inside, it should be easy to keep it there.

According to some college instructors I've had, you do it by drawing the upper left and lower left legs as one stroke, and the upper right and lower right legs as another stroke. The strokes should be curved rather than angular, and need not touch.

That IS neat. She'd make a cool superhero or anti-villain.

Savage Worlds as it currently exists evolved directly from the rules for Deadlands: Rail Wars, and still works great as a miniatures-based combat game, or so I hear. I haven't actually tried it. They've also got a version of the rules specifically for minis combat on their site; look for "Showdown" under the Savage Worlds products.

Having said that, you could certainly use Hero for skirmish combat! Just use the normal rules and don't worry about any skills, perks, or complications that won't apply in combat. You'll have a very detailed skirmish game that might be a bit slow-playing, but all the rules you need are already there in the core Hero books. If you try this, please report back with your results; I'd love to hear how it went!

Funny flex, but fine.

Hmm, not necessarily. A villain could have respect for the law as a force greater than themselves, or as a tool to be manipulated, without having any of those three virtues.

On 1/3/2019 at 8:05 AM, Ranxerox said:

In any event, I tend to view space explorations as not a national aspiration but a human aspirations, and as such news of the landing made me happy.

As far as I'm concerned, national borders only go up to the Karman Line. Beyond that, we're all just Terrans.