Terry Wilcox

Re: HP Lovecraft movies The HP Lovecraft Historical Society has created the best Lovecraft movie I've seen. The Call of Cthulhu, in Mythoscope:

Re: Potential Campaign: Alpha Flight or Superhero Socialism I know. I grew up in a small town in northern Alberta. By "empty" I meant low population density, not devoid of all things, including life. You know, figuratively, not literally...

Re: Potential Campaign: Alpha Flight or Superhero Socialism French and English language skills will vary greatly by region, age, and education. My parents, retired in Alberta, have 0 points in French. I have about 1 point although I had a decade of French courses a very long time ago, I know a few people who are fluently bilingual, and I have a friend with Quebecois relatives who have 0 points in English. Public employees are expected to be able to get by in both official languages. Keep in mind that Canada is really really big and pretty much empty. As the crow flies it's 5046 km from Vancouver to Saint John's. In comparison New York to L.A. is only 3961 km. And IIRC Canada is larger North to South than it is East to West. Most of the population of Canada is within a few hundred miles of the American border, so anything North of that is pretty deserted. I don't really see why your campaign needs to occur in Canada. There's already precedent for groups funded by or operating under the auspices of the American government. All-Star Squadron during WWII, the Avengers, SHIELD. Not every super group has a genius that makes billions of dollars off of patents that never ever show up in technology outside of other super groups. And how do solo superheroes get by working part-time and needing so much health insurance? As a Canadian I'd rather play in Avengers or Superhero Litigation. In today's episode we learn that nobody on the planet will insure the Avengers and the world doesn't have enough lawyers to cover all the property damage and personal injury lawsuits filed against them. Meanwhile, the Fantastic Four are in a quandary when the Human Torch can't use his powers due to a restraining order. Little Bobby Smith lit himself on fire because of the Human Torch...

Re: Pimp my Pulp Ride The Batgyro is from Johnny Lightning/Polar Lights: http://www.johnnylightning.com/pl/products_details.php?productid=257 It's 1/64, which is probably the right scale for 25mm and 28mm figures.

Re: Questions for the Canadian HEROBoard members

Re: Cities of the Future

Re: Cities of the Future I'm curious what cities will look like as oil and gas prices continue to rise and hydrocarbon supplies dwindle. I work in the oil and gas industry (writing software for production accounting, which accounts for oil and gas production). Every day I hear about rising demand for hydrocarbons. Some of you may have noticed gasoline prices getting stupidly high. The cost of heating my house with natural gas keeps growing every year. What happens when hydrocarbons are too expensive for consumers? If a cheap science fiction energy source were introduced in the next 50 years, what would happen?

Re: Cities of the Future I was in London in July. They were working on extending their light rail (Docklands, not the Tube) out to City Airport (not Heathrow or Gatwick or Stansted, which already have trains). In London it isn't seen as a major expense because Londoners use public transportation a lot. If you've ever driven there, you'll know why. The London Underground is less than 150 years old. It has around 275 stations now, with in excess of 200 miles of track. That's a pretty dramatic change for an existing city over the last 150 years. And that's just the change in public transportation. The changes in plumbing and sewers were prety big too. So if London can change that much in the last 150 years, how much will it change in the next 200 years?

Re: Pulp Stargate! Stargate: Degrassi Stargate: Sesame Street Stargate: Playboy Mansion The possibilities are endless.

Re: Pulp Stargate! What happened if Great Cthulhu came though the gate? Stargate: Ryleh Starring Kurt Russell as Jack Burton. He could drive the Pork Chop Express through the gate...

There's a simple way to test this. Go stand next to a wall. Lean into the wall and push. Do your feet slide back? Now try it while standing on ice. Then try loose soil. Then try it against the front of a moving car. On ice. With only one leg. With wolves biting your leg. That's why superhero physics is different from real world physics. How can Superman lift a car with one hand without bending the frame? If you put your jack in the wrong place you can bend the frame. Why aren't flying heroes covered with bugs after a flight? My car collects bugs at far lower speeds. Why don't Cyclops' eyes blow out the back of his head? Before she joined the X-Men, how did Kitty Pryde walk through walls but not her clothes? Superhero physics is like time travel. If you think about it too much it gives you a headache.

If you've got a player that takes 5 minutes to make a decision, no amount of rule hacking is going to make combat go faster. The player is the bottleneck. So get them chess timers. Those make a slow game of chess go faster without changing the rules. If you have 5 players and 5 NPCS in combat and you want to limit it to 10 minutes, put a minute on each timer. Or scale each character's time according to their speed.

That really depends on your perspective. If you're a dirt poor peasant, the so-called Dark Ages were no worse than the so-called "enlightened age". You're still down-trodden and dirt poor. People still tramp through your village killing and pillaging. The dark ages weren't particularly dark. They just got a bad reputation by lacking the huge empires that impress western civilization.

But that would be incorrect. I recommend Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel as a more detailed summary. And this appears to be a reasonably good quick overview.

If you want to keep magic rare but also explain why we don't have flying cars yet, use the standard reasons for technology not advancing. Lack of resources, lack of knowledge transfer from other civilizations, persecution of inventors by whoever is in charge, etc. But it doesn't take much magic to stifle innovation. Superstition works just as well. Priests of the Harvest Goddess frowning at the idea of a new plow works, especially if the Harvest Goddess really exists and the priests do have some power.

A lot of fantasy literature is based on post-apocalytic worlds. Often the world is "early in the third age", meaning that the last two ages ended in some horrible world-ending conflagration that nuked almost everybody back to the stone age. Except those damn elves. An apocalypse is a good way to set up forgotten civilizations, lost cities, and ancient magics. Have an apocalypse, then wait for your players to find the lost goodies. 100,000 years may seem excessive, but but it's relatively tame compared to flying cities, gods, giants who don't need knee braces, etc. Fantasy is prone to hyperbole. As for technology, consider where medical science would go if diseases and infections were caused by evil spirits and the local priest could pray your wounds away. There wouldn't be much need for disinfectant or stitches. Or surgery. Or doctors. Or much medical science. A world with wizards who can conjure up a wind wouldn't need steam ships. It just needs more wizards. Necessity is the mother of invention. If you have magic to fill the need, technology isn't required.