Duke Bushido

This rather implies that there is a correlation between INT and vocabulary, world-travel, television shows, and knowledge of famous renaissance painters....

To the best of my knowledge, we are the last nation on earth that still uses the stupid thing. It seems most other countries have figured out that it does not measure intelligence in any way, shape, or form: it measures exposure and retention, and compares them to a predicted norm for your age group. For the reason, incredibly intelligent people with bad memories tend to get shafted, and people who are better-travelled or better-educated tend to score higher. And of course, as you age and enter the workforce, you are no longer exposed to new things they way you were in childhood and in school. However, there are newer and newer concepts, sciences, etc out there, and you're not being exposed. By default, this means your IQ is getting lower. I can't find it on the net, but I remember back in the 80s reading an interesting study on the whole IQ test thing, and one thing that could really skew results was not having cable television. Children without cable television tended to watch the news with their parents. They were exposed to all kinds of things-- even if they didn't understand them. And of course children have remarkable long-term memories. These children always scored higher on IQ tests, even if they were complete idiots otherwise. The whole thing was preposterous-- much like standardized testing lead _away_ from a rounded education and teaching towards the tests, this obsessive need to compare everyone and everything that lead to IQ testing also lead to throwing all kinds of things at people, and finding them somehow deficient if they failed to be interested in certain things. It's asinine, and it needs to die. But I digress: INT does not equal IQ, not in HERO and not in the real world. In HERO, INT seems to be more about quick-wittedness and making connections between disparate things, and even just the ability to quickly analyze and understand what you know and what your senses tell you. I strongly suggest keeping it that way.

Not into it. That's pretty much what "Striking Appearance" is as I understand it. I prefer a gauge to a mechanic for social interaction. What I liked about COM, and apparently I was (again) the odd man out, was that it was a _gauge_ to where your appearance fits into your society's scale. And I preferred that because it allowed the modeling of something that doesn't work when you have a mechanic telling you "this means this, period:" There are people who will react negatively to very attractive people. There are people who will react _differently_ from the expected norm, and there is a tendency for people to naturally feel more comfortable around people they perceive to be "on their level." Sounds weird? Maybe, but it's true. If you tend to think of yourself as medium ugly, you tend to gravitate toward other people you perceive as medium ugly. Some people prefer "cute" to "beautiful." For what it's worth, cute tends to last longer as we age, too. Shame I missed out on that. I'd go on, but my "RETURN" button on my keyboard has gone out again. Gah! At any rate, I find that many things role-playing wise are better-served by _roleplaying_, and thus a gauge is far, far more useful than a mechanic. As noted by someone else above, HERO has _plenty_ of mechanics. However, it is _not_ a computer program; it's a game for sharing stories _that we make up_. Unless the APG 4 includes new mechanics for generating campaigns, too, of course.

Go for it. I'm good either way.

If it's like the original-- well, just the one in your head, I would think.

Holy carp! I just watched the video. I'm pretty sure that Australians are essentially British Floridians.....

If that's the case, the car in the video has taken somewhere around 2x BODY. People tend to confuse "how it looks" with how it _is_. The entire front clip and a-pillars are destroyed, as well as every part of that vehicle intended to dissipate kinetic energy (this is why body shops replace bits of the car that _appear_ undamaged, if you were curious). There is no frame on the car, and the unibody is tweaked to a point where attempting to straighten it will make it too weak to be safe in another impact. The transaxle will be damaged beyond Salvage, and anything mounted to the engine has been torn and damaged, possibly ripping mounting bosses from the block itself, meaning the engine is now nothing more than a toxic boat anchor. The suspension will be unsalvageable, and the subframe assemblies carrying the engine/transaxle unit is scap. Radiator, a/c condenser, etc: all toast. Likely the dash is shot (air bags, crumple zones, and passenger impacts) as is the steering wheel, if not the entire column. And for good measure, at least one of those front wheels is bent. And this is just scratching the surface. Seriosly: this car could be made "operable," (I don't know if you are familiar with a Salvage title, but they exist for just this reason: your car is now legally classified as rolling garbage), but it will never be properly repaired. Don't let a relatively minor amount of smooth sheet metal fool you: the car has salvageable parts, but it's beyond reasonable repair.

I think-- we'll never know, because Steve doesn't answer those sorts of questions--that this is the sort of thing that "real weapon" and "beam weapon" was meant to address. I never used (and rarely allow) either of those limitations, simply because there are both advantages and disadvantages to any special effect, and I have always felt that making those calls is specifically what the GM is for in the first place.

Considering that the main portion (the cabin) is completely hollow: nothing. UT sheet metal and a large ount of glass, and that the trunk is also completely hollow, I think a case can be made that the car has easily taken over half its BODY. But this gets tricky: The _car_ is quite dead. So is it at - 10 BODY? (negative starting BODY in some rules sets)? If so, then it has taken over 100 percent of its BODY. But it can still provide cover! Well of course it can: it lost BODY; it's PD is still fine. Maybe it's Bleeding: totally useless and effectively dead as a car, but repairable? (in this case, no; not really). All this thought and examination work against our goals, though: while it's possible to develop a model using the rules (more or less), do we want to stop the game and run the math every time the environment takes a hit, or just go with what feels right? And that is why I suspect most of us just "wing it.".

Think of-- well, I have no idea where you live, other than "Canada," which is pretty vague (you sneaky Canadian devil, you ). I live in a --- well, let's say that our big annual event around here is the harvest-related "Onion Festival," and leave it at that. Don't get me wrong: I grew up more rural than this, but today, this is as close as I can find anywhere in the lower 48. But imagine a metropolitan area (I've seen them in movies ) filled with steps and porches that let directly onto the sidewalk. Now imagine each of the uprights on those posts being air pumps! How much more practical would bicycle travel become, instantly? What effect would it have on traffic, parking, and air quality? Sadly, we'll likely never know, because if it happened in the western world, they'd be coin operated.

Okay, this is nowhere near as neat or cool or interesting as most anything in this thread. But Holy Cats, it's an idea whose time should have come ninety years ago!

If magic-- particularly the growing / shrinking thing-- are commonplace, then I'd find an aggressive dog that could do the same thing. if invisible to scent is common, then I guess I'd have to go with a few trip wires, too, to get the dog going in the right direction.

My wife uses that show to help with bouts of insomnia. Something about the absolute lack of life in the narrator's voice. Ten, fifteen minutes of him droning on, and she's out like a light.

It was, but still: that's the sort of info that just doesn't circulate this far. Thanks!

Nah-- we used it quite frequently, I expect the same way you do: to refer the wild or totally undeveloped areas (large, large areas: not like a city park or something). It's why we used to refer to the lunatics who transported goods to the more inaccessible settlements as "bush pilots." Seriously? No; I'm not laughing-- I'm learning. As an American, I assumed no Australian could swim because there were forty-seven-thousand deadly life forms just waiting for you to get your toes wet. Now I'm going to level with you: swimming is not something we did back home: every river in the state was either glacier melt or mountain ice melt, and most of them were, in the hottest stretch of summer, about 34 degrees. It was bad enough having to bathe in the things ankle-deep; I can't imagine trying to dive in for fun. I didn't learn to swim until adulthood, when I came to Georgia back around '79 or so. Can't get enough of it.

Four meters might be difficult, but a quick walk around the outside demonstrates that I have no ten-inch holes in my house. Well, there's the roof vent for the sewer, but that should be downright toxic for little tiny lungs.

No need. We've all seen Gallagher.

You, Sir, are a talented and clever man, and I wanted to take a minute to say, out loud, that even if you never do write an actual sourcebook, your presence here makes this board a wonderful and inspiring place to hang out and think. Thank you, Sir. Duke

Perhaps going back to older edition Growth or Density Increase would give a good starting place if you're wanting to model increase in DEF to scale with increases in mass and BODY. Old-school DI (only because I know the old rules by heart; I'd have to look up the new ones): Every level of DI doubled the mass (you'd have to wing it to make a "thickness" calculation: twice as thick? Likely twice the mass, right?) and provided +1 BODY and 3rPD and 3rED. Old-school Growth: Every doubling of the mass provided +2 BODY and +1 PD and +1 ED. Twice the BODY and far less defense. I would postulate (perhaps incorrectly) that the BODY difference is related directly to the fact that in Growth the physical form is no more dense; there is simply more of it. Much like making something thicker: you're increasing the volume taken up by the material, but are not increasing the material in the present volume. Likely this is why the DEF climb is much lower as well: the increase in mass allows for some sort of "reinforcing" of the DEF, but as the density hasn't changed, the change is not drastic until the mass is _considerably_ higher. Making the material _more dense_, however, has a radical effect on DEF in relation to mass, and I submit that this is because the physical properties of the matter in question have actually _changed_, as opposed to simply increasing the amount of it. I don't know if there's any point in pursuing this line of thought; it was just something that occurred to me.

You two are not alone. I have a strong suspicion that this is how we _all_ handle it, guided by whatever logic crutches make us feel good about our decisions.

I hear you, there, Brother. Time I started into the fifties, I noticed the chest and arms weren't near what they used to be, but the belly-- well, it had made up for some of my losses.

According to the write-up, yes: density is precisely the problem. Dude, I am so happy. I seriously spent the last fifty-odd years thinking I was the only one. Though I can "back float," but it's six inches above the river bed. However, I've always been outdoorsy (probably goes with being from the Alaskan bush), and swim quite well, but since I don't float, I find it extremely tiring. That, and I don't freestyle: All my swimming is under the surface. I seem to balance out (relative to buoyancy, that is) at about twelve feet under the surface. Love to swim though: try to go down to the river every weekend with the kids when the weather's right (which, living in Georgia, is quite often ). They have a great time, I get exercise and pain-releif (since I'm not caring weight on my spine, exactly), and I go home very, _very_ tired.

The recent arrival of The Broken Kingdoms in the HERO store has made me very happy: I have always wanted to print a couple of copies. Most of you know how I feel about bootlegs and piracy, so I figured I'd never get a second copy to make a legal "backup" of, and of course, the price of having something printed and bound at that time.... It's way cheaper now, and I've bought my second copy of the PDF (having gotten the first from the diskettes, the way I'm sure a lot of you did. I've contacted Storn Cook to see if he might still have the original "cover" image (he's not sure, if you're wondering, but he's willing to look around for a digital copy, as he sold the original physical copy) because I was never happy with the "mini covers" of the HERO Plus PDFs. My original plans had always been to incorporate the title logo into the blank space between the dragon's head and wing. But that's neither here nor there. I was inspired to stop my other projects for a bit and re-read the book, and I caught something I had never noticed before. In the Dwarven Package Deal, there are two things that don't go together: There is a -2" Swimming _and_ "Cannot Swim." Hunh? Missing a Hand _and_ the thumb that was on it? You're right: this goes absolutely nowhere. It just bugs me how long I've had that and never caught it before. Carry on. Duke