Duke Bushido

Reverse crossbow, with the lines pulling the arms, or you will have a hard time pulling the line,through rhe masts themselves. Because of this problem, I am inclined to think modified trebuchet, tweaked to throw the payload extra high, giving it glide altitude to build boyance under the wings as well as forward momentum (at the cost of some forward momentum, of course).

I believe, Sir, that rhis is foinf to depend,_entirely_ on what is possible with magic. For example, if magic can take care od your basic needs such as food, shelter, and clothing for the environment, there is foinf to be a radical,change in societal structure: I cant possibly be the only person who would look at a job of demanding physical labor for sixty hours a week or anythinf _remotely_ related to customer service and just laugh like hell if I could alakazam me up a delicious meal and an air conditioned house in which to spend my time, ar a magic carpet by which to travel the world. Similarly, what do people in a world of casual magic fear if it is not starvation or exposure? Loss of the magic itself seems like a good start. Looking at that, is magic available to anyone, a lucky few, or a ruling elite? The answer to that will give you a lot of insight into the society. For example, a lucky few may realize that they are in an enviable position and make no bones,about using their magic for their own benefit even to the detreiment of others. "What are they going to do? Stop me?" Well, that is one idea. How do we stop them? Arrest them? Somehow deposed them? What does either answer suggest? And so on amd so forth. If magic is availqble to everyone. It will likely come with laws and regulations for its use. What do those look like? What is the downside to violaring them? What is the pumishment for violating them? Who is in charge of doing the investigation, and how are the punishments meted out? What other forves exist in this world (churches, secret societies, government agencies, demigods, demons- you name it- and how does the use of magic affect them? What would they like to see sone differently regarding rhe use of magic? Do they plan to make that happen? How do you stop them? Who is in charge of that? Those are just the first questions that pop into my head, and,I think a solid campaign can be built just from the answers,you come,up with.

Shadowrun without the punk?

While Cygnia is correct: you have no obligation to do anything, I twnd to agree with LL when these things happen (and as he said: they _do_ happen. It used to be one every two or three years, then we had that one guy in the white house and I lost huge swaths of friends and family). I don't get in a panic; I don't get desperate-- I remind myself first of who they were the last rime I spent time with then, and the one before, and the one before-- I just want to see if there has been a pattern that I missed before. Often times, that answers the question for me. When I am not seeing- I just go on as normal: greerings when i see them, email, phone calls, swinging by to check on them. See, I have no teouble making friends (lucky, I guess), but when I decide that someone is my friend, they are my friend until they either become a radically different person, or until they tell me that they are done with me. My friends are important to me, and I am going to make certain that they are okay or that we aren't friends. I am not going to spend thirty years wondering-- I did that already; it cost me a lot in subsequent relatiinships, and I am not ever soing it again. Before I cut you out of my life, I am going to confirm either that you have become someone I dont care for any longer, or that you are done with me, but it is not going to be left hanging or uncertain. You are either going to tell me "Yes; I have embrassed being an ass" or "hey, I just dont think we have the commonality we once had, and maybe we just need to move on." But no matter what, you are going to tell me, in your words, becauae- well, if I have been your friend, I have never asked you for anything beyond your company or your thoughts. I _deserve_ you being honest enough to look me in the eye and tell me what is going on, and I know this sounds bossy or pushy to any non-extroverts out there, bur I am going to _keep_ coming at you until I get a definite answer and reason. I have told you all about L, the woman I pursued and,gave up on, only to have her come back into my life-- this went on for ALMOST THIRTY YEARS! You ever wonder why a sixty-three year old man has kids in ninth grade? She is why! But this story isn't about her; it is about her younger brother J. The middle child. Always seemed like a good kid- always craved attention and conversation. After he for out of high school, he disappeared. Flat disappeared. Every onve in a blue moon, he would call and ask for some money to be wired- sometimes his folks; sometimes,his sisters (he was the middle child) and twice across twenty years, me. I would call his mother (his father had passes,the second time he called- wanted money to come to the funeral and didn't feel right asking his family just then.) So I sent it to him. I did not say "how are you holding up?" I did not say "why don'r I xome get you?" I did what everyone else did: well, he kind is went nuts ans headed out west amd joined a commune and I guess he'a happy, if broke." Just a few years later his mother recieved a letter from You know what? The short,version is that I onve had a solid friendship with a guy who debeloped schizophrenia, and I didnt know,it and his family didn't know it bevause we made aasumptions that he had just gotten a bit more odd, and we knew nothing,until his mother was asked to go California to claim his body. Here she met several people who knew him and learnes that for the last three years of his life he had been in a rehab then a psych ward and his favorite thing to talk about was that any minute now, they (his family) are going to come get me. He would jump excitedly every time the main doors opened, for _three years_, then he got a sad look, walked out, and they found him two weeks later. I don't mean to imply that your friend is having psychological issues; I really don't mean that at all. I am just saying that from eventa in my life, I take am active role in a friendship, and I will _make_ you tell me if there is a problem, and what it is. So yeah. Call. Stop by. Even if (and it probably is) it is just someone who has grown in a new direction, you still want to know for certain.

Keeps you young, i'm told.

Eh; you can dins both in either. But if you look at it as difgerenves in players, it's hilarious!

Thank you! Man, everyone just praised and praised that remake, and while there were some,rhings I thought were great additions to the original story (robots that are ships instead of robots flying ships, conflict within the cylons, etc-- I just absolutely hated it for all the dark and broody angst. Ugh.

Got that covered. All my characters are competent.

I hqve done that quite a bit, as well as aboriginal north Americans. It's just-- well, bluntly, sometimes that is what it takes to keep someone from trting to turn it into Tolkien. "We're doing a fantasy of ancient Peruvians" or "let's dabble,in Innuits and magic! No, Davien, there are no freakin' _elves!_ "

Dude, if you find a copy, let me know! I heard about this thing when WotV hit the stands, and I have been looking for even proof of its existence ever since. WotV will never again see the light of day (having provided several of the scans of older material that are in the store, I offered to do a pristine version of Wings, and was politely but firmly told this item will never exit again, period), so the only shot either of us has is a long shot.

Of you are creating a world, there isnt necessarily a Britannia, and there does not have to be a long trade route to get tin.

Eh. I suppose that's possible. It's not the sort of thing that springs naturally to mind for me, as I am not the sort of person to take an injury and leap back to feet with the thought "and now I must injure someone else to make myself feel better!" I get that this mindset _exists_; I use it semi-regularly in villanous backstories, but even then, I use it because it is an indicator that this is a vile person. I have no natural inclination to behave like or become that person, so it doesnt spring to mind. Moreover, even if it did, are you ultimately deciding to spend your time relaxing with friends by being embracing things that genuinely bother you? Seems counterproductive at _best_.

Quite the opposite, I would think. Believing that you are surrounsed with bleak existence and a callous society would make wantinf to use something else- such as heroism- more attractive as escapism. As Cygnia noted, why spend your entertainment hours pretending that you are part of the problems you struggle with in real life?

Okay, let's not get that started again! There's a whole split off thread around here somewhere for that endless debate.

Yes indeed; already on the menu, Sir. I mean, it is kind of like being a Wal-Mart employee: absolutely nothing says "slavery" like having the guy who pays you decide how much you have to pay him back for groceries and living supplies, right? There is no imperial port here save the Scout base and a small auto pad for robotic probes and supply drones that service the terraforming project and periodically bring supplies for the Scout base. In an interesting twist, the original story (character background) had involved a psionics Institute on this world, hidden away in the most remote of the terraforming projects. Most of the terraforming personnel here are in some,way associated with it, as are a few of the Scouts. Three of the players (including both Scouts) have expressed interest in Psionics for their characters, so rhis might work out beautifully for them. As To duty-free shops: Every one of the corporate nations has and controls their own port (save one port shared amongst five companies of whom none could support one alone). Strangely, part of their sharing agreement (drawn up to protect each other from each other) features lamguage that makes it impossible to really shaft offworlders for using this port (though it is still way more expensive than it should be). It is also the only port with reasonable repair facilities- not great, but they can do more than just maintenance. Even here, it is difficult to move beyond the port, as _all_ corporations here have a vested interest in not letting offworlders learn any truth about what the situation is here (lots of potential here for the crew that wants to smuggle a couple hundred tons of weapons to the people or go to the Imperium with the truth of the mass abdication of nobles or even the sheer volumes of ores _actually_ leaving the system. While the lid is clamped down tight on this kettle, there are too many ways to turn up the temperature. Off-worlders who learn too much find themselves becoming locals very quickly). Well that sucks! I don't get it. Even in the earliest days of DnD, when we where _all_ murder hoboes, we still wanted to be the good guys. you know: murdering only every monster or evil wizard or evil warlord or minions of evil we encountered. Only murdering those guys. (though to be fair, after the class was created, we took to murdering palladins as well, figuring that "Lawful D*ckhead" was some variant form of evil, and the appreciation of the townsfolk seemed awful similar...) As long as your both having a good time, it's all excellent! Bows or muskets? live There you go; all fixed!

Well. I can't like anything else today, it seems, but I.... Well, I want to say that I really like your elves and orcs pushed into human thing, but "like"-- while I do like the creativity and how beautifully it fits into DnD of that era- seriously, Dude; that is an ingenious bit crafting there! I think what I wish to say is that I greatly appreciate how it explains several things at once, and quite tidily: the rise of man and him seemingly being the most common and prolific of the peoples of Perth; man's bizare interfertility with other races, and the fact that we just said "half orc" instead of half orc / half human" and "half elf" instead of half elf/ half human." While in later editions we would find things like "half orc/ half troll," during the Greyhawk era, it seems that only humans were randy enough to give a pelvic salute to anything vaguely bipedal. (Though for some reason, every half orc PC I encountered was from a human mother who had been raped by an orc- and I really like how your bit makes it possible for there to be a natural, instinctive attraction between the three major bipeds of the era. I mean, I never played a half anything-- well, Koloth was a halfwit; I suppose that counts- they felt a bit cheaty. I was a diehard 'I play humans' type save for one ill-fated dwarf thief.) Well done, Sir. I quite like it!

Excellent! You'ee the GM; you should enjoy the game, too. As long as it is not to the detriment of the game, of course. Here's how I messed with mine earlier this evening: As you may be aware, I just started a Yraveller game with the majority of,the your GM group (and remembered why I usually,put Psionics off limits. Ugh.) I not only,fot,my,Scout, but managed to get two scouts! Aa hoped, one of them rolled 'Scout' on the mustering out tables. He also rollwd a low passage, while another player rolled two more low passages. As you remember, this means they are granted use of a scout ship, periodic fuelings and a couple of other things that boil down to interstellar transportation without constantly hustling freight or passengers. Yes, there is some od that, but the pressure is really off now. The gane begins right durinf the mustering out ceremony. "...has been granted permission to use a Scout ship in perpetuity, with the standard restrictions and requirements," hands a set of file cards to the recipient. "These are the kasr known xoorsinqtes odbthe ship and dossiers of her AWOL crew, who we believed have stolen her. Find her, take possession, and use her as you will...." The asventure begins!

Can you say "Distraction?" Good! I knew you could...

Yeah.... That's cool and all, but I cannot in words alone describe just how much I don't want those things anywhere near me.....

So NASA gets radio signals from a bajillion miles away, and my WiFi drops if I go to the laundry room?

Doc gave a couple of great (and very eloquent) answers, plus he used the word "puissance," which I don't get to see every day. moreover, we learned that Doc and I have a similar take on being an FH GM. But I am not certain if any of that answered your question here. I _cannot_ and will not attempt to answer for Doc, but if it helps, I can answer for me: Yeah; pretty much. To explain a bit: by and large, my fantasy preference (which is saying a lot, as fantasy overall is not a "preference" for me, but I can groove in it once in a while) is low fantasy, where men with long hammers pummel the crap out of fur-and-leather clad barbarians or men with bows shoot horses out from under men wearing over a hundred pounds of armor, and then run up a flight or two or stairs and neener-neener at them and small clay pots of boiling oil are excellent and horrifying sling weapons. While HERO shows its superhero bias most prominently in its core rule "defenses are cheaper than attacks," medieval warfare demonstrates quiet conclusively that this just isn't the case universally. When I run low fantasy, I tend to stick with more or less period weapons (swords, slings, and heavy things tied to sticks) and defenses (leather, gambeson, wooden shields and splinted clothing, etc, with big heavy swords and metal armor making appearances only in very wealthy kingdoms that have gotten lucky with easy-to-mine surface deposits of iron. Even then, I prefer low fantasy outside of the European midevial experience to begin with. High fantasy-- I dont do much of it, but when I do that, I still stick with more or less real-world armors and weapons; I just allow them to be more widespread and a bit more redined than they actually were. And of course, "magic." Magic is the game changer. With magic you can up you defense (magic armor) and your offenses, but if you let that get to D and D levels, then you are basically running "Clanky Champions" and that is where I just lose any interest in fantasy. I have seen steampunk fantasy D and D game books, and.... Wow.... I think the reason there isnt a HERO steampunk midevial fantasy book is because of Steve's from-the-big-bang-to-the-cosmic-collapse timeline thing that shives and beats all setring books into a consecutive timeline. There is no possible way we would give up zero-point infinite magic, orkish technology that works because we want it to, steam and tesla coils as the ultimate energy sources, and non-explosive derrigibles for global warming, party politics, and diesel pickup trucks competing to see who can pump out the greatest quantity of carcinogens with a single romp of the throttle. While I am not a huge fan of high fantasy magic, I would probably be willing to give up one of my Valks to leap into my brass-appointed Excelsior Henderson, open the water valve, let the Tesla coils magically and instantly superheat the water, and steam my way effortlessly to work..... We did, for about six months. (There was a rime when the only games I could find were DnD). We eventually abandoned it because it was slowing things down. Ironically, when I mention certain systems being inherently better at modelling this or that, the response is generally "Championsccan do that, too! All you have to do is add...", in spite of everyone suggesting that likely didn't use the ADnD for the same reason we gave it up: not enough bang from the inclusion for the buck of slowing down combat even more. If I agreed with this any harder, it would have bruises. Every system (with the possible exception of Macho Women with Guns) has something that it does better than any other, and does it in a fashion that is uniquely elegant or provides a "feel" that isnt going to be captured by adding something to something else. At best, you can duplicate the mechanical results, but the feel and the simplicity are unique to the original system because that system was purposely designed to do it. If only mechanical results mattered, we'd still be playing war games and parcheesi or anything else where the results matter and the feel is non-existent.

Science? Let's get nutty! A group of knights in plate armor is essentially a group of single-wound coils. Get them to stand in a proper alternating formation, and a single lightning bolt, cast correctly, should magnetize them, pulling them into a pile of single-wound coils, probably knicking them all down, and making them pretty easy to finish off. But we don't do that- probably,because the lightning bolt isnt Constant; who knows. Now for the most part, I am with Lone Wolf: the sword is the sword and the lightining is the lightning. As Hugh pointed out, that means your magic sword is going to be pretty expensive, as it has to attack powers, both at campaign-acceptable ranges to ensure that it isnt just showy: for either oart to seal damage, ir has to wxceed defenses. However, I need to take a moment to adress something that seems to escape a lot of people in fantasy HERO games: how does the lighting make it more likely to hit or to do more sword damage or whatever: Because it is _magic_ lightning. That is the in-game justification that leaps to mind. The game system reason is "because the lighting does not cause the mechanical effect; it is the special effect of the mechanical effect in action. For fantasy adventures, lightning makes swords sharper, heavier , stronger, and more deadly. For horror campaigns, lightning reanimates corpses for ceazed German scientists. For super heroes, it allows people in spandex to becime intangibke and fly really quickly. For Dark Champions, it is stored in a bottle which powers a gun that makes people wet themselves. The lighting "does what the creator of the build says it does," and no more or no less. Now I am not shooting anyone in the ideas, nor am I saying it should or must or can't. I know where all this frustration comes from because I went through it, too: I really want the Mcguffin to be this cool sword, but that thing is like fifty-eight points! As a result, over the years my "magic swords" became bonuses (bonuses to damage or to hit rolls or other actions) or included something odd: the sword of absolution has +1 OCV and gets an additional +2 DCV when fighting followers of whatever god is directly opposed to your God. The sword of vengeance, in addition to having an extra DC and no STR Min, provides a bump of direction for whoever your sworn enemy was when you found it or soon after you found it. I even have a lightning sword: it is +1 with block /parry and when the lightning crackles (three consecutive hits), it gains double armor piercing, and will hokd it until you miss or change weapons. Bwcause it is magic lightning.

This is the opposite of a nightmare, Sir. I cannot see anything but absolute glory for such a project.

Me, too. However, we can relax for another year. April Fools is all over, and now everything on the internet is true again.

I rolled up a character a while back, and her background throughout her military service-- well, you know how that goes with Traveller: if you are not careful, it will give you the character's entire backstory. I opted to roll up a completely random homeworld for her, and ended up with something so out of skew with everything else that I had rolled up that by the time I twisted everything together, I thought "this might actually make a pretty decent campaign (it had gotten way to involved to be a simple backstory)". It wasn't too long after rolling her up that I lucked into a paper copy of Crowded Hours and an online "short adventure" that- well, one of the stories in Crowded hours combined with the short adventure made for a better adventure than either was alone. The modified adventure also provided a great way to get the characters moving, and by the end of the adventure, the characters would be in a position very similar to where my character's background story started, so I was sold: Scrap the character (well, not scrap, but combine these three items (minus the character, of course, because I am not a GMPC kind of guy), inject a few things along the way for the characters to get a feel of the universe, decide their motivations, introduce them to both sides of the situation- And this part has to be handled carefully, as you could accidentally railroad the characters, so I want to make certain I have that bit fleshed out before starting (and to finish the Champions game, so everyone has a chance to play if they want to try). They will find themselves in a repellent situation for a while, at least until they realize that the only reason it is bearable for them is because as off-worlders they are afdorded a few privelliges not available to the rest of the population. The rest is pretty standard fare, at least so far. Okay, backing up: The Imperium will be a backdrop- we aren't going to be going too deeply into the official setting, but it is there. For simplicity's sake, this game will be humanocentric unless the players just insist on aliens; I am more than willing to consider any player-submitted alien race so long as it doesn't feel of Combat Monster or other sort of Superman- again, if the players insist. I just think as an introductory adventure, staying humanocentric will make it a bit easier to understand all the various potential NPCs, motives, etc. Similarly, I would prefer to not have psionics in this campaign, but have no objection to including them if the players can agree to the randomness and rarity rules, but if _everyone_ wants them, we are going to either not have them, or we are doing the "one ability at level one" thing so as not to turn this into a superhero game (which is why I would rather not have them straight after four Champions campaigns. ) The Imperium is there, and the adventure starts with the characters mustering out on its fringe (and having spent most of their various careers on the frontier fringe, but with enough in-the-empire time that they should be comfortable asking any questions they want; this will not be the fully-fleshed Imperium as we know it today, but a grossly simplified version- partly because it won't be a major part of the adventure, partly because it allows players the freedom to have an Imperial background (if they want) without being locked in to specific locations, politics, and know worlds, etc, etc. Mostly, though, because I won't live long enough to address every aspect of the extant universe and still run a game. As stated, I will have to have a Scout (for Mcguffin-related reasons), and I would prefer two (or more; it is about increasing the odds of Mcguffin success. The quest for the McGuffin is, of course, complicated- including running through a variant of the One Crowded Hour scenario (just that one from the Crowded Hours book). There are multiple ways to get back on track from this disaster (if they survive it ), including- if they get lucky, just dumb luck dropping them where they want to be. Tracking down the Mcguffin isn't too terribly bad: they have a Mcguffin locator. Problematically, they have no immediate way to get to the Mcguffin, and they aren't the only ones looking for it. Worse, someone else is currently in possession of it, and causing serious problems for the players just by being themselves: locals arent going to be happy to see the players, and it is going to take some work to get the help they need. Once in possession of the Mcguffin, they will shortly discover they have all new problems, mostly related to the Mcguffin. A couple of patroned "side quests" gets them off world and headed home, but if all things go right (ie, something goes beautifully wrong), they will discover that just because they are the legal bearers of the Mcguffin doesn't mean that the other folks looking for it have given up. The previous owner had used the Mcguffin as collateral to every shady character on the planet, and some of the better-resourced of these folks plan to collect, and certainly aren't above a little sabotage. The characters will find that their opponents aren't above stranding them, either. The characters will find themselves stranded on a planet balkanized by megacorporations. This world is located in an Imperial "grey zone" where Imperial influence has had a hard time setting in and staying (too remote and the stars are too scattered). However, one single-world system has proven to be rich in a number of extremely rare minerals and metals to warrant developing, but the world itself is so unihabitable that without domes, no one can survive for long. The last appointed Sector Duke simply abdicated his position for staggering wealth- after the discovery of lanthum, the Corps started jockeying for position. Currently, the world is listed as an Imperial world, but the only rule here is corporate. They control everything, including access to and from this world. The only exceptions to this stranglehold is a remote Scout base (ta-da!) and an equally-remote teraforming station. The Imperium is practical, and a century or so ago when the lanthum was discovered, they listened when the Scouts recommended terraforming as the key to attracting colonists, particularly,when the sector Duke reported on the frozen Hell of the planet itself. Still, the domes were working, so teraforming became a back-burner project. That is to say that it is proceeding, but without the normal amount of dunding and urgency (due largely to the corpos massive misinformation on the situations in the domes,and the amount of ores that are reasonably accessible). After the entire nobility for this world and the sector Duke himself abdicated, the Imperium accepted the offers of several corporations to take over the running of the world in exchange for a portion of the wealth. In truth, only the Sector Duke rolled over (for money). With him out of the way, the lesser planetary nobility was simply deposed or killed. The Imperium is none the wiser, assuming that the letters of resignation office and title were legitimate, given what they knew of the world, and the corpos keep the money flowing (though they keep a far, _far_ greater portion than the Imperium even believes to exist here. Still, the mass abdication convinced them to commence transforming. Local resistance to the project felt very wrong, and so the Imperium also installed a Scout base, both to keep tabs on the local situation and to ensure the safety of the terraforming project. Their presence has ramped up security measures as corpos fight to keep their activities hidden and the move to protect one's self by eliminating the competition via exposing them to the Scouts has lead to heavy (and paranoid) balkanization, with a populace reduced to little more than slaves. The character's are travelling with one (or more) Scout(s), granting them a freedom of movement that makes all the corpos very nervous. There will be a few encounters and problems while the players attempt to resolve their transit issues, and the chance to stumble across the truth of this world. If they do, what will they do with this knowledge? That is actually more than I wanted to divulge, given that I may have a player or two lurking out here, but that is the gist of it. Deets enough, Sir?