Ternaugh

Re: Paying endurance for adders you're not using Found an old question that I had posted: http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29740 Referencing the second part of the question, Mr Long's answer led to page 246 of 5ER, which says that adders always count for END cost (unless eliminated by GM ruling). JoeG

Re: Paying endurance for adders you're not using Unfortunately, the official answer is that you pay the END for the adders each time the power is used, whether the adders are used or not. However, Steve Long makes a note about half-moves here that implies that it's okay to prorate based upon the amount of movement used. http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16992&highlight=adders As always, YMMV, JoeG

Re: Why are robots always immortal? The brain/body connection is one that continually crops up in real AI research. Current research seems to point to a tight connection, where the software and hardware end up influencing each other in a type of feedback loop. Perhaps, it's one of the reasons that intelligence is so hard to identify in other species. It may truly be impossible to form a common point of reference. For dramatic use, having something akin to a positronic brain (ie. a durable, transferable AI core) is extremely useful for telling the types of stories where we are looking for a mechanical "mirror" to our own behavior. It should be noted, however, that Asimov used the positronic brain almost exclusively in anthropomorphic robots, with the only non-humanoid examples being the huge, robot-created "brains"--basically supercomputers. And these had an intelligence incomprehensible to humans. Plugging a human into a robot body (either as a brain-in-a-box or as a "braintape") would undoubtedly require a type of bridging to put the various inputs into a human frame of reference. Doing otherwise would probably drive the human intelligence mad. Perhaps, changing the body of an AI would create the same type of disjointedness, unless there were similar buffers to emulate the original body. In the prospectus for the setting I mentioned, I assumed that the AIs were more of a "plug and play" arrangement, and didn't consider the ramifications for multiple bodies. The AIs were basically tools, and would not have been as autonomous as robots in other stories. Humans would not be able to switch bodies or braintape; their consciousness is firmly rooted in the hardware. JoeG

Re: Why are robots always immortal? Of course, there's always this: "Falling apart again, What am I to do? These threads take metric screws No one stocks them" --sung by an android that is literally falling apart while performing in the John M. Ford Star Trek novel, How Much For Just The Planet? In the writeup for a Star Hero miniseries that I never ran, I had envisioned AI characters that would be purpose-built for certain skill sets. The core AI module was standardized to fit within different shells, so that an AI of a given type could be plugged into the body that was needed at the time. Looking back at my notes, the AIs were given an immunity to aging, though this is something that would not have come up within the course of the game. If I were to set it up today, I'd most likely leave that bit off, since the reason for using the AIs in the first place was to do jobs too dangerous for humans. Echoing Keith Curtis' comments about data portability, this file originated on a 286 computer running dos 4.01 and WordPerfect 5.1 in March of 1991. It has traveled through a variety of storage devices through several upgrades of the original system (including, at various times, the motherboard, hard drive, operating system and case--this is my Grandfather's Axe), migrated to a Windows 98 Celeron box (where it lived on various hard drives), jumped again to a P4 system (once again, being shuffled to various drives), only to be found and opened again on a new Pentium D system. Of course, in that time, the careful formatting has been mangled slightly by the new programs that open it, so one would have to wonder about the fate of an AI also upgraded. Would they just lose a memory of what happened at a certain time in the past, or would they lose a bit of their personality? JoeG

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? More random track weirdness-- "Dialogue: That Was Some Banquet!" from the 2001 cast recording of Frogs, by Steven Sondheim. Nathan Lane's playing Dionysus, talking to Hades about the amount of dancing in Hades: Hades: "Well..." Dionysus: "No, No, No, this is a Greek play, let the Chorus explain it" So, then Dennis DeYoung of Styx begins explaining to a live audience why these are "The Best of Times" Not quite as weird as when I was tendering out a sale at work a few nights ago for a Mr Foust. Seems that XM radio at that moment chose to play a favorite Charlie Daniels' Band song, "The Devil Went Down To Georgia". JoeG

Re: Re-envisioning I believe that would be the show, Avenue Q, known for the songs, "If You Were Gay", "The Internet Is For Porn", and "You Can Be As Loud As the Hell You Want (When You're Makin' Love)". Now playing at Wynn Las Vegas, and some place on the other coast. http://www.avenueq.com/ How about: CSI: Anywhere that's actually filmed in the host city for longer than 2 weeks a year. Word of advice, people, there are no large hills in Miami, and Las Vegas doesn't have any warehouses with "Sunkist" painted on it. There are a little too many trees, and what's with those strange filters to change the smog colors? JoeG

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Based upon a post by Enforcer84: "My God (Can Beat Up Your God)" by Dennis DeYoung. JoeG

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? "No Self-Control" by Peter Gabriel JoeG

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? "Home by now/No Matter What" by Meatloaf followed by "I Am a Mirror" by Freudiana (probably the best Alan Parsons Project album, though not released under that name) JoeG

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? "Summer Nights" by Olivia Newton-John, John Travolta and the cast of Grease. Transitioning to "On the Breath of Poseidon" by Symphony X. Random play weirdness, I guess. JoeG

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? "Dressed to Kill" by Symphony X JoeG

Re: The real Indiana Jones? Actually, Indiana Jones was heavily based upon Roy Chapman Andrews, the organizer of the Central Asiatic Expeditions of the '20s. While they went to the Gobi desert looking for the "missing link", what they found was much more valuable: dinosaur bones. Getting the bones out of the desert wasn't easy, because much of China at that time was experiencing civil war as various warlords fought for power. For more info, see the book, Dragon Hunter: Roy Chapman Andrews and the Central Asiatic Expeditions, by Charles Gallenkamp. http://express.howstuffworks.com/ep-andrews.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Chapman_Andrews JoeG

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? "Lavender" by Marillion. That your previous song was "Come Sail Away" isn't truly a great surprise for me, Enforcer84, it seems that we share similar tastes for a lot of the music. And Lord Mhoram can match much of the rest. JoeG

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? "Come Sail Away" by Styx JoeG

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? "The Enchanter" by Robert Plant JoeG

Re: Ghostbusters How about an adjustment of the time period to the '20s and '30s? I think that it could easily make the transition. Think of all of the angry dead from the Great War, or the flu epidemic. Of course, you'd also have real cults trying to pull in ancient evils, and the Art-Deco buildings would be a bit newer, though no less dangerous. And would gangsters who die leave really nasty gangs of ghosts? The proton accelerators need a bit of tweaking, perhaps based upon this newfangled Radio and maybe lots of vacuum valves to make them a little less certain to use (more fragile). Laser containment grids are out, but maybe you could hold the spooks with a Tesla coil or two. Thomas Edison could rail about how dangerous the equipment is, and threaten to shut it down. If set in the early to mid-twenties, you could even have Harry Houdini try to bust them as frauds. You could use Aleister Crowley as a reoccuring villain, or unwitting dupe. Now, if I could only talk my players into a game... JoeG

Re: The Treasure of Emperor Qin Is this the same Emperor Qin who is associated with the Chinese pyramids? I seem to remember seeing something about them associated with his tomb. JoeG

Re: Wwycd: Doom!!!! I'd ask if I can film it as a crappy movie featuring the Rock and a gimmicky "first-person" uncontrollable shooter mode for the last third. Then I'd pretty much do what Iuz the Evil said. YMMV, JoeG

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? "One of Our Submarines" by Thomas Dolby. JoeG

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? "Take the Long Way Home" by Supertramp transitioning into "Wild Sex (In the Working Class) by Oingo Boingo Seems that my music player is on extreme shuffle. JoeG

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? "We now return to 'Extreme Aircraft' on 'Modern Marvels'" on the History Channel. JoeG

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? "Song for America" by Kansas JoeG

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? "Suite Madame Blue" by Styx. Transitioning into... "Bells of St James" by Kansas. It's a random type of day, so I'm drawing from the 30 days of mp3s on my computer. JoeG

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? "Shadow of a Lonely Man" by Alan Parsons Project JoeG

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? "Don't Ask Me Why" by the Eurythmics JoeG