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Ternaugh

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Posts posted by Ternaugh

  4. Seemingly Silly Things to Model

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Seemingly Silly Things to Model

     

    Unlikely Servant: Summons a supermodel to perform household chores.

     

    Format Wars: Breaks (Dispels) any electronic device by making vital components no longer available, with a bonus of +10 to the effect if the device has the letters "s","o","n", and "y" inscribed anywhere on it.

     

    JoeG

  5. Seemingly Silly Things to Model

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Seemingly Silly Things to Model

     

    And if Rudyard Kipling's approval were that important to me, I would seek a way to render him slightly less dead.

     

    Anime had nothing to do with it. The ideas are borrowed from Conan O'Brien, Phil and Kaja Foglio and Chuck Jones, respectively.

     

    Render Slightly Less Dead: The character has the ability to "freshen" any dead object into something slightly less dead.

     

    3d6 Cosmetic Transform (Dead to Slightly Less Dead), Only on formerly alive objects (-1/2), Does not work on Mostly Dead--Use the Big Chocolate Coated Pill for that (-0). Active Cost: 15. Real Cost: 10

     

    JoeG

  6. If YOU have been playing Hero since the 80's why do you still keep coming back?

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: If YOU have been playing Hero since the 80's why do you still keep coming back?

     

    I was introduced to Champions in '82, and started playing in '83. It was a fun system that allowed us to create the characters the way we wanted. At the time, AD&D, Boot Hill, Gamma World, Traveller, V&V and Top Secret were all big in my various gaming groups. Of these, only Traveller and Champions were systems that I enjoyed enough to GM.

     

    The release of Fantasy Hero fundamentally changed the dynamics by producing a flexible fantasy system. While a lot of time was spent converting 1st and 2nd ED AD@D concepts and spells over, we soon learned that the system was robust enough to support just about anything that we wanted to do. My time as a player shrunk, as I would end up as the GM more and more. With the release of Hero 4th, my GMing went exclusively Hero.

     

    I weathered the storm as Hero de-ICEd itself, went through its Cybergames Fuzion illness, and ultimately was reborn under DOJ. During the lean times, I invested heavily in GURPS material. Much of it makes great source material for inclusion in a Hero-driven game, and some of it is just a really cool read. It cushioned the blow of my two favorite games (Traveller and Hero) both going through hard times.

     

    Forgive the rambling, here are the points that I like the most about Hero:

     

    1. It is an easily-customized system.

    2. It is, at runtime, a simple system. No saving throws, no active defense rolls, no looking through several rulebooks to find out if a Feat applies or not (it's right there on your sheet, or the GM decides), ranges work the same way for weapons (unless you bought it differently, then you can figure it out). For the most part, you don't have to refer to the rulebook at all for most combats or character interactions, especially if you have a few common charts handy.

    3. It allows for extensive solo play (with creation of characters, items, etc--another reason that I was first attracted to Traveller).

    4. Character creation, while time-consuming, is actually easier than many other RPGs on the market (a current character in D&D 3.5 required me to flip pages constantly, often to find a line or two hidden on a different page that could have easily been included in the section), and offers more control for the end result. While the size of the rules is daunting, the vast majority of characters in a Heroic situation won't have to deal with most of it. It is like a cookbook: you only need to read the sections that apply to the current "recipe", not the entire book. And, like a good recipe, it's easy to season to taste.

    5. It uses 6-sided dice. Very important for an excuse to collect as many different kinds as I can find--which, in Las Vegas is quite a lot. That Classic Traveller also used 6-siders is an added benefit.

     

    JoeG

  8. Exclusive: A Serenity Sequel?

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Exclusive: A Serenity Sequel?

     

    My guess is it's all going to be based on the sell-through of the DVD of Serenity. If that does fairly well, then it would benefit Universal/Sci-Fi to do a few tv movies. BTW, the street date is 12/20 for the movie, so it's just over a week away.

     

    JoeG

  10. Paying endurance for adders you're not using

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    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

  11. Why are robots always immortal?

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Why are robots always immortal?

     

    I think it depends how you define intelligence in your setting - is it separate from the physical body?

    Do you have "AI"s and can humans download their brains?

    Is a robot merely the physical container for an "AI" that can transfer to a different body as needed?

    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

  12. Why are robots always immortal?

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    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

  13. What Are You Listening To Right Now?

    in Non-Gaming Discussion

    Posted

    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

  14. Re-envisioning

    in Other Genres

    Posted

    Re: Re-envisioning

     

    Everything's better with Muppets.

     

    Except maybe that Cinemax version of Facts of Life.

     

    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

  20. The real Indiana Jones?

    in Pulp Hero

    Posted

    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

  24. Ghostbusters

    in Pulp Hero

    Posted

    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

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