Ternaugh

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Beyond the Storm, disc 1 by Edgar Froese

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? "Great Gig In the Sky" by Pink Floyd--Musicmatch Radio, transitioning to "Fat Bottomed Girls" by Queen. Currently loading in disc 1 of Chess (I can tell my wife listened to it last--the discs were loaded in the wrong order in the jewel case, and the libretto has been pawed over! Must...resist...the...urge...to...rotate...discs...upright!*) JoeG *I used to be obsessive-compulsive, and then I washed my hands of the whole thing.

Re: Atmosphere

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? "Dance on a Volcano" by Steve Hackett

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? "Like It Or Not", by Genesis, transitioning to "Another Record" I'm in the beginning of my "great reload" project. After a fun few days reloading Windows XP, I decided to wipe one of my data drives, and reload my music on it. I'm at 9 gigs and climbing (with a mix of vbr and 192kbps), using Musicmatch. And on to "Night on Bald Mountain" by Mussorgsky. JoeG

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? "Another National Anthem", from Assassins--"Where's my prize?" JoeG

Re: Map of the Western Shores Offhand, I'd say that it looks vaguely like his home continent. JoeG

Re: Why does STR vs. STR use Normal Damage Body? So, could you show us your "leeetle" chart? I'd be interested in trying it out in my game. Thanks, JoeG

Re: Is Mind Scan broken? Teammate:"So where's the secret hidden base?" Mentalist: "I'm still stuck on his 7th grade memories! Gah! How do I fast forward!" Teammate: "But it's in there, right?" Mentalist: "Somewhere, but there's just so much crap! Wait. Wait. Found it! It's right here: Dantoine!" Teammate: "That's 'Star Wars'!" Mentalist: "Oh, wait, here it is: 1313 Mockingbird Lane. I'm sure of it!" Teammate: "That's 'The Munsters'!" Mentalist: "Boy, this guy sure watched a lot of stuff. Oh, wait! Here it is! The leader is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue." Teammate: "Let's scramble the team!" Mentalist: "Yeah, you can't miss it, it's a big, white house." Just because you recorded everything, doesn't mean it's easily searchable. JoeG

Re: Is Mind Scan broken? What I think is forgotten here is that a situation where a character "demon dials" his Mind Scan just isn't very fun. And if something isn't very fun, why would we want to play it? It doesn't fit the superhero genre very well. It doesn't allow for a good story to be told. It is a fine example of metagaming, however: a character wouldn't know that by repeating an action a statistically significant number of times that they'd succeed, but a player would. But as always, YMMV, JoeG

Re: A Random Bestiary, Anyone? I'd be interested in a "HERO-ized" version. It'd probably fit well into the Traveller material, as well. JoeG

Re: Devious Idea that may work once....once... For those with Traveller experience, imagine a human trying to accurately fire a Hiver rifle. (What do you mean, you don't have six opposable tentacles on your "hand"?) JoeG

Re: Devious Idea that may work once....once... That would work, or you could try any of the following: The original owner shows up for it and demands it back. The suit requires rare "batteries" to recharge (lumps of unobtanium, bottles of tritium, or the souls of victims). Oh, and that little flashing icon in the suit? Well, that just let the wearer know before all of the servos lock, and you can't get out of the suit (or move). The suit has an automatic return circuit, which causes it to fly back to home base (wherever that is). The suit's AI automatically detects the intruder, and proceeds to subtly affect targeting, movement, and (occasionally) life support. The suit's reputation is wholly associated with the former wearer. The current user is now wanted by major law enforcement agencies for a laundry-list of crimes. Related to this theme, law enforcement wants the suit as evidence to prosecute the former wearer. Without it, much of their case goes away. The character is sued by the developers of the suit under the DMCA for violating certain encryption schemes in order to reverse engineer/use suit. The suit fits perfectly, if you're 5' 6" and weigh 120 lbs. Or, you could just take them aside, and tell them that it doesn't really fit genre to keep the loot (though museums that hold the "trophies" seem to be genre, just not reverse engineering). YMMV, JoeG

Re: Question on a Villain Bonus. Villain Bonus was just a convenient way of listing experience and a "fudge factor" for overall power level when designing a villain. Using the villain's backstory and desired power level, build the character as you see him, and then flesh out all of the disads. Anything left over on the cost becomes Villain Bonus. Now, if your question was really, "what power level of character could take on all of these PCs?", then I'd suggest looking at the type of encounter you desire. If it's a pileup of all of the PCs vs the one character, then your villain needs to be many times stronger than the PCs (and will still probably lose if the players are any good at tactics). Agents or weaker villains may help. I'd probably set the master villain at 2x to 4x the level of the average character, or even higher, with weaker villains at 1x to 2x the level. Agents will typically be at 1/2x to 1x the power level of the average character (depending on how fast you want the agents to fall, I usually rate them as 1-Hit, 2-Hit, etc). If your villain's tactics are to separate the group and take them out one-by-one, then you can get away with a few less points. As always, YMMV, JoeG

Re: my magic system; what do you think? Looks fine, but the "Must learn spell" limitation should be on the control cost, not the individual spells, since it actually regulates what can be swapped into the pool. It also seems a bit high for a limitation, but that would of course depend on how much time exists between adventures. Typically, I have something like a couple of weeks to months between adventures, which would allow a typical spellcaster to learn just about any spell they would want at their leisure (assuming that they had the KS). I would probably give it something like the Requires Bulky Spell Book limitation (-1/2), or probably less, since the spells can't be taken away like a book can. YMMV, JoeG

Re: Encounter Paradigms

Re: Blowing up the Earth A friend of mine in college was utterly dismayed at the TFFV rulebook examples which listed the Mighty Grong and Biff Cantrell. Her last name was Grong, and she shared an office with a gentleman who's last name was Cantrell. I haven't talked to either of them in a while, so I'd have to wonder if they were captured by the Vagabond's door.... JoeG

Re: peaple that love star wars come here!! I'm having trouble parsing the sentence(s?) grammatically. Using initial caps for each word, and a general lack of punctuation make several different meanings possible. For example, if we put in rudimentary punctuation here: I Hate Stupid Star Wars So! The Peaple That Do, Get A Life. The Movies Are So Stupid!!! This reveals the writer's inner pain, of hating Star Wars, but realizing that the people who do (hate Star Wars) need to get a life. Again, with the closing, we are presented with more of the inner confict. Obviously, the best way for this person to exorcise his or her inner demons is to watch a full marathon of all official Star Wars movies (though one wonders if the cure would be best following release schedules or episode numbers), and perhaps those cute Ewok live adventures movies. If that doesn't break him or her of their inner pain at not getting "it" with the series, then maybe we'll just have to break out the big guns, and show off the Bea Arthur big musical number in the Cantina. Perhaps, it really means: I Hate Stupid Star Wars, So The Peaple That Do Get A Life, The Movies Are So Stupid!!! Which seems to imply that the movies should not be used in lieu of fertilzer or water for a peaple (I believe it's a type of fig tree native to India, though it's usually spelled pipal or peepul). Miracle Grow may be okay, but some gardeners feel that's cheating. A little HG TV or the Victory Garden should be all that's needed to put this person on the right track with their seedlings. YMMV, JoeG

Re: Don't be a hater! Or, maybe some nice boobies? YMMV, JoeG

Re: Don't be a hater!

Re: Don't be a hater! Yes, that pretty much sums up the entire discussion. YMMV, JoeG

Re: Don't be a hater! So there I was, looking at my copy of FH v2 (you know, the one that came out like in '90 or so?), and there it was! The last edition had copied that chart on p. 35! Well, okay, so they called it "Incredible" for 21+, and it was more of a list than a chart, but it was sooo like what they were saying. Well, anyway, it must have been a time machine or something, which reminds me of this old film. See, there's this guy who ends up coming from the future in order to save it from these robots that want to wipe out humanity. And, well, he ends up having sex with this lady, who gives birth to the leader of the human resistance in the future. Now, see, here's the twist: it didn't have anything to do with either Mechanon or Mentalla directly, but it really looked like they were just copying the ideas listed earlier. The other strange thing is it had an actor that looked a lot like the governor of California in it (not Gray Davis, the new guy). There's just too many details that are the same (well, without the amnesia pregnancy thing) for it to be pure coincidence. And anyway, I remember a buddy of mine talking about the movie years ago. YMMV, JoeG

Re: Hieroglyphics... If you want to be able to identify the hieroglyphics, tell what dynasty the style is from, and, perhaps some of the history of the individual glyphs, then you want a KS: Hieroglyphics. If, however, you want to be able to read (and write) the language, you need the LS. I'd actually recommend both, since they'd be complementary. JoeG

Re: Question: Usable by Other and AoE A lot of what to use comes down to what you envision the effect to be. If what you are looking for is some sort of defense of a squad, all at once, then you may be looking for a force wall (no area effect required, just buy it as large as you need). If you are looking for a wizard to be able to shield each character individually, like a personal armor, then you are looking for Usable by Others (then the target can run the power if they like, and pay the END cost). If you want it so that the wizard doesn't have to touch the other characters to give the power away, then you want to add Ranged. For more info, check out pp 273-277 in 5ER. JoeG

Re: Power Cells