Ternaugh

Re: Generation Ship Campaigns

Re: Generation Ship Campaigns That story assumes a strong central figure which forces order (in this case, a very reliable computer with obedience chips in everyone). Unfortunately, by its very nature, this type of society does not tend to produce adventure-worthy conflict (either of a social or a violent nature) without introducing an outside agent not under the full control of the central figure, like the Enterprise crew, or some sort of disaster that the central authority cannot handle by itself. Now, if the computer suddenly goes offline.... JoeG

Re: Generation Ship Campaigns Well, see, what you really need is a Holodeck so that the characters can themselves have characters that are immensely more interesting...Oh, wait...This isn't the Next Generation discussion thread? JoeG

Re: Comeliness? Welcome aboard! As to your predicament, I would use a combination of characteristics and Disadvantages to solve it. See that big, lurking Troll over there that just cracked the bar in half by slamming down his mug, that's Presence. Not much to look at, but he sure is impressive! Just look at him; you know he's a troll (Distinctive Features: Causes fear). And he obviously isn't great at speeches (either limit the so-called PRE-based skills, or apply a penalty connected to a physical limitation--inarticulate), and, as you know they can be dangerous (Reputation), especially that one (bad Reputation). And as far as savoir-faire, his idea of Seduction may involve blunt instruments, and his Conversation is limited to one syllable words. Now that Elf, on the other hand... Of course, YMMV, JoeG

Re: Free version of the HERO System You forgot the "Hi, I'm Steve Long, and I personally approved this message".

Re: Sidekick vs. GURPS Lite GURPS Lite was developed specifically so that Discworld could be a "standalone", but at the same time, was released as both a printed folio (distributed in the GM Screen, at cons, and from their online store) and PDF file. It has been updated and customized several times (in world books, printed, and PDF), and will be updated yet again for GURPS 4th Ed. And while it makes a fine basic combat reference and getting started document, I believe anyone who tried to run a continuing campaign would have difficulty using just GURPS Lite. In addition, the group would all have to be "on the same page", since the worldbook editions are different from each other, and from the printed/PDF versions. Sidekick, on the other hand, could be used very successfully in running a campaign by itself (see note in quote about "crunchy bits", however) and is a common reference for all genres. All in all, it shows you that "you get what you pay for", and perhaps even more than you pay for with Sidekick. JoeG

Re: Gate Stations Yup, I was thinking of the cache of ships "off the beacon" that was accidentally discovered in one of the episodes. Basically, any ship capable of carrying a hyperdrive in B5 can exit hyperspace just about anywhere, while (typically smaller) ships have to follow the beam or risk getting lost. For HERO game mechanics, however, EDM isn't supposed to give advanced real-world movement unless the adder is included (basically, the argument is that it shouldn't be a cheap teleport) and the GM agrees. So, it breaks down to use the Adder, have each ship have a FTL only in hyperspace, or just declare that hyperspace just works a certain way. Say that distances in hyperspace correspond to the real world in a fixed ratio, and ignore the EDM limitations. This is probably how I would do it, with the Adder being used the way you mentioned. JoeG

Re: Massive Traveller Sale on E-bay

Re: Gate Stations Are you looking for a B5 style hyperspace gate, where ships can interact and see each other, or are you looking for a direct path to the next gate? The second type is discussed on pp. 193-4 of Star Hero For the first, you could use EDM, but then you run into the limitation that you can't normally use it to move about in the real world. You could use the +5 adder to "any location in dimension" and link it that way, or you could make stl engines work as FTL (multipower slot?), but say that the ship has to be in hyperspace. JoeG

Re: Generation Ship Campaigns Another source would be the Amazing Engine game, Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega, which has maps and descriptions of the denziens. And, it'll probably be cheap, if you can find it (my copy was a buck at a local hobby store wanting to get rid of it). JoeG

Re: Sleeper Ships How about The Lazarus Society? JoeG

Re: Massive Traveller Sale on E-bay

Re: More boast than post! Cool! I've had JI since about 1985, when I picked it up at a local comic store. Bought my Lands of Mystery a few years back, straight from Allston himself. I've got the signature on the book to prove it! Alas, if only I found players willing to try it... JoeG

Re: Modern-Day Fantasy Some Magic is Secret books: The Serrated Edge series by Mercedes Lackey and friends, Based upon a little war between the Seelie and Unseelie, with high-performance racing thrown in. Mythology 101 and sequels, by Jody Lynn Nye, follows the exploits of a college student who discovers the elves living in the library. Harry Potter series, by JK Rowling, well, you probably know... Some Magic is a replacement for Technology sources: The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump, by Harry Turtledove, Follows an investigator for an environmental agency as he investigates illegal dumping of magical toxins. Recommended. Doc Sidhe and Sidhe Devil , by Aaron Allston. You can download Doc Sidhe free from http://www.baen.com/library/aallston.htm, but buy the book and support the author of Champions! "Cast a Deadly Spell", a movie following the adventures of detective Phil Lovecraft as he investigates a Cthuthulean plot. I remember a great scene where invisible servants are carrying luggage through a train station. GURPS Technomancer is a sourcebook for the rpg in a world where Trinity created a magical rift in reality. As with most GURPS products, it is easily transfered to HERO. JoeG

Re: Limitation for Spell Casting with Armor and Helms If I understand correctly, the penalty is to represent the "insulation" of the spellcaster from the magical energies, rather than a Gestures/movement issue. I would probably build it in as a design feature of the magic system, rather than a specific limitation, but I have seen the "Caster cannot carry more than a dagger's worth of metal -1/2" and "Caster cannot wear armor while casting -1/2" in various fantasy games over the years. JoeG

Re: Interstellar communications For a Space Opera game our group co-designed, we had a FTL drive/radio that involved creating an energy field around the object, and "accelerating" it up the dimensions. The more energy that you were willing to push into it, the "higher" up the dimensional ladder it would go, and the faster it would travel. For spaceships, this power could be continuously fed by the ship's power plant. But objects could be "shot" up the dimensions by way of an FTL cannon, that created the energy field around the object during launch. The energy field would decay, based upon the amount of energy packed into it, and the highest dimension that it could reach. Once the object reached that highest dimension, it would remain at that energy state for only a brief period of time (since this was Star Hero, no longer than a turn). It would then "skip" back down the ladder, spending twice as long at each level. It would re-enter the "real" universe when its velocity went below lightspeed. The process could be applied to radio, too. Since they were basically focused beams of photons, they, too, could be packetized, and shot much longer distances (up to several parsecs). Of course, the FTL radio required huge antenna arrays, so only the largest ships could mount them. Also, the arrays were fragile, and had to be stowed if the ship was to maneuver at anything over a half gee. Major star systems had orbital arrays, which had an effective width of several kilometers. A side-effect of this FTL system was RF noise. As the packet decays, it sheds particles sideways, creating an ever-stronger "wake" along the entire path. This included the FTL radio, too. So your enemies could guess that you sent a message to HQ based upon the amount of FTL wake (for power levels) and the direction of your antenna array. And they could track your ship as you powered up through the dimensions, and plot possible endpoints. The system did produce some interesting quirks. First, sensors were only for use STL. Second, weapons could be fired FTL, but they could only damage things once they returned to this dimension ("skipping" missiles). Everything FTL could only travel straight-line (including ships), so accuracy counted. And, it often took longer to unfold the array than to send a message, but receiving a message was done with standard radio, assuming that you were in the cone of the transmission. JoeG

Re: Traveller Plasma Weapons I'm assuming comparisons to descriptions in GT:Starships. Those guns are kinda wimpy compared to MT or CT, where high-energy weapons can reach at least 30,000 km. Seems ok for GT, though. They tend to be used more as a point-defense weapon against incoming missiles in GT rather than as a primary armament. Your crew-served designation seems a little strict: bays usually have a crew of 2, but turrets usually only have a crew of 1 per battery. I haven't actually worked out the damage numbers for starship scale weapons, but a FGMP-15 (GTL 12) is approximately 14d6 RKA, based upon the raw average killing ability*. By comparison, most CT/MT handguns and rifles are DC 3-6, with comparable weapons already worked out in Fred. I would assume that a turret or bay mounted weapon would be even more powerful. JoeG * FGMP-15s are truly the "Blue Lightning" of Traveller: something that inexperienced gms frequently misuse to keep unruly PCs in line. It seems to be designed to completely destroy a character if used against him, since average damage works out to about 7 points higher than possible character hit points. Mapping this over to HERO gets this nasty level of lethality. GT characters actually have this worse: average damage received would be over 50 times the hits that a normal character could take.

Re: Interstellar communications According to Intel, there are about 42 million transistors on a typical Pentium 4 chip. And memory chips. Memory chips require 1 transistor for each bit for DRAM, or 4 transistors for each bit for SRAM. And the memory in my computer, SDRAM, is a combination of the two (about 5 transistors per bit). 8 bits in a byte, 1000 bytes in a Kbyte (actually, 2^10, but try telling hdd manufacturers), approximately 40,000 transistors per Kbyte. And the paragraph above is a little less than a half Kbyte. Now, setting up the computers on a starship to the level of 40s-50s computers would, in effect, limit you to room-size, fragile computers with the processing power of a modern $5 pocket calculator. In fact, this was the era of the slipstick, with slide rules used for most scientific calculations. Custom slide rules were available for specific tasks, like fuel load calculations on B52s. So, maybe the starships would have special slide rules for calculations of jump (or they're done on-planet) to set mechanical controls. Information is put on microfilm or fiche for compact shipment. And, maybe, people have to be "turned off" by being put into suspended animation so that they survive the toxic effects of the higher dimensions. Those deciding to ride it out suffer from jump sickness, created by the strong emf fluxes interacting with their nervous system. Kind of feels like a "Forbidden Planet" or "This Island Earth" type of campaign. JoeG

Re: Nothing personal Ben, but I killed you last night. Did a search on switchboard.com and pulled up 9 Zaphod Beeblebrox entries. Now, how would I explain to my players that I just grabbed the name out of the phone book? What worried me the most is that the site offers an "instant criminal records check on Zaphod Beeblebrox" For those keeping score: 6 Ford Prefect entries 15 Arthur Dent entries 2 Dirk Gently entries 6 Luke Skywalkers 3 Darth Vaders 0 Anakin Skywalkers JoeG

Re: Massive engineering projects? A few projects: The Transatlantic Tunnel: Imagine shuttling from London to New York under the Atlantic on a maglev train in a little under an hour. Of course, the tunnel has had the air evacuated from it so that the train can hit 5000 kph+ speeds. For maglev info, try: http://travel.howstuffworks.com/maglev-train.htm For Transatlantic Tunnel info, try: http://media.dsc.discovery.com/convergence/engineering/transatlantictunnel/interactive/interactive.html And for a fictional, alternate earth treatment, try: A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! by Harry Harrison (oop, though probably available used) Floating Cities: These are large arcologies designed to travel on the oceans of earth. An early design, the Freedom Ship, is basically a huge ocean liner with room for 50,000 residents. http://travel.howstuffworks.com/floating-city.htm Laser Launch Facilities: Why burn reaction mass, when you can get the boost you need from a ground-based laser? Put the lasers in space, with large solar arrays, and you have a way to apply a push to ships without them requiring large amounts of reaction mass aboard. Try The Mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle for a truly powerful example. David Brin's Sundiver also mentions the use of laser rocketry, but in a less "hard science" manner. Terraforming: Of course, Mars is the primary choice for terraforming, but why stop there? With a lot of work, Venus could be converted to a more habitable world. Or, how about restoring parts of earth ravaged by slash and burn, stripmining, and global warming? JoeG

I was lucky enough to purchase my copy directly from the author, Aaron Alston. Unfortunately, he does appear to be sold out of LOM. However, he does have other pre-5th material for sale on his site, and he is willing to autograph the stuff you buy. You can find him at http://www.aaronallston.com Joe

You might want to take a look at The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump by Harry Turtledove. It describes a world where magic has replaced technology, complete with avatars who inhabit a library dimension, viewable through scrying screens. It doesn't allow mortals to cross over, though (at least not alive, anyway). JoeG

Well, A long time ago, A GM gave me a pre-generated character that fit right into this discussion: a genuine Ninja Halfling. Lots of stealth, lots of pointy things (caltrops, throwing stars, and the like), and a tendency to borrow anything not nailed down too well (especially food and drink). The other players nicknamed his fighting style as "Death from Below" Just remember to adjust the Hit Location Chart accordingly. JoeG

I seem to picture a druid walking around in a dungeon with a little bonsai tree, just so he can cast magic. Of course, if he's any good, he should have a little light spell and perhaps a small raincloud spell, just to keep it happy. JoeG My wife adds, "Is that a lichen in your pocket...?"

Actually, Ley lines are more of a modern thing, having been "found" by connecting the dots formed by churches and historical sites in England on a map. The sacred geometry of ancient Egypt is much more interesting: There is increasing evidence that the layout of the pyramids is an earth-based model of the constellation of Orion. Other astronomical ties could surely be found. Of course, without Ley lines, the ancient Egyptians would have trouble levitating all of those stones, (and von Daniken wouldn't have anything to write about). If you want to use Ley lines as a major power source, then you need to decide how wide they are, and how far away from them you can be to cast magic. If, like Skeeve in the Myth series, you just have to locate one nearby( within a few miles or so) before using it, then it is probably at -1/2, or even less. If, however, the line is narrow, and you have to be right on top of it, this could be -2. Splitting the difference, your limitation of -1 would be right if the lines are wide, or can be tapped into from a little ways away. Another way to do it would be to assign modifiers to casting based upon proximity and strength of the lines. Maybe casting on the line is easy, giving a +3 to the casting roll. A little ways away, tapping into the line is a bit more difficult, perhaps +0, And maybe a mile away, it's at -5. You could still try to cast a spell away from a Ley line, but it would be extremely difficult. YMMV, JoeG