Jhamin

Lots of us want to game in custom Sci-Fi settings.  Most of us just don't have the patience to actually communicate the setting to players or have players invested enough to digest our world info.

Fun Fact: The Expanse started out as a RPG universe that the author was trying to get made into an MMO.  Someone pointed out that the game notes he had written to get players oriented were more extensive than most novels he had read and actually werent painful to read through.  So the author got a writing partner & converted his setting into published novels.

I think the biggest barrier to most Sci-Fi games is having rules all the players understand.  Not game mechanics, but universe rules like

Are there Transporters?

If so, can we just beam explosives over to enemy ships?

Why Not?

Do we have FTL?

can we rig captured ships do FTL rams into the big enemy stations?

Why Not?

Sci Fi covers a *lot* of ground and you need everyone in the group to be on the same page for the game to work.  Most established universes have rules about what actions do and don't work, and they are very different from universe to universe.  Without a common consensus on how this universe works you get players expecting Firefly and getting Chronicles of Riddick.  Then people are unhappy because they aren't playing the game they expected too.  Or worse, a player who made a Babylon 5 style military guy, a player who made a Starship Troopers military guy and a player who made a Battlestar Galactica military guy all showing up for a Stargate Universe campaign.  Now the party doesn't even gel.

If you just declare "we are playing Star Trek Next Gen" and then enforce the rules of that setting onto the game you avoid lots of weird arguments.  Making impassioned speeches works, because it's TNG.  No, you can't beam the side of the Klingon antimatter container out into space and make them explode.  Why?  Because they never do so you can't.  You solve your problems with klingons by appealing to their Honor or by arming Photon Torpedoes, you don't release Nanite Bombs from a shuttle you converted into a fighter even though they totally have Nanites because of episode XX.

Or do that.  But then the whole game becomes about the players and the GM out-gambiting each other by exploring the poorly thought through implications of most popular Sci-Fi Franchises.

RPGs are a communal experience and need to be experienced and enjoyed by the players.  Without good rules about tone and what's possible in universe things get really frustrating.  If you obey the rules of a universe everyone is familiar with you will be fine, if you homebrew a universe or jumble one up you end up with players who either are confused or have to read 40 pages of campaign notes before they make characters.

Mechanon was a long running antagonist in my old 5th edition game (and thus used his 5th edition stats).  His origin was mysterious as this was long before 6th Ed gave him an actual one.

The game ran for over many years and the PCs had the points to tackle him, but his "return having been rebuilt to not go down that way again" shtick eventually made him even more of a monster.  By this point he was immune to their tricks and had enough experience fighting them he was predicting their tactics.  Then someone pulled out the *big* guns. 

One PC was an angel slumming it on earth & dealing with her newfound mortality after quitting the war between heaven & hell.  She was profoundly disturbed that Mechanon wasn't just a puppet gone wrong.  He had a mind and a soul (she could tell) but no idea where it came from.  And it wanted to kill everything organic the Creator had put on the earth. 

She still had a favor from her old buddy the Angel of Death AKA the Reaper AKA Thanatos.  She called it in claiming that Mechanon was an abomination and must not be allowed to exist.  The Reaper demurred that it didn't really work that way, he couldn't just take someone before their time, but he compromised (really owed her for a solid she had done him outside Gomorrah) and took away Mechanon's hatred of life.  It wasn't really kosher for him to do and they agreed not to discuss it with anyone immortal. 
Mechanon is now a hero of last restort in my world.  He is still as arrogant, paranoid, and vain as ever, but he actually kinda likes organics and has backed into being a reluctant hero.  He doesn't fight street crime or really care about Eurostar but if Istvanna shows up she has to get past his legion of War-Bots first. 

The Angelic PC has embraced her mortality and settled down with her old DNPC boyfriend, studiously avoiding Viborra Bay.

A current PC in my RavensWood Academy game is his "son" born of a fight between Mechanon and the Engineer (Still a villian) inside one of Mechanon's auto-factories.

On 12/16/2019 at 12:24 PM, Chris Goodwin said:

It took me long enough to find this, and I overlooked it more than once.  

 

<<SNIP>>
Champions III, p 24.  

 

Edit to add:  While it might have thrown additional gasoline on the Great Linked Debate fire back in the day, it also assumes that the Powers are designed to go off together.  Essentially, what Hero Designer refers to as a "compound Power".  X, plus Y, plus Z. 

 

My god man!  I survived the great FRED wars when 5th edition made attack builds like this explicit.  Hundreds of posts for months and years and I don't think this was *ever* dug up in all that time.

What kind of world could we have built had such an explicit call out been made back then?

I ran a very long term game that lasted from early 4th edition to the end of 5th edition.  Dr. Destroyer was still too powerful for my Players, but Mechanon became a long-running antagonist.  His increase in power from 4th to 5th more or less kept him above the PCs but not overwhelmingly so.  Although I do admit I didn't give him all the slots in his multipower when they first ran into him in 5th edition, they were added over time as he upgraded his body.

The 6th edition version seem a bit high-powered for the suggested starting heroes, but I suppose you need somewhere to go.

My Champions Universe ran for 20 years with a gradually cycling series of players.  Its mostly inspired by a mix of Marvel Comics and the published Champions 4th and 5th edition universes with some homebrew hero and villain teams.  In retrospect it was pretty optimistic without being a parody.  Primus was a valued ally and while there were tons of rotten government secret programs and anti-mutant Generals in charge of R&D projects, they were always shut down when the PCs exposed them.
The players saved the world several times, and played many of the published adventures.  (They never forgave Black Harlequin for Omega World from "Champions Battlegrounds".
Some of the highlights:

- We did a big summer crossover with the Despoiler actually damaging the Keystone of Reality.  When the dust settled we had the 5th edition universe.  

- Captain Future's backstory from 4th Edition Golden Age Champions was expanded into a super-heroy time police, with a Captain Future in every heroic age.  The PCs said good by to their buddy the Star Trek TNG themed Captain Future and said Hello to his Matrix Themed replacement at the turn of the Millennium.

- A PC who was a member of the royal family of Cotopia, his vaguely Monaco like homeland, had to take back his country after Brother Bone launched a new inquisition against their decadent ways.
- Foxbat stole a time machine & led the PCs (and the Captain Future Corps) on a bewildering cross-time adventure before he succeeded in his master plan.  When they returned to the present they discovered that he had altered history so that the Star Wars Prequals were different and the fandom agreed they had surpassed the originals in every way.  Lucasfilm was making plans to buy Disney.  The PCs decided to look the other way and just keep living in "FoxBat's Future"
- An Angelic PC who escaped from the war between Heaven & Hell during the Despoiler incident used a favor with the Powers that Be to end Mechanon's threat.  She expected them to kill or banish him.  Instead  he ended up becoming a heroic protector of Organic Beings & Is now up there with Tetsuronin as one of the most powerful heroes in the world.

We retired the old game a number of years ago, but are about to start up a new Ravenswood academy game set in 2019 in the same game universe.  I plan to let the characters the Players remember from the old game to still be around, aged 10 years.  New characters, or characters they never encountered will match the 6th edition versions.  This should make it easier to express that time has passed & new heros and villains have stepped up.  One PC is the heroic Mechanon's "Son".  He is the result of The Engineer's interference in one of Mechanon's projects, making her the PC's "Mother"

Back in the day when I played 4th and 5th ed, I just house ruled all published character's Dex down by 6 along with the drop in CV.  It was a very small amount of mental arithmetic to make the adjustment when I used them and I felt a lot better about where everyone's stats were.  The conversion to 6th Edition will follow the same rules where needed.

Setting wise, I kept UNTIL out of the US, Russia, China, and a few rogue states.  They protected most everyone else.  In my games the USA used PRIMUS rather than having armed UN forces operating inside their borders.  I could never imagine the US allowing armed troops not under their control to fight in major US cities.  I also kinda liked the Silver Avengers and the Iron Guard too much to shut them out anyway.  SAT just didn't exist.
China and Russia had similar organizations but in never came up much.  My PCs international adventures usually took them to central America and the South Pacific.

After an absence of 12 years from Hero System my group is starting up a Teen Champions game using 6th edition.

When last we played we ran 4th, converting to 5th a few months after FRED came out.  In game we had a big summer crisis crossover with the Despoiler damaging the keystone of reality.  This time out we are taking advantage of our time away to catch up to the "current" version of the Champs Universe and the Hero Rules.

The changes from 5th to 6th edition have been noticeable, but so far I'm not seeing what the controversy is.

A basic chassis with a variable power pool you plug in stuff into works for the modular approach

I tend to go this way.  All of Iron Man's armors (for example) are bullet proof, have repulsors, can fly, are super strong, and have internal radios & heads up sytems (combat levels).  These are all powers that the base character can buy outright & then you leave the Variable Power Pool for the invisiblity on the stealth armor, extra Str & PD for the Hulkbuster armor, etc.

I wrote up an Animated version of Iron Man this way once & submitted it to Surbrook's stuff once.  It seemed to work out.

http://surbrook.devermore.net/adaptationswesternanimation/avengers_emh/iron_man.html

As you say, Roy hasn't even fired up the anti-undead green glow on his ancestral sword yet.

This fight has a ways to go.

Re: Order of the Stick

Because of the white skin and him mentioning needing "Special Diet" some think he is a Vampire.

A valid way of reading that, but I don't agree that he is. He spent a lot of time standing outside in the daytime, both at the Arena and Girards Hideout. This is a big no-no for D&D vampires, and when D&D rules have been ignored in the past we have always gotten nods to the fact in the strips. (Like weather control not being able to do the stuff Durkon does with it in Cliffport)

Re: Order of the Stick

A lot of the characterization that informs RedCloak is unfortunately hidden away in the book-only strips found in "Start of Darkness". The books details Xykon and RedCloak early lives, how they hooked up, and why they are doing what they are doing. It is a fun read and really helps you understand the villains. He has already done terrible, terrible things for the plan. Feeding Tsukiko to her own minions is kinda small stuff compared to what he did to his own kin in service of the master plan.

As for power level? teh bunneh is spot on about RedCloak getting the spells he says are brand new at 17th level. That doesn't put him in Xykon's league power wise. Heck, it only puts him maybe 2 or 3 levels ahead of most of the protagonists.

Xykon is very clearly an epic-level character. We have seen Xykon cast at least 4 or 5 9th level spells in one battle (which is easier if you are a sorcerer, but you still need to be way above 20th level). We have also seen him use metamagic on 8th and 9th level spells which isn't possible without epic feats.

I'd peg him around the mid to high 20s personally.

Re: So how did you guys learn the system?

Hmm. I notice that 5 pages into this thread I've seen maybe two or three people that came into the game in 5th or 6th editions.

That can't be good for the future of the system...... Eventually all the folks that started in 1st or 2nd are going to get too senile to teach anyone new.

Re: transformer question

How to handle the cassettes is kind of a philosophical question. Are they characters in and of themselves or are they extensions of Soundwave? I would make the argument that it varies by tape. Rumble, Frenzy, and Ravage tended to operate more or less independently but could pop out of his chest. (as you mention, they show up on a number of episodes he doesn't) Laserbeak and the only-seen-a-couple-times Buzzsaw operated in close cooperation with soundwave most of the time.

I might give Soundwave a multipower, one slot a summon for laserbeak & such, and EDM to allow him to move the more independent characters in and out of his "chest dimension".

His summons would have writeups attached to his sheet, while the others might be fully independent characters.

Re: Blasters: why?

The issues with most sci-fi weapons mostly come from writers or directors that want a good action scene. Phasors had continuous beams that could disintegrate things right up until someone wanted to film a shootout. Then they shot these little pulses that corridor beams could provide cover against.

So I see that as more of a problem with the production staff than the weapons.

Re: Repercussions of mass-producing comic book technology

If the generators can be definitely proven to work' date=' and ready to run units could be delivered to towns and cities in weeks, would people demand the change? Could it get delayed by the government trying to block it? How would the ecology groups respond?[/quote']

 

I'd ask a different question: Is the fusion power as profitable for utility companies as existing coal/gas/nuclear? If it was as profitable _for them_ and didn't pollute I'm sure they would love it. If it was going to put their power plants out of business I'm betting industry would fight it no matter how good it was for the earth.

 

Most of the power-distribution lines in this country are owned by the same companies that own the power plants. To replace the power coming out of the socket with Fusion-derived electricity you are either going to need to co-opt the utilities, go around them (by duplicating a lot of infrastructure), or make sure they make at least as much money after the change as they did before.

 

 

 

I'm not saying it wouldn't work. I'm just saying that massive technological change that doesn't topple governments or start riots is going to take a super-genius who is just as brilliant at sociology and economics as they are at physics and engineering.

Re: Blasters: why?

My credibility is strained as well' date=' but for different reasons. Why wouldn't they have more advanced slug-throwers just as easily as advanced energy weapons? That's the route I went in my campaign: bullets with high-tech explosives, "smart" bullets with guidance systems, and other options make them competitive with those fancy laser guns.[/quote']

 

Well, if you asked a medieval archer about muskets vs Longbows I'm sure they would very rightly point out all the advantages of the longbow and how with continued advancements they will stay ahead of those unreliable muskets pretty much forever. Which is why Navy SEAL teams use Ultra-bow 4000s to this very day.

 

Don't get me wrong, slugthrowers aren't going anywhere. They will continue to get scary better, and beam weapons are currently completely underpowered and fragile. I just don't know that I want to write off directed energy weapons for FTL capable civilizations.

Re: Blasters: why?

I think folks tend to think too much in terms of how well weapons work in individual battles and not how they fit into larger organizational thinking. As long as a energy weapon is inexpensive enough, the logistics of using power rather than ammunition would be a *huge* factor in favor of energy weapons for some armies.

In Hero's own Xenovore War setting the timeline mentions that the humans switched from Slugthrowers to Energy weapons about 2/3 of the way though the war. The lasers did less damage and the troops *hated* them for that exact reason, but the logistics division felt they were "good enough" and loved that they could supply each laser-equipped platoon with a charging station and never have to worry about ammo again.

They decided that not having to ship ammo to _every_single_solder_ before every battle across interstellar distances let them field larger armies that were better equipped in other ways. It was decided that when your supply lines were stretched that thin, in the long run operational flexibility was more important than individual firepower. (Kind of anathema to modern US doctrine, but then our supply lines are "only" a few tens of thousands of miles long with lots of secure friendly bases along the way)

The game did note that elite units & commando teams still tried to use slugthrowers if they could.

Re: Repercussions of mass-producing comic book technology

The introduction of fusion power would probably cause a boom in the world economy because cheap power has that effect. If we just looked at the US' date=' replacing fossil fuel generators with fusion generators would cut our fossil fuel needs by about half. If cars could be powered by the previously offered batteries in this thread, that would cut oil needs even further, down to using it for lubrication and plastics I think. Imagine if the US was able to cut its oil needs by 75% or more.[/quote']

 

Of course the other side of this is that you have a lot of loosers as well.

 

In the real world most economists expect oil to gradually keep getting more expensive and for people to find more and more alternates, gradually weaning lots of industries off the stuff as they switch to other methods. The sudden, widespread availability of an inexpensive alternative would be highly disruptive and destabilizing for a lot of power structures. If the US and other developed nations cut their imports by 50-75%, Oil-exporting nations would loose a lot of income and power on the world stage. There would likely be a lot of chaos when lots of governments lose their primary source of funding and local economies based on exploration, pumping, refining, and transporting oil all collapsed.

 

Some people might view this as a good thing. But make no mistake, a lot of chaos would happen during while society re-adjusted itself.

 

So how much does your NPC care about stability? Or would he see all the disruption as being worth the environmental and long term economic benefits? Or would he not want to deal with it & release some less-disruptive tech instead?

Re: 40K Space Marine Abilities

my original thought was treating them like cybernetics

I'm with the others that don't feel comfortable with "extra heart" getting a focus limit. Even if you do treat them as cybernetics I'm not sure how the point break is justified. My Mother has an artificial knee that lets her ignore her Physical Limit: Gimpy leg, but I cannot disarm that focus or remove it from her without a saw. If you can't remove a focus it isn't a focus, and if surgery is a adequate special effect for "removing a focus" I want points back on my liver.

I think all the Space Marine organs are really just special effects for their crazy statistics. Kind like "Gamma Bomb" is the effect for Hulk's.

Re: Space fightercraft in RPGs.

True...if you have a targetting solution from that distance, if you're willing to risk bringing your ship into missile range, and if it's not needed somewhere else.

Fighters, or more accurately in this case, parasite launch platforms, give you flexibility that you will NEVER engineer into a 100% expendable missile, for simple economic reasons. A Carrier and it's parasites can be in two places at once. A single craft can't.

Range as we usually understand it is determined by Gravity and Sight lines. Neither apply in deep space (around a planet, but not deep space). If you can see them you can probably hit them. A missile that is out of fuel in deep space is still moving just as fast, it just can't change course anymore. There is no such thing as "hanging out of range of their missiles", there is only being far enough away for your side to destroy the incoming missiles or get out of the way before they get to you.

"Two places at once" is only valuable if that distance gives us some advantage. If I can detect the carrier I can try to kill it while it's fighters are inbound, then leave. They either have to alter course to intercept my missiles or let their ride home die. If they can "jump" to me or FTL to me, then I should be able to "Jump" missiles or fighters right on top of them and distances start to become irrelevant.

If you have enough fuel to get there, stop, turn around, and return, I can use that same amount of fuel to create a missile with 4x the acceleration (thus reaching a much higher top speed before they run out of gas) giving you a lot less time to react.

I'll take the economic advantages and the capacity to fine-tune my attack from optimum distance every time.

This really comes down to how good everyone's computers are. If I can plot a targeting solution from my home that is good enough to kill you I don't need fighters in between me and you. I'll take my shot and not waste a lot of resources on Fighters that only help me fine tune something that is already good enough.

If I need to fly right up to WWII Dogfighting distance you before I can get a good solution (Like they apparently did in Star Wars), my computers are worse than the one's NASA is using right now.

Fighters only work somewhere in between these two extremes.

Re: Kim Possible - Modern Day Pulp Heroine?

I'm actually the guy that sent them to Susano long ago. They were written up before the series had completed it's initial run so they don't reflect some of the stuff we saw later (like Ron's on again/off again ability with Mystic Monkey Kung-Fu).

If I had it to do over again I'd have Ron pay points for Rufus. Maybe I should update...... I always kinda wanted to write up the villains just so I could List Ron as Lord Monkeyfist's hunted. If you really examine the episodes from MonkeyFist's point of view Ron was a much bigger deal than Kim.

Re: Stealth in Space

The decline in the chances of the laser actually doing anything is not canceled out' date=' particularly on a dodging missile with mirror coating (why not? It's not stealthy in the first place).[/quote']

 

Once again, you are not going to dodge lasers. If they can see you they can hit you with a laser & there is no non-superscience way of knowing when an incoming laser is about to hit you. You can't wait until you see the gun shoot at you as by the time you see it you have been hit by the laser. You can dodge the entire way to your target, but then you are burning fuel continuously for months or years and I just can't envision a missile with that much fuel.

 

And mirrors only work on low power lasers. If your mirror is 99.8% perfect (and it won't be) that .2% of energy getting through will still kill you if the beam is strong enough. And if I was defending my planet with beam weapons knowing how bad even one getting through would be I'd spring for the beams powerful enough to kill you with .2% of their energy.

 

140 kg is a lot more doable. Of course' date=' at that range, the missile can also afford to do something like flip 90' degrees on one axis and have its main engine fire a short burst. Of course, then it has to cancel out that movement, but it's also canceled out your missile.[/quote']

 

When you are moving at interstellar speeds in a vacuum you do not have time to do "last second" maneuvers. Any maneuver that will get you away in time will have to happen far enough ahead of time that the interceptor will have time to adjust for it or at least burst as it goes by & kill you anyway.

Re: Stealth in Space

Well' date=' drag forces (which are available to you in an atmosphere, but not in space) can scale as velocity raised to some higher power than 1. This has the potential for giving you deceleration (and asymmetric deceleration, which is a huge part of maneuverability) far beyond the force you can apply directly. Move a control surface, and the resulting force on the entire aircraft is much greater than the force you had to exert on the control surface. Hence, we routinely have much greater maneuverability in the atmosphere than we have in space, even at equivalent speeds.[/quote']

 

This is of course what I meant when I mentioned atmospheres, I just did a very poor job of saying so. My main point was that any dodging you might do with an interstellar missile wasn't going to involve the kind of acrobatics you can do in an atmosphere and could be matched by an interceptor.

Re: Stealth in Space

Given that the missile only needs to dodge by its own diameter' date=' it seems plausible that the missiles could dodge regularly, with most of them staying on target.[/quote']

 

In an atmosphere that would be true. You can use fins to steer and you are only moving a few hundred miles an hour tops. In a vacuum moving at the kind of speeds you need to cross interplanetary or interstellar distances you are moving thousands of meters a *second* and have built up *enormous* amounts of inertia. As we all know from highschool physics the more inertia you have the harder it is to change your course.

 

You would need the full power of your main engine to affect your course and changing course enough to move the diameter of your missile out of the way will change your course enough that you will need to expend even more energy getting back on course. Changing the direction you are traveling by 1 degree when you are in between Venus and Mars will cause you to miss Mars entirely, let alone not hit the part of it you want.

 

Any attempt to change course when traveling at a good % of lightspeed will throw you so far off course that you will not have enough fuel to get back on course! If you do have enough fuel, then why didn't you use it to go faster and cut down how long the other side has to work out the best way of killing you? Turning in space is hard. When the Apollo 13 rocket suffered an explosion on the way to the moon they had to ride out the trip and circle the moon before coming back because even if they were in perfect condition they didn't have the fuel to turn around in mid-flight and go back to earth. And they were not going at anywhere near the speeds we are talking about. (and I know that turning around is a bigger deal than dodging, but at the speeds we are talking about even dodging is too much)

 

This also begs the question of how your missile knows to dodge. If it has sensors capable of detecting the missile coming to kill it then the incoming missile can try see it's target moving and can also try to correct course. This becomes a war of who has the best sensors and maneuvering computers. If the defender is shooting lightspeed beams of energy at you then you are already dead by the time you detect the attack. "Wobbling unpredictably" is only possible in an atmosphere against an enemy with poor sensors.