azato

Re: My campaign plans for Mechanon I will need to come up with a weaker form than is given in 5E. Perhaps even working it so that plots of his which succeed give him large amounts of XP. (stealing certain technologies, etc).

Cheshire Cat enters the picture and develops a crush with the in the women in the group. He is not necessarily a member of GRAB yet (tBD). His power provides a reason for introducing Mechanon. Cheshire’s teleport is a very crude way to travel dimensionally. It leaves small tears in the dimensional fabric that does, over time, heal itself. But these tears have to potential to let other things through. These tears are like squiggly lines which are dark and create a weird “tingly” feeling when touched. They generally dissipate after a few hours but some have lasted as long a 1 day. Mechanon comes through as an “egg” or “seed” of sorts. These eggs were seeded through the Aether for some purpose. It may be that the seeds were released by a mechanonistic race who seeks to dominate other worlds. Perhaps, more likely, the intent was a weapon of war against another world/race and this particular seed fell into the “crack in the sidewalk” left by Cheshire Cat’s teleportations. Mechanon will start off small, perhaps the size of a small cat and will have 4 legs and two arms. He will take this time to learn about the race that inhabits this world. Once he feels safe enough he will show up and befriend the super group, appearing to be ‘cute’ and “friendly” much like the creatures for Gremlins or perhaps even ET. But as he gains conficence he will become bolt and assertively testing an acquiring. His main objective is to gain access to major technology/computer infrastructure. Once he gains access, the fun begins. He will seem to have disappeared for awhile, perhaps even leaving the old body behind, and then surface weeks or months later – in a much more powerful form. Thoughts....Ideas...Critiques?????

Re: Post-apocalyptic campaign? They may be self sustaining to a point - but without access to technology they may have problems when complicated things break. There may be redundancies in the systems, but there is a point when even those will fail. Also replacement of simple equipment may be a problem. All the steel ad iron is in the city in some form. Do they have the means to turn rebar into shovels or stainless steel tables into auto parts? Medical supplies, such as vaccinations may stop. What might be even more interesting is what will happen politically within the colony when they realize that there is no more help coming from earth. Perhaps even give them a ship that could be used (perhaps at great cost) to return to earth. But if earth is destroyed, there would be no means to refuel and it would be stranded.

Re: Post-apocalyptic campaign? Hmm. I have been thinking along these lines myself. Here is what I am thinking....I would make it OUTSIDE the solar system...make it so that the colonies have no idea what happened (later plot hooks) and would be forced to become more self sustaining..they would be forced to explore. If there are other species that are intelligent this may play an interesting twist in their relationship especially if the aliens are lower tech AND know that something is wrong.

Re: New Package Deal(s) Well, I think that you may want to significantly increase the strength on these bad boys especially if they are 280 LBS. A normal adult chimp is something to be feared let alone adding over a 100 lbs to it.

Re: New Package Deal(s) Are the "apes" uniform in size and shape or are there different species (ala Planet of the Apes). If there are multiple kinds then perhaps different write ups.

Re: Hagar the Horrible Has the Hagar strip been "reinvented"?

Re: How to handle healing Killer, I will be glad the day you come clean and finally admit that you are multiple people running the same account. Then the rest of us can feel better about our comparatively meager output.

Re: How would this work - Citizenship I do need to flesh out the rules for a least a few countries and I probably need to do it in reverse - what is the type of government -> What does it mean to live in that country -> what does it mean to be a foreigner. I imagine that in some cases, as you stated boarders will be fairly open. I guess what I need to think about is the "degrees of citizenship" or to what depth I want to handle that. Thanks for the great input Mark!

Re: Looking for sector map generators phanks! Hmmm. Maybe I can resurrect some other programs as well.

Re: How would this work - Citizenship My intent is to set up different "rules" for different countries. Some may follow a strict Romanesque paradigm, while others will follow a feudal/manor style. Keep it coming...good stuff.

Re: What would happen - and at what cost? I am not totally sure that is true. I work for a major manufacture of construction and mining equipment and our largest structures - the facility I work at - the castings for some of our largest vehicles come from China. In general, most of the major US foundries are out if business we receive most of our castings by boat and then rail/truck. Even our company is going on the foundry business http://www.toughquip.com/Caterpillar-Off-Highway-Truck-Models.htm In fact, one of our major foundry, located reasonable close to the internal customers (peoria, il and lafayette, in) is being largely moved to Mexico. http://www.jobbankusa.com/News/Jobs/jobs120304a.html

Re: Looking for sector map generators I got a new computer and it was what came with it. I debated on the two and decided to go ahead with Vista. For the most part I have enjoyed it as an OS. My main beef is that it does not play nicely with my home network. I can play video games with my other computer, but for the life of me I cannot get them to see and play with each other nicely any other time. I am sure you will write back and tell me that I am also suffering a major performance drain, which may be true but I have nothing to compare it with on this computer. Oh, yeah, there were some games that used to work on XP that don't work now.

Re: Looking for sector map generators I may try that.

Re: How would this work - Citizenship That may be the case for some countries. I have decided to "rework" greyhawk and provide more detail in flavor into some of the countries. One of these is the question of citizenship (especially during a time of war) and what it means to be a citizen (or not a citizen). Shadowcat, you do propose an interesting tangent ... what things would either be a requirement (necessary) and what thing would be sufficient? Luckily we have some examples as provided by Rome and given by the links provided by this group. Since I am looking for a smorgasborg in which to build different plates (nations) what are some other thoughts on citizenship in a more "medieval" or earlier setting?

Re: Looking for sector map generators Vista seems to be a problem. It doesn't like Gal and Heaven and Earth can't find an obscure file when it is installed. (sigh) I can always try it on my wife's laptop.

Citizenship is nothing new and has been around since...well, mankind has been around. For very small cultures it is very simple to know who is a citizen and who isn't. But as nations get larger and restrictions for citizenship get more strict what means does a person have to prove his citizenship? I am sure that the Roman empire provides a great example of this but I haven't a clue.

Re: Looking for sector map generators I found one. While it does work it doesnt' output to a print friendly graphic. I suppose I could invert the colors (negative). http://zho.berka.com/data/random/subsector.html

I am looking for a program that will generate sectors automatically and puke them into either a graphic format or a pdf. Traveller rules would work the best, but any other system would work as well.

Re: Narf's Fantasy Stuff I think the problem was with FireFox.

Re: Generic SF Universe Project To me, the exact science is not as important as some other factors such as: 1. How far can a ship travel 2 How long does it take 3. How does it refuel These three options will dramatically influence how the characters interact with the universe and will also greatly affect trade routes and the vulnerability of planets and empires. For example do all ships coming into their portion of the sector have to come by way of a couple of systems or can they pop in just anywhere? That may make some back-water systems very important for defense and for refueling. Or it may make those same back-water systems virtually ignored because of the their lack of importance.

Re: What would happen - and at what cost? Yeah, you are right. I re-re-read the post and even when back to edited this reply. --> I completely misread your post. <------

Re: Generic SF Universe Project Yeah, I have the game but there are some aspects that I don't care for, at least as far as the maps go. I think they are way too confusing, too many planets and, while more realistic, i think the 3 dimensional cordinates is just not easily grasped when written on a 2d surface. What I am thinking is something more star opera ish. I am not actually looking to put earth's nations into space, but to create the dynamics that was in Europe and the rest of the world during this time. Take America (north and south) for example. We have the British, the French, the Spanish, the Portugese all vying for a space occupied by the native population. The events in europe led to the colonies seeking and gaining independence. Take the continent you have the various powers pushing and pulling with GB taking sides just to keep the continent unbalanced. Plug in some various races and the history books will write the adventures.

Re: What would happen - and at what cost? So the other planets do not contain, or should I say potentially contain, material (metals, radioactives, gems, etc) that is more rare that would be easily mined? For instance, I believe that gold is still found but it is not in the great veins for which they were found centuries ago. If one could do a strip mine and get large amounts of high grade that would make it viable. Likewise, we have great amounts of oil because previous plant life. Now eventually this will become depleted. Now obviously other planets would not have petroleum , but would they have some alternative?

Re: Generic SF Universe Project Count me in although I don't know how much time I can put into this. What I would LOVE to develop would be a recreation of the European empires during the age of exploration to the mid 1800's. Wherin each "nation" would be a separate race or faction. They would be a handful of small empires but powerful empires who have a long series of complicated relationships and varying and swinging alliances. Vast new areas of relatively unexplored regions (like America and Africa). develping trade with empires with which the "Europeans" are on shaky ground (china). Also the "european" empires would be vying for control over some "virgin" rich, unexplored and undeveloped areas (think africa, india, Pakistan and america).