doublefine

Re: automatons The thing you have to look at I suppose is what the characters are likely to buy...and also what the GM wants something to do...you don't have to create a full character sheet for this automaton if you don't want to...just scretch out what abilities YOU want it to have. I once had a GM that came up with some really cool villians. I asked him when the game was over if I could see the character sheets so that I could use some of the same abilities in a campaign I was thinking about running...no character sheets. The key point being, if you're running, come up with a special effect and the abilities presented by it and don't worry about how many points it would actually cost. Just make sure that the automaton, or whatever villain you build, aren't needlessly overpowered and that your players would actually have a chance against these things. For example, if your players have mainly gas attacks and the like, Does Not Breathe might be hopelessly overpowered and allow the villain in question to roll right over them. Other than that have fun. And...off the soapbox

Re: Help with a new campaign. Yeah, the Blackcollar novels are by Timothy Zahn. Basically, Humanity is attacked by a race known as the Rycor, they're faster stronger tougher than humans. So near the end of the war we create Blackcollars. Human warriors trained in some very old fighting techniques, including a lot of ninjitsu, and then injected them with a chemical cocktail, mainly indunine(which retards the aging process in humans) and Backlash(which speeds up the human nervous system permanently). Then we lost the war, the Rycor moved in and psychologically conditioned all of our leaders, and pretty much left the Blackcollars to rot, keeping a close eye on them to prevent them from becoming a threat of course. Of course a Resistance Movement is formed, the main character has been chosen to inpersonate a high level government clerk and go on a secret mission to try to tip the balance in the Rycor's latest war against another race. Anyway, they make great guerilla commandos. As they are used to lightning fast raids against hardened military targets, and they also use mainly low-tech weaponry which don't normally show up on the various police scanners(nunchakus, shuriken, swords, and sniper slingshots). They also have rather interesting armor, which spreads out the impact of various projectile weapons (completely useless against sharp or pointy objects unfortunately).

Re: Interplanetary colonies well...the prisoner thing obviously won't create a self-sustaining population, but it might still work with extremist groups, religous nuts (yes, that's the technical term), and other undesireables. You could even mix them up with the prisoners...if you really want to make things interesting. BTW your Ice Cream cone has 2 OIFs on it TH

Re: Help with a new campaign. ROCK ON! You're recreating Blackcollars??? That being said, you might want to create a template for the players to use (+whatever Str, +random number DEX, etc...). So that your players don't try to TOTALLY abuse the drug. Also, if you can you might want to make the player characters earn it (go through a series of training exercises, attempt a quick dangerous mission, or something). After all, what good is having accelerated reaction times if you don't actually know what to do with them. As a side note, are you keeping the idunine, psychor training, and psych conditioning? Or are you just going with Rycor and Blackcollars?

Re: automatons Um...I do know what a nerve gas is...I was just mentioning a particular nerve gas that I saw in a SciFi movie. Although they normally only affect acetylcholinesterase and don't normally damage the rest of the body (which BDY is generally an expression of)...besides, nerve gasses are more expensive if you get them to do BDY

Re: automatons Well, unless there's an Immunity:Crowbar, most of the can still be hurt. The Takes No Stun is meant to simulate the fact that an Automaton's "Nervous System", for lack of a better term, is setup radically differently than an average Human's (ie. it has better shock absorbers around it's positronic brain, or it's in a modified berserker mode like most mindless undead). Most Automatons with Takes No Stun simply react differently either calmly doing damage control listings in their processors, or don't have any way of really recognizing that they've been hit except that they've taken damage. Or so I've always thought. Would a nerve gas do BDY? I think I saw something once with a nerve gas that was actually corrosive to human flesh, but it's been a while. And I think that was in "Mr. Stich", which actually included a Shelly style reanimated Flesh Golem made out of various medically donated corpses. So, somehow, I would doubt the scientific veracity of such things...

Re: Gravity, Inertia, and Star Hero Well, I wouldn't worry about the first bit...especially with the Hero Sysytem...they're very good about flexibility. If you don't like it you don't like it, and honestly that's one of the things that I don't particularly like about the Hero system myself. It's very unrealistic, but you can kind of see where they were coming from with it, as it does simplify the bookkeeping involved. If you had to deal with Inertia, or Gods forbid potential energy, then the GM and players would have to spend entirely to much time to do anything. But with Starship physics you'd think they'd make a general exception to the rules...oh well, that's why they embeded so much flexibility into the system, and also why most of what they write are suggestions rather than hard rules. And...off the soapbox for the moment. It's good to know that I can come up with something that's pretty close to things I've never even seen before...although that might speak more to the "common sense" approach of the Traveller folks than anything else. and Bigdamnhero...I know they're coming out with TravHero...I'm posting suggestions for Shadowcat on the TAS board... Although I did come across http://www.starherofandom.com/b5/index.php the other day...which is a bit closer to my heart, as I've been around B5 a bit longer...Although as far as I can tell the author is trying to charge his players for using the increased movement in hyperspace, but I'm probably reading that wrong...

Re: Gravity, Inertia, and Star Hero Unfortunately, while I'm offering my opinions on on certain Hero adaptations of Traveller ships...I've never played Traveller, and I don't have any of the books. Honestly at this point I'm thinking of going with inertia (ie. movement not taken within a planetary atmosphere doesn't stop until cancelled by another equivalent move, either provided by the ship itself or by the following gravity draft) and gravity (using basic Newton a=m/d squared or acceleration equals mass, I'm probably only going to map out the major planetary bodies, divided by the distance to our ship squared). I'm thinking of shading rough estimates of the acceleration around the requisite planets, and using those for simplicities sake. Questions, opinions, comments welcome.

Re: Interplanetary colonies or telephone sanitizers

Re: More private space-flight come on EDP...Texas isn't that bad. Other than the hellish climate...and, in some areas anyway, most of the people...it's a really nice place...kind of...

Re: Gravity, Inertia, and Star Hero That is mildly comforting EDP. Although I must say that the masochistic part of me was actually looking forward to hashing it all out myself. Then again, the Hero System and I do not always agree (which, honestly is why I use the Hero System...you can change just about anything a lot more easily than any other system I've used). So I may go ahead and do it anyway once I get the books, but what I'm looking for is basically opinions on how the more "realistic" mechanics usually impact gameplay...I'd like to have some realism, but I also don't want to bog my players down with a lot of rules, that in the end are only going to be an inconvience to everyone. After all, this is supposed to be fun...few people are going to have fun spending an hour calculating the most fuel efficient course for their pretend spaceship. Edited to avoid angering giant space feline

Re: Interplanetary colonies Actually, you see things like this a lot in SciFi...particularly military ScFi(where the glorified commandos of X Unit have to go settle the long term problems caused by it) Normally governments would essentially "subsidize" the transfer of whatever group they don't want around anymore. Paying part of the fee to get them away, and granting them a, sometimes hellish, world at the back end of beyond. In others, groups of like-minded individuals, usually ones that no one really cares about, get together and purchase a world and move en mass all by themselves(see Gordon R Dickson's Dorsai books). Basically...it COULD work, but the group in question would have to REALLy REALLY honk everybody off.

Well, I'm relatively new around here...I ordered the Star Hero Bundle the other day, and I'm rather breathlessly awaiting it's arrival. In the mean time I started to get bored, so I started thinking about some acceleration conversions I did for the Traveller Hero Board. Then I started looking at physics websites. Which was probably at least my second mistake. Regardless, I started pondering the effects, if any, that could be applied in Star Hero, mainly those that would act on starships. Useing my newly won...(snort)...knowledge of physics I started looking at gravitational effects. Those of you that have actually played in Star Hero campaigns, is this generally worthwhile? I figure inertia at least should be a viable game mechanic, but it doesn't really present in a normal Hero game, the only type I've really played. After all, there's nothing quite like seeing players come to the conclusion that they can either get into position to do something (and fly into the Sun), or wait and possibly come too late to be of use. I had thought that a rough simulation of Gravity effects might work well, but then again they might also be fairly negligible and only wind up costing me extra work. I think I've found most of the relavent equations neccesary, but I really would like opinions before I possibly waste several days/weeks/months quantifying something that everyone is going to hate. Thanks in advance.

Re: I know this probably sounds psycotic, and it probably will be. I've attached a few of the modules that I've built for my..."hero"...please let me know what you think. Not sure, but I'm thinking that I should work out Hit locations for each of the implants(I currently have 11 built, but I'm thinking about using two of them, grasping mouths and a missile deflection tentacle twice). Should I use a limited for of feedback for this? or should I just got the route of Physical limitation? Thanks for the feedback so far.

Re: I know this probably sounds psycotic, and it probably will be. Umm...what exactly would be the effect of buying large amounts of PD/ED/MD/Power Defense Usable Simultaneously (by however many of these little creeps I wind up taking + 1 for the actual Character) Along with Various Flash Defense also Usable Simultaneously by the whole merry band and then because I think this guy might as well be completely evil buy +to Characteristics Usable Simultaneously by Everyone... The way I read it (and I have been known to miss glaringly obvious pieces of text) all of the Implants, and the Character, would wind up gaining the full measure of each effect... Please keep in mind...if I want to I can get 20 602pt Duplicates for only 401 Real points Which adds up to an insane amount of boost to Characteristics/Defense simply because I can devote entire 602pt characters to upping various things. There has got to be a flaw in this. Other than most SANE GMs not allowing it within 50 miles of their games anyway. Sorry I keep asking about all of this, but one of the people playing has been playing Hero System for a while, and is a devious little @#)*^%! in the first place!