Ian Mackinder

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Immediately reminded me of this, from the movie 'Undercover Blues'.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Ah. yes, the inevitable Polaroid moment. For once, I can Rep ya, Drhoz.

Re: Brain-Scanning Alien As usual, as many as you can justify. Probably with certain limitations to set it apart from "regular" telepathy - eg. Dependant On _____ (Whichever sense the alien uses for this); Requires A Skill roll (recognizing / figuring the Neurology of the being that is scanned), Limited Range; Won't Work Through Strong Electromagnetic Fields; etc..

Re: Worst Hero Names (of your campaigns) In a samurai game some years ago, two players opted for character names that (to their minds) sounded vaguely Japanese and, well, you'll see. The third Player to join, learning what his fellows were called, chose a rather ..... unique name. So, the game centred on these three ronin who, whenever asked for their names, would respond thus: Player #1: "F### YOU." Player #2: "UP YOURS." Player #3 (with an expression that said both 'I Know What's Coming' and 'GET ME OUT OF HERE!'): "Help." Yes, those were their characters' actual names. They seemed to get into a heckuva lot of fights, for some reason.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Sounds interesting so far.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... I think the Sanity / Corruption Point effect would be an area effect thing, as the entire universe recoils in horror.....

Re: Blood Falls, Antartica "Life will find a way."

Re: Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible?

Re: Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible? Well, we know one ship-chunk got into atmosphere, and from there down to the surface in a semi-controlled fashion. Given all the ships blowing up and ordnance being thrown around, I am guessing a few other ship pieces would have made the trip as well - though probably more destructively.

Re: Trek HERO Netbook? Personally, I have zero faith in ADB's concept of "real soon now" - burned W-A-Y too many times in my SFB days.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Yet again, DrHoz, I'd rep ya if I could.

Re: "Neat" Pictures Both funny and kinda wrong, I'd say. Maybe you should run a Poll.

Re: Gothic science fiction settings

Re: A Thread for Random Videos "You sound like you were home-schooled ... and you were there by yourself." Understatement.

Re: A Thread for Random Videos Double Post

Re: A Thread for Random Videos For anybody who DOESN'T look in on the Skippy's List' website at least once in a while. The titles say it all: http://skippyslist.com/2011/07/18/this-is-awesome/

Re: Earth Goes Poof, Wherefore Art Thou Luna? That too.

Re: Earth Goes Poof, Wherefore Art Thou Luna? I'm not sure (rarefied territory for me) but he might be thinking of stuff to do with transfer of momentum. The following thought experiment grossly over-simplifies a complex problem, but consider. Imagine tying a weight to a length of string and whirling it around. Once the twirling is up to a certain speed, things are nice and stable. The more weight at the end, the slower this speed has to be - you expend more effort to get it going but, once it is, again nice and stable. So what happens if the string is suddenly shortened? The "Orbit" becomes smaller and the weight whips around faster - same energy, just less distance. So, what happens if the string remains the same length, but a very big part of the weight suddenly vanishes? Whatever is released will zoom off somewhere, and the portion still attached? Add to that picture, suppose the string is elastic, and only partially stretched. When all that weight at the end vanishes, I imagine that the elastic will probably try to "pull in" whatever is left. The dynamics of the Sol-Earth-Moon system are a heckuva lot more complex than this simplistic premise, but I hope the idea is helpful.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... So, how many Sanity Points did the party lose in total from THAT little ..... 'business transaction'?

Re: Star Wars: Technological Stagnation? Fair enough.

Re: Star Wars: Technological Stagnation? Occurs to me that the Empire could have a lot in common with the militaries of ... certain regimes (past and present) here on Earth. "Sure, we are SO Big And Bad And Awesome, because our bookkeeping and our propaganda says so. But, erm, I cannot actually let anybody see our stuff..."

Re: Eccentric but plausible ways a character could be rich? Yeah, well. I dunno what sort of return Mr Wonka's business was making but, even assuming the Umpa-Lumpas worked for free, the overhead on his plant must have been horrific.