David Johnston

Re: Question about IQ The most common IQ test, the Stanford Binet test would, in theory, rate an intelligence 20 character as having a 145 IQ. Points in excess of 145 are regarded as meaningless since so few score high enough to allow for statistical analysis of the results. So...just pick a number between 145 and 180.

Re: Planet Building Help Needed In fact extrasolar gas giants have been detected closer in than the habitable zone of the star. So there's no problem there as long as the gas giant in question is really, really big, so big that it has enough gravity to remain intact. As far as the density of the planet goes, it would be a planet that had a higher metallic composition than that of Earth of course. A little too high, really. You might want to go with .9 gs which would still leave it with loads of heavy metals by comparison with Earth. Things like gold, iridium and platinum would be relatively accessible and common. Any main sequence star could in theory have a gas giant in the habitable zone. However it would probably be a bit on the young side so let's call it a F-type "white star". (Note that the colour of a sun would not in fact be visible to the naked eye. They all look "white"). That gives it a biozone of 1.6 to 2.4 astronomical units. 1.8 is a safe choice. CO2 levels in the atmosphere can be manipulated to give you any kind of general climate you want. Without knowing the mass of the primary it's impossible to estimate the orbital period of the satellite. However, I can tell you that since gravity increases the speed satellites can move at, and the faster a satellite moves, the farther it is away, your moon would be "somewhat farther" away from its primary than Earth's moon is. That's about all I can say. The distance from the sun will be an insignificant aspect of the "seasonal" variation which happens in a 28 day cycle. By far the more important element will be getting continuously radiated with no cooling off period for days at a time. The interior of the outerside continent equatorial continent will get pretty darn unlivable for a few days every "month" unless it has an interior sea. Water acts as a heat-sink, so coastal areas and islands would probably be livable all the time but will still cool off and heat up significantly. How much heat the planet gets from the gas giant itself is dependant on the size of the gas giant. A Jupiter-sized gas giant doesn't make much of a difference. A degree or so, maybe. But the planet's giantside would get most of it's warmth from solar radiation (since quite often the sun and the giant would both be in the sky at the same time) and air and water convection. The temperature variations however would be more modest than those of the farside because the sun is never hitting it full on, the way it does the farside. There would be regular eclipses of the sun on the giant side and these would cool things down, but big as the giant is in the sky the eclipses probably still wouldn't last more for than a few hours. Yes, the giant side will experience a lot of moonlight much of the time of the time. However, the eclipses will be nothing but starlight.

Re: WWYCD in the event of an approaching army I considered it, but rejected it. This bunch of bedwetters obviously aren't suitable for that kind of operation.

Re: [Campeign Creation Project] Pirates of the Naebbirac Astroid Belt

Re: Star Hero versions of Fantasy Hero races? They aren't immortal in Fantasy Hero either. They only live about 1600 years. But lets see now. A humanoid species which is very long lived, older and more learned than humanity, gifted with some kind of psionic (magical) powers that few humans can duplicate. Oh yeah, and they have pointy ears. Remind you of anyone?

Re: New World Creation Project, needs some help. I recommend checking out the CIA fact book for a format in which to present your descriptions of the major nations of Ultim.

Re: [Campeign Creation Project] Pirates of the Naebbirac Astroid Belt Well one thing I'd suggest is placing the belt in a cluster of young, short-life-expectancy (meaning big) stars. The reason why there are no habitable planets is because the planet formation process doesn't have time to run its course before the primary dies, and the resulting novae have created exotic elements. Since the system is in a cloud of collecting gas, and is an irregular variable with lots of solar flare activity, it's difficult to "see" your environment, putting everything in a perpetual fog of war. Ships sometimes find themselves having to take shelter behind a rock for protection against particularly harsh outbursts from the sun.

Re: WWYCD - unpowered normal facing imminent death Nothing special. Go home, read books in the bathtub. Wait for the end.

Re: WWYCD in the event of an approaching army Wouldn't matter. If they were overrun, Tanis would already be trying to use invisibility to bail. Never trust someone who says "trust me".

Re: WWYCD in the event of an approaching army Tanis says, "Guys, guys, you are looking at this all wrong. You can _easily_ get those guys to stab you to death, so why are you asking me to do it? Nobody has to be taken alive here and me stabbing you isn't going to hurt you any less than them stabbing you. And if we can hold them off for just one candlemark, our reinforcements will arrive and most of us might even still be alive to see it! You'd rather be live heroes than dead nithlings, right? Now everyone grab hold of your pointy things and point them at the bad guys. Remember, they're more afraid of death than you are. So you can beat them. Trust me."

Re: New World Creation Project, needs some help. This is one of those ideas which is so vague that it is difficult to respond to. One thing you could do with an original world though is play around with actual major nations which are, for example, ruled by an oligarchy of superhumans, or perhaps a constitutional monarchy where the monarchs have superpowers. You could also consider the possibilities that this world never largely abandoned polytheism because the beings worshipped as gods are very real and actually respond to entreaties for assistance.

Re: Superpowered Worlds They have fairly high levels of nonresistant (only) PD and ED. Think Thor and Wonder Woman. So there's still a market for pointy things and body armour

Re: Re-Imaged Hero(ines) The thought strikes me that remaining as a fringe mob associate means that he'll never be called on to do something significantly bad, but he's in a great position to hear stuff he can use as his alter-ego.

Re: ORCS! What makes them our favourite enemies??? Well the Silmarillion is a post-mortem collection of a whole bunch of stuff that Tolkien never actually approved for publication, his drawer full of work in progress. So if there's a Tolkien canon it probably doesn't count any more than Ellison's script for City At the Edge of Forever counts as canon for Star Trek. The corrupted elf thing doesn't work too well though, simply because elves were never that populous and the orcs had endless hordes.

Re: ORCS! What makes them our favourite enemies??? Well there are certain implications to being "born evil". One of them is that the character comes with a great deal more of their programming hardwired in from birth or hatching. More read only memory. That means they would require far less parental teaching and nurturing. The notorious orc nursery scene simply wouldn't happen because juvenile orcs would not be helpless babies for more than a very short time after birth. They'd just be shorter orcs. And not for very long since there'd be no need for the extended juvenile development period for humans in which they learn what's what. This fast maturation period is of course perfect for producing disposable low quality troops in large numbers. What's more it means there's less of a push for sexual segregation of responsibilities since children quickly become self-sufficient at least as scavengers on the kills of their seniors. Thus, no need to define females as noncombatants.

Re: ORCS! What makes them our favourite enemies??? Or even if they aren't irredeemably evil, at least operating in faceless masses and intent on immediate evil so you don't have to sweat the exceptions.

Re: Re-Imaged Hero(ines) Alexander Tyburn was quite smart, but very maladjusted, an egotistical Peter Pan with a solipsistic view of the world. One night he visited the nightclub where entertainer/superhero Doctor Fate was doing his psychic act and something about that posturing phony just rubbed him the wrong way. Whether it was his predictions of the future that implied a predestination that was anathema to a man who felt his was the master of his own course, or the way Doctor Fate looked at him, sized him up, and seemed to find him wanting as he moved on to a different member of the audience. Hotshot "police psychic" conartist...who did he think he was? So, Tyburn wrote Doctor Fate a letter, one that opened: Are you really a psychic? Can you guess my name? Do you know what I'm going to do next? He'd hint at crimes he was planning, profitable but elaborate and vicious crimes like poisoning a jewellery exchange's water cooler and robbing it while everyone was incapacitated or deliberately causing a power failure during a heat wave in order to rob a police evidence locker. Doctor Fate was surprisingly successful at guessing what the Question (as he became known from his distinctive trademark of starting every communication with questions) was planning, if only at the last minute, but the Question's flunkies tended to get caught while he beat a hasty retreat, allowing the two of them to continue their duel for quite a while before the Question was first caught. Inside, the Question amused himself by planning escapes, prison riots and murders, and made sure to keep in touch.

Re: Alignment Issues Detect a large class ofthings (psych lims; "very common or abstract objects or phenomena", abstract the key word here) is 10 points. Discriminatory +5, Analyze +5, Ranged +5 makes 25 points. That would buy a lot of dice of Telepathy given the limitations - it has a normal range modifier, can only read a subclass of Deep Hidden Thoughts and does not provide mental awareness. It can only receive, not transmit. It can't be used through a Mind Scan either. OTOH, it's 0 END and requires no attack roll. I think those are some pretty substantial differences, and I don't find the costs prima facie out of line. As to this generally being the province of telepathy, no more so, IMO, than detecting whether the target is Good or Evil. I kind of prefer to leave discriminatory and analyze out. Lots of opportunities for ambiguity and ominous foreshadowing when you are pinging Evil but can't be sure what kind or exactly where.

Re: Making colonization attractive? I guess it depends a lot on your setting. 7 - If the earth is extremely overcrowded (eg downtown Tokyo all over the world) people would want to have some 'elbow room.' Doesn't follow. You can dig a hole in the ground here and get just as much elbow room as you'd have in your hole on Mars. 7 - A large fraction of scientist types would do it for the chance to learn. Yes, Antartica-like scientific outposts are likely at some point in the future. - A large fraction of the adrenaline-junkies would do it for the challenge and the rush. Going there has adrenaline in it. Staying there, not so much. - A large fraction of the ne'er-do-wells would do it to get out where the authorities don't know them. You need large cities with a great deal of traffic first before that could happen. - A large fraction of the oppressed would do it for freedom. We aren't exactly talking North American homesteading here. The "freedom" you'd get in a space colony would probably be the same degree of freedom you'd get in the sponsoring society, or less because people are so much more easily monitored in an arcology. - Maybe the government offers incentives (no income taxes?). Of course the government must have something worth claiming first. - Maybe they work for a corporation that wants to start a colony and offeres them a good deal. Requires a profitable resource to have been located, perhaps by one of those scientific outposts, ideally something that doesn't exist on Earth. - Certain working-man types (eg miners, construction workers) would do it for the challenge/money/experience/etc. But that requires an employer who has found something they want. - A certain fraction of the religious would do it to be able to found the "perfect society." I should probably include the social evolutionaries in with the "religious," but you get the idea. A distinct possibility. A hole in the ground with no easy way out is ideal for a tightly controlled cult and governments might welcome the loss of such nuisances. But they'd need a way to support themselves in space.

Re: Alignment Issues It didn't require it so much as risk it, on the theory that someone who repeatedly kills in self defense is going to get more hardened to killing. It's not a moral judgement. How could it be when the World of Darkness had no good in it? It's a psychological theory.

Re: A Weird One: Dream Interpretation. There probably ought to be some kind of guideline as to how much penalty to the "interpretation roll" a given kind of reality tampering will create but I can't essay it.

Re: Alignment Issues You obviously didn't have to put up with the confrontational "I want to play my Munchkin, too" GM, that used the mechanic to basically create unrealistic moral conundrums, to include losing humanity for gunning down security guards for Pentex in self defense. Well you could lose humanity for killing in self defense, if your humanity was up above 8 or so. (which is of course more "human" than your average human). But no game system is proof against a GM who misunderstands or abuses the system by for example confusing "murder" with "killing" even though they were separate categories on the Heirarchy of Sins. AFAIK, there's no "Humanity" stat in Werewolf. I wasn't suggesting there was. I was just comparing the two.

Re: Alignment Issues As usual with White Wolf it was more hype than reality. There was no chance that you would ever be driven any further down the scale than Humanity 3 unless you worked really, really hard at catapulting sexually molested babies at spikes. You could stay at Humanity 1 forever without effort. They just wanted you to be worried about it, just as they wanted you to be worried about about the coming death of your werewolf's species so you could be "horrified".

Re: Alignment Issues Sure they do. Behaviour can BE a distinctive feature. And if your DF is "Looking like a mad scientist complete with lab coat and Einstein hair" then in order to live up to it, you have to avoid combs, haircuts and wear a lab coat whenever possible. In this case, if you behave in a consistently good fashion because you want to, you seem to have gotten a hair cut and forgotten your lab coat. That not to say that people can't ping as evil when really they are good. There are a multitude of plot devices that can explain a false positive, not least of which is the Evil senser failing his perception roll.

Re: Alignment Issues No, I'm not. "Alignment has no place in Fantasy Hero" is not a statement that "alignment is not obligatory". It's a statement that you should never use alignment in Fantasy Hero. So what if a character has Distinctive Feature: Evil, but behaves in a non-evil manner? The same thing that happens if he circumvents any other disadvantage. First the GM says, "Hey, what's the deal?". Then if no reasonable explanation is forthcoming (Like: This is all part of my cunning scheme to win the trust of those fools before I stab them in the back.), the disadvantage must be bought off or replaced with another disadvantage like "Distinctive Feature: Good.". The idea of alignment is an appeal to the notion that people are Evil or Good, Or of course something in between, since I've never yet seen an alignment system that didn't have a middle ground.