egaroadkill

I can make new friends.

Exactly!

Like myself, say he came from a military family that transferred to a new post every 18 months. He makes new friends easily and often, only alternate ID and children would be a slight emotional issue. The movie "The Man from Earth" comes to mind.  

I was actually playing a character with serial immortality in a recent game. His was a GM controlled Transform (Mental transfer) charge with limited lives that triggered upon death, exorcism, and then later choice once paid up the xp for it. I could also buy new charges but only upon completing certain tasks, usually remotely associated with the plot hook and new body. A cheap but very fun power that I think fits the AP cost of this thread.

Life Support (Immortal)

Healing: Slow 1 point regeneration with limbs

+2 Overall Skill levels or 4D Luck

The money, technology, skills, contacts and other improvements will advance over time... first on the list... anonymity!

Re: Societies forming around advanced/alien/forgotten purpose technology?

Imagine a society where the poor/middle class live out in the plains while the the elite reside in an ancient spaceship with a reactor that always provides electricity...oh' date=' and there's climate control too..[/quote']Sevateem and Tesh from Dr Who "The face of Evil"

Re: Planets of SF Author Hats

Pournellion: Present day Earth but with Alderson drives, off world gulags and penal colonies for petty criminals, those who disagree, and who can’t pay the bills. Meanwhile, cultural philosophies polarize to the point of genocidal anger as a few military men and transhumanist scientists act on their own angles for a way out to carve their own kingdoms before the lights go out on the dystopic, corrupt civilization.

Re: 7 Sci-Fi Series Ripe for Movie Reboots

There is a new Blakes 7 in the works.BBC is in the preproduction stages on it last I heard.According to the Wikipedia entry for Blakes 7 it says

 

"On 24 April 2008, Sky One announced that they had commissioned two 60-minute scripts for a potential series, working alongside B7 Productions, a subsidiary of B7 Media who owns the licence to the show."

 

Haven't heard anything newer

Cool, let's hope they get B7 right.

On a side note, I finally saw an episode of Hyperdrive. Loved the silly show!

If they remake 1999, I demand twangy, funkadellic 70's guitar and that whooooooosh effect for every time someone gets to suck vacuum.

Re: 7 Sci-Fi Series Ripe for Movie Reboots

While I would love to see a new Blake's 7 even if it was reimaged somewhat. I doubt that I would ever love it the same way that I love the original. Paul Darrow's performance in the role of Kerr Avon was really what made that show shine. I doubt that you would ever see another actor that could be play the character half as well as Mr Darrow did. That character alone was responsible for the series' longevity (even after losing it's name sake character).

Sometimes it's ok to let a classic stay a classic and not be redone for a future generation.

I was actually excited a few years back when Darrow was angling to make a new series with his Kerr Avon reprise having survived and playing a sort of Napoleon trapped on St. Helena. Too bad it fell through. I agree, even though the original show’s dated, they really should leave it alone and go with a new generation.

On another note, I awoke to my four year old boy cheering and giggling up a storm early this morning. It turns out he figured how to break into my DVD collection and play them on the machine. He was watching Robotech for the first time and absolutely loves it…

This made me wonder. What about an animated remake of that old series, or even live action considering the recent transformer movies but, please, please minimize the Minmie gunk.

Re: 7 Sci-Fi Series Ripe for Movie Reboots

I'm sorry. The article lost all crediblity when it described Earth 2 as a "great series".

I agree! Ugh... That series annoyed the heck out of me.

Now what I'd like to see is a Blakes 7 movie and new series.

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

I never heard of Sky Scorcher, very cool. Thanks for the atomic holocaust tidbit. My favorite wow factor, I can’t believe they even considered it, atomic holocaust weapon is still the old SLAM from Project Pluto.

Re: Hard sci-fi adventures?

My player’s say thier favorite episode I run is the one they nick named “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Universe” where the players small tug and salvage employer has assigned them to join up with a couple of other companies to prepare an obsolete, remote university astrophysics station (Bernal Sphere) for transfer and resale to new owners.

A day or so after arrival, one of the few remaining university astronomers makes a discovery that he shares with everyone. There is a heat source he’s located far out in the ort cloud of the system that turns out to be a star ship. He’s even identified it as the long lost colonial liner Moscova. She’s a massive ship that was the pride of the Russian federation; reportedly filled to the gills with cargo and the personal treasure of 1200 people all lost decades earlier on her maiden voyage to the colonies!

The party along with the other crews, the university staff and a few other “competitors” who hear this now must rush to make the claim. To make it fun I simply copied the characteristics of the competing actors from the old movie as captains and crew and let the chaos run rampant as people scramble for the salvage rights.

There have been times when the game gets real mean with violence and nasty acts of sabotage and others turning to dirty tricks and friendly competition. The games with (IPW) interparty warfare breaking out were the absolute best!

Towards the end, before the law arrives, the players might discover the ship was sabotaged and that even that went wrong. Instead of simply damaging the drives in Sol system, the ship was thrown far off course and drives ruined stranding the vessel in a distant systems ort cloud. The players can also find clues as to which government and corporation was behind it (The conspirators are today now key politicians and corporate execs, movers and shakers of the UN).

A little later, an old black hat arrives in amongst the other government investigators to make sure the ships secret stays a secret.

There have been other times I’ve thrown an opportunistic merchant/pirate into the mix who shows up after the UN investigators with guns blazing.

Their second favorite adventure is when the tug suffers a radiation shield breakdown during a huge flare forcing the tug to land at a mining colony on Io. Then ensues a direct rip off of Outland.

My own home grown Sci-fi game of three decades is a near future (70+years), human only (no aliens but some rare AI) hybrid taking stylistic hints from 2300AD (balkanization, familiar states the various Colonial Arms), Jerry Pournell’s CoDominium (corruption, oppressive bureaucracy, BuReloc), Ben Bova’s Planetary Tour (UN economic oligarchs, corporate intrigue, mass media manipulation, replace believers with political ideologs following collectivist demagogues), and a little P.K. Dick cynicism with sprinklings of cyberpunk and the wild, west on the dumping worlds. A real fun Dystopia my friends all say.

I normally start the campaign using the tried and true Heinlein coming of age path with a hard dystopic twist (similar to “Higher Education”) starting everyone in one of the many CoDominium like “Welfare Islands” that players say are akin to life in Neo Tokyo (think beginning of Akira) only more vacant and run down because a quarter of the bums have been hoodwinked/forced migrated to the periphery.

I quickly present them an option out of high school early, before becoming a 15th grade senior, and into work with a struggling but honest little orbital maintenance business (tug boats and orbital cleanup) and eventually into the real meat of the campaign.

Re: Long Distance Communication

I’ve run many a fine 2300AD campaign starting the players off in an Xpress boat delivery service relaying data and parcels up and down the French arm. When, the GM forces data to travel at the speed of shipping between the stars, all sorts of room opens for adventure hooks and intrigue.

Too heck with reliable instantaneous communications, gimmie a courier for good plot every time!

Re: Help me flesh out a kernal of a setting idea

I’ve always liked the Pac Protectors from Larry Niven’s Known Space.

Re: What about a Space 1999 Hero

Space 1999, gotta love that silly old show. Talk about suspension of disbelief! There used to be a website were someone counted every crewmember death and eagle destruction, listing them by episode, adding them all up to a total that suggested the moon dwellers died three times over.

Look out! Here comes the Quella drive. Queue the stock explosions, laser beaming staple guns, decompression whooshing sound and flying bodies…

Love it! Well, the first season anyway.

Re: Post Apocalypse Hero: I am Legend

My only gripe is why in the world one would go mucking about with such a dinky weapon as a 5.56 M-4 when it’s obvious a good high capacity semi auto shotgun would have been more useful too shred maniacs. Just kidding, I thought it was a fun movie well worth the matinee price, although, if I had paid the normal $10 fee, I would have been upset seeing that’s what I’d pay to own a DVD of it.

Re: [PA Hero] Limited Nuclear War Not So Good

I’d say forget the doom and gloom, atomic angst and radiation melodrama for now and save fretting over it if after they have thirty years of an unrestricted nuclear arms race and couple of thousand megatons between them. For now any nuke exchange between them would not be a radioactive world holocaust but it would be a prelude to one nasty real war between many other players that’s been brewing for some time.

Re: Favorite Sci-Fi Weapon

My vote goes to the slaver weapon from Larry Niven’s Star Trek screenplay that eventually got made into one of those horrible Trek animations.

It was a transformable device able to become many different tools of which my favorite was the matter/energy conversion at a distance power that looked like a thermonuclear blast miles away.

Re: help with ship clasifications

My friends and I played 2300AD Star Cruiser a lot using our highly modified rules taking into account various things such as delays in communications due to C and refined sensor and distance rules. We also preferred double blind/judged play. Think it being akin to a Star Cruiser/Full Thrust/Harpoon/Hunt for Red October sub combat hybrid.

With that said I greatly preferred the 2300AD example of the fighter over SFB where fighters are really just extended sensor/decision making/weapons platforms expanding the zone of control about the warship a couple of light seconds. From these extended viewpoints, if a pilot/crew is aboard one could ID an unknown target earlier, decide what to do about it and set up his torpedo attacks accordingly. By putting a pilot and crew in the “fighters” a carrier could eliminate a second or so of the observe, orient, decide and act loop time allowing it to get inside the opponents loop thereby taking control of the engagement. Then again, playing a Kafer Alpha or Beta armed, armored and shielded to the hilt, not to mention massive too, with powerful sensor arrays covering half the map effectively did the same thing only making up a phase or two of decision time with unbelievable toughness.

These system rules ended up turning the fighter into a passive AWACs unit with limited missile capacity to combat any other like craft out hunting. We ended up mostly using them to take care of the other fighters or as distractions for the target ship while our distant, hidden ship got in position for a firing solution. Rarely did we ever use them to make torpedo runs on capital ships, the fighters were simply too fragile and expensive to risk unless the odds were way in their favor.

Also of note, 2300AD fighters were not small. They were actually fairly large massing up to several hundred tons in some cases. They were most certainly not the glamorous; mix it up, fur ball, top gun, viper or veritech sort of fighter and died like flies when straying too close to a capitol ship.

Re: Military SF Character Stereotypes ?

The incompetent butter bar fresh out of the academy that carries himself like a power drunk, busy work micromanager who locks up in indecision during combat forcing the NCO to take command.

“Repeat, all AFF incinerators”?

Re: Need Book Recommendations

I’ve found Ben Bova’s “Grand Tour”books, Power Sat, Moonwar, The Precipice/Rock Rats/Silent War, Mars, Jupiter, etc... easy reading sci-fi.

Also I'd reccomend most of Larry Niven and or Jerry Pournelle's works.

Re: How to get swords on your starship

Make swords the weapon of "gentlemen" and a badge of higher social status; so "only barbarians cowards and use blasters in close combat." Guns may be more practical' date=' but a sword has for centuries been the mark of nobility. Have people carrying swords be treated more favorably in many social situations.[/quote']

This is the route I took in my space opera style campaign. Dueling is very much in vogue among the elite using sword or knife. The philosophy being that these weapons convey a greater sense of personal investment in ones opinion. Blasters are simply too impersonal, distant and overwhelming i.e. easy, for serious, personal differences.

As for battle, expect anyone worth anything to grab the nearest radio and call in the artillery, gang up, deceive or use whatever maximum firepower is available to win with minimal loss.

Re: 2057

I think I’d rather be a scrap down in the steam tunnels, hanging out with Edger Friendly, wearing tire armor, eating rat burgers, making the occasional visit to that upscale winner of the franchise wars, Taco Bell.

Mello greetings citizen… Be well and have joy, joy feelings as you sing the Armour hotdog song. To heck with that, I want them to run around screaming maniac is imminent and making scornful remarks!

Re: Skyguard Laser

 

EDIT!

 

they have now reached 67 kw for a solid state laser

 

 

I just recently read further from another source on this that engineers also quote that 100Kw with a solid state laser are now technically in reach quite soon.

Re: More Aircraft: P-61 Black Widow

My uncle flew the P-61 in WWII. He said it was a great plane to fly. Later, during the Korean War he flew the F-82 Twin Mustang with one of his buddies having the first air to air kill of the war.

There's currently an effort to get a 61 flying again and they just recently put one on display at the new Aerospace meseum at Dullas in DC.

http://www.maam.org/p61.html

Re: 2057

I just realized why this accident happened the way it did. Society does have windows capable of withstanding that force' date=' even now in 2007, but the guy in the story was too cheap to have them installed.[/quote']

Cheap windows probably implies he’s in violation of several building codes that resulted in not only the tangled insurance mess but also several hefty fines and possibly a subpoena or three delivered to him the next day. These were soon followed by the inspectors looking for other violations, financial lock downs, the uncovering of a twenty year old parking ticket now for $28342.00 in interest and late fee’s, three audits from other government agencies that smell blood and an arrest warrant for “hate speech” uttered by him four years ago during an argument in his car with a friend over sports when routine data mining algorithms ran facial recognition searches and lip reading applications over the fifty terabytes of his archival traffic camera footage…

I just love dystopias!

Re: 2057

All that said' date=' I found it interesting. I didn't know about the conversion ratio problems with solar energy (though if I ever get stably into a house I still want to put a couple of panels on my roof).[/quote']

If I had to pay ¼ of my budget to insure a level of health care depicted in that show, I’d do it but, I’d be really unhappy with my life not having any disposable income. Hopefully jobs fifty years from now will pay enough so I could afford it.

Actually, they missed several important points during the show. For example; carbon fullerene tubes, the material allowing the space elevator, has already had a break through in thread creation. I read just a few months back that some DARPA funded lab has found a way to make continual strands.

Then there’s the solar efficiency issue which, by the way, Boeing doubled just a few months ago to 41%, claiming the process can reduce solar cell pricing to below $3 a watt and that lab results show promise of reaching another 8% more! Don’t get excited though. They also said it may take a decade or so before it’s publicly available. Then one also has to take into account that current cell production is mainly bottled up in three manufactures who have agreed to fix the prices up nice and high!

Also, speaking of tissue regeneration, I just read somewhere that DARPA has made some sort of major breakthrough in that department too.

Predicting the technological future today is one tough moving target to hit.

Re: 2057

I enjoyed it. Most all of the futurist information covered current lab technologies in existence today and how they could be used in fifty years. One thing that did bother me though was the portrayal of a hyper invasive information society; such as, the poor schmuck nearly losing his life after a bad fall because his premium insurance discovered he had a couple of beers the night before.

I’d rather trade the inkjet printer cloned heart, the temporary hibernation and blue tooth nervous system for free will and personal anonymity rather than have “His Shadow” monitor me 24/7, nanny nagging and coercing me to be a good little citizen. I mean, what’s next, cauterization, triple donor for 1000 demerits? I refuse to be made into Stanley Tweedle or worse someone who doesn’t know any better, thinking it’s ok. I say feed that future to the cluster lizards.