Scott Ruggels

Watching Bosch: Legacy on Amazon Prime’s free service FreeVee. It’s a continuation of the Bosch series, but takes place after an acrimonious split from LAPD. My mom and I agree that Harry Bosch is more interesting and creative as a private eye than he was as a cop detective. The cast is necessarily smaller, but there a lot of cameos from previous years. It’s very much above average television. It is also filmed mostly in the old neighborhood I lived and worked in, and I often point out locations where I have been ( much to my mom’s annoyance).

I write supplements that never get off the hard drives. Though I might submit a monster thing to Nord Games. I am thinking about writing a 5e supplement. Basically I daydream a lot and world build at the drop of a hat. Most of your discussion on legal cheating would be theology and doctrine. This results in knowledge and skill rolls, rather than specific spells to aid that. It would be writings on contract law, the ethics of smuggling, and discussions on the question of is tax theft? The spells themselves, are regarded as the god’s will, but also as tools to spread the message, therefore the magic would have to maintain a reputation of being above board, and consistent, so as to maintain trust amongst the population. Toubaris is more on the Order side of the Order/ Chaos line as he craves stability, as that is best for business. Toubaris and his church align with the crafting and fertility gods. Is ambivalent to the war gods, and is opposed to the gods of sin and destruction. He is also opposed to any leveling ideology, as that will damage an economy as surely as a plague. His ideal is a settlement of comfortably prosperous people, enjoying their work and play together, serving each other’s wants and needs through work and wise investments.

Toubaris, God of Trade , contracts, and commerce. appears as a solid, middle aged man, but with a very mobile face. The first commandment of Toubaris is to have a goal, then to have a plan, and then work, day by day along to plan, towards your goal. His Holy Symbol is four coins, from where you took his oath first, arraigned into a diamond shape, with the highest denomination uppermost, worn around the neck. The oath, administered by a priest over the coins empowers it. The reasons for the coins is to test one's commitment, as once can keep it as an holy symbol, or one can part the coins off, and spend them. In extremis, one can part things out, but they will have to make a new symbol within the month, even if they are reduced to digging ditches or cleaning stables. The Symbol has to be remade from local coins once again, and blessed within a moon's cycle. Tavern owners, shop keepers, and traders, are often worshippers of Toubaris, but the worship is often seen amongst larger land owners, horse breeders, and millers. The worship is decidedly middle class, and unless a country is ruled by merchant princes, The nobility may only see their exchequer, or Senechal as worshippers of the trading god. Priests of Toubaris and successful Merchants are nearly indistinguishable, save for the fact that the deep green and bright gold trim on hats and clothing here and there, Walking shoes, or boots, and that four coin holy symbol. The Clergy can be male or female, so long as they uphold the doctrine., and don't get carried away by emotion. It's just business. His Clergy are instructed to wear clean, presentable clothes, quality working shoes, and to go about armed. The Clergy are schooled in accountancy, as well as theology, and members often specialize in various aspects. They encourage the acquisition of languages. They test for intelligence, and "Wisdom". Their philosophy, is that everyone's coin is valuable, and one wisely spent will improve people's lives. They will advise, business owners and the populace if consulted on what would be a good course of action to improve their income, business and lives. They are educated in the law, and so, for coin can be an advocate. They tend to be very polite, as goodwill is the first part of any business, but they will know how to defend themselves. Spells often seen are the sealing of oaths, magical penalties applied to oath breakers (penalties declared before the oath is administered, so the breaker will know why thy are in constant pain, have gone blind, or members of their family have become gravely ill), to lock in contracts, so both parties are bound to it. Detect debased coins, Detect forgery, Translate Languages, a suite of spells to secure rooms or buildings (Often, a priest will have one pocket of their garment full of unremarkable stones, that they will use to mark boundaries around temporary lodging for the night). Illusions. sleight of hand. Like other clergy, they can heal, but they aren't the ones to go to if one has suffered grievous wounds. Toubaris' healing tends to be a bit more subtle, in that it is to enhance or provide endurance to people and animals, to banish sleep for a time, to enhance mental focus, especially during boring tasks, such as accountancy), to calm the digestion, so that they do not suffer in foreign lands, and to prevent sickness or disease from taking hold. They may also define a boundary so that if a wagon is driven into it, the weight, the percentage of spoilage, if gold then it's percentage of debasement total (good for tax time), and to drive away vermin. The As they are representatives of the god of commerce, all services are provided either for coin, or for labor. There is no free lunch. (but often free drinks). Magic items they may carry are enchanted scales, that give correct weights to items, regardless of attempted deception or debasement. weather proof cloaks, Magical shelters, Strong Boxes with magical puzzle locks. Inkwells that never run out, a roll of papyrus (some cultures object to parchment as it is an animal product, and animal products interfere with contracts, as both parties have to sign in blood), A weather proof tent, and Regenerating wagon wheels and axles. If there is a lot of nautical adventuring or travel, they would have a compass, but not the normal kind, and ways for their goods and containers to float. This is just a first pass. I may elaborate later

How is a power framework simple? What would be wrong about buying the spells out right? It would be simpler on the page. The limit on spell acquisition would be XP, and END.

There were a couple. But mostly if people wanted to be socially distant, they generally picked robots as avatars. Or picked small birds. However most Avatar choices were aspirational, as in perfect physical specimens with expensive accessories, or something that was the opposite of themselves. Furries were their own culture, and having a furry avatar segregated them from regular humans. I had a lot of different avatars that I would change into depending on who I was doing business with.

Old hat. I’ve been onSecond Life since 2006, and made a fair amount of money on it. Incidents of scams, and sexual harassment were very common, and the scams ranged from annoying to spectacular. But sexual harassment generally was just Brazilians asking any cute female AV for sex, or inappropriate comments. However when you have an entire continent devoted to kinky adult pleasure, you know what is on a lot of people’s minds. I made my cash making working aircraft, because unlike other virtual worlds, the geography, other than private islands was contiguous, so it rewarded exploration.

Exactly. I would see Clerical (Ecclesiastical?) Magic, being very situation specific, and oriented the opposite of combat magic. ( but allowing buffs or debuffs as long as they are maintained. ) I can see a stack of limitations, like: concentration multiple phases/ turns to cast. must be cast within defined borders within sacred/ holy ground. Requires the willing donation of energy of a number of willing followers. must have a minimum of five willing followers (with Hero doubling Doubling per number of followers to add points), to provide soul energy (through ritual, prayer or END, depending on the flavor. This would allow a church full of parishioners, or a cave full of cultists to bank points for a spell). Requires the wear of a holy symbol. Requires music (singing, chanting or instrumental accompaniment counts) Requires consumable materials (smoldering sage branch, product of the harvest, animal sacrifice, blood sacrifice, human sacrifice) Items to be enchanted must be pure/clean examples. conversely Enchanted items can be made from items from notable sacrifice, great heroism, or touched by the diety, or his divine representatives. Requires renewal, time period and method of renewal dictated by theology. requires use of enchanted object. So you can with the limitations, change the flavor of the magic quite profoundly with the choice of limitation. But to check the limitations generally, does the limitation work for both a church and a cult in a cave? Feel free to stack limitations, but using all at once would not be required. However unlike Wizardry or Sorcery, the shap of the Clerical spells is defined by the theology and the GM, eschewing player input, as abjuring “experimentation” of that system, because that becomes heresy. Magic for them is a tool only and a way to praise and assist their gods mission, and not art, or a venue for self expression. This is how you approach magic so it is not the usual Generic Adventurer’s Fantasy Magic. It also pays for the indirect or invisibility which to me replaced the need for “fuzziness “, in the magic. More on why, later.

Is this getting a bit too close to RL religions?

It would probably be a good idea to borrow a magic system from a literary source (like Bujold or Kathrine Kurtz), and maybe less something from a game. D&D borrowed from Jack Vance. I am sure someone is going to borrow from Brandon Sanderson sooner or later.

"The Lord moves in mysterious ways." Allowing the Magic to be subtle, like either indirect (Comes from the God's will, through his hands, not mine.), or Invisible/ Inaudible power effect would give it a much different flavor than Sorceror Artillery of most spells.

Take your pic. Generally referred to since World War II, but it could also be since The whole Detroit situation, wiping out a large percentage of the more mobile and powerful Heroes. Tying things in with the Champions Universe continuity?

What about Non=Teen Heroes? What about Hero History since The War ect? THe focus on Teen heroes is limiting the city's usefulness for a general CHampions GM>

Saturday with Netflix. Russian Doll. Too New York, Too glib, too whiny. too slow. Gave it a pass after the first episode. Cobra Kai, Episode 4, Season 4. The show continues to be well written, and amusing, and thankfully free of wokeness.

It’s just a plausibility issue. After a polymath like LDG, it was like being a comedian taking the stage after Dave Chappell. At least that was the thinking at the time. These days I am running, but it’s Cyberpunk Red, though I am giving Traveller long and loving looks (none in the group has any interest in Hero at the moment). Cyberpunk is not a genre for melodrama, and it rewards impatience with action (though perhaps not on the player’s terms), so this may be a suitable warm up. But the group has had bad experiences with “puzzles”, as in not figuring them out, so that may be a limitation. A fair number of Europeans signed up on the server, so it may be a language thing. I don’t know. We’ll see.

Of all the GMs I have played with, only L.D. Garrett was capable of running "Space Mystery", and Exploration. My only in depth science education is Geology (because it doesn't have a lot of "math" in it). I surely can't do it and make it a compelling story. It would end up of "orbit the planet, roll dice on sensors", then give then the results of their sensor skill rolls, from the tables in the various books. Then they land and put cameras out in the various biomes and record the animals, and to me that is a "job", more than an adventure. (I have a couple of relatives that are Park Rangers, and they definitely love the job, but it's a job.) Then again I have to talk to my players about what they expect, but even so I have to play to my strengths, and that is not science.

Well the "Interpersonal Interaction", often led, as it does in D&D , to some sort of Empire building. The Melodrama was in service to a goal of taking over some stellar locality. Again, probably not your thing, but it kept the men and women at the table united on a goal. However, I was not the GM. How would I GM Traveller? Probably ta;;k to the players some, to at least get an idea of what they want to do, because like Hero, you can do pretty much anything in Traveller. The short lived All Vargr game had them as "policy implementation specialist (hired guns) for a few corporations outside of the Imperium. But as a GMI am flexible to a point. I am curious enough to want to run Travgeller again, or play it. Traveller Hero? Probably, but in 5th Edition, if not earlier.

Create once, cry once. Play for years.

How to get to stranded folks, in a hurry in crap weat5her that a helicopter can't handle? use a jetpack!

I think it's just a combination of the women, and the GM. in those days I was a professional player, and didn't start GMing until Fantasy Hero became "official". But back in the Traveller days we a couple of women that had a Nobility fixation. In the most recent game (last year), the game was the Papers & Paychecks medium low risk game, after the crew got bit by armed opposition in a couple of missions (and the re-occurring NPCs sometimes were hilarious), and only towards the end did we start taking a look at nearly uninhabited planets. I think the most extreme example was one woman who at one point, snapped, and would not play in any further games that had the possibility of fatal encounters any more, and went total Melodrama, so we only saw her in Champions games, and she went off for her princess adventures that the rest of us avoided (I faded out of that group soon after that). So it really is a case of GMs and the interactions with certain players is what tends the flavor the games IMO.

I think I was a little later, with my SF being different authors and a heavier dose of shows like UFO, Space 1999, and such. I've read and enjoyed the Heinlein juveniles, and I think I have read a couple of his other stuff, here and there, but I was reading a lot of just about everything back then, so I had a lot of different influences. The Expanse has been one of my favorite recent shows, mostly because of the Hard Science approach, and substituting acceleration for gravity, because of the Epstein drive allowing for multi-day 1G burns. Also the whole "Protomolecule" subplot was a right and proper "Space Mystery", and there have been few GMs that I have gamed with, that had enough of a science background to pull that off, so in a gaming situation, it takes a high level of education, and a lot of prep to get something like that to not only work, but survive the barrage of elegant, and educated, as well as bone headed questions from the players. L.D.Garret's "Polarized Gravity" Subplot was probably the pinnacle of that, and it predated Star Wars Prequels by About 5 years. In another thread, That touched on the decline of homebrew content, and the assumption of GMs competent at Homebrew, it's still a question of time. Right now Time is stolen by anything with a screen, but more specifically social media, and short form video. Time is also stolen by overtime at work. So there really isn't a lot of time for prep or homebrew items, with some notable exceptions. The Creator of Traveller, Marc W. Miller is ambivalent about much of the background that was created for it, having a much more minimalist approach to the game, than other people, at that particular point in time. The hobby caught up with him a decade or so later, but in the mean time enthusiastic players filled in the background, for other enthusiastic players who purchased the published material, and kept GDW afloat. Now, the paradigm is that a full adventure is provided to the GM, including as much detail as can be included in the book to run the adventure, and cover for player induced divergence, so as to prevent the adventure from feeling on rails (See Pathfinder Adventure paths). It's not 1983 any more. The Politics in the Prequels made it's point, though Lucas wrote some very bad dialogue, due to some harebrained theory about "Mythic acting", which marred the movie. It's a valid critique on a way for Democracies to fall into tyranny. But in games, in my experience, the more women in the game, the more "socially" focused it got. In games with no Women at the table, a lot of the Traveller games became Tactical war games, which I quite enjoyed.

Waiting on getting paid for an art commission, but yes still interested.

I used to play a lot of Traveller. I think I played D&D for about a year, before the first Traveller books came out. We didn’t quite understand the rules, but had a lot of fun with it, and eventually worked out the kinks. Also, we tried a number of systems as well, until champions was released in the summer of 1981. We still occasionally play Traveller concurrently. I played in Matheson’s fairly vanilla campaign in the Spinward Marches, where we used High Guard to build ships. I also played briefly in Paul Gazis’ Eight Worlds campaign, which was ner total home brew (as he was a NASA engineer at NASA Ames), and had a very 16th Century feel, socially, after a collapse of the Star Empire. In College, even after abandoning most other game systems for Hero, I got an invite into L. Douglas Garrett’s Traveller campaign, which invoked a fair amount of an intrigue of noble house, and Small Unit, Special Operations. Even recently, in Roll20, our D&D group gave Mongoose 2nd Edition Traveller a year of play, before returning to D&D 5e. So I have experienced a lot of different flavors of Traveller in my 45 years of gaming experience. In the early days, the exploratory nature might have been overstated, depending on the group. Sure, there was a good set of rules for generating sub sectors, and then the planetary ecology, but the enthusiasm for “frontier” style gaming was inversely proportional to the number of women in the group, and we had a few. The women would steer the play more towards social roleplay and interacting with the noble houses in the Spinward Marches, and would shy away from open conflicts and kinetic operations. Heists and abductions became common as well. On the other side of things, we also tried out the ship combat rules as a pure wargame for an afternoon, involving a few of us. Back then we had an embarrassment of riches of gaming groups, and people would swap in and out. One of the things I learned was tha different groups has very different play styles. The rules then, and now supported all of them ( even my short lived, all Vargr ship and mercenary unit, that was probably proto-furry, even if there was a moderate body count.) Not everyone was enamored of frontier exploration, the recent campaign was pure trade and profit, with us taking minimal risk if we could help it. Some campaigns were intricate ASOIAF political maneuvering. It all depended on the desires of the group, and those desires became clear usually by the second r third contract that the ship accepted. It also generally helped when the players, and the GM, kind of discussed the campaign over the meal breaks, during other campaigns, so when the current champions campaign or D&D ended, there was some idea and agreement on what the Traveller campaign would look like. My tastes ran towards being a tourist rather than an explorer, enjoying the scenery of other civilizations, and settled planets, going to TL5 planets to buy hand made bespoke suits and shirts for bargain prices, watching the local air races, buying something for my lapel from the little Vargr flower seller, talking to the locals about the news, and partaking of the local food. Either being a merchant or mercenary suited me just fine. As such I like the published material. for those that want to explore uncharted space, there is plenty of blank map out there. Travellermap.com illustrates what has been documented, but also where the edges of the map are. Just use the various generation rules and such to fill in the sub sectors as you go along. It does take time to do it though. Running Traveller on a Hero I haven’t tried yet, myself, but Duke seems to have had a fair amount of success with it. I would definitely want to give it a try, but then how much of the regular system do you replace with Hero? I would probably not use Hero for ship combat. The idea of dropping the tech due to jump energies I thought was preposterous, until I remembered the modular electronic systems I had invented for a Hero based SolarSystem campaign. No WiFi and all programs hard wired in to the modules that would snap together like Legos or Technics, to prevent outside hacking, or failure due to cosmic Ray damage. So you would put the plastic nodes together to make the computer do the thing you wanted to do. The more nodes, the higher the power consumption, and the more heat it put out, but the system was far more robust and easily repaired than Microchip based tech, that could be fried by a solar flare, or be hacked by malicious code from outside. Little nodes would then themselves become a commodity based on what function they could do and how rare or common they were. The computer room would then be these semi-random looking collections of Lego looking bricks, with fat cables coming out. However, with this system, functions could be distributed all over the ship, so that hits don’t disable all computer functions, and having spare bins of modules would allow for easy repair, or after hours tinkering to improve, or invent new programs. The other idea was reverting to electromechanical fire control, but that didn’t go too far. I know how Battleships and Submarines did it, but not with too much detail, other than that they were analogue and relied on skilled machining to make the forms within the device, necessary for the ballistic calculations. I rambled, but then Traveller causes me to, due to my history with it. But part of my twitch about the change in the tech, was it felt like it pushed Traveller into a pulp paradigm. Traveller, to me now has become its own genre. Sure, in the beginning it was a first generation “universal system”, but due to publications, and a lot of cooperation between groups, it has become its own thing. Sure, enough of the universal mechanics are still there that you can homebrew one’s own background. But why pulp, or worse Sword & Planet? 😁 I’d much prefer seeing something more like The Expanse. But that’s just me. Anyway, these are my thoughts on Traveller, and I kinda want to run a campaign of it sometime. No. Starships run on water or collected gaseous Hydrogen and Oxygen in RAW. I suppose you could invent your own system, though.

I had forgotten that one, but how appropriate.

Sad to report that George Perez has died, aged 67, from cancer. Details: https://variety.com/2022/film/news/george-perez-dead-wonder-woman-teen-titans-comics-1235261261/