Deucex

Re: Pulparize It!

look at the character donkey himself. He was a slave whose master turned him in for the bounty for being a magical character. He was guilty of the crime, it just wasn't a just law. He gets off because he is smart enough to ally himself with the biggest, meanest guy in the swamp.

So, we bump it into pulp. The magic swamp becomes an immigrant slum of a big city, in New York, it would be Irish or Italian. He probably is a member of a street gang which makes him a target of the police. The slum lord of his building probably turned him in to the cops for some imagined crime. He was probably payed to do it. I called him "Donkey Show" McKoy so he could be called donkey. It fits that he would always talking about his adventures because he has had none and he wishes his life was more than just working at the produce warehouse and living in a rat hole apartment.

Re: Pulparize It!

Shrek: Effete' date=' egotistical young tycoon Louis Farquad blackmails hulking convict Ed "Shrek" Shrekowski into taking on a mission for him -- rescue a wealthy heiress from her near-lifelong confinement. The idea is that the bruiser will get the job done and, because of the hold the tycoon has on him, allow the tycoon to take both the heiress and the credit. But Fiona Prince, for all the fabulous fortune she is to come into, is not confined against her will, and has a secret that will throw Louis' plans into disarray and make Shrek wonder if he may really be a hero after all....[/quote']

 

And don't forget about Shrekowski's weasely sidekick from the old neighborhood, "Donky show" Mckoy who can't stop talking about his trip to Tijuana. Sure he's a greasy hood but he's loyal.

Re: SJG's Traveller Deck Plans - dang wrong scale!

and make sure they know to use booster seats when piloting

Re: Fun Artifact: The Rosetta Disk

of course what good will it be to future archaeologists since we shred all our important documents these days. That and instead of writing letters we write emails, text message and make phone calls. It doesn't leave much left for them to find that is worth while. I can hear them now, "literally translated using the information we gleaned from that translation disk this says 'buy now and save 15%"

Re: Night of the Living Dead Hero Plot Ideas

Nnnnaaaaarrrrrgggghhhhh!!!!!! Halloween Zombie Attack!!!!!!!! Nnnnaaaaarrrrgggggghhhhh!!!!!

Re: Night of the Living Dead Hero Plot Ideas

Dead is dead, put a cap in d'ere head

(so you do you spell the gangsta' form of there?"

Re: How do your Star Heroes get around?

I've toyed with 2 main ftl forms. The first is stable wormholes. They are hard to detect but easy to use. interestingly enough the wormhole entry points tend to cluster around solar systems. I wonder why that could be. Travel through them is instantainious but traveling to and from then happens at normal speeds thru the use of steam vent drives and solar sails. The steam vent drives are fueled with Ice mined from asteroids and moons.

The other form of travel I toyed with is dimensional portals. Instead of traveling through space, players travel between dimensions. I always liked the idea of aether space. Dimensions are bubbles of reality floating in Aether space, some can be linked to directly via strings, some you need to travel via ship to in aether space. The further you travel the more exotic the dimensions get. Oh yeah, there are things, ancient and monsterous, that live in the void between dimensions. This works for both hard SF and Fantasy, or a mixture of the two.

Re: The Tech of Torchwood

I should have thought it was obvious who the hand originally belonged to.

oh, Duh.

Re: The Tech of Torchwood

I just want to know the importance of the hand in the jar.

Re: Modern Mililtary Vehicle Reference Sites

I have never seen a better site than http://www.militaryphotos.net/ its vid and photo section has just about everything and what they don't have the members can get.

Re: Another advanced and weird material

You'd want long-chain fullerenes' date=' not buckyballs for armour.[/quote']

 

thought you'd want that for cutting tools and nanotubes for armor?

Re: Night of the Living Dead Hero Plot Ideas

Actually' date=' for a World War Z type game, I'd just make the infection work as advertised: Get bit, turn. Screw the points, heck with the transform mechanics. Sometimes it is best to simply sideline all of that stuff. Make rolls based on Con or something to see how long you can stave off the infection, but you are going down my friend.[/quote']

 

I have found that that usually doesn't work with Heroes players, there's usually one math junky in the bunch that starts pissin and moanin when you say "that's just the way it is." If you have a good mechanic to back it up they usually settle down. Besides, the mechanic offers the promise of a points based way out. As far as playability, the zombie menace is like a nuke/bio war for any other apocalypse game. think of it as a nuke strike that isn't instantanious. The zombification "blast" will have a ground zero and spread, those in fallout shelters will survive and have to cope. Eventually the hoard will fall apart (literally) and it becomes a bit more Road Warrior like. Of course, when the players get bored fighting the warrior of the waistland, the iatola of rock'n'rolla, throw in a zombie menace to get them back to their roots.

Re: Night of the Living Dead Hero Plot Ideas

I don't think "9 Body" is exceptionally healthy. Using the guidelines in the book' date=' it's actually [i']below[/i] normal.

 

Transform must achieve twice the target's starting Body to take effect. Add in another doubling (for 32) and the power should work as advertised.

that's cool, i wasnt really paying attention to the specifics. you get my point though. The other nice thing about it is you can slide it down the time scale to make it take a while. since it's also persistant the infected character is always in danger of getting injured and turning. "Bob fell down the stairs... Bob, are you alright?... NAAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!!!!" by the way guys check out http://www.urbandead.com/ been playing it for about a year now. free zombie apocalypse web game. good fun.

Re: Night of the Living Dead Hero Plot Ideas

After playing San Andreas, I realised that it would be great to mod into a zombie game. Reading this thread I remembered that thought and thought, Tell your players you are doing a "Gangsta" game ala GTA:SA and then throw the change of theme unannounced. I always thought the best way to do Zombie Apocalypse was to sneak it in. The players will start out as a close knit group and have access to weapons etc. but they are stuck in the worst part of town in the middle of a huge city of Rotters.

One of the major differences between Solanum zombies and typical romero-esque zombies is that the infection can be spread not just from a bite but from any fluid to fluid contact (similar to 28 days later but with a much longer incubation period). So be extra careful when blowing them up!

 

How would you model the threat of fluid to fluid transmission using HERO?

A friend years back played a Necromancer in a Fantasy Hero game and came up with zombie rot. 1 pip major transform, max body 16, damage shield effects on other than grab, cumulative, continuous, sticky, 0 end, as i remember. You could then add area of effect radius.

It allowed for players to be immune by buying 1 point of power defense. (let them figure that one out on their own.) It also makes it so the players can survive the disease if they are exceptionally healthy. They would also be protected if they have a biohazard suit or make their own if they are smart enough.

Re: Another advanced and weird material

In the early 90's I was poking around UT's research center when I came across a door marked "Nanotechnology." Behind it was a room apparently empty' date=' but for a single chair.[/quote']

 

DFW wierdness is par for the course. I worked nights down the hall from a place called "DNA Research" the door had a wierd green glow coming out from under it. A favorite description of the evil research lab in games for years to come.

Re: Another advanced and weird material

I saw a documentary about camoflage where they talked about bright light as camoflage. they put a vehicle on the crest of a hill and strapped a whole bunch of flood lights to it. The light from the floods blended with the daytime sky behind it.

"If exposed to an electric charge, buckypaper could be used to illuminate computer and television screens. It would be more energy-efficient, lighter, and would allow for a more uniform level of brightness than current cathode ray tube (CRT) and liquid crystal display (LCD) technology."

...active camoflage and invisible aircraft.

Ray Baughman's group from the NanoTech Institute at University of Texas at Dallas produced the current toughest material known in mid-2003 by spinning fibers of single wall carbon nanotubes with polyvinyl alcohol. Beating the previous contender, spider silk, by a factor of four, the fibers require 600 J/g to break[37] In comparison, the bullet-resistant fiber Kevlar is 27–33 J/g. In mid-2005 Baughman and co-workers from Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization developed a method for producing transparent carbon nanotube sheets 1/1000th the thickness of a human hair capable of supporting 50,000 times their own mass. In August 2005, Ray Baughman's team managed to develop a fast method to manufacture up to seven meters per minute of nanotube tape.[38] Once washed with ethanol, the ribbon is only 50 nanometers thick; a square kilometer of the material would only weigh 30 kilograms.

I live just up the street from UTD were they are doing this stuff. I think I may go make myself an active camoflage suit. great for paintball.

Re: Space Pirates?

I look at the probes we are launching today. They start here, do a big burn that way, slingshot around this planet, head over there and so on. All very calculated to make the most efficient use of fuel and time. If i was gonna run freight in space, I would do the same thing.

Now if you know a shipment is going out, you can figure out its expected trajectory and pick the most logical intercept point. Since it would basically be drifting through space it would be quite easy to match speed and link up, just like a docking proceedure today. From there you cut free what you want or board it and take control.

The big problem would be whoever polices the the lanes may fly by and catch you in the act.

The big targets would be atmospheric supplies, food and water, most of which could be sold to small private Belt or moon mining establishments that probably would otherwise have to pay through the nose to buy it legally from suppliers. The other big targets would be ModCons for colonies.

Re: Freedom Fighters/alternate history

the US presence in Europe and Asia/Pacific after WWII would make it hard to go back to isolationism. In order to give Russia clear dominance in world affairs the US would have had to stay out of the war.

Interestingly enough I found out that the Manhattan Project didnt get into full swing until '41 and the Germans only real effect on it was because they had their own program which was on the heavy water track. In the scenerio I started earlier I gave Russia a clear lead in the nuke world. It wouldn't have happened. The slower pace of advancement would probably have yielded atomic weapons by the mid '50s but Soviet Russia would have had a clear advantage with balistic missle technology.

The Pacific war would have dragged on into the late '40s to early '50s

with the US possibly falling in with the Japanese, at least at a commerce level.

Sometimes, when I am up late at night and my mind is wandering I find myself contemplating the game Freedom Fighters.I loved the atmosphere of the game, the involuntary stirings of Patriotic furver as my character raised the Stars and Stripes over a landmark after taking it back. I loved the fame I garnered as I battled the invading commie hoards. I loved the political intrigue as I made dangerous contacts inside the occupying forces' ranks.

The back story always bugged me tho. How the Soviets came to power. How would you guys write an alternate history for a story like this? How would you bring the Soviets to world dominance?

I always thought I would turn history when Germany invaded France in May of 1940. While Germany was busy with the west, Russia decided to brake their treaty with them before Hitler had a chance to. The Germans found themselves fighting a defencive war in the east while trying to fight an offensive war in the west. Germany crumbled. The Russians got all of Europe except England, got the Nuke, balistic missle, jet and weapon scientists and all of their research data.

So every advantage we would have split with them after the war became theirs. After that, Japan would not have been pressured to start a war with the U.S.

China kicked Japan out with Russias help. Russia developed the nuke first, and used it to end the war in the Pacific. The U.S.'s only friends left were England, Australia, and Central and South America. Africa and the middle east was split, Muslim countries sided with the religiously tolerant United States and those countries that joined the soviet union would be riddled with guerilla wars due to Soviet Religous intolerance.

The proxy wars of the cold war era were fought mostly in the Middle East, Africa, and Central and South America. The Peace movement of the '60s was a responce to the rising death toll of the war in Iraq, one of the few oil rich nations still selling the U.S. Oil. The decision by Americans to buy small fuel efficient cars from places like Cuba, Colombia and Peru was a responce to the "Oil Wars".

where I would go from there I will have to think about. What do you guys have to say?

Re: Space Pirates?

Of course Space Pirates! With laser cutlasses!

 

Nothing less will do.

hey you could use real cutlasses, all you need to do is breech their space suit... and no recoil to send you off into the big black.

Re: Space Pirates?

I love Ice Pirates personally.

 

But a close analysis shows the problems of space piracy. Not hi-jacking - that pretty much involves getting a team aboard a ship in dock, I'm talking the old find, board and take style piracy.

 

Intercepting a ship in space isn't easy. Hell, finding one that doesn't want to be found is hard! And any sort of "Jump" FTL drive would make it futile, unless you can somehow jam their jumping capability.

 

The only realistic depiction of space piracy I've ever found s in the David Weber Honorverse. And there you have a very specific technological, physical and economic/political environment to support it's continued existence.

I always liked the whole stable wormhole/warp conduit thing to be good for SF games. You don't have to be that much more high tech then we are now, the wormholes are good bottle necks, you can predict traffic patterns, it makes for great exploration scenerios and there is the ancient alien civilization possibilities. The FTL is instantanious through gateways and the majority of travel is at nonrelitivistic speeds getting from wormhole to wormhole with the occasional stop in port.

Of course I love it when the players eventually realize that the web of wormholes sure is a convienient set of anomalies.

In this format, a few credits to the harbor master will get you manifests departures and destinations of both manned and unmanned vessels. From there, fuel capacity will tell you speed and stellar chartography will give you the most likely paths. All that's left is grappelling hooks, cutting torches and a near suicidal need for income and it's AAARRRRGGGGHHH! Maties!

Pedantics, please step away from the keyboard.

Re: Space Pirates?

I had that thought too when posting.

"the little guy, he trys harder... I painted him black so he'd be perfect"

Beware Space Herpes!!

Sure you always run into them, but, has anyone ever played a Space Pirates game? Now, I don't mean swashbucklers in space or anything. I was thinkin' more along the lines of regular Joes skulking around the galaxy in rickety ships, syphoning off goods from unmanned cargo barges. Avoiding facist/corporate patrols, etc. Or perhaps, you work for a small government at war with a big government and the small government supports piracy for its disruption of supplies.

anyone?... got any stories?

Re: Plot seeds?

If ships use "Hyperspace," "Underspace," or similar rubber-science terms:

 

The PCs are going from A to B on a spaceship. Somehow, the ship is forced entirely into Otherspace, losing contact with Normalspace. The PCs have to "get back," a problem made worse by the fact (hitherto unsuspected) that there are...things!...that live in Otherspace.

 

Very inimical things. Things that can eat...let us say, absorb...people.

 

Which are hungry!

Things, like Dinosaurs, giant squid, neanderthals... oh, wait, that's inner earth... I've been thinkin' pulp hero to much.

Re: Plot seeds?

This is free trader beowulf calling anyone... loosing cabin pressure fast