The Weapon

Re: Anyone have a terminator statted out? Unusually for Surbrook he missed something, the T101s can mimic human voices (in T1 the Terminator mimics Sarah Connor's mother, in T2 it mimics John Conner both times well enough to fool people who knew them well).

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Island "How often does flight 851 go from Sydney to LA?" "Almost every time."

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Island Oceanic? That's convenient for me, they've got regular flights out of Sydney.

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Island The caretaker. On one of the medium-sized islands there is an old man locals refer to as "The caretaker", he is fit, healthy but very craggy-looking. If you ask anyone about his age they'll make a guess and try to back in up with obviously specious reasoning everyone around jumping in with their "logical conclusion", including the caretaker. His name reminds the characters of someone, they're not sure who. Possibly someone who disappeared or a historical figure, they're not sure. He is either a fair skinned native or a very tanned white man. Again, asking will only result in tall tales being told by everyone, if the PCs join in this fantasy with humour and originality the locals like them more. The caretakers job seems to be fixing anything important that goes wrong, from the satelite phone tower to the water trough. Locals warn you never to offer him help of any kind. If the PCs comment that he seems to be overworked and deserves a break or otherwise justify giving him help the local make it clear, give all the help you want but NEVER offer. Just do it. If the PCs or anyone else is in danger from the various things on this or any of the 4 neighbouring islands the caretaker will appear to help them out of the situation. He's doesn't seem to have a magical knowledge of where to be but he hurries to the scene of danger and knows a lot about the area. He seems to know a lot about the various dangers as well, giving valuable tips. Occasionally he'll try to trick one of the PCs into offering to "take care of things until I get back". If anyone accepts they find they can't leave these 5 islands, something always stops them. The caretaker won't be seen again, except perhaps as he waves goodbye from his concealed seaplane/speedboat or other very fast conveyence. The locals give the PC who made the offer the key to the caretakers hut where his diary details the duties of the caretaker. The only way out of this is to get someone to make the same offer the character made. That could take a while, the old caretaker's diaries seem to go back a long way...

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Island Let's ask that forensic scientist guy, what's his name? Got a boat called "Slice of Life"? Goes out fishing at all hours? Never seems to catch much?

Re: Technologically advanced Neanderthals? Agriculture means that humans need less area, and so are less likely to fight over neanderthal territory. The question isn't "how much better are we than them" it's "how much do we displace them?". If humans and neanderthals rarely use the same resources then human numbers don't affect neanderthal extinction. If we use only the same resources then it's critically important. The truth is probably towards the latter but technological advances would change that (e.g. if we learn to fish and they don't). You can't go directly from "slow extinction" to "small edge for the humans".

Re: Technologically advanced Neanderthals? From the wikipedia entry "Dunbar's number" " The number of social group members a primate can track appears to be limited by the volume of the neocortex region of their brain. The number of social group members a primate can track appears to be limited by the volume of the neocortex region of their brain. The number of social group members a primate can track appears to be limited by the volume of the neocortex region of their brain. " "In a 1992 article, Dunbar used the correlation observed for non-human primates to predict a social group size for humans. Using a regression equation on data for 38 primate genera, Dunbar predicted a human "mean group size" of 148 (casually rounded to 150), a result he considered exploratory due to the large error measure (a 95% confidence interval of 100 to 230)."

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares The soldiers in "The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman did that all the time. Of course a significant percentage of them died in training (it's remarkable how many ways there are to die at that temperature).

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel The recruiters: Every so often a team of recruiters rent a conference room and give group interviews/testing to anyone who turns up (mostly teenagers, but some in their early 20s). All the recruiters look to be at least 40 years old ethnically diverse, of both sexs and some have physical injuries (a eye patch, burns etc) . They are looking for "innovative, quick on their feet team players who are willing to go the extra mile" for a "world class services organisation with unique and specialised expertise". Beyond that they are very vague about what they're looking for and what the job will be, except that they once held the positions they are seeking to fill. Questions about whether the recruiters got their injuries in that job are deflected with comments about confidentiality and how everything will be explained more fully to those who pass the interview process. Potential applicants are given tests for creativity in very limited time frames, reaction speed, physical fitness and various psychological traits. Those who pass are taken into another room where the job offer is explained. Those who come out are either nervous and excited or really, really scared, the latter being the ones who turned down the job. The next time they book the room the interviewers all look like the new hires from the last time, but 20 or more years older and with several permanent injuries similar in degree to that suffered by the first interviews. Some of them are missing however. If asked about this similarity they will act surprised (they're not that good at acting). Any reference to their missing companions will provoke anger, denials of knowing what you're talking about and a swift end to the conversation.

Re: New Campaign Idea: "Blood" Just two levels of "bloodedness"? Wouldn't there be 1/4 blooded (children of a normal and a 1/2 blooded) and 3/4 blooded (one full-blooded and one half-blooded parent)? If there are lots of different levels you get a lot more resentments and power struggles ("He thinks he's so great because he's 1/2 blood, I'm 3/16 that's practically as good, why does he get everything?".).

Re: Kill the Dude with the Thing ? I can't imagine anyone insisting that he pays. I mean seriously, which would you rather have, the price of a meal or your restuarant be free of enraged Things?

Re: Kill the Dude with the Thing May be? He's practically a cosmic horror! So how is making him suffer supposed to solve that problem? I mean given that the only reason he has this power is he's miserable. Kill him if you want, but don't wound him!

Re: Welcome to McGuffins. May I take your order? The Necronomiconned-you-all. It's been 10 years since the deaths of the superhero "Mr. Adaptable" and the villains "The Solution", "Endgame" and a number of other super-hitmen for hire. As described in Adaptable's will a large TV screen is set up in main square to play a message he left commemorating his greatness. He wasn't the retiring humble type. "Greeting City, if you are seeing this it means that I am... NOT DEAD! I'm just foolin' and I have been for 10 years. But that's not all, you know the Super-Hitmen I 'died' defeating? Well they're not dead either. They just decided to retire when they found out how many times I'd faked the deaths of their victims. They collected dozens of bounties on people they genuinely thought they'd killed. Naturally they didn't want to hang around when their employers discovered this. A full list of who they thought they'd killed, who wanted them killed, how much they paid, to who, and where they were when I last knew of them is in my 'book of the names of the dead', now where did I put that..." So people who are looking for the book are everyone who ever hired the hitmen to kill someone who might still be alive. The prosecutors who lost witnesses in important cases, who might still be alive, relatives who want to reconnect, people who want dirt of their criminal superiors, anyone who wants to protect the original victims the list goes on. At least half of them are known to be homicidal. Let the games begin. Of course it could be a hoax, the guy was known to have a twisted sense of humor. But are you prepared to take the risk?

Re: Welcome to McGuffins. May I take your order? Why would he need a way around it? Do you know how many descendants Urther Pendragon would have by now? Assuming 25 years between generations that's 58 generations. If they inherited their ancestor's tendencies they'd have more than 2 kids each, but even if they didn't there is would have to be 2.88 * 10^17 descendants without breeding with other of his descendants. Oh wait it's Urther's kids, make that 16,341,541,651 assuming each descendant has only a 1/2 chance of breeding with a fellow descendant of the horny screwup. That's still more than all the people alive today.

Re: The 10 Most Disgusting Alien Civilizations Yeah but it's not moving relative to the planet's surface is it?

Re: The 10 Most Disgusting Alien Civilizations

Re: Super Zeroes There was a movie about a guy who could do that. He was a clockmaker and the Nazis wanted to know how he did it so they tortured him. He didn't know. Eventually they sent him to a firing squad but before they shot him he pointed out that it wasn't the stated execution time yet. While the German officer was waiting a resistance bomb blew up the wall of the prison and killed the firing squad and he escaped. Don't know much about the film as I only saw the last 10 minutes or so.

Re: "Normals" gaining superpowers: how would they change in terms of mentality? It would depend on how they got it and what the person who gets the power thinks of how they got it. Do people think mutants are weird and evil and wrong? Then having a mutation will make them ashamed, afraid etc. If it's seen as a gift of a god they're proud, maybe arrogant, maybe anxious about not using the gift well enough.

Re: If I had 500 slaves... How much is the government going to help you if they run away? If (like the US South) the government is willing to coerce the free population to do your slave hunting for you need a lot less guards. If there is somewhere to escape to where the slaves can blend in you need a lot more. This is why slaves were traded each way on some ancient routes, you need to keep them away from places they know where they can slip back into free society. Slaves near a border with somewhere they won't be enslaved (e.g. the Everglades under the Seminoles) are much more likely to make a break for it. Slaves who's routes to a sustainable free place are blocked by physical or social barriers are fairly safe. There are two possible problems of course, escape and outright revolt. The latter is only a problem under the most brutal regimes where the slaves care less if they die.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Damn You! Now I'm going to have to come up with powers for each of them. Nope, just for Joey, Rachel, Chandler, Phoebe and Ross, we already know that Monica is "freakishly strong".

Re: Military Spacecraft Designations There would be floating energy weapons or kinetic-kills weapons (guns left lying around) and predeployed missiles. Just leaving bombs around hoping that someone will get close enough won't work in something as big as space.

Re: Suggestions for caste system for post-apocalypse arcology

Re: More cross-genre goodiness: The Predator vs. a Jedi

Re: More cross-genre goodiness: The Predator vs. a Jedi Yep, because as usual in the Star Wars universe creatures without technology are some of the biggest threats. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense but it's still a noticeable Star Wars trope. How a snowman was able to nullify even an apprentice Jedi's precog ability I don't know but he did. Anything that can do that, be stealthy enough to get close and hit like a sledgehammer is more of a threat than a Predator. Note that this happened before he became a Jedi. All luke would have needed is something to show up the Predator on a scope and it's one shot, dead to the the head. Hell if the Predator misses Luke could probably shoot off it's gun just by aiming at the origin point. He's a damn good shot.

Re: Physics of space battles - gizmodo article