Merovign

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign Killian is proud to be referred to as "beefcake." Except by cannibals. But that would be "long pork." Awesome job - the forum says I've given you too much rep - I have to go give 20 other people rep before I give more to you. Back in a minute.

Re: Dilema... Congratulations! Adulation! Cheers and applause!

Re: Panorma of Mars "Prop" pictures for a near-future sci-fi adventure?

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign And this is my son, Micah. Say hello, Micah.

Re: US Police Equipment Big variation from place to place: 1) In hazardous areas (you know, LA, DC) Body armor would be pretty likely, Level IIIA (good against handguns, not so much rifles). If there's one murder a year in the jurisdction, the officer might have armor in their trunk but not wear it. 2) Totally varies from place to place - the department sets the rules. Some specify fairly exotic (RBCD makes an armor-piercing frangible round, legal only for law-enforcement), other places have standard types they buy off-the-shelf, usually "truncated cone" fully-jacketed (mushroom on impact) or hollow-point (mushroom even more). Nobody in real life uses banked shots, because ricochets are unpredictable. A bullet spinning at high speed hitting an object at an angle... umm, no. Obviously if you want to go comic-book or camp, go for the pool-game shots. 3) Again, depends on the departments. In both rural areas and high-crime urban areas, a rifle is at least as likely as a shotgun - both for range and for anti-armor capability. The LAPD introduced a standard patrol rifle after a famous shooting involving armored criminals. If they aren't wearing armor, the officers would likely have armor in the car, as well as extra ammunition. The backup armor might be "SWAT-style" or "Riot-style," with leg and groin guards, arm guards, neck braces, and even helmets, though that's a lot for a patrol officer or detective to carry around.

Re: Dilema... Maybe we could come up with a one-time or occasional Sac-Area "meet" for those of us on the forums. On the other hand, I never make it to the Sac Scapers meets, and I've been a member for three years, so what chance do you guys have?

Re: Rail gun damage? It's a 32-Megajoule railgun, BTW. And Ace is the guy who statted out 2004 candidates in D&D terms. There's a little bit of RPG geekage at AoS, along with a whole lot of crazy. Look today and you'll see an argument over a guest blogger declaring support for Seahorses in the primaries. Be warned that there's often a fair amount of profanity and some real brain-bleach-needed posts. There's a reason Ace describes his blog as a "Moronblog."

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign Well, that's okay, because we won't have... er, yes we will. Well, at least we don't have.... umm, well... actually... We'll try not to have too much crap.

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign Oh, sure, I was trying to KEEP A LOW PROFILE! WRT Gemini, I think it could do equally well as either the current "player-directed (chaos)" method or a more linear game... it might be trime to try a more directed "story arc" a few sessions long to see whether it really does cut down on the side trips, or whether Gemini Ascendant truly does have a mind of its own. I was hoping to avoid the word "Shadowrun" given how much we "re-imagined" the universe, but it would eventually have become obvious and we'd talked about a Shadowrun game before. Nolgy and I are working on a Content-Management site for us to be able to share GM information in a controlled way, and a blog for "in-world news" and possible comments for characters - as in a place where players can exchange messages IN-CHARACTER and see in-gameworld news - a new kind of game prop. I hope to have that up shortly with quick "brief history" and game intro posts to help people get the flavor and give feedback well before we start. So we can tune the game ahead of time. I'm also working on "tidbits" - in-game scenes and dialogue that can be cut-and-pasted to cut down on GM workload. Obviously that demands a more linear game, but I think I can still allow for a lot of side-trips. I don't know how far I want to go into macroing in MapTools, but I think I'm going to have to to keep up. The game we're planning doesn't really have the flavor of Shadowrun, which should help a bit. The way I figure it, we could run an "episode" or two with the SR3 rules (as modified), and if it's a bother and people want to go back to Fiver we can take a "Gemini" break while we work up some crutches for me so I can GM in Hero.

Re: Dilema... Job. Less people read resumes on weekends, so play then. Trust me, I know how this works.

Re: Dyson Sphere Ship Good plan. Obviously, the AIs could have individual personalities but a collective "database." Which leads to fun stuff like an obviously different personality and aspect treating you like it knows you as intimately as a previous and different AI. To deal with the mass issues you could basically have ships spaced out with thin "solar collector" web stretched between them, constantly repaired by spider-like robots than spin photoconductive webs. Tis fun to dream...

Re: Star Wars arms and armor It is totally up to the GM how they want to run things, it really is. But just a couple more points. 1) If the bullet is tumbling in mid-air, something is very wrong and you need a gunsmith. A few weapons have been designed to do such an insane thing, but since the bullet tends to go off on a trip to the beach when you do that, AFAIK nothing like that has survived into practice. Tumbling = chaos, chaos = miss. Obviously that doesn't relate to the OP, just to thread discussion. 2) The "regulatory" explanation would make some sense. On the other hand, you can't really hunt Bantha with something that's like an SMG equivalent. "Regulated" low-power weapons would only be useful for small game - but that might be all it's legal to hunt.

Re: Dyson Sphere Ship Sometimes I need to expand acronyms more than I do.

Re: Star Wars arms and armor Lightsabers are devilish to make rules for, so I can't really add to that. The STR min is one way of dealing with the "excessive ease" problem and the physics. I do have one pet peeve that may or may not apply: the "sporting" thing. If you mean hunting, generally speaking a sporting weapon would be more or far more powerful than a service weapon, depending on the prey involved. Possibly less charges, but not single-charge. If you mean target-only, it makes more sense, though the damage might even be negligible. The way you did it is pretty common, just seems the opposite of obvious to me. Definitely rep for all that work, though.

Re: Dyson Sphere Ship It would depend on your tech level and the amount of energy you were able to apply. Could be anywhere from decades (ATRI 14 maybe?) to a million years (ATRI 11 maybe?). For an immortal sentience or a race that really didn't give a rat's patoot about individual lifespans, patience can pretty much achieve all things. The Dyson cloud makes this arguably even easier, though the effect of a n offset ring can be highly directional.

Re: Dyson Sphere Ship If you used a ring or series of rings instead of a sphere, you could move the ring to induce an oscillation in the star and eventually a jet of mass which would become propulsion - i.e. using the star as an engine to move you to another star to take over and use as the new engine. Don't ask me how I would do that. But the "special effect" of an asymmetrically jetting star dragging a Dyson Ring is easy enough to visualize.

Re: Terran Empire Vaccinations I would expect that at least some anti-disease treatments, particularly viral diseases, would involve nano-technology, which could be purchase and might even involve subscriptions. Just an alternative way of dealing with it - a lifestyle cost. And the disadvantage would depend on the setting or location - the sterile super-city, not much of a risk, the grungy frontier, moreso. For a quick-n-clean approach you might just leave the issue of disease unaddressed. Sometimes Less Is More. Obviously the grittier the campaign, the more extra factors you'd introduce.

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign Coolness. Now I have to sketch Micah.

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign 6'1", a slim 180 lbs, red-tinged light brown hair and light brown-hazel eyes. The irises are almost yellow-tinged. Tanned look to skin, but not dark. Kind of large eyes and high forehead, but not anime-freak looking or anything. Man, I wish they would release that photo-to-3D model with lipsynch software already.

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign Possible headshot of the character, based on British actor Simon Darwen: Or something like that. I don't know if you have access to one of the programs that can convert a 2d picture into a 3d face, obviously it's not that important since I just looked at a bunch of pictures and said "that one." If anything, a touch older.

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign In that case I need to come up with a pic and description, which should be much easier. I actually found a uniform that's awesome from an unexpected source: Well, awesome apart from the giant target on the chest and the McDonalds hat. You kind of knew that French riot police would ride public transportation. Looks like they bought the uniforms at a film studio auction. Anyway, I'll come up with a theoretical head appearance later, game's starting.

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign And I said I'd try to participate in the thread more. Bah! Been working like 37 hours a day for the last few days. Feel like it anyway, and a 1.25-hour commute each way. Man, I hope they don't hire me. Anyway, now that I've seen the layout I'll try to come up with (steal, borrow or beg) an appropriate cropped image for Killian, color-balance it and send it on to Ghostie. Sometime in the next galactic standard millenium, anyway. Re: Piracy: Here's a novel idea, how about we cap pirates and do our best to RETURN the loot we recover, by following the pirates records (if any) or interrogating them? Imagine the warm glow of returning the stolen goods to the survivors and/or families of the pirates' victims? Not to mention the notoriety! We still have a lot of work to do on the salvaged ship. I have an idea on that I'll be developing before gametime today having to do with the primitive AI copy I've been working on in-game. Robot servitors, anyone? Welders, maintenance bots... heck, even backup crew for the capitol ship? "And remember, if the Emperor Palpatine can build a massive robot army and conquer backwater planets, so can you!"

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign Just proving that I occasionally visit the thread. I'll work on what I can get tonight, we'll talk on the phone if you get off work ever again.

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign Starwolf - if you need a visual cue :

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign 1) Starwolf: Great news, I've seen that happen so many times it isn't even funny, but great news anyway. Knew a cardiologist once who said that you had to be extra careful with heart news - the stress of the news is often worse than the condition! 2) Hmm, zombies.... I could kill me some zombies... or even better, clowns... How about 125-point characters, and a zillion 25-point clowns, highest scoring character wins? As someone else quipped recently on the subject, "fast clowns or slow clowns?"