Clonus

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

Re: Superhero Legal Disclaimers Interrupting soliliquys is against the rules. Hence this legal disclaimer: For Love and Justice, the pretty sailor suited soldier Sailor Moon! In the name of the moon I will punish you!

Re: Designing Interstellar Cultures Oh sure we can...bearing in mind that we don't get an indepth look at yer Klingons and Romulans all that much. For example there was a TNG episode where one of the Klingon worlds was rebelling, but we never even met the rebels and found out just what their beef was. Later on I saw a world of pacifist Klingon-Romulan hybrids. Don't get much more different from the supposedly homogenous Klingon culture than that. But in part it's like looking a face of another race. You have to spend a lot of time looking at the faces of a visually distinct ethnic grouping before you stop thinking how different they look from your lot, and start thinking how they look different from each other. But apart from that, another consideration is that actual cultural differentiation requires communication barriers. Establish your colony on Mars but give them 24 hour access to all those Earth TV channels, and they will not be a terribly distinct society from the Earth society that founded them. They'll talk pretty much the same, and they'll imbibe the same attitudes about life and right and wrong.

Re: Superhero Legal Disclaimers Or you can save time by dressing in primary colours with a cape. If that doesn't say "I'm a metahuman" I don't know what will. In fact, that makes a pretty good justification for heroes to get into costume before swinging into action even when they have no secret identity. If the law requires them to identify themselves to perpetrators, police and bystanders, then wearing a distinctive suit of clothing that nobody sane would wear if they didn't have powers, that might be just the ticket. In which case the verbal disclaimer would only be necessary for people who happen to be in civvies. In which case the boilerplate might be something like "This is a citizen's arrest. I have metahuman powers and I will use them in my defense if you resist."

Re: Astrophysics question

Re: What's in a Name Yes and no. That's what they do with objects they don't find particularly interesting or that they aren't entirely sure actually exist. But they are still naming objects like Eris and Sedna because of their size and proximity, and should they discover life-bearing planets in space, they will certainly want to name them.

Re: WWYCD: The Life Pod Riptide: She's teh hawtness, isn't she? How is not defrosting her even an option? Wizard: Figure out just how long the stasis pod has before it runs out of power anyway. Hellfire: We're in the business of helping people, aren't we?

Re: Isis and Solara On the whole I find NPC opponents more useful than NPC heroes.

Re: New President -

Re: Grandiose Schemes Use the Gay Bomb, http://cbs5.com/local/local_story_159222541.html on a major population center.

Re: Points Equality The point of having a point budget is not to make all the characters equal. After all, you can give me an infinite number of points and I can still use them to create Xander if I feel so inclined. You can always create a less-powerful or effective character. The reason for a point budget is to define, more or less, an upper limit to how powerful and versatile the characters can be at the start of the game. It lends structure to the character design process.

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... I'm not sure I see the problem. Situations like that crop up all through history

Re: What would your character Dream: The Hero who has everything Hellfire would dream of being married to the Canadian Shield. However this would fall apart as she'd find herself inexplicably attracted to her real husband. The Wizard of Oz Incorporated would dream of being world-famous as the inventor who catapulted the whole world into a future of flying cars, robots and space colonisation. But then the robots rebel... Riptide would dream of a world in which his mother was still alive and he had never become a superhero, instead pursuing his pop music career.

Re: Humans are "Special"

Ever watch Ben 10? Notice how pathetic humans seem to be? Everyone else seems to have these superkeen powers. Are we just the lameoids of the universe or what? Suppose you were setting up the Galaxy Legion, a team which takes the most formidable individuals from each of a bunch of species like that. What would you set off as the human specialty, the thing we do that they can't?

Re: Democratic Republics in Fantasy Worlds? Not as long as we can simply refrain from refueling them.

Re: What would a supers setting look like 35 years from the present? Cash is something that if lost, will inevitably be reinvented. People need something to pay hookers with that won't show up on a credit check. I'm betting on "souvenir" gold and silver coins and prepaid gift and phone cards. One obvious development would be an increasing tendency among the criminally inclined to go to black market body shops for the implantation of a competitive edge. Being a cyborg might end up being socially stigmatised. Android servants in a comic book future might be affordable for businesses and the upper-middle class. Actually I highly recommend raiding J.D. Robb books if your players don't read them.

Re: What would a supers setting look like 35 years from the present? Floating cars obviously. Nothing says "future" more than floating cars, no matter when you start from. You might also want some kind of space colony. Those are the classic science fiction 30 years later benchmarks (neither of which are likely that soon in reality). You could have a society that has lost patience with superheroics and instead relies on special police squads that are sufficient during a relative supervillainous lull.

Re: How to get swords on your starship Find Galactic Empires and you'll see the original short story that was much better untainted by the author's second thoughts.

So you're mapping your universe and you want to name your inhabited planets and systems? Well what kind of name you end up with is going to tend to be determined by who gets to name it: Astronomers: Astronomers have a tradition of going with mythologies. So names like Odin, Hecate, Isis, Fenris, Kuan Yin or Anansi. Colonising Governments: Governments are likely to go with naming planets after things they already control to send the message they control the new colony as well, leading to names like New London, Nuevo America, Texas or Nihon no Tenshi. They may instead have a tendency to name worlds after past or present officials or other persons they wish to honor, so Hammerskjold, Lincoln, Rice, Van Devoort. Private Enterprise: Likely to go with names that will attract customers like Paradise, Greenfield, New Earth, Opportunity, Cornucopia, Hope. Explorer and Early Settlers: Likely to name the planet after what they notice early on so names like Plateau, Purplewood, Dragonhome, Tempest, Montana.

Re: Democratic Republics in Fantasy Worlds? Yes but that has very little to do with what I said. The British colonies in America had elected legislatures before they had their revolution and afterward democracy was established not by the sword but by tedious talkfests. 9 times out of ten when a dictatorial government is overthrown by force, what replaces it is something no more democratic. More than half the time, the result is something more oppressive.

Re: Democratic Republics in Fantasy Worlds? If you have nothing to say, don't respond. Guns.

Re: Teleporting -- need a better name for it. Of course if you were speaking classical greek it would be "teleporos" from "tele" meaning "at a distance" and "poros" meaning "passage". If you were speaking latin it would be "transportus".

Re: Teleporting -- need a better name for it. But they lifted from The Stars My Destination.

Re: Democratic Republics in Fantasy Worlds? So, you're no longer amateurs. You've become a martial class devoting considerable time and effort to your training. That separates you from noncombatants in a way that easier-to-learn weapons don't. And while you may end up creating a kind of democracy consisting of your class, that'll end up being more of an oligarchy.