Clonus

Re: Democratic Republics in Fantasy Worlds?

True. After all' date=' heroes never fight on the side of the poor and oppressed... [/quote']

 

Sure they do. So what? Fighting doesn't create a democracy. If anything, the opposite is true.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clonus

No, they really aren't. You have to know how to drill to make polearms effective. Otherwise a few men on horseback can tear right through you.

 

So?

 

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.

Re: Golden Age Superheroes as Pulp Heroes

relationship is more equal in private. His origin could remain essentially the same. I would substitute an early version of steroids or Human Growth Hormone with an impossibly long lasting effect for the rubber science energy field in the experiment that created him.

Ala Truth: Red, White and Black?

Re: Matriarchial Societies

One common fanon interpretation of Vulcan was that it was a matriarchy based on the old bats who seemed to run the ceremonies even though that conflicted with T'Pau's warning to T'Pring about the possible consequences of challenging the betrothal. Personally I thought that it was actually a gerontocracy, and women simply have higher average life expectancies on Vulcan.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

I just watched Advent Children despite never having played Final Fantasy. Pretty pictures.

Re: Which is faster, Gravity or Light?

out the total effect of matter's placement and effect.

 

Well...I'm not explaining this very well, but information does not have a speed limit. So if the sun disapears, or doubles in size etc... the "information" arrives everywhere at a non known speed, but that speed could be infinate, and no "laws" I know of, would be broken.

 

If that were true then it would be possible to talk to the past and have it answer back.

Re: Which is faster, Gravity or Light?

So far as we know, shifts in gravity propagate at the speed of light.

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

Now, even in our world as it is, overpopulation is a serious problem that some despair of solving. It's hard enough to get people to stop expanding the population recklessly as it is. In a world with the same technologies available, but where the people making all the decisions are the very ones who are MOST likely to want to bring more people into the world no matter what (and if the agony of childbirth and all the other attendent problems don't constitute a deterrent, I can't imagine what would - that's why I say "no matter what") wouldn't we have a far more crowded and overpopulated planet than we already do?

?

No. Yes, a lot of women want to hold their baby in their arms. That doesn't translate into an abstract general desire to have everyone else reproduce more or even to have a really large family for themselves. Women have been leaders in the cause to develop and legitimise birth control because it acutely relates to their self interest.

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now?

I'm listening to this dance club version of Sarah Maclachlan's Sweet Surrender. Frankly, I find it annoying.

Re: New Game: Remnants of Hope

Stats: I *strongly* prefer that they be No Figured Characteristics, barring good reasons otherwise (case-by-case basis).

 

No Endurance abilities: Honestly, I'm fine with it. Again, case-by-case, but I'm not going to turn it down out of hand.

 

BTW... anybody else out there with outstanding questions I haven't answered yet?

Is "Spider" an element?

Re: Matriarchial Societies

The concept of women being weak and evil comes from the rise of some modern religions' date=' [/quote']

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora

 

In Greek mythology, Pandora ("all-gifted") was the first woman. Zeus ordered Hephaestus to create her as part of the punishment of mankind for Prometheus' theft of the secret of fire,

Re: How common are guns

Something just struck me about the argument that the level at which one buys a vulnerability or susceptability determines how common it is (as opposed to vice versa.)

 

Does that mean that by taking such a disad at the "rare" or "uncommon" level I can gauarantee that my character WON'T have to face that effect very often?

If the GM let's you take it at that frequency that's what it should mean. Of course the GM would be within his rights to say "No, you would be facing the proximity of iron more often than Rarely so you can't take it at Rare". Obviously GM and player need to get on the same page.

Re: New Game: Remnants of Hope

Recluse: I assume that she's normally human, with the spider abilities and the shrinking?

 

She looks human, yes. I tried to do something different with an arachnid character, so no webbing but instead she shrinks. She's optimised to be a spy. Of course she powers up easily enough just by giving her a little training and a lot of food.

Re: Amalgam Universe Campaign

Thor + Captain Marvel (Shazam) = The Northman

Wisdom of Odin

Strength of Magni

Stamina of Modi

Power of Thor

Courage of Baldur

Speed of Hermod

How do you pronounce OMMTBH?

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

You can make the same case that cloning and artificial wombs eliminate the "need" for women, but it doesn't show up as often in sci-fi, probably because a society of hot gay men is much more frightening to the average male sci-fi fan than a world of hot lesbians.

Are they scarier when they are a world of hot telepathic men?

Re: Democratic Republics in Fantasy Worlds?

 

The weapons you are talking about are spears, pikes and polearms, all of which are just fine for dealing with "professionals".

 

.

No, they really aren't. You have to know how to drill to make polearms effective. Otherwise a few men on horseback can tear right through you.

Re: WWYCD: Grrrl Power- emphasis on Grrr

Mind Game: If he was lucky, his girlfriend would just be aggressively over-friendly. If he wasn't lucky... she'd break free of *his* mental control, still be under the influence of the new one, and he'd be eating through a straw for the rest of his (no doubt limited) days.

Sounds like a richly deserved fate.

Re: New Game: Remnants of Hope

Well here's a rough draft of Recluse

Recluse

25 STR 15

30 DEX 60

18 CON 16

30 BODY 40

18 INT 8

20 EGO 20

10 PRE 0

10 COM 0

5 PD 0

4 ED 0

6 SPD 20

9 REC 0

36 END 0

54 STUN 2

Characteristics Cost: 181

20 "Spider sensitivity to the slightest tremor" Ranged, Discriminatory, Targeting Touch

10 "Yes, I can stick to things" +0 STR Clinging

20 +10 Enhanced PER,"Touch",Detect

33 "The size of a large spider" 5 LVLS Shrinking(64mm,3.2g,+10 DCV,+15 KB),x2 Increased End

Cost(-1/2) 10

10 "Yes, I can stick you together" Healing 1

10 "Wolfspider leaping" +10" Superleap 3

45 "Yes I can stick you to things" 3D6 Entangle,entangle not damaged 4

3 Acrobatics 15-

3 Breakfall 15-

3 Contortionist 15-

3 Survival 11-

3 Paramedic 13-

6 AK: Home City 15-

3 Shadowing 11-

3 Stealth 15-

3 Streetwise 11-

3 Concealment 13-

15 5 Levels: Stealth, Shadowing, Concealment

3 Security Systems 13-

5 Defense Maneuver

Powers Cost: 204

Total Cost: 385

Base Points: 350

15 Psych Lim,"Shy",very common,moderate

15 Psych Lim,"In Love",common,strong

5 Hunted,"Local Official",less powerful,non-combat influence,

limited area,harsh,appear 8-

Disadvantages Total: 35

Experience Spent: 0

Total Points: 385

Her parents were killed when she was very young and she grew up alone doing nothing but honing her incredibly tuned ability to avoid everyone. She only made an exception for a local official who began his rise to tyrannical middle management with the denunciation of her parents. She stole from him on a regular basis. Then one day she saw someone special and powerful, someone who was trying to help people, and she fell in love with all the demented fervour of an adolescent. She started stalking him. Maybe he'd need help? And if she helped, maybe he'd be impressed?

Re: WWYCD: Grrrl Power- emphasis on Grrr

Hellfire: Almost immediately gets into a brawl with a team-mate and ends up getting locked up.

Poet: Probably ignores it. While Sonnet is technically female she's a ghost and powerless without his cooperation. If it does work on her, then his powers go on the fritz anyway, and the effect probably doesn't work on ghosts anyway. He's concerned with the living only when they kill.

The Wizard of Oz Incorporated: Retreats into his lab, locks the door against his girlfriend and her bear, builds a gizmo to detect the broadcast and triangulates to find the source.

Riptide: Agrees he isn't fit to run the team and asks his female team-mate how she's going to go about tracking down the mental influence that is influencing men to make them more annoying and incompetent.

Re: Pirates : An amusing question.

Guys with long term plans are exactly the kind of guys who would build a trapped hidey-hole for the loot they are saving up to hire their mercenary army or whatever. Of course that applies less to an individual big haul than a series of lesser, and less conveniently portable hauls.

Re: How common are guns

This is one of those cases where the level you get the vulnerability at determines how often people will throw their guns.

Re: Matriarchial Societies

I know the Navajo were matrilocal, but what were their divorce customs like and how were decisions of public policy made?

Re: Matriarchial Societies

I'd go about the process of designing a matriarchal game setting by deciding what I want the final result to look like and then working backwards.

 

If the goal is FemDomFantatopia, build the great city state of FDF however you want for game purposes, then fill in the justifications later. Alternatively, you could go the classic Pulp route of exaggerating period feminist stereotypes and putting them in charge of a dystopia of weak men (allowing our heroes to teach the women their rightful place through this Earth Thing Called Kissing), or the classic feminist SciFi route with exaggerated gender roles and men placed in the classically female place.

.

What I always wanted to do was a Golden Age world war II storyline where Hitler adds an extraterrestrial ally, an evil dominatrix type dictator from the world of Amazons who is not actually going to be all that much use to the Axis because she's fighting an alliance of the nicer Amazons already. But the heroes go there, meet the local superheroines, just so I can have them say:

Re: Silver Age and tragedy

Too dark for a Silver Age hero?

 

I look foward to comments. Thank you.

Not at all. A staple of Silver Age Superman was the old "Hey I can travel in time so why don't I undo my parents deaths" story. He revisited those tragedies in his life more than once and never with a happy ending. Spider-Man's loss of Uncle Ben, Doctor Strange's stint as an alchoholic street person, Steve Trevor's death in 1968...the Silver Age wasn't all sunshine and lollipops. The difference of course is that the Silver Age person isn't going to use their tragedy as an excuse to leave a trail of bodies of deceased walk-ons.

Re: Democratic Republics in Fantasy Worlds?

There are two basic problems with creating a genuinely democratic republic in a low-tech fantasy environment. The first is a lack of a publishing industry, meaning that the bulk of a large population will be uninformed and very probably illiterate. This can be gotten around by having your community be so small that people don't need books and newspapers to learn what's going one but in such a community there's not much need for representative. You can probably stick with a townhall democracy unless the population are simply too apathetic to concern themselves with public affairs. Most historical representave republics were in fact oligarchies, often with strong plutocratic elements.

The second and probably worse problem is that, in the absence of generally distributed effective weapons any idiot can be dangerous with, even against a pro, and the absence of the requirement for an elaborate working logistical structure to keep the professionals supplied with things like ammo and fuel, there is a much greater power imbalance between the warrior class and the noncombatants. The introduction of magic only worsens this problem. Whether it's the superhuman warriors and magicians of Exalted and D&D, or even just the Hero and GURPs characters wearing OAFs and gadgets that boost their DR, a small force of professionals can sweep away a positive horde of normal poor men. Egalitarianism only works when people really can meet on more or less equal terms.

That being said, I do have an idea of a nation reigned over by a sub-society of magicians who, being fully occupied in their magical studies most of the time, let their subjects elect representatives who actually run the place.

Re: Life Force Control?

Stormswift, Scirocco, Velocity, Raptor

Tailwind?