Maur

Re: World's Largest City From my glances through that monstrosity it would make a decent book for a setting if all you are needing is background material for the players to play in. And it comes with a massive map of the city.

Re: Game of Thrones Yes, there is an RPG. The main book was published by Green Ronin, but they don't seem to have it available any longer. Main RPG Book: http://www.amazon.com/Game-Thrones-D20-Based-Open-Gaming/dp/1588469425 Two upcoming Adventure books in the above setting: http://www.amazon.com/Song-Ice-Fire-RPG-Adventure/dp/1934547166/ref=sr_1_17?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208967901&sr=8-17 http://www.amazon.com/Song-Ice-Fire-Roleplaying-Adventures/dp/1934547123/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208967870&sr=8-14 And the Latest NOVEL HAS A RELEASE DATE: http://www.amazon.com/Dance-Dragons-George-R-R-Martin/dp/0553801473/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208967870&sr=8-2 Now we'll see if it will actually hit the streets on said date...

Re: portional speed I wasn't aware that you couldn't have a portional speed. Just that it didn't do any good in regards to where you moved on the SPD chart as you truncate off the fraction to determine your real speed. So, if you didn't buy any speed and bought Dex up to 15, then you would have a SPD of 2.5 and act at the same speed as SPD 2 people.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement and both cases aren't problems with the rules systems, but with the players and their GM. No book can force a GM to use the rules, only the players can via their expectation or unwillingness to continue to play. The only way that rules can truly be always enforced is via MMOs where the rules and gameplay are all handled by the computer and only the programmers can alter the rules which causes them to apply equally to all players.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement Or since this was for dramatic effect and not for player use a build wasn't needed.

Re: Realistic Aviation: Discuss Well, if you want to get accurate then I think vehicle combat needs to be revamped. I don't agree with the premise that a vehicle has to slow to half its speed to be able to fire (guns, missiles, lasers, etc...). I also don't agree with the need for the pilot to have a speed at least equal to the aircraft to be able to control it. I can understand one going on the slower dex of the two (aircraft or PC), as the slower dex would represent the fact that the vehicle has a poor response time (e.g. big trucks, C130 aircraft, etc...). realistically vehicles need quite a few stats. Acceleration Braking Turn radius Handling (bonuses or penalties to ones combat driving) Top Speed Aircraft add: stall speed max climb rate max airspeed (above which you stall) and unlike a PC a vehicle is always in motion once put into motion so it would be more realistic to always split its movement up into 12 phases. On all 12 a driver can maneuver the vehicle, but only on the PCs true phases could one fire the weapons. Or something like that.

Re: Game of Thrones Which is funny since Brienne, is a GIRL, heheh.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement Why would you build a rapier with reduced penetration? Is a person in armor that much more protected from the rapier vs other blades? Why do you think that all these items need to be written up with that much level of detail? Stats of items in any game (rule lite and rule heavy) are just abstractions of all the various physical properties and as such none of them can truly get every detail down in the rules to account for all the various possible situations that players/GMs can run into. As such, all gamers have to have a level of trust, or at least experience, with each other or why game...

Re: Game of Thrones IIRC, book 5 will deal with the other half of the cast that was left out of book 4 due to the way he split the book up. If true, then Catelyn, Brienne, etc... will not be in book 5.

Re: Punch-Through The problem is the shear distance between each hex. While it might work for a ranged attack (e.g. Indiana shooting all those nazis on the tank with a luger), I wouldn't expect one to be able to do it at all with a melee attack. Why? Because you are both, essentially near the edge of each of your hexes to fight from one hex to the other and hit. Which means that all the other opponents are 2 or more meters away. Now, if you changed up the grid to be 1" hexes or required opponents in melee to be in the same hex, then maybe you could hit another person with the blow through, but generally you aren't likely to get anyone else. To give you an idea just how roomy a hex is, you are looking at 2.6 square meters of space for a single person to stand in. Parades usually anticipate a single adult to occupy about .2 square meters. So, to get parade crowd density, you are looking at 13 or 14 people in each hex. That's a lot of space, heheh.

Re: Fighting against more speed heheh. The OCV penalty for going first would just be the same, mechanically, as a player who chose to hurry his action to go first

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement I don't trust any system. I read them, study them and learn them, but don't trust them. There isn't anything there to trust, heheh. GMs on the other hand you have to learn to trust (or get really good about arguing over to your point of view) or find another GM/group.

Re: Space Junk in Earth Orbit I didn't realize you could be in both LEO and GEO at the same time... heheh. Sounds like a writer that needs to take remedial english.

Re: Exploding Dice While nitroglycerin would be that touchy, plastique is very safe and stable. You can beat on it with a hammer and not set it off.

Re: Game of Thrones Bad things happen to good people. They just happen to be in the way of the ambition and power climbing of others who have fewer compunctions against killing an obstacle.

Re: Order of the Stick I don't understand why Belkar is so hated. Yes, he likes killing things. Has since the very beginning. He pretty much seems to be a 2nd Ed character brought into 3.5... XP is only gained for killing, so that is what he loves to do.

Re: Fighting against more speed You could use a variation on the original Deadlands initiative. Shuffle a deck and deal to the players and the NPCs cards equal to their number of actions. Then just call out the deck in descending order. Ace, King, Queen, Jack, 10... Players with that card get that action, or can choose to hold it. If they do hold, they have to dex off against anyone else when they decide to go. At the end of the turn you reshuffle the deck and deal again.

Re: Game of Thrones I enjoyed the books, but have been put off by the author's claim that the last book printed was split the way it was because it was getting too big. That meant that he had the other half with the other characters in it, and yet that book has yet to surface after a few years... Now it seems that it hadn't been written at all as a recent update indicates that he has still been working on it over the last 10+ months...

Re: Fighting against more speed You abort to save yourself and can't abort if you've already used an action that phase. If you want to have an attack action to use against an opponent, then you hold your action for either a specific time or event. E.g. Hold and take aim at a corner of a building and shoot when someone comes out. In the case of dealing with a faster opponent, one can hurry to get Dex on him and then use that to set up for an attack. Or do other things to take advantage of the shape of the battlefield so the faster guy can't take advantage of his speed. If the speed guy wants to go full defensive for the 4 actions that you have, well, hit him with something his extra DCV won't help against. E.g. an AoE...

Re: Order of the Stick they probably suffer the "Slashdot effect" each time they release a new panel.

Re: Order of the Stick West End Games' Bloodshadows was a fight between Law and Chaos in a pulp backdrop.

Re: Colonial Gothic? again, untrained does not equal weaker, heheh.

Re: Traveller starship combat I would think you would apply it either way. Smaller ship shooting at larger should have an easier time hitting. Larger ship shooting at smaller will have a harder time hitting. Also, weapons use the ships OCV unless they have the advantage that they use the persons. This is because a person doesn't physically manipulate the weapon directly. Instead they make adjustments to controls (e.g. wheels and levers on battleships, computer joysticks and keypad entry for more modern systems, etc...). So, you are limited to the response time of the ships systems to your commands.

Re: Colonial Gothic? A has been taught Calculus B has not A can do integrals, therefore A is better than B... Those diseases still exist, but now they get types of exposure that most of the rest of us do and, SURPRISE, their immune system has the same capacity to fight it off. Again, I'm not sure that you can truly make the claim about genetic disposition towards diseases since European children suffered from smallpox, chickenpox and cowpox every year. Quite a few died every year from those diseases, but those that suffered cowpox and chickenpox at a young age and survived were then, generally, immune to the pox diseases when entering adulthood. Native Americans weren't and commonly were hit by epidemics of these diseases every decade or so, which meant that quite a large percentage of their population was previously unexposed when the new wave swept through and might have been more likely to be hit by the virulent strains (smallpox) instead of the milder form (cowpox).

Re: Colonial Gothic?