Toadmaster

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? House of pain: Top o' the morning to ya

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Charlie Daniels: Devil went to Georgia

Re: Night of the Living Dead Hero Plot Ideas

Re: Night of the Living Dead Hero Plot Ideas Well then I agree with you, those zombies would take all the fun out of a zombie infestation, fast, semi-intelligent ("send more paramedics"), and basically unkillable. I think spear gun is the only option, nail them to telephone poles and such. As I recall though they electrocute them in the second one, but its been along time since I've seen those movies, I do remember nuking them was a bad idea.

Re: Night of the Living Dead Hero Plot Ideas Ummm, Night of the Living Dead is where that whole shoot them in the head thing came from, you know movie done by George Romero at a friends house, chocolate syrup for blood and all that. Or is there another Night of the living dead I don't know about (seriously there could be). I think you are thinking of Return of the living dead where the zombies pretty much couldn't die, except by incineration which just spread the zombification. Battlestaff, another thought for a place to send them (because personally I wouldn't go near a prison, too many live people I'd be worried about) is a secure government facility, military base, research facility, even a power plant or oil refinery, these types of places tend to have pretty secure walls or fences, sturdy buildings etc without the concern for "bad" people, besides alot of prisons have morgues and / or cemetarys. That Zombie Survival Guide is great, you also might check out All Flesh Must Be Eaten, it is a well done Zombie RPG great as a game or as a reference, it even has a random zombie ability table.

I ran across this site while looking for some data, I thought it makes a pretty good reference for running a game in a country other than your own. I thought this was the most likely forum for interest in this. Lots of details including the national anthem, monetary system, political system, population distribution etc. http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/

Re: Hero System for Horror gaming Depends on how you define horror, if you want to play Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, I don't think it would work so well, but if you want something like Phantasm 2, or Evil Dead where the PCs are capable of fighting back to some extent then it certainly is possible. I've used HERO for monster hunting campaigns which works well, I also used it for Call of Cthulhu which worked but it was very different from BRP CoC. I don't think of horror as scaring the players as much as creating a sense that even their successes are only delaying the inevitable. Its not about the body count its about crushing their hope, giving them just enough success to keep at it but not enough to feel good about it. Kind of like throwing a drowning man a rope, then showing him the anvil its tied to just before you drop it into the water.

Re: Popular Guns As I recall the .38 special and 9mm were the only "real" cartridges listed, .38 was pretty high up but 9mm was close to the bottom, maybe 7 or 8, the .45 ACP might have been on there but it was like #10 if there at all, it was quite sometime ago. I don't see many PC's using anything smaller than the 9mm or .38 Special. Speaking of street conversions you can have some fun with these, they are notoreously funky since they were never meant to be full auto. I took some law enforcement classes when I first got out of high school and one of the instructors told us about an apparent "gang" shooting where 2 gang members were shot in their car, the investigation eventually found they shot themselves with a converted Uzi, apparently they dropped in on the floor and it went off emptying the magazine killing both of them.

Re: Popular Guns

Re: Popular Guns My experience with gang type shootings when I worked on an ambulance in the 90's was primarily small caliber crap guns, .22, .25, .32 etc the only powerful weapons encountered was the SKS which is pretty cheap itself. This is strictly personal expereince I can't back it up with actual studies. I do remember seeing a top 10 list many years ago with the most common handguns used in crime, .38 special led the list followed by a variety of small low powered rounds, most of the rounds the typical PC would want were near the bottom if at all, 9mm was near the bottom. Keep in mind many criminals steal their weapons and they tend to steal in the areas they live, areas where people don't have much money so the cheap handguns are common. Autoweapons were still moderately easy to legally buy until the mid 80's, the buyer had to pay a licensing fee ($200 per year as I recall) and under go a detailed FBI background, this was part of the 1930's law. In the mid 80's it became illegal to import new autoweapons and even some parts. You can still buy autoweapons as described above but the supply is dwindling. Many states (like California, pretty much a d'uh if you know the state) have added stricter laws banning autoweapons, I know Arizona and Nevada still allow their ownership. At the time the law from the 80's passed there had only been 1 case of a legal autoweapon being used in a crime and that was by a law enforcement officer so like many gun laws was more flash and little value.

Re: Night of the Living Dead turns Post-Apocalyptic I forget to mention the Zombie Survival Guide, you might find a number of interesting ideas and its a fun read. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400049628/sr=8-1/qid=1155784747/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-9950955-6653567?ie=UTF8

Re: Night of the Living Dead turns Post-Apocalyptic Watch Land of the Dead, it is pretty much what you are describing, small communities of humans living in fortified cities to keep the zombies out and raiding dead towns for supplies.

Re: I have 4th Ed, do I need 5th immediately? I think all the new FH stuff is good and would recommend getting all of it, but none are really required. I wasn't very enthusiastic when DOJ announced they were going to do some world books for FH. I really wanted to see more genre books and never really cared for the worlds in prior FH editions. I've been pleasantly surprised to find both the Valdorian and Turakian age settings very good. I haven't been able to do anything but read them but if I ever get to game again (no time, no players) there is a very good chance I will use one of them.

Re: Micronauts Art Hey I had that guy, Micronauts were cool toys when I was a kid, haven't seen any in years, Thanks.

Re: THE FALLOUT BRIGADE: Ongoing P-A HERO campaign design Looks good, I am a huge fan of PA but am also very fussy about the PA worlds I like to game in. All I can say is I wish you guys were playing near Fish Camp. If you want to move I'm sure you could find a nice Unibomber shack for a half million or so.

Re: HP Lovecraft movies Thanks for the links I remember seeing Cast a deadly spell on HBO years ago, I've been trying to find a copy for years but it doesn't seem to be available. Fred Ward is always great, one of those actors that could make a real turd of a movie worth seeing but I can't think of anything bad he's been in to prove it.

Re: Stupid firearms question

Seems like there has been a resurgence of zombie movies the past couple of years. I just saw Land of the Dead and found it quite entertaining. While there are plenty of cheesy zombie flicks out there I found the following to actually be pretty decent movies. 28 days later (I know, some don't count this as a zombie movie) Dawn of the dead (remake), I thought this was a great movie, lots of zombie foo (TM, used by permission of Joe Bob Briggs ) it really put me in the mood for some zombie gaming, if I could only find some AFMBE players around here. Land of the dead, interesting spin on the typical zombie movie, kind of a PA meets zombie flick. I'd like to have Dead reckoning for my morning commute some days. Night of the living dead (remake), nice job updating the original. Shawn of the dead, its a comedy but still manages to be a good zombie flick. Reminds me a little of Evil dead 2, funny but it doesn't ruin the horror aspect, somehow the humor kind of makes it more real. and of course the original Night of the Living dead / dawn of the dead although its been eons since I've seen either of them. Any I've missed that I might want to check out?

I ran across a DVD in Walmart tonight, "Dreams in the witch house", I thought it might be worth a rental but I'm not really willing to spend $20 for what is probably a really bad movie. Has anyone seen this? care to comment? Are there any decent HP Lovecraft movies out there? From beyond was Ok, if I found it cheap enough I'd probably get it. I've never really cared for Reanimator, far to goofy to be scary. I'm not aware of any others out there actually based on HPL although I know several movies have been loosely inspired by his stories.

Re: Stupid firearms question I'd have to take a guess and say this is a myth, not alot of air in barrel to mix with between the cartridge case and the bullet. once the gases exit the barrel and contact the atmosphere it is another story but that has no effect on the bullet but makes a nice fire ball in short barreled weapons. One factor on the recoil in space not being accounted for is the escaping gas, "supposedly" (as in I recall reading somewhere) this has the effect of a small rocket pushing away from the direction of the target. It is probably fairly minimal but is an additional factor to consider than simply the bullets energy. Maybe we could get the guys from Myth busters to try this one, of course they will probably need a bigger budget or at least a surplus rocket from NASA.

Re: Military Archtypes Well since nobody else has said anything I might as well start. Personally I like the building block method used by a few games, instead of a single package deal. So what I was working on was a series of packages, basic training, advanced training, special training etc All military characters would have the basic training package and an advanced training package. Basic is the stuff everyone learns in boot camp / military life which end the bullets come out, who to salute etc, advanced is what they do in the military armor, infantry, engineer etc. Special training would be things like airborne, SEALs, Rangers etc. Some like Special Forces or SAS could actually be dual packages again if you want to get extra detailed (language, weapons specialist etc) although I think that would probably be easily handled by the advanced training packages. I was working on a fairly detailed set of skills packages for the military, I posted some earlier but unfortunately I think I lost alot of it when my laptops hard drive died.

Re: US Military .45 Pistols Actually I thought it was the other way around, the 10mm came out with a 200 grain bullet at 1200 fps, this is what te FBI bought off on, because of the recoil people were soon using reduced loads and the FBI spec'd a load with a 200 grain bullet @ 1000 fps. S&W picked up on this lower performance requirement in a round that could be used in popular 9mm pistol frames when they introduced the .40 S&W. Due to the length of the 10mm it had to use a larger frame pistol so with the new FBI load specs you had similar performance to the .40 in a larger package.

Re: US Military .45 Pistols Arrrrgh, it burns speakith not that name... Man that guy actually made me start disliking gun threads, what an attitude.

Re: US Military .45 Pistols Marlin made their Camp Carbine in .45 at one time, I never shot one but it looked like a nice rifle similar to the WW2 M1 carbine, IIRC it could use the magazine from a 1911A1 but its been awhile so I could be wrong on that.

Re: US Military .45 Pistols Tri-Tac did a Traveller type game (FTL2448), they had a .460 Weatherby Magnum pistol, I don't think that would have much trouble with body armor. The game designers admitted they just wanted to make the most over the top RPG gun they could think of.