Toadmaster

Re: 5 Of The Biggest Gangs Yes its good info, and it highlights a good use for Wikipedia. You often post a link to a list of things, some of these are good some ehhh, but even the not so great ones usually inspire a good discussion of what should have been on the list. This list also serves as an example of why its a good idea to have a solid concept before writing an article. If the author had simply changed the title to 6 of the worlds dangerous organizations selected at random would have avoided 90% of the criticisms.

Re: Western Hero Resources Thanks a lot for making me feel old, I remember making a wild drive to buy Western Hero when it first came out during my lunch break from work. It was usually a 40 minute drive to my FLGS but I made the round trip and purchase under an hour. Looking back that drive could have left a nasty mark on my driving record (not only broke a few traffic laws, I think I might have broken a few laws of physics )

Re: 5 Of The Biggest Gangs I don't know but it seems like even the author admits that these were just chosen to provide a cross section of gangs, nothing really scientific about the choices. Seems like he missed a lot though, I mean if the IRA counts as a gang where are the islamic terrorist organizations? I'm pretty sure they are larger than the IRA. La Cosa Nostra seems like a pretty big ommission to me. My guess is this is a good example of what happens when you don't specify what the requirements are to qualify for the list before you start the list.

Re: How long does tech last after The End? Absolutely knowledge would be lost, you won't be dealing with a 21st century community, but it won't be stone age either, stone age tech actually requires skills that have been long lost by most. Sure you could make arrowheads from glass shards, but can you make an arrow? a bow? If you do manage to make these can you actualy fire it and hit a target? A sling is very simple to make in actual materials but takes a lot of skill to make it right and use it. The knowledge is out there but the odds of finding somebody who can is probably lower than finding someone who can reload ammo and maintain a modern weapon. I'm not saying all communities will maintain some semblence of modern life simply the ones that survive 40 years will or most won't be there 40 years after. Morrow Project assumed a tech level similar to the US in the 1870's, that seems pretty reasonable to me. The idea that you need a critical mass for a community to maintain the equipment and the educational system to continue the knowledge sounds quite reasonable to me, I'm not disagreeing, but there have to be some assumptions for a campaign and one of those is that the community was lucky enough to combine the knowledge base, with the population to feed those who have devoted their lives to learning technical knowledge (medicine, power generation etc). Any other assumption means you have no community to game in. Thats all I was trying to say. Successful communities will maintain the essential tech needed for life and moderate comfort, these are things that will be important to survivors and will be the priorities. Many communities will not have that "critical mass" of knowledge, population and will to survive, those communities will be absorbed by those that do or they will die out when the supplies run out.

Re: U.N. Armament The Colt Government Model (M1911A1) is a perfect example of what you are saying, the uber accurate "race guns" used in competition have very tight tolerances which makes them accurate but much more sensative to dirt, on the other extreme you have the M1911A1, tolerances so loose some guns rattle when shaken, but they will keep firing after being submerged in mud, dumped in the sand etc. Same gun but one extreme is super accurate the other has legendary reliability. Regarding old guns my understanding is the WW2 era M3 "Greasegun" was used to arm US armor crews well into the 80's. It wouldn't surprise me to find out National Guard crews still had them in the 90's. The Navy still had M14's in ship armories long after the Army switched to M16's, who knows they may still have them (any Navy people here?).

Re: How long does tech last after The End? A successful survivor group will have these things, it has to be pretty much accepted or the group would have perished and you would have no game. Many imagine that people would regress back to stone or bronze age tech. In reality I think most groups would maintain some semblence of modern society or die. I mean if the community doesn't have people with the knowledge to farm, build irrigation, provide heat etc they will die. They will not suddenly remember how to flint nap arrow heads, make fire with 2 sticks etc. Sure you might have some groups that do this because of the local knowledge base (a caveman reinactor ) but if a group can not maintain the essential services they will die when the canned food, matches, clean water etc runs out. Now these same things also provide for many of the plot devices in a game. The local doctor has died of old age, he has trained a number of apprentices who can maintain the general health of the community but a new doctor is needed to complete their training. The last spare parts for the wind generators have been used, the PC's are tasked with finding more parts before the generators break down again. Etc

Re: How long does tech last after The End? I'm wondering, in all your posts you mention no maintenace. Where have all the people been for the past 40 years? I realize you are eliminating 99% of the population but 1% or even 0.1% still leaves quite a few people. Important items like power and water are not going to be ignored by successfulsurvivor groups. They will locate close to the power / water supply, do what they can to eliminate waste (cut excess power lines / water lines) and scavenge / stockpile / manufacture spare parts. I'm not saying every survivor group will do this, some will fail to paln and some will not be lucky enough to have utility engineers, mechanics, gunsmiths, farmers etc, but then again those groups probably will not be successful so won't be a factor 40 years after.

Re: How long does tech last after The End?

Re: How long does tech last after The End? Wind turbines, possibly, you say no spare parts but in reality you have lots of spare parts in the other wind turbines. If the society planned for it they could have taken many out of service for parts (99.9% died so electricity demand should be similarly reduced). Solar panels, I'm not sure. There are no moving parts so it seems likely but don't really know. Electric cars, maybe, the current crop, probably not. They are impractical now and I doubt they could survive long without modern support. However simple electric vehicles like golf carts, then maybe. Lead acid batteries are fairly simple so it is beleivable that the community could make them. As long as they recieved basic maintainance (oiled, kept in a dry location etc) then firearms will last a long time. 20-50 years is no problem there are plenty of WW1 & 2 era weapons still in use. When the US military replaced the Colt M1911A1 pistol with the Beretta M92 many had been in continuous military service for 50+ years. There are many 100+ year old weapons in usable condition and many still get a fair amount of range time.

Re: [PA Hero] Limited Nuclear War Not So Good I don't believe any of these people anymore. According to the nuclear winter people the oil fires in Kuwait were supposed to change the environment catastrophically. Didn't seem to work that way when they actually got lit off.

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Foriegner - women

Re: U.N. Armament

Re: Is this too dark for DC? I don't know where you are going with your campaign but there are a number of 70's and early 80's movies dealing with vigilantism and corrupt / system is broken themes. The Star Chamber (judges privately re-trying cases and hiring a hitman for punishment) and Magnum Force (one of the Dirty Harry movies) are two that I know off the top of my head. These usually dealt with a weak prosecution (criminals have more rights than the victims, evidence thrown out for technicalities etc) but might offer some ideas.

Re: U.N. Armament My guess would be the SKS followed by the FN-FAL & G3. The WW2 / Korean era weapons are probably still pretty common weapons in much of the third world. M1 Carbine, SKS, Mosin Nagant, Lee-Enfield & Enfield family, Mauser 98K, Springfield 1903, M3 smg, Sten, PPSh41 and MP40. These weapons were made in enormous quantities and still seem to turn up all over the place.

Re: Vikings? Well its not a HERO system book but GURPS Vikings was a great reference on real and mythological vikings. it probably wouldn't be hard to find on ebay and might even be available from SJG.

Re: Indiana Jones opportunity? I'd heard rumors of a 4th Indiana Jones movie, glad to hear it looks like its going to happen. I can't see Hero licensing the movies though, not really much reason since the only thing that isn't (basically) based on actual history is the characters and thats easy enough to fudge.

Re: Hangliding and Hero that sounds about average. I don't believe you need any kind of permit to own one but where you can fly is fairly well regulated. In the proper air currents they can stay airborne for quite some time (hours) by catching thermals (rising warm air). Not sure how I'd build one off hand, is there a glider built anywhere? TUV maybe?

Re: Modelling Explosives : TNT This is my chart, fairly simple except I like the mid level steps that some don't use (1/2 die and d6-1). I based it off the gun damage in 4th ed and earlier HERO books. It is based off of trial and error to find a good balance between accuracy and ease of use (rounded to a base of 100 since that is easy to calculate step to step vs an odd number like 104 or 93). Energy over that listed goes to the next catagory, so a bullet with 202J would be DC 4. If you don't like the d6-1 then you can ignore it and make that value apply to the 1/2, so DC5 would be 1.6KJ instead of 1.2KJ. DC Damage Energy 1 1 pip 100J > 2 1/2d6 150J 2+ 1d6-1 200J 3 1d6 400J 4 1d6+1 800J 5 1 1/2d6 1.2KJ 5+ 2d6-1 1.6KJ 6 2d6 3.2KJ 7 2d6+1 6.4KJ 8 2 1/2d6 9.6KJ 8+ 3d6-1 12.8KJ 9 3d6 25 KJ 10 3d6+1 50KJ 11 3 1/2d6 75KJ 11+ 4d6-1 100KJ 12 4d6 200KJ etc

Re: Modelling Explosives : TNT Oh and I would assume the original creator of the chart either made a typo or misunderstood the difference between muzzle velocity and muzzle energy. The first column is muzzle energy in Joules, the second is muzzle energy in ft/lbs. Velocity is not listed although MV is the common abbreviation for muzzle velocity. This chart is way off compared to what the wikipedia article says, 1 gram of TNT is 4184 joules, this chart would require 4 lbs of TNT for that force. Someone did a lot of work but unfortunately it looks like it was poorly researched. Then again wikipedia isn't always 100% and 4184 joules for a gram of TNT sounds high.

Re: Modelling Explosives : TNT

Re: Post-Apoc Adventures Lets not forget the decent wasteland wanderers vs the high tech faschist society (examples being Tank Girl and Rebel).

Re: Post-Apoc Adventures Morrow Project is still available http://www.timelineltd.com/ You can also get some of the Twilight 2000 stuff on drive through RPG http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/index.php?cPath=21_23 Tri-Tac's Fringeworthy, Rogue 417 source book is pretty good for ideas. http://www.members.aol.com/tritacgames/ BTRC did Down in flames, a bakers dozen of world wrecking scenarios http://www.btrc.net/html/catmain.html#CORPS Finally Aftermath is also still out there, the system is a bit of a mess but it is a great reference source and the adventures were pretty good. http://www.fantasygamesunlimited.net/ Steve has his work cut out for him, trying to top Aftermath as the ultimate fat tanker full of gas, leather clad bikers, glow in the dark zombies source book, but I have faith in his abilities.

Re: Rant? Speed in Hero Sorry I have to disagree with this. I am pretty much in complete agreement with the original post. Speed is a combination of quickness of movement as well as thought. INT is more of a knowledge (IQ) vs quickness of thought, although I have toyed with the idea if factoring INT into the SPD equation but you don't neccessarily need to be highly intelligent to be a good fighter (at least within most genres) while you don't see a lot of good clumsy fighters. If you are a speed 3 you can still do continous actions (suppressive fire, cover etc), you need a high speed to change your actions frequently. I see no justification for a fast scientist, unless there is something else behind that. The "Flash" can be built with high movement powers or high speed or a combination of both. A mostly non-combatant "Flash" should be built the first way unless they are so inhumanly fast that their committee discussion is faster than most peoples quick action.

Re: Rant? Speed in Hero The problem with speed is largely GM control. In a game where the GM strictly limits speed allowing only an occasional high speed character it doesn't matter, but try playing a speed 2 or 3 character in a game where all the other players are speed 4 and you will get sucked into the Speed vortex. I had an anti-terrorist character years ago (Danger International) Speed 3, no problems until I took him to Dundra Con and got into a game rescuing POW's, most of the other players came from the same GM's game, the "slow" characters were Speed 4, and there was even a "rich guy" who was speed 5. Needless to say I had a pretty boring time even the cannon fodder was as fast or faster than me. In my game at home all the PC's were 3's except for a martial artist type who was 4. I agree with your "chart" BTW, unfortunately not everyone uses it.

Re: Two-Weapon Fighting and Double Tap Talent Making Chow Yun Fat?