Beetle

Re: A Thread for Random Musings The first time I saw a post by "Owl Wife of SS" I thought of something completely different than Super Squirrel. I need to put the World War II books down for a bit, I think.

Re: Conan vs. Elric The important thing is that while Conan and Elric are having their battle, Fafhrd and Grey Mouser will be robbing them of their gold, their wine and their women.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings I tried to give rep to somebody and was stunned to get the "you must give out rep to others" statement. It had been a while ago that I gave rep to that person. I'm going to make it a point to give out rep more often.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... This one is along the same lines from the GURPS Firefly campaign I'm in. "We get much more done when the captain's unconscious!" Our captain is a pessimist who agonizes over every decision. He spent the last session in the infirmary recovering from wounds. Meanwhile, the rest of us formulated and executed a plan, accomplishing all our goals for the evening in record time.

Re: PLEASE ! No more 'What would your character do ?' threads

Re: A Thread for Random Musings I'm wondering how long it will be before someone creates a thread named "What Would Your Character Do On A Swift Boat?" and how soon I'll light myself on fire afterwards...

Re: The cranky thread Here's an update on my lost shipment from the 1/2 price sale (yes, it unfortunately still belongs in the cranky thread). Whoever got my books handed them back to UPS. Instead of attempting to deliver them to the proper address, UPS decided to throw their hands up and send the books back to the shipper. At last report, my books are in Hodgkins, Illinois on their way back to San Francisco. If UPS attempts to charge for shipping to get the books back to Massachusetts, I shall move well beyond cranky.

Re: What Would Your Character Do? #69 Black Arrow - She'd hand over all information on villains to the proper authorities after entering the data into her team's system. Information on teen heroes would be given to the team (minus secret IDs). She'd try to warn those marked for termination by Viper, and try to recruit/offer help to any threatened heroes. Darkshadow - He'd keep all the information for himself. Nothing gets passed on to anybody. Teen heroes will get suitably creepy warnings that they need to take care. Maybe a note (with a DS throwing knife) left in the kid's locker at school. He'd also try to nudge the teen heroes towards someplace where they could get help. (at no time would he entertain the idea of taking a teen sidekick)

Re: What Would Your Character Do? #68 Black Arrow - Her reaction would depend on the world leaders. Are they actually going to hand over power to Megascourge? If so, she's dropping out of site while using her contacts to either join a resistance movement, or create one if she has to (though she'd rather be the lieutenant than the leader). Darkshadow - I'll take "assassinations" for $1000, Alex. Captain Atlas - Probably died in True Hero [TM] fashion fighting the space monster. If not, he'll boldly fight Megascourge in public at the first available opportunity, if just to prove that no man has the right to dominate others, and that nothing can defeat the human spirit (cue inspirational music)

Re: The cranky thread UPS delivered my second order of damaged books last Tuesday. The only problem is, they delivered it to the wrong address. The driver checked off that he delivered it to the right address, but somebody was home all day on Tuesday, and no UPS truck ever showed up at the house. UPS (who were properly apologetic to give them their due) is now conducting an investigation to see what part of the phantom zone my books ended up in. Grrr... Note to self: buy off that 2d6 of Unluck at the first available opportunity.

Re: Got my 'damaged' books today... Now that I've seen what "damaged" means for myself, I'll be more than happy to buy them in the future at $5 off.

Every time I've played in a sci-fi campaign where the universe was entirely GM created, it has been a big disaster. The main reason for that was that everybody brought there own assumptions to the game, and acted as if that was the tech level. One GM and I had a disagreement about whether my pilot's evasive maneuvers would send people hurtling around the bridge of our small ship. He said yes (Star Trek fan), I thought not (Babylon 5 fan). Sure he was the GM, and it's his campaign, but he never said we didn't have seatbelts. He assumed we'd all just figure there were no seat restraints and we all figured there would be restraints, so nobody thought to discuss it. Numerous other small dustups and misconceptions about things such as sensors, shields, weapons, communications, just about anything you could name. The only sci-fi campaigns I've played in that have worked was one where we were told "the tech is same as in the Honor Harrington books" and the current campaign I'm in which is actually set in the "Firefly" universe. That set a baseline for the campaigns that everybody could understand. So how do those of you in GM-made universes get everybody on the same page?

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Here's Lawrence Watt-Evans' reply to why he wasn't going to collect his Ethshar short stories in one limited volume: "[T]he book would be relatively hard to find and wouldn't exactly make me rich. (You do understand, of course, that the underlying purpose of Ethshar is to make me rich.)"

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... I just finished Dragon Venom, the third book in the "Dragon" trilogy by Lawrence Watt-Evans. I really like LWE's stuff, and enjoyed the first couple of books immensly, but the finale wasn't quite as good. Part of the reason is there's a gap of several years between the second and third book (a device I don't like), but also the end seems to come out of nowhere, complete with a deus ex machina style solution to their problems. All in all, I'd give the complete series a solid "B". Worth picking up in paperback. On a side note, while I was happy to hear that LWE has been contracted to do another trilogy for TOR, I was very disappointed to hear that the Ethshar series is on indefinate hold. Those kind of tales are where his style works best, and it's a niche that nobody else is really filling in the fantasy genre now.

Re: Character Help: name for female powerd-armor Muslim heroine Maybe it's a 60s/70s type campaign. Remember Black Lightning, Black Panther, Black Goliath and Black Talon?

Re: Character Help: name for female powerd-armor Muslim heroine As long as you realize that the first time she takes knockback, the "crescent roll" jokes will start flying.

Re: Character Help: name for female powerd-armor Muslim heroine It's obvious and probably way overused, but what about The Arabian Knight?

Re: Answers & Questions Q: Why do you have so many accounts at the Vatican Bank? A: The foil seal has been broken.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... This isn't really a new quote, but it came up the other day and I thought I'd share. I was running an FH campaign with two experienced gamers and two fairly new gamers, one of whom was playing a sorcerer. The sorcerer announced his intention to open up a pouch they'd gotten off a dead spell caster. The player, being new, didn't think to cast a detect magic spell before opening it. Since it was trapped, I decided to give him a break. New player: I'll open the pouch Me (GM): Make an intelligence roll. New player: What's an intelligence roll? Old player: It's a life preserver the GM throws you when you're about to do something really stupid.

Re: What is Evil?

Re: A Thread for Random Musings I'm losing patience with my current audiobook. [Avery Brooks]I was promised smugglers. I'm on disc 5 out of 7, and there aren't any smugglers! Why? Why? Why?[/Avery Brooks] It's wierd enough that it's read by the guy who used to host BBC's Ground Force (he's the author). I keep waiting for him to give gardening tips.

Re: What is Evil? Here's the excerpt from Lawrence Watt-Evans' "Rules of Fantasy" about good and evil that I referenced on the other thread. He's aiming at prospective fantasy authors, but I've found his rules helpful in being a better GM as well.

Re: Goofy hero names that you still love I once made up a gnome jester for D&D named Hool (of the clan O'Hoop). Nobody would ever let me use him in a game... The last Champions character I got to use more than once was a new addition to a campaign that had gotten a bit dark. Partly to offset that, and partly because I'd been reading too much "Power of Shazam" I came up with Captain Atlas. He was strong, he flew, and he was very 1950s.

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? Hey, we all knew better than to get involved with this, it just didn't stop us. (Maybe WotC can use involvement in this thread as an example of the difference between Intelligence and Wisdom in their next edition... ) Interesting point about Tolkein. I'm re-reading LotR beginning to end for the first time since high school. While I'm enjoying the story and the language, I do find myself wondering what the Gross National Product of Mordor is. How does Sauron feed his troops (does he trade with the Haradrim?) Lawrence Watt-Evans has a list of "Rules for Fantasy Writers" one of which is that evil people don't believe themselves to be evil. Everybody thinks he's in the right (something he uses to good effect in his novel "Touched by the Gods")

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? Interesting question, but I'm not sure that it really applies. In the case of Star Trek and X-Men, the authors are deliberately creating situations with real-world counterparts. In other words, they are intentionally creating in their works a fictional variant of real-life situations with the purpose of making the reader think. That's not usually the case in a fantasy RPG.