austenandrews

Re: Pulp sci-fi movie trailer Heh, very cool.

Re: Lost World critter Now if you shrank the PCs down to two pounds...

Re: Lost World critter What kind of Lost World are you runnin'? Only two pound critters in mine are the fleas.

Re: The Godzilla Scenario I once figured that those tall inflatable Godzillas are just about right for standard Hero scale. Just sayin'.

Re: Lost World critter Handy. With these, you don't have to kill two dinosaurs to replace the wings on your crashed biplane. Saves you a bullet.

Re: Defining the "Mystery Creature". Personally I'm fascinated by ecosystems and evolutionary niches. The creatures don't have to be intelligent, just evolved to fill a particular niche. Maybe the arrival of Earth biology has brought them food/resources beyond their native niche, so they're expanding out of control. So the question becomes, what role would these extra-dimensional thingies have evolved to fill? And why do humans (or other Terran organisms) overfeed them?

Re: "Neat" Pictures Plus it needs a crane underneath so it can ride over other boats and pluck them out of the water. Man, we should be engineers.

Re: "Neat" Pictures Awesome! Can you inflate a blimp from its roof? 'Cause that would double-rule.

Re: "Neat" Pictures He's going to put somebody's eye out!

Re: "Neat" Pictures

Re: "Neat" Pictures Holy crap. That's beautifully horrible. How many people die there every year?

Re: Jokes A-huh-huh huh-huh-huh huh-huh-huh-huh He said "consummation."

Re: "Neat" Pictures I'm thinking a rocket-propelled lightsaber chainsaw. Now who's going to PhotoShop a clip from Texas Chainsaw Massacre?

Re: The Future of Small Arms Of course economics doesn't always boil down to the least expensive ammunition. If I can see through a brick wall, for example, then one fifty-dollar bullet that will punch through is worth more than the equivalent cost of ordinary bullets. But that wall-piercing round is not practical or economical in many combat situations (and even less so for policework and personal defense) so the ability to switch between types of projectiles might wind up being the most economical solution as a general military weapon. Off the top of my head, I'd think something like a gauss rifle might fit that bill the best. Not only is it theoretically cleaner, quieter and more efficient than known chemical propellants, but it doesn't require a stout firing mechanism that can absorb and redirect an explosion. That would indicate to me an increased ability to vary in projectile size and shape. (Not, mind you, that it wouldn't have to be a rugged weapon. But imagine the ability to swap out loading/firing chambers as easily as reloading.) Concerns about charging batteries to me is the equivalent of an 18th century man worrying about how an armored tank could possibly carry enough black powder for its cannon. We're talking about 300 years in the future. "Technology will out." I can easily envision gauss ammunition that, like today's bullets, carries its own power source. Imagine a soldier with several clips, each with a different type of ammunition (piercing, exploding, nonlethal, etc.). Each clip contains its own firing chamber. When he pops the clip into his rifle (or whatever it's called), the clip mechanically forces the weapon into the right geometry for that ammo. (This needn't be a complicated mechanism. Two axes and a narrow range of movement, all made of whatever light, rugged, probably nanoengineered material is common for the time. Everything locked down by a simple mechanical system no more complicated than today's automatic handguns.) Now the weapon is correctly shaped for the given ammunition. Pull the trigger (whatever constitutes a trigger in three centuries) and the chemical/whatever power storage mechanism sends its charge/current into the rifle. The rails light up, the projectile shoots out and the next one pops in. Ultimately, the rifle itself may essentially just be an aiming system, as high or low-tech as the mission requires. The whole process needn't be any more difficult than loading and firing today's firearms, and in fact may be easier and less likely to fail. Of course the odds are good that three centuries will produce a mechanism less analogous to modern firearms than what I just described. My point is, futuristic weapons can (and very likely will) be just as rugged and easy to maintain as plain ol' exploding bullets. Now advance ammunition technology alongside it, with the ability to put gauss-firing power in a bullet-size projectile. There's no telling what kinds of weird effects we could see.

Re: The Future of Small Arms I'm inclined to think nanoengineered materials and machines will open up some more efficient/economical/practical options. I'm also inclined to think that high-velocity projectiles (not necessarily solid) will remain the primary method of delivering energy to a target (though momentum may not necessarily be the primary carrier of energy).

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe Zen physics? I don't know if it's art, but I like it.

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe One idea I've used is that while small changes leave the timeline intact (history corrects for the change), big changes spin off an unstable timeline that falls apart catastrophically. Not only does this cause needless suffering (the primary timeline is unchanged) but the time travelers must flee the timeline before they are destroyed with it. So killing Hitler is in general a bad idea. It is possible to make big changes, but extreme care must be taken that the divergent timeline is not unstable (according to whatever hyperdimensional mathematics serves the current plot).

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe

Re: A Little Discussion The author makes a lot of good arguments that should have been reasonably obvious from the get-go, but for whatever reason weren't. However he also employs some assumptions that to me should be just as obviously erroneous. For one thing, "nanobots" wouldn't be microscopic versions of macroscopic machines. Frex communicating via radio, as discussed above, is a silly condition to debunk. They'd be far more likely to use a chemical medium, like microscopic organisms. Also the assumption that nanobots would be made of "refined metals" and not complex molecules makes about as much sense as a medieval engineer positing spaceships made of wood or stone. Nanotechnology will refine high-tech materials long before it creates microscopic robots. We probably won't recognize the materials they're made of. Likewise the assumption that a group of cooperative nanobots will be roughly homogeneous doesn't hold up to any scrutiny. He may as well debunk the idea of building a computer because you can't just string together integrated circuits. It should be quite obvious that performing a complex task will require a veritable ecosystem of chemicals and nanomachines, some large, some small, some high-energy, some low-energy, with high redundancy due to quantity. Like as not they will be coordinated by a mechanism somewhat greater than nanoscale. The article is a good topic starter, though. (Btw, wouldn't a nuke-level EMP knock out a nuclear missile?)

Re: Neolithic Hero

Re: Neolithic Hero If you're throwing out historical accuracy, why not have towns & temples in a paleolithic setting?

Re: Neolithic Hero I've never done it but I've always wanted to. Not sure I could interest any players in it, though.

Re: Another advanced and weird material In the early 90's I was poking around UT's research center when I came across a door marked "Nanotechnology." Behind it was a room apparently empty, but for a single chair.

Re: RIP: Wilson "Bob" Tucker I shared a "smooth" with him backstage at a convention when I was probably 16. Cool old guy.

Re: Horror Hero: Cliches to Avoid