arcady

Re: Possession

Re: Romantic Fantasy Fantasy has no need for action. I've written a 'post romance' story: http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/libr/b/r/brianfw2/arcady_moving_on_forelfwood.html.html Which has been decently recieved, and put me in contact with two publishers - though I haven't bothered to pursue either of them yet. But anyway... Fantasy Romance can be anything which mixes themes of romance and fantasy in one degree or another. I personally am not a fan of the action genre - and find such fiction boring. I write in terms of characterization, and romances work a lot better for that. There's a criticism that fantasy cannot handle character depth, and I've been trying to challenge that in my writing - that of it which is 'genre fiction' at least.

Re: Standard FH5 Magic System? I suppose you could say one of the options presented is very much like the old edition version. split into 'colleges', needing a skill roll, pay points per spell, that sort of thing. The biggest difference is that you divide the real cost by three, and only pay that amount on the actual character. Thus a character is likely to have three times more spells than in past editions. The book also provides a number of other systems. I'm fond of The Gift where you get a VPP equal to five times the points put in, but then have a list of actual spells you know with it, and must learn new ones - but without needing points to do so. An oversimplification, but that is the gist of it. Several other options between those two extremes exist.

Re: Evolution of the races? Where they? In who's setting? This is a setting dependant statement. It does have a difference though. If they evolved they will likely have certain similarities and if they were designed they would likely have different similarities. In my own setting two races evolved - dragons and humans. Faerie are other worldly and just what they are is unknown - they are more like ghosts that never lived than anything else. The other races were made by dragons or humans through accident or intent - but this was done by using magic to mix races that cannot do so naturally, like cats and humans, with the aim of a specific result - a humanoid cat - rather than what would logically happen if you spliced cat DNA into human - something that probably would not live much beyond birth, if it even made it that far. Or in the case of accidents, magic simply grabbed up what was nearby and changed it to 'correct' for the arrogance of mages. There is in inherrant flavor difference in an evolved origin from a magical one. Once you use an evolved origin you are also postulating that your world fits scientific norms enough to allow for that eviolution. Evolution into humans will not happen on the back of a giant elephant - the physics to get the right atmosphere won't be there - but magical origins might work there, where you can push past the laws of physics or even declare them completely moot. That flavor difference will seep out intoother aspects of the world - creating very different end results.

Re: Turakian Age: Why should I buy it? If you want more illustrations shift the typeface down by two points and thus free up a hundred pages or so... All a setting book needs though is perhaps a generic male and female of each culture illustrated somewhere and a pic for each major highly unusual something. Take those and pose them for mood.

Re: Master Lists Prefab Question Honestly don't care how its delivered, just that it is - in whatever means makes it sooner. I can then work it to my own tastes.

Re: What's the best way to learn Hero? Champions was one of the smaller and rules light systems back when I learned it. I learned the basics in play, and found I could teach the system in five minutes or less. All you had to do then was show somebody how to count body and stun, and roll a given number or less on 3d6 for everything else. You can start with that, and let the details filter in over time. Let somebody else manage the speed chart, what this or that can do, and so on. Just do whatever you think you ought to be able to do given the genre you play in and what your character has been described as able to do. As you play, pay attention to the mechanics that pop up as a result of your choices in actions.

Re: DnD's Spiked Chain Just to dig up something old... Because I'm going through my Hero designer prefabs for my players, and wanted to check this thread for notes... The penalty skill levels stop the penalty you face when a shoter length weapon gets inside your reach. See page 186 of Fantasy Hero. That was done to reflect that once you get in, the chain user only has to pull back and use less chain - which is no harder than using the longer length of chain due to the flexibility. Oh, and stretching includes indirect for free, but has a limitation to remove that. So the weapon already has what it needs for the flail manuever. As for countering the weapon in DnD - it takes a team of opponants to do that, and that in itself makes the weapin very effective. You become a disporportionate drain on the opposition resources - freeing up the rest of your own team for other actions. And if you can be mobbed, you probably didn't take the right feats... Anything that can get you without mobbing you can do the same to any other tactic (such as the magic missile comment), but again you force the hand of this - forcing those missile to go against you and not the others on your team, who are then freed up to focus elsewhere. Put a spiked chain on -one- side of a DnD 3.x battle and it limits the other side's tactical choices more than other melee weapons do.

Re: Master Lists Prefab Question Any news on this front?

Re: Turakian Age: Why should I buy it? It does DnD better than DnD. You could read my review of it for why I say that and more: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10598.phtml

I just did up the religion section for the Western Kingdoms, the part of Fahla in which Lomyr rests. I'm still working on details for some of the gods in the pantheon. Thoughts? Ideas for the spots that are empty among the Pantheon?

Re: Evolution of the races? True. In our own world there are plenty of species that compete with each other over the same niche. With humans, we have managed to remove our competitors before the rise of civilization--so we no longer know exactly what they were like. But this did indeed used to be a multiple intelligent primate world, particularly in light of modern DNA finally ending the debate about Neandertals, which were indeed a different species that likely never intermixed with us. http://www.archaeology.org/9709/newsbriefs/dna.html Throughout most of our history though there was more than one intelligent ape walking around. So the people who say in so many of these kinds of threads that multiple intelligent species make no sense need to relook at Earth's own past. If the two groups had found seperate geography long enough, they might both have risen into civilization. We don't really know why the Neandertals went away, we can only guess we killed them. All it takes for one species to become two is seperation for a time. This can give minor variation such as with different shades of field mice, or something major like the different between African monkeys and New World monkeys - both of which rose up out of proto-simians (similar to Lemurs) who themselves crossed the Atlantic. If it had been Homo Erectus 400,000 years ago that left Africa for Asia, Europe, and the Americas and not Homo Sapien Sapiens who did it 40,000 years ago we might have four seperate species today. (And it is interesting to note there that humans have been in Europe and Asia about as long as they have been in the Americas - the same population settled all three regions after splitting in Central Asia.) ------------------------------------------------------------ In Fahla, most of the races are offshoots of humanity made through magical intervetion. The Dragons engineered the Naga by abducting populations of Cro-Magnon (Which is a Homo Sapien Sapien lacking a BMW and Latte Frappuccino). The Faerir world has bled into the mortal world in places, and where it did Faerie has taken people and left them changed - producing the Fey races such as Centaur, Pixies, and so on. The other non humans came about from the work of men upon their own people - crafting 'beastlings' by magically mixing them with animals.

Re: No progression in Champions "Theatrix" is a diceless RPG that has progression which amounts to doing an updated rewrite based on an essay every so often. The character thus gains some things and loses some things with no conrete methods to it. You really need the right tone for this sort of thing though - without development of some kind a character will begin to feel stagnant and the game will thus start to drag for the player - which can then spread out to other players.

Re: Fantasy Hero PBEM I'll be -home- sometime after 5pm PST, and able to type it in and send it back to you then. Did you send it to the GM as well?

Re: Fantasy Hero PBEM Once you apply, you have to wait for shadowpup to approve you. If somebody sent me something, I didn't get it. I would send it to shadowpup as well, so he can decide on it. All I've offered to do is play typist if you don't have the app and shadowpup doesn't have the time.

Re: Growing love for Star Hero and Sci-Fi games. Well... women and gay men spend more time looking at and obsessing over attractive women than straight men do... And look at Cosmo - cheesecake sells better to women than it does to men. Men have been trained to feel guilty over their natural attraction to the female form, but women have been trained to obsess over it. By contrast, as children boys only want art with boys in it, and girls only want art with boys in it... Psycho-analyze that if you want. I'm not sure how you could get Star Hero to appeal more. Honestly not too many people do science fiction gaming. I suppose you could try to capture a license, but Hero has never done licenses. A new setting book of some kind perhaps? One with a good dose of justified cheesecake in the art and text (trust me - put in holographic clothing as a fashion accessory in your setting and it will boost sales of the game add pleasure bots for even more. I'd bet you Neuromancer didn't become a hit because of the cyberspace, but because of the scene with the female assassin in the coffin-hotel. Likewise one of the sequel novels were he has a conversation with a naked teenager in orbit... fan service sells in the text). Somehow, for Star Hero to do better, you have to convince people it's a better game system than something like d20 Future. Unfortunately d20 Future has a lot of well done unoffensive cheesecake art, as does d20 Modern - thus by default it will always be preferable in the market even if the actual game engine makes first edition Star Hero look like a masterpiece.

Re: Looking for random-roll HERO WoW I'd love to see the code for that thing. There's a Champions one here: http://www.trimira.com/hero_stuff/champions_random.html Unfortunately it doesn't have the background generator part of the Fantasy Hero one (which looks like it is based on Heroes of Legend - they put out a Heroes of the Modern day (and supers and science fitction) as well. I've got both books and I recognize the table entries).

Re: What is it about Champions?

Re: Gladiator's Net - what stats should it have? These grab, bind, disarm options sound good. Is +3 too high though? Or maybe even too low (probably not - +3 has a massive impact in Hero, especially on the Heroic scale). I suspect Nets are very good at this, but just how good? The character I was giving this too was armed with a long spear as her other weapon, but I may down shift that to a 1 handed weapon so she can use them together gladiator style. http://home.pacbell.net/arcady0/Hero/Iola.pdf (that has an older entangle net still - a correction will have to wait until I get home - but it just shows you what made me start this thread).

Re: When I Am the Benevolent Ruler.... Ergo... Teddy Roosevelt was evil and Adolf Hitler was good. Teddy was a hunter, and a bit of an adventurer, the real villain in his era though might better be William McKinley - who put us into the Spanish American war in order to sieze Spanish territory. We could say the same of presidents like Andrew Jackson and Lincoln who fought in Indian wars in order to sieze land... Hitler however, rebuilt a plundered economy, gave his people pride and took them from massive depression and the bottom of Europe to an industrial powerhouse with a strong sense of civic and national pride - and he did it all out of patriotism and protecting the nation in a pre-emptive strike against those who might attack it if they weren't stopped first - namely Jews, Gypsies, Communists, and the other European powers that had so devastated his nation in the Great War. Yeah... got to be careful about one-liners, they really let you put the wrong spin on things. The reall issue here is not good, evil, or neutral, but 'overlord.' Once you've got an overlord somebody's gonna get stepped on. So give me any evil overlord I will paint them as heroic, or any good overlord and I will show their villainy. So what would I do? Put in a document and a tradition of law that limits myself and all future people in my position.

Re: Gladiator's Net - what stats should it have? Ok, well given that a long spear does 2d6, and a broadsword 1d6+1, how effective of a hold should a net have?

Re: Master List of Distinctive Features Insert unpopular ethnic group here. Sounds more like a social disadvantage.

Re: Gladiator's Net - what stats should it have? Um... I want it to make sense for what a net ought to be able to do.

I figure it's an entangle with OAF, Strength Minimum, and Real Weapon, but how much entangle, and what strength minimum?

Re: Master List of Distinctive Features Birthmark Branded Third Eye Vitiligo (the skin tone disease Michael Jackson has)