Pogo

Re: Penalty of Death It's an intriguing premise; here are some things you may want to consider. If the characters have robotic bodies, then the microchip doesn't need to be in the brain. The government might be better off using a combination of methods: a remote shutdown procedure, a tracking device, and some sort of rare fuel as a power supply. The disadvantage is that if the bad guys figure out the shutdown signal or the tracking device, then the PCs aren't needed any more. Explaining why the robots can't just be remote controlled is left as an exercise for the GM Another wrinkle to consider is what if the players slip their leashes. They're now hunted by terrorists, government agencies, and retirement accounts, oh my. As far as villains go, what are their resources? If they can outfit people with artificial bodies, suicide bombers just got a lot more dangerous -- appropriate for at least some Dark Champions campaigns.

Re: How Fast Can I Go? How did it go? How did it go? Did you go fast? Did you go slow? Seriously, have you rescued your wife yet, and if so what happened?

Re: Train, Train Chaosium's "Horror on the Orient Express" might help, but the signal to noise ratio might be low for your purposes. In addition, Publius has posted some excellent plans for subway cars, and hinted about doing a train.(http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35446)

Re: Limitations You Would Like to See More Often Cats: Desmond Morris covered this in Cat Watching. Usually the person who's allergic to or dislikes cats will not look directly at the cat, not make noises at the cat, and not make quick gestures at the cat. Most cats find this very inviting, so of course they head for that person. Cats challenge each other by staring and making noise, so the one with the allergy is saying "I am friendly. I will not hurt you. You can surely trust me" in catese. Smoke: I suspect this is a matter of sensitivity. I don't smoke. My wife is allergic to cigarette smoke. She notices it much more quickly than I do, even if we trade places. Presumably the same sort of thing holds true for smokers vs non-smokers. I'm guessing fewer smokers than non-smokers don't mind cigarette smoke, so the non-smoker reacts more strongly. Buttered toast and carpets: Some secrets man was not meant to know. Oh, and a limitation I'd like to see brought in from [dagnabbit, can't remember the game]: -0, power will fail with 3 consecutive identical descriptions (eg: "I punch him" "I punch him" "I punch him.") It gets boring after a while.

Re: Who is the best Archaic/Anachronism/whatever in comics? Who was/is your favorite Ninja in comics? Oasis -- that may be stretching the definition of Ninja though.

Re: Limitations You Would Like to See More Often When players were first learning the system (Hero for one group, Torg for another), I was very tolerant of this sort of behavior, but after two or three months, I started using time limits. After around minute of reasonable thinking (should I attack with X, Y, or Z), or half of minute of dithering (should I recover? attack? dodge? snarf chips?) I would say, "OK, you're holding your action," and move on to the next character. When Mr. Indecisive had a plan, he could take his action. It wasn't a problem for most of the players, but two players took around five months to get the hang of it. Combat moved much more rapidly after that.

Re: New JLU Tonight The time slot may be a function of the content. The second episode had a fairly high body count, including some of the good guy grunts. Yes there are more violent shows in earlier timeslots, but for the most part they aren't cartoons. CN may just be trying to cover their butts. As for the other decisions, I'm afraid they're listening to the voices in my blender, and my blender always lies.

Re: How Fast Can I Go? Your character can move at ~583 km/s (7 phases at 1000 km/s). The Marianas trench is 11 km deep. Assuming Atlantis is at the bottom of that trench, you can do 45 laps from surface to Atlantis in one phase. Mark Spitz will be envious. Of course, since you are displacing all that water, see my previous post for the effects on local property values. You will make big waves and boil away some small fraction of the ocean. Actually, from what I've gleaned about shock waves in incompressible fluids, you're boiling lots of water, since the local temperature scales as the Mach number squared, and you're at Mach 388 on the average (Mach 666 if you just look at one phase). So, you want to get in and out as quickly as possible. The speed of sound in water is rather complicated (see http://www.npl.co.uk/acoustics/techguides/soundseawater/content.html#UNESCO for example), and this is a game, so we use the simplified value, 1.5 km/s. As long as you travel faster than that, they won't get any warning from sonar -- you'll outrace the returning pulse. Fortunately, you won't be exceeding the local speed of light, so Cherenkov radiation won't give you away. If we assume no visual contact or magic, the first warning they'll have is when the pressure wave hits. Hard. Very hard. It will be localized, since it falls off as 1/r^2, but I would not want to be in Atlantis when you arrived. Do you have a CvK? Is your wife in an armored cell? Can she breathe water if it breaks? What are her feelings about parboiling? At 1.6 km/s these questions are somewhat important. At 100 km/s, they're critical. Do not go in at full speed. OK, you've got your wife back. Now for the getaway. If you move 1" with your megascale, that puts you on the surface. Now would be a good time to contemplate decompression and the bends You'll be fine if you held your breath, but if your spouse has been breathing pressurized air, she's dead unless you get her into a pressure chamber. You might be better off swimming at constant depth to a different ocean, then calmly ascending.

Re: Determining Gravitic Pull Very nice job. Had I rep, I would give it to you. Then I would add missile deflection to the writeup. Then if we add a charge to it, and start it rotating, we get one or more viewers having baaad flashbacks to graduate school

Re: How Fast Can I Go? Some of this depends on the SFX of your movement, but assuming the character actually displaces the water he's moving through, lots of spectacular things happen. Nearby sea life seriously messed up from the pressure waves. Sperm whales stun other creatures with their sonar clicks. Your pressure wave far exceeds their sounds. "Nearby" is relative. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say 1 km easy. You may also leave a bright path through the water. Ship propellors can produce sonoluminescence -- basically converting sound into light inside bubbles. You're churning up the water a lot more than a ship's prop. If you're moving through the water headfirst, then the surface area is around 0.3 m^2 (very rough estimate, much larger values if Liefield draws you). 10^6 meters/phase means you displace around 3e5 m^3 of water each time you move. A 50 m high, 20 m thick triangular wave would be 600 meters long. That makes for a tsubstantial tsunami in one phase. Just think what you can do with a few held actions How fast do you go before you start vaporizing water? Not as fast as you might think. Remember, you're leaving a vacuum behind until the water rushes in to fill it. Water boils very quickly in a vacuum.

Re: Requiem

Re: Aldaric Gaming Presents: The Illuminati OK, here's a proposal. Use whichever sentence you find useful ?????, hereafter group X, have more advanced weapons than any government. They have members in most defense contractors, as well as the DoD. These individuals will report on promising avenues of destruction. Appropriate saboteurs will then be sent out to make these avenues seem unworkable. The Sgt. York would have worked if not for group X special ops. Delaying learning isn't enough. Group X also tries to deflect research into less dangerous areas. The Question was almost right -- aglets originally had a sinister purpose, but not anymore. To this end they use seduction, bribery, blackmail, diversion, and on rare occasions, force. Allison's husband asks if she really wants to do this work, or would she be happier elsewhere. Defense contractor Fred's girlfriend wants him to move to Clemson, SC. He'll have to find a new job. Oddly enough, a lucrative one will have just opened up. Pat has been encouraged to change companies so that photos will not be published -- most group X members don't like this sort of correction, but accept it as necessary. Recently group X discovered a combination of sound, light and odors which makes most people more agreeable, more pliant. This is not a simple box agents can carry around to make their jobs easier. However, the components can be hidden in an office building or a large home. Rigging someone's apartment is not yet possible without the owner's cooperation, but is being worked on. In the meantime, rental properties in the DC, LA, and San Diego areas are quietly changing hands . . . .

Re: Bio-Booster Armor Guyver for Champions You can reduce the stun they take and be fine. At around 30 con + def, the bullet will stun them with a probability of 34/216 ~ 0.15 (I think I got the math right). Throw in some fairly high DCVs compared to humans, so we assume a 9 or lower to hit (misses include the SFX of a bullet glancing off the creature's armor). 5.6% of the shots fired will stun the beasties. OK, that's still too high, as I assume fusillades of gunfire didn't work. Fortunately, 25% damage resistance stops the stunning fast. 3/4(damage - 10) > 20 works out to needing 50 stun, a 3/216 chance (~1/216 if you go by shots rather than hits). So, what's this do to our poor Guyver? 4d6 armor piercing against PD 10ish, Con 20ish, Body 18ish, 25% reduction on stun only. An average roll does 9 body, so two hits and they're dying or dead. How often are they stunned? (3/4(damage - 5) > 20 --> 32 stun to make them Stunned. This happens a little over half the time (not going to do the math right now). If that's not frequent enough for you, drop the piercing and add more d6 to the HKA. You don't need it with the way the villains are statted out. Congratulations on capturing the flavor of combat in the manga. I think your self-assessment was too harsh, and I'm a nit-picker.

Re: Bio-Booster Armor Guyver for Champions It is thorough and readable. I saw the first 2 movies many years ago, and this brought back memories. Thank you for doing this. I have a few nits. The Zoanoids' Susceptibility to being dead isn't a disadvantage. It's a clever way to simulate their evaporating after death, but it should probably be a special effect instead. Also the strength for Guyver Gigantis appears to be wrong. If I didn't miss anything, 8 + 100 (multipower) = 108, not 118. I could have missed an extra +10 though. Combat in this universe is brutish and short. Con (~18) + Def (~10) for the villains I checked is less than the expected stun from their own attacks. Guyver 1 drops into turkey carving mode with a 4d6 HKA.

Re: Aldaric Gaming Presents: The Illuminati

Re: Pulp Stargate! Iron Chefgate -- Using a stargate set to an unknown place, cooks have to go in, catch something, and make several meals out of it. The team with the fewest fatalities (including tasters ) wins. Stargate Springfield -- Homer gets a Gou'ald and sets about conquering every brewery and donut shop on the planet. Eventually the Gou'ald kills itself rather than submit to the indignity. Stargate Trading Spaces -- Trading Spaces, now with planets. This won't end well.

Re: Aldaric Gaming Presents: The Illuminati Have you had your acorn stash tested for ergot? Nice website, by the way. How did you do the Easthaven maps?

Re: Aldaric Gaming Presents: The Illuminati For group one, I'd go with "The Eight" and have fifteen members. After all, if I were part of an enduring cabal, I'd hardly advertise the real number of leaders. For group two, the motto should be Latin for "we guard the guardians." As for a name, "Devi" might work. She is Shiva's consort in at least one translation, and after the Trinity tests, Oppenheimer quotes, "now I am become death, destroyer of worlds." Or, in keeping with the principle behind group one's name, they could be "The Goldfish Fanciers." If you want a snake theme for group 3, Jormungand (The Migard Serpent) kind of works for a world-encircling consipiracy. Moving away from the reptillian, "The Order", "Spec Ops" [1], or "Renewal." Good luck, and I hope these suggestions don't drive good ones from your head [1] Sorry, I just finished the latest Thursday Next book and had to work something in.

Re: The Cutting Edge SuperBase...what's in it? You could go with some of the stuff PARC was dreaming up before AT&T broke it. They had smart badges keyed to individuals, so any room could become that person's workspace. This will offer entertaining possibilites for villains who can get into the system. Spinning tops of doom would also be helpful, as would a butler's quarters -- someone has to polish those tops.

Re: Ideas for Cliched Cartoon Powers Mind control: only to make victim do something incredibly stupid ("These blockbuster bombs don't go off unless you hit them juuust right"). Damage reduction: SFX is character gets squished into a disk and spins around a few times, or beak moves to new spot on or near head. 3d6 major transform: X into X with rockets. or 30 pt VPP, requires skill roll, only to add rockets to something. SFX must include a crosscut saw.

Re: HERO's Newest Fan Innocent feline? Steve don't know any kitties, do he? Mr. Long, I believe your supposed cat is something else in disguise. Have you ever seen your cat and Death Tribble together?

Re: What's the most ridiculous PC you've ever been subjected to? The Solipsist, a superpowered philosopher designed by an undergraduate philosophy major many years ago. The Solipsist had an ego drain, a body drain, and several defense drains because he could convince you that you don't exist. His own defenses were based on his denial of your attacks: "Since you don't exist, you can't have attacked me, so I could not possibly have been injured."

Re: The Incredibles -- WITH SPOILERS Gives a new meaning to "training regimen," doesn't it.

Re: Quantum manipulation Damage reduction or extra DCV since you don't know exactly where the character is. Transform person to person with X d6 unluck as the odds literally are against them. The indirect explosions suggested by Madstone are good. You might also consider entangles (watch as I increase the electroweak coupling between your atoms and the floor's). N-ray vision could be neutrino-based. For a more deadly character, consider the effects radiation can have on people. Finally, you might want to consider suppressions or dispells on electromagnetic devices (lasers, radios, compasses, remote entry keys ).

It is very dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue. And a very ladylike grue at that.