Markdoc

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

Re: How do you visualize combat?

Re: Components and Failed Spells Also a useful general rule is that if you fail a skill roll, you can't try it again until you get some sort of a bonus to the skill. Now you can get a bonus simply by taking extra time, but "extra time" steps up So if your caster fails once, he can try again taking a full phase and if he fails again - in a turn. If he fails a third time, he can try again - but it'll take him a minute, then again - in 5 minutes (and so on). Alternatively, he can try to get a bonus another way (help from another caster, using a complementary skill, whatever). But he shouldn't be allowed to try every phase without penalty until he succeeds. Basically if it fails the first time - ur doin it wrong - try another way. cheers, Mark

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

Re: Masterful Ambush I'd tend to agree with people that this is probably better done with skills, but given that ambushed (surprised) people are at half or zero DCV and hit location penalties, you could do it using change environment, giving people within the area of effect minuses to their PER rolls - thus their ability to spot hidden foes before a surprise attack. cheers, Mark

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero It needs to be applicable to social situations and readily comprehensible. There's been a fad for the idea that social conflict should be analogous to physical conflict, which leads to all sorts of strange constructs like "a social knockout" or "social hitpoints". Getting a system which encouraged interaction in an interesting way and which recognised the difference between a "cutting remark" and 12 inches of sharpened steel would interest me. Rules whereby players are "forced" to act/react in a certain way - with a few exceptions. Hero, oddly enough. It has plenty of social interaction skills, plus the ability to build and more if I need 'em, plus a PRE attack system for those cases where the interaction is more antagonistic than interactive. It has social limitation and reputation rules for enforcing consequences. It would reward players for interacting sensibly - nothing more than that. cheers, Mark

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Yep. Props to Mike. Last night I watched 28 Days After, which was a bit formulaic, but reasonable fun. Tonight I watched the first discs of Witch Hunter Robin. Oh and on the topic of movies, Mike, the place I got my latest haul has both Sympathy for Mr Vengeance and Lady Vengance cheers, Mark

Re: Relativistic Effects of Interstellar War And just a couple of peripheral comments: They let you off with 50 hours? Slackers At the NIH, there was a T shirt some labs used to give noobies, with the lab name on the back and the slogan "You know, 60 hours a week just isn't going to cut it here" - and it was funny, because there was a large element of truth in it.

Re: Relativistic Effects of Interstellar War I've snipped the rest of the rant, but that doesn't mean I disagree with it. As I see it, there is no alternative to the idea that tech people are going to have to accept either finding another job, or retraining on a regular basis (more accurately, retraining as a way of life). There are, and always will be (for the foreseeable future), jobs that don't require this, but more and more of them will. There is, however, an alternative to making it an intolerable extra pressure. That alternative, though, is cultural, not technological: it means making retraining/uptraining an explicit part of the work contract. Both the institute where I am working now in the US and my home institute in Denmark do this. In Denmark, the process is institutionalized: every year, workers meet with their boss one on one, to discuss (and write down, to make formal) their mutual goals for the coming year, and rate how they did on meeting last year's goals. This can include identifying training needs and arranging the necessary training - that's considered part of your normal work week (and making it happen becomes your boss' job, so he can't fob it off into your spare time). For me, it's even more extreme. I have the contractual right to take 1 year in 5 off work for retraining, if I want. In practice, I never have: I just couldn't afford the time - but this year I am taking 3 months off my regular work (I'm still paid) for training. Making retraining an integral part of the job makes a huge difference. Oddly enough, this seems to be the summer of the sabbatical: 4 of my senior colleagues - from Holland and the UK are also doing it. So the problem you describe is not with retraining, per se, but with the idea that tech workers are disposable and it's cheaper to burn them out and hire a new guy with updated skills than retrain the old guy. That idea's accurate, which is why it's so popular: it'll take a major effort to change that, but it can be done. cheers, Mark

Re: Oerth Language Chart

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Yep, and both well worth the time invested! I think I'll pick up a copy of the Host. I did some DVD shopping on Saturday and picked up a bunch of movies that were on special. I watched one of them - Curse of the Golden Flower - again. It's no Hero, but the final battle scenes are still awesome on steroids. cheers, Mark

Re: Relativistic Effects of Interstellar War

Re: Relativistic Effects of Interstellar War

Re: Doppelganger (Weird Horror!) Strange as it may seem, I've already had to answer these questions for a very similar monster -2. This is not something that can normally be easily and conveniently arranged, and it tends to be a one-time-only thing. Even if the victim survives being snacked on, that's not a guarantee you can do it again. -1 Based on the idea that unlike Flesh eating, it's possible to do this with a victim's cooperation: I based the limit off the fact that this is similar to "can only change powers under certain circumstances" and "requires a difficult to obtain focus" which would give you a -1. I just wouldn't buy the smell group at all. Not buying it doesn't make you automatically smellier: so a dog - or a character with enhanced smell - might be able to identify what you are and would at any rate note you have a distinctive smell. But that's hardly going to be a common occurrence. With a mimic pool - a VPP that only changes when flesh or blood consumption occurs. Including skills in a pool is a stopsign power, but as long as you have activated your GM powers, you can sneer at stopsigns. That way mundane skills (the victim was an expert pianist) can be easily duplicated by simply adding PS: pianist. The character's memory can be duplicated by using telepathy - also resident in the VPP (to "read" them at the time of consumption: how high you score indicates how complete a reading you get) and then simply a skill - KS: Personal history of X. For my purposes, how deeply the Doppelganger could read, determined what skills/memories they could access. So, for example, reading the base level gave a maximum of a FAM (so KS: Personal history of X, 8-, FAM: Pianist) in all the associated skills, reading deeper thoughts increased the roll to 11- and access to the basal thoughts gave access to whatever the victim had, plus a very high personal history KS. As an aside, I also dropped "uncontrolled" on the VPP, so the creature could not pick and choose memories. The Telepathy was triggered by the act of eating flesh (in my game, any flesh, so to remain human for long, such monsters *must* prey mostly on humans) and the memories and skills were absorbed in reverse order, starting with those costing most points and working down as the most important parts of the pysche were absorbed first. Finally: I don't know whether it fits your schema, I also added a side effect in which consumption of deeper memories also ran a risk of adding psychological limitations belonging to the target. cheers, Mark

Re: Setting a real point limit, instead of AP limit Yes. Which is why limiting real points instead of active is so hard to do. It encourages weird builds. Personally, I don't worry about points caps at all. I look at the character in toto and see if it is balanced. That allows players to build effects that might be expensive to do but won't necessarily be overwhelming in practice. cheers, Mark

Re: Game of Thrones

Re: Game of Thrones Any major character can lead an army - a Hero leads it from the front In addition, heroes can undertake tasks that a normal person cannot. In a Game of Thrones, you could cite Arya Stark, or Melisandre, who haven't led any armies, but have already had an effect on the outcome of the war, or Daenerys Targaryen, who has led armies but also done other "Heroic" things: like hatching three dragons

Re: Game of Thrones Unimportant like .... ensuring his legitimacy to rule, without which he probably could not have held King's Landing, even if he took it? Unimportant like increasing his army by 400%? That's even assuming he could take King's landing with only 5000 men, which is made clear was highly unlikely: Cersei had 5000 Goldcloaks alone. He needed his brother's 20,000 men (almost all of whom he got by going to Storm’s End, which was after all, the point). Hardly: their plan to put Joffrey on the throne is in ruins, their enemies gathering, their allies unreliable to say the least and half the major Lannisters are already dead or traitors. All in all, it looks like the Lannisters succeeded initially by being better organised and more ruthless than their foes - but they over-reached, and now their power is tottering. They've had some lucky breaks, but they've had some bad ones too - like everyone else in the series. And that's what makes it interesting. You can't assume the bad guys will lose simply because they are the bad guys and you can't assume the good guys will triumph largely unscathed because they are the good guys. And there's a fair number of characters who are nether good guys nor bad guys. cheers, Mark

Re: Flash, Flash Defense, Cost Vs. Value Remember, under the old rules, that 60 points would get you an average of 6 BOD, so the target would be affected for 0 phases. The new rules give Flash a better chance of getting through defences, but mean that it generally lasts a shorter time when it does so. cheers, Mark

Re: Flash, Flash Defense, Cost Vs. Value I understand that: it happens sometimes, and is just unfortunate. But as I see it, it's not a problem with Flash per se: it was just a misunderstanding. If you had known of the change, you could have coordinated with your team mates to have exactly the effect you wanted. So I just don't see it as a problem with the mechanic - just a misunderstanding of how the mechanic changed between 4 and 5. And I agree with that, more or less. The rules should be set up (and can be set up) to let the players be appropriately heroic. But if the GM starts bending the rules too much out of shape, then nobody - player or GM - knows what the characters can do and when. The whole thing starts to be come arbitrary and that usually presages the death of the game. The rules are a guide and a good GM knows when to depart from that guide. But in general a good GM knows not to depart from that guide too often, or it ceases to become a guide. A sympathetic GM would have picked up on the fact that you'd tripped over a version change and pointed it out, letting you play that maneuver appropriately. I am a pretty sympathetic GM, so I'd do that. But I wouldn't let a player decide it'd be cooler if the rules actually worked differently and play them like that. cheers, Mark

Re: Buying off a skill roll with a focus That's how I'd do it (have done it, in the past). If he can choose to use either Focus or skill roll, it certainly sounds like a variable limitation. cheers, Mark