Markdoc

Re: Cult Of The Red Banner I used them as one of the major bad guys in my Sengoku game (a hero system game set in the medieval Japanese Sengoku era) http://www.geocities.com/markdoc.geo/Gaming_stuff/Sengoku/sengoku_front_page.html I must confess, though, that I never developed the cult much, since the cult organization stayed mostly in the background and the players encountered its minions, allies and dupes. I mostly used them as a source of unusual martial artists. The only "expansion" on canon was that I altered the idea that the dragon was a singular being: in my "real world" game continuity, positive and negative emotions and actions feed a sort of pan-human pool that manifests in different areas in different forms depending on local cultural assumptions - and that those forms then affect the way people affected by them behave. So the Dragon was the "asian" and more specifically chinese form taken by these negative aspects, emphasising Cruelty and Fear (its counterpart being the Sage, emphasising Order and Calm). The Western equivalent was the Serpent (also sometimes confusingly sometimes called the Dragon) emphasising lust for power and brutality - and countered by the Maiden emphasising self-sacrifice and mercy. All evil cults tapped into their particular aspect of the "evil force" and good cults either tapped into their version of the "good force" or attempted to neutralise the evil force. Particularly powerful/influential people could actually become living avatars for one or other of these aspects - and natural targets for their opposites. So in the medieval era (the Sengoku game) the Red Banner cult attempted to take down the Ming Dynasty by sabotaging the competition held by the Watchers of the Dragon - thereby releasing the Dragon, and causing political disintegration, so that they could act as they like. In my short-lived pulp game, the plot included a group of Russian cultists who planned to bind the Maiden, in order to strengthen and extend the authority of the Tsar and allow him to extend his domination in central asia. And in a planned (but never run) age of enlightenment game, an English cult planned to kill the living enbodiment of the Lion (the African "positive" force) so as to throw Africa into chaos and render it an easy target for colonisation. cheers, Mark

Re: The artwork drives me nuts I buy both gaming book and artbooks. I don't buy rules books solely for the art. And I certainly don't buy artbooks for the rules (well, maybe the "how to draw..." ones ). However, bad art in a gaming book today basically says "sloppy presentation" to me. To someone not committed to a purchase, it is definately off-putting. Heck, I picked up a copy of Tuala Morn - a book I had really been looking forward to for some time - cracked it open and damn near put it back on the shelf. The artwork reaches standards for craptitude that haven't been equalled in the industry for decades. I understand Herogames had some problems with art and non-delivery of same for that book, but I really think it's a case where maybe a released delay was in order to fix it. I bought the book anyway, since I'm a diehard fanboy and am overall pretty happy with it. But if I hadn't been a fanboy, I would almost certainly not have bought it. cheers, Mark

Re: Grimoire books content I have to admit that for me the first Grimoire was so disappointing I didn't even consider buying the second - and I've bought almost everything fantasy-related Hero Games has put out. Presentation is pretty good, but it's basically a list of spells and worse (from my point of view) heavily oriented toward the Turakian age setting (the only other book I didn't buy). The spells are mostly high fantasy-themed and there's a bias towards very high active point spells, which are not usable (or even affordable) in settings other than uber-fantasy. I did like the approach of presenting multiple versions of the spell, although a huge amount of space could have been saved by simply presenting the different versions once and then simply listing cost after each spell rather than presenting the same breakdown over and over again. There's not great deal on designing magic systems (though that is addressed in the Fantasy Hero system to a reasonable degree). If you only need a relatively small number of spells and plan on running a game with high-powered magic, most of the staples are here and there are some interesting spells. But if that's not your cup of tea, I can't recommend it for broader use. cheers, Mark

Re: A Map of Zothique It's a great map. I didn't leave a comment, since I have nothing really to say except "great map!" I did try to rep you, but I couldn't (must spread it around, yadda, yadda) so I didn't As for the stories, Black Rose, read them all! (Of course, I admit I'm a fan ). cheers, Mark

Re: Pennsylvania Dutch Magic: design questions

Re: Another Brick in the Wall (Tell me about your Brick!) I like Bricks: I've played plenty. My two favourites were. The Watcher (Byline: I can see you and I know what you're thinking!). He was an Alien Cyborg with Magnetism powers. Armoured body, some density increase, fast and strong. In addition he had a largish "magnetic powers" multipower which let him generate Forcefields (making him nigh invulnerable), enhance his STR (letting him punch stuff real good), killing attacks (pointy forcefield, like a monofilament knife), he had a weak EB and could fly - including FTL (by manipulating the universe's magnetic field). What made him stand out though, was two non-conventional magnetic powers - he could "visualise" the magnetic field and any disturbances in it, so he had telescopic/microsopic N-ray vision of a sort (he couldn't see colours, but he could see into or through "stuff" and also sense what it was made of) and he could sense electomagnetic changes in the brains of living creatures and even (since they were very weak forces) manipulate them at range, giving him slightly clumsy telepathy. He served as the team's telephone exchange being able to see the whole battlefield and pass messages around, in addition to being our most potent offense. Today, I'd probably not allow such a character - he was a bit grotesque (IIRC, he could generate an 8d6 HKA!) but give me a break - it was my second Champions character and I played him for more than 2 years. I enjoyed playing him because he was a cosmic-level combatant and was extremely flexible in combat. Valiant! (Byline: Never fear citizens! Valiant! is here!)He was a "quick brick" with OIHID - (STR60, DEX32, PD/ED r30, SPD8). Tough and strong, but basically no other powers apart from superleap/superrunning and limited life support (he could hold his breath for 5 minutes and as long as he could breathe or hold his breath, he was otherwise unaffected by stuff like vaccuum, extreme heat/cold, etc). He was a deliberate design decision to make a character *without* a lot of funky powers and backup abilities and was a blast to play simply because with exactly one power (punch stuff) I had to be inventive and because he had a fun backstory with some interesting weaknesses. I didn't play him for long, though as he proved to be overwhelming in combat compared to the rest of the team, which was a bit sad. cheers, Mark

Re: Pennsylvania Dutch Magic: design questions Just clearing up a few misconceptions here. 1. There is (sort of) a thing you could loosely call "pennsylvania dutch magic" - they believed in the evil eye, in witches who could cast evil hexes and in certain folk practices to prevent that. These folk beliefs are essentially identical to those practiced in some parts of rural Germany up until the early 20th century (and still practiced these days in places like the Harz, but now it's for tourists, not for real) so you could call it "rural central european folk magic" just as accurately. Some groups of the Pennsylvania Dutch (now pretty much gone) were famous for making "hex signs" on barns and houses, and corn dollies. Since a lot of these feature things like stars, it has been said that they had magical "hexing properties" to protect the buildings theyw ere on, but in truth that seems mostly to have been said by outsiders and given a magical status they didn't deserve - the Pennsylvania Dutch themselves said they were only decoration, which given the fact that they only appeared relatively late (and have no folk antecedants in Germany) is probably true. It was this whole (probably fake) "hexing" thing that Orson Scott Card drew on for his Alvin Prentice series. As far as I know the Amish (only one group of the larger population known as Pennsylvania Dutch) never did this to any great extent - but then they were an extremely puritanical sect who split off from the Memmonites for being "too worldly" 2. Rural Germany? Yeah. "Pennsylvania Dutch" is an anglicisation of "Pennsylvania Deutsch". They've got nothing to do with Holland. They were pretty much all German or Swiss by origin, even the Amish, who draw their name from their founder, Jacob Amman - a Rhinelander. cheers, Mark

Re: Rant? Speed in Hero Unless he buys combat levels. Or an "excellent defence" fighting feat (PD Force wall, with RSR). Or... in fact, there's multiple ways in which the SPD 2 guy can triumph, or at least have fighting chance. And as you increase the points characters are built on, the significance of that extra action becomes less Having said that, SPD is an excellent buy. There's few things as cost efficient as SPD. Indeed, in all my many years of running heroic level games, it's been very rare for players not to buy their SPD up (though in the current FH game we are more than a year and 40+ XP into the campaign and one of the starting PCs is still SPD2, 2 are SPD4 and 3 are SPD3, so we pretty much cover the human range). cheers, Mark

Re: Long Range Archery This is true, but for me at least falls into the categorey "weaknesses in the system that exist but which have proven so unlikely to ever affect play I no longer worry about them." However, FWIW, a house rule I use might appeal to the OP. I always thought it was dumb to seperate dodge and dive for cover, when both essentially involve the same maneuver - trying to get out of the way. I have simply combined the two into a single maneuver ("dodge"). Basically, with this house rule, a dodge can include a half move, if you make the DEX roll modified by -1 for every hex you move. You get the Dodge bonus regardless, but if you fail the DEX roll you end up prone in your starting hex (which may mean an even worse DCV than you started with, even taking the Dodge bonus into account) You cannot completely avoid an aimed attack (such as a punch) by dodging out of the hex - although as noted you do get the dodge bonus, thus avoiding that ugly exploit. The dodge bonus to DCV doesn't help against area affect attacks, but if you end up behind cover, you get the protection of cover. That will - depending on the type of cover - also potentially give you a bonus to DCV, though since you were exposed for at least part of the phase, it can only ever be partial cover. This way you avoid the "is it an area effect attack? Then I'll dive for cover. If it's an aimed attack, I'll dodge." Now if cover is handy, it makes sense to dodge behind it regardless. And if it isn't, well, it hardly matters, does it? Combined with the range penalties, this would make it easier to dodge long range missile fire cheers, Mark

Re: Long Range Archery

Re: Bernal Sphere, O'Neill Cylinder, Turing Craft.. I played with the idea of a fantasy game set in a generation ship, whose inhabitants had forgotten they were on an artificial construct a while back (inspired, in fact, by books like Aldiss' Non-Stop and Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun). The reasons were simple - you can design it as you like, you have plenty of rationales for odd structures and tunnels to explore. In addition, if the "monsters" are biological or biomechanical constructs, you can have a traditional fantasy "monster-heavy" environment without worrying too much about ecology. My original plan had been that the generation ship's AI (the ship would be an O'Neill cylinder like Rama, with a central core containing the "sun") was equipped to make constructs to service the ship and keep it running even in the face of human social collapse: adding the idea that the ship harvests mass to build new ships gives an even better reason. In addition, I had assumed a backup plan, whereby in the event of a social collapse the ship would attempt to stimulate human cultural development by "stressing" the existing colonist's culture, working on the assumption that stress such as a need for defence would accelerate the adoption of technology and also give the humans a common enemy to prevent human vs human war. Hence, making "monsters" for them to fight and leaving clues about in the form of documents or artifacts for "adventurers" to find, providing culturally-relevant clues to spur development. The idea being that once the humans were advanced enough to overcome the ship's defences (which were intentionally not intended to be totally lethal) they would be technologically advanced enough to fathom the ship's workings and communicate meaningfully with the ship's AI again. It also (not coincidentally) provides a rationale for an "adventurer" class - scouts, protectors of society and discoverers of lost knowledge. The original colony ship plan went off the rails in the distant past when a faction that developed in the colony attempted to organise a rebellion by seeding the computer network with a virus allowing them to take over the AI. Instead, they succeeded in only in severing the AI from the network, crippling it and plunging the ship into chaos - leaving most of the ship without power, without light or other services. 99% of the population soon died. By the time the AI recovered enough to start repairs (centuries later), the humans had rebuilt multiple isolated primitive cultures, but in several places, the severe inbreeding had led to the rapid development of psychic powers (which the inhabitants think of as magic, and which stands in for magic in this setting). Cue the "culture stimulation" program, plus religious cults bult around the day the lights came back on in the interior, which greatly stimulated exploration and a new "cultural renaissance" In such a setting I'd never bother to stat out the ship itself - I'd assume almost limitless resources, but not active planning for the AI: it's resourceful, but not imaginative. It's also lightly crazy in that much of its former databanks are inaccessible or destroyed. I would stat out some of the tool's at the ships command: what kind of monsters it can build, working with the banks of human and earth animal species gene plasm, how much damage a laser does, that kind of thing, but that's just a basic bestiary, and how psychic powers work and what they can do - but that's also basic setting information. Other than that, you just need a map and you're good to go. cheers, Mark

Re: Bernal Sphere, O'Neill Cylinder, Turing Craft.. Gene Wolfe - an interesting, if somewhat odd series. Really well done, though. cheers, Mark

Re: Fighting Techniques of the Middle Ages: anyone read this? No-one's claiming that they were as tactically flexible as the Romans or Nikephorians, (or even the Normans, for that matter) but there are still a lot of people who adhere to the old idea that they were largely undisciplined, didn't understand drill, raised and fought locally, etc. It's that perception modern historians are trying to dispel. More research has suggested that none of this is true - and that at its height the Anglo-Saxon kingdom actually had a standing national army, with clearly-defined field and garrison forces, a national armoury (or armouries) and an interlocking series of fortified towns assigned to regional defence commands. Several authors (like this guy) http://www.deremilitari.org/resources/articles/abels.htm argue that the Anglo-Saxon military had actually decayed significantly by the time of the Norman conquest: that it had been so successful in repelling invaders, that over time people got tired of paying taxes for an efficient defence and let it collapse. It's an argument that makes a lot of sense, explaining how earlier Anglo-saxon kings were able to keep quite large forces in the field for prolonged periods of time, even when operating outside their own areas. cheers, Mark

Re: Difficulty ratings for Bestiary/MMM/etc... I agree - Hero is so flexible, that distilling it to a single number - even if posisble - is likely to be pointless. You can, however, do a quick survey to check suitability. Here's what I do: 1. I know the damage output of my group - average 1+1d6 HKA, max 2 1/2 d6 2. I know their maximum OCV range (5-13) and DCV range (4-10) 3. I know their average DEF (range 4-7 resistant, but not all over, 4-12 otherwise) When I'm drafting a new monster in, I simply ask 4 questions: 1. If they hit it, can they hurt it? Answer: DEF 6 or less everyone can hurt it. DEF 10 or more only the biggest guy can and he usually won't. Double those numbers with regard to STUN damage. 2. Can they hit it? If it's DCV is 6 or less, everyone is going to get a hit in, if it's 10 or more only the martial artist will routinely tag it. 3. Can it hit them? Again if it has an OCV of 4 or less it's going to probbaly hit no-one, 8 or less, it stands a decent chance of tagging most of the group, and if 10 or over it's going to hit every time 4. Can it hurt them? If it's doing 3-4DC the answer is no, if it's doing 6-8 DC the answer is "some" and 9+ DC the answer is "pretty lethal". Any monster that scores a "no" to either the first two questions and a "yes" to one of the second will be a bit of challenge, and if it also score an extra yes/no respectively, it's potentially nasty. Score "2 yes/2 no" and it's potentially lethal. This can only ever be an approximation, since it takes no account of numbers of foes or of special abilities, but it allows you to roughly estimate how long a particular target will stay up in combat. cheers, Mark

Re: Greening Earth’s Deserts

Re: Greening Earth’s Deserts Yep. The plan was mostly driven by a need for power (electricity, that is, not the electoral kind). The Aswan high dam is silting up and is, in any case, proving inadequate to Egypt's growing population. At the same, it was hoped that filing the Qattara depression with water would lead to increased evaporation and thus, extra rain in the surrounding area (although the weather geeks say "not so much"). cheers, Mark

Re: Greening Earth’s Deserts People have been talking about greening the desert for decades and one large scale terraforming project (flooding the qattara depression, to provide an artifical coastline and a hydropower source) was being seriously developed. As far as I know that project has been shelved, but increasing population pressure and energy demand could easily revive it. Other plans have been gaining speed to use the Sahara as a vast solar energy farm and then wire the energy back over the Med to Europe: the biggest obstacle to that is politics. The local politicians can't promise control over the needed areas and it's a pretty safe bet Europe isn't going to pay for such a huge project, if it's not secure. But as for making it green (as in, useful for agriculture) I dunno. A nitrogen-fixing bacteria (or more likley, fungus) could be made, but it'd take literally centuries (maybe longer) to build up enough biomass to support larger plants and in the meantime, the fungus till has to live on something - nitrogen and sun isn't enough: otherwise the area would already be crawling with plant life. Perhaps if we collected all the vaious biological waste generated by city sewerage sytems and started dumping it there instead of eutrophying our own water? cheers, Mark

Re: Soldiers marching.

Re: Soldiers marching. Exactly. It's not a slam on Harold, who was obviously a very competent general. But as it ended up, his army was stretched out in bits and pieces the length of England - units kept turning up for muster days after Harold's death. Waiting would only have strengthened his position and made Willaim's more tenuous. We don't know why he decided to push forward. Some historians have hypothesised that William was wasting the countryside to draw him out, but it's equally possible that Harold hoped to repeat his "turn up and catch 'em by surprise" trick, which had worked so well, just a week or so before. cheers, Mark

Re: I am a comic book dinosaur. Here's my take: I stopped reading mainstream Marvel and DC titles years back (like you) and by Thor's Mighty Hammer, I'm glad I did! However, I still collect carefully chosen trades and *like* some (but only some) modern titles, angst and all. Here's my picks: Astro City - can't go wrong. Classic heroics, but painted with modern sensibility and just great stories. Quasi-realistic, but not dark or broody. The Authority. I like (or liked) the Authority - at least the initial run by Ellis: an attempt to portray the effect of having a real world team with ultra level powers. That covers the first three story-arcs: The Circle, Shiftships, and The Outer Dark, up until the death of the team leader Jenny Sparks. Do not, for the sake of your own sanity, go further. That's where the original creative team intended the series to end. The writers who followed (starting with Mark "Civil War" Millar) kept the power and occasional ruthlessness of the original series and just upped the foul language, ultraviolence and sex. In its place that's fine, but to add it simply for shock value gets old pretty damn fast, and the plotlines are ... well, just silly. By the same writer (Ellis) is Planetary: it's set in the same universe and involves two teams of mustually hostile superpowered folks conducting covert operations, but also including lashings of pulp heroes, wierd science, HP Lovecraft, etc. I await no TPB as eagerly as Planetary except maybe "Med Kappe og Kårde" - and I figure the latter's no good to you! Kingdom Come - very good. Takes some of the same basic ideas as the Authority and Civil War (but in the DC universe) and shows how Civil war should have been done. And it's so pretty! Powers - I like this one. I haven't been collecting it (yet) but have been reading it at the library. Quirky, and dark but not at all cruel or nasty. But people seem to either love or hate the art style (me, I like it). You've already mentioned Rising Stars, so I'll just note I thought it was a decent read. As for the Batman stuff (Arkham Asylum, Dark Knight Strikes Again, Year One, Year One Hundred, Dark Victory, Hush), the Dark Knight Strikes again is painfully lame, Year One and Year 100 are OK'ish and .... well, meh. I used to be a fan, but now I'm just tired of Batguy. I haven't realy enjoyed any of his appearances since Kingdom Come (apart from his cameo in Planetary). I know it ain't happening, but it's time to hang up the bat-cape and spend some quality time with a glass of bat-scotch and the bat-slippers. cheers, Mark

Re: Problem with Missile Deflection Also what is missing from the debate is the rcognition that it needn't be "DCV or Missile Deflect". It can also be "DCV and Missile Deflect". Let's face it, most of the classic deflectors like Cap are also high DCV characters: it's another way of protecting low DEF characters who mix it up with the big-attack guys and both of them give you slightly different options. cheers, Mark

Re: Rant? Speed in Hero

Re: Rant? Speed in Hero Elapsed time out of combat simply proceeds as "SPD actions per turn" - which is 12 seconds. That applies to things like "defuse the bomb", which if you only have 15 seconds is likely to be a single roll with the bonus for taking a turn to make the roll. (which is why in the movies, the bomb is always stopped with a few seconds on the clock - they take the max time available to get a bonus on defusing it ) In the situation you suggest, I'd probably simply give the players X actions to get past the bomb rather than letting the storyline sit on a random dice roll, although doing the latter would certainly add to the tension. But in such a situation, you are to some extent always at the mercy of the dice - a few bad attack or damage rolls can also lead to an unanticipated result. If chases are "in combat" ie: chasing someone down the block, we go by dice roll. If longer, by "SPD actions per turn". The former tends to lead to unpredictable chases (kind of like in the movies), the latter to the faster character accelerating rapidly out of harm's way. If a chase starts in combat and then leads to a longer chase, I stop the dice rolling when the faster charcter has any sort of reasonable lead (usually sufficient that 1 or 2 rolls is not enough to catch him) and simply state that the faster charcter is pulling away too fast to catch - at which point the pursuer has to fall back on cunning plans. cheers, Mark

Re: Rant? Speed in Hero

Re: Rant? Speed in Hero