Markdoc

Re: And off we go! Wow, I've been really bad about updating this, so I'll skim through the last couple of month's play... After the night's foul play with the beer, the Intelligence Contest was delayed a day and the Wall of Death taken in its place. For this event, the town put a narrow wooden footpath up on top of the battlements between two towers, 10 metres up in the air. The Contestants had to run between the towers, while 5 archers shot at them with blunt arrows. If hit, you had to make a DEX roll (at minuses depending on how much damage there was) to hold your balance. The players spent the morning at the market, selling off the last of the qurrocks and some stud services and then scratted around town trying to see what was going on. Lamoniak had a flowery letter delivered to Lord Raus and Khastz managedto outrun two of Raus' armigers (military retainers) who wanted to "teach him a lesson". A huge crowd assembled to watch the Wall of Death, packed into the streets below or the grassy field outside the town. The first contestant, Khelsen the huge lumbering merchant, got only a short way out of the door before being peppered with arrows - he decided he'd had enough and tried to jump off the wall onto the roof of a house across the street. Alas, he didn't quite make it, grabbing the guttering and tearing it off before crashing down into the crowd. The injured were carried away and Aquila used the opportunity to lighten a few purses in the crowd. Several contestants made the run next. Corylyon, the local lad, ran and got most of the way, battered and bloody before collapsing near the second tower. Poor old Promidor decided the archers would hit him anyway, and sprinted (1/2 DCV, but only one phase of shooting), but took an arrow in the head. He didn't fall off, but was stunned, making him an easy target and went down. Sir Baharach decided to tough it out, trusting in his combat luck and bracing himself with his STR (bonus to DEX rolls not to fall off) but making him half DCV - he made it most of the way to the far tower before collapsing unconscious. Lamoniak was next and he got halfway before taking an arrow to the thighs and stumbling. He lost his balanced and went straight down into the street. He didn't bounce, and the healers dragged him away too - although he's already taken so much magical healing, there's not that much they can do. The crowd was loving it That left Khastz, Vathmar, Jaarst Daro and Mhyrrhyn Calmstorm. Khastz, unfortunately has a severe fear of heights . It took him several EGO rolls to force himself out onto the walk and then once he was started he ran screaming to the next tower - only overcoming the urge to drop and crawl with more EGO rolls. He got there bruised but OK. Vathmar had been boasting about catching arrows - he tried his missile deflection and managed to catch two arrows, to roars of approval from the crowd. He missed the next two and took one in the stomach and one in the groin, doubling up and falling off the wall intothe dry moat. The crowd roared it's approval of that maneuver too - and while they were doing it Aquila took another purse. Or at least he tried - but the mark noticed, called thief and Aquila took off with a mob in pursuit, eventually losing them by hiding under a canvas cover on the docks. Jaarst Daro made his run and also got shot up, eventually dropping to his stomach and trying to worm across so as to make a small target (Boo! Hiss!) He didn't make it . Last of all, Mhyrrhyn jogged across weaving and dodging - he didn't get hit once. Partly because of his dodging, partly because of a protection spell cast on him before hand by Agrestis, when Mhyrrhyn was pretending to take a leak. Since three people made the twoer, there was some debate about making them run again, (Khastz: NOOOOOO!) but eventually they all got first equal rankings. After the wall of death, some of the armigers from Samadrian challenged their opposite numbers from Klinthe to a game of Shield Push out on the parade ground. This game is played by warriors in armour as a training exercise. Shileds are carried, but no weapons. You stick a spear in the ground, with a helmet on the top behind your team (usually 7-12 guys) The other guys do the same. Then you line up, shield to shield - and push. The idea is to break the shieldwall, grab the other guys' helmet and run it back past your spear, while stopping them doing the same. The Samadrians won, by a cunning trick - they had a small fast guy on their team who dropped back as their shieldwall advanced and then ran up over the back of one of his large team members and jumped over the Klinthan's heads. He was halfway to the helmet before they had a chance to react and managed to run it home while his team-mates ran interference for him. The Samadrians went surging in to town chanting about their superiority and the local warriors quickly started to recruit a pick-up team to challenge them. Eventually it was decided there'd be two matches - the Klinthans versus the locals and the winner of that match to take on the Samadrians. The local team was a pretty motley bunch but they had several good players together with some hopeless ones. Lamoniak was at Khastz' cousin's home nursing his injuries and complaining about barbaric sports, but Khastz, Bellona (the female armiger) and Khelsen the huge merchant all took part. The first match went well, with the Klinthans, who were in a bad mood after their earlier defeat, wasting too much time pounding some of the locals into the dirt and were caught off guard a second time, when Khelsen pushed two of the opposing armigers before him making a hole through which Bellona darted - she's SPD4 and lightly armoured, so easily outran her opponents, snagged the helmet and ran it home. The locals went wild. An hour later the second match took place - locals versus Samadrians. The atmosphere was electric, and the city guard had their work cut out for them preventing fights among the spectators. This match swayed back and forth, breaking up into several small fights. More locals got shield-bashed unconscious. Bellona and the fast guy on the Samadrian team both made a run around the edge of the shieldwall and got their helmets - Bellona got swarmed (and stomped, though not badly), but threw the helmet to Khastz before she got taken down. Khastz had to run a long route to avoid the rampaging Samdrians, who now had a numerical advantage and crossed the line a second after the Samdrian runner. With two victories, the Samdrians and their supporters went dancing into town to party, leaving the locals to carry away their wounded . The players ended up at a bar, where people were more than happy to buy them drinks after their valiant efforts and were later involved in a brawl between Samadrians, Klinthans, local townspeople and some hill tribesmen who just joined in on principle. The players got out just as the city guard arrived and started to break up the brawl with heavy staves. Next: The Intelligence Contest!

Re: What would be a good example of... Speaking as someone who's lived both places, yeah, there's a lot of similarity between the NZ climate and the US west coast. Draw a line starting at about Carmel and go north to a bit past Vancouver and you have a good idea of what the climate's like down under. Northern New Zealand's a wee bit more temperate than the SF area (you haven't got the central valley heating things up so much during Summer, and snow is basically non-existent), but otherwise, it's a pretty good match. Lifestyle's pretty similar too. New Zealand has better sailing and diving - California has better skiing. As for the immigration policy - we like it that way. People with plenty of money are welcome cheers, Mark

Re: Player Characters who might need Automoton Powers

Re: Player Characters who might need Automoton Powers For me, I generally do not allow automaton powers, although the only really nasty one is "takes no stun". Th reasons are: 1. The DEF rule - tripling costs. Are your players who want this power happy with paying triple for their defences, and getting their EGO dropped to 0 (for no points back) as well? 2. Genre stuff - robotic/synthetic characters in comics and movies seem to be able to be stunned, or even put temporarily out of action if hit hard enough - it's just generally that they are bricks and therefore have to be hit very ard to have this effect. See, for example, the bad terminator smacking Arnie's terminator in the head with some heavy machinery - he certainly behaved like he was getting stunned. Nothing says a solid whack won't temporarily affect a positronic brain as easily as it does an organic one. 3. As already noted, "takes no stun" and immunity to mental powers really limits the GM's options to killing, entangling or dismembering the character if he wants to throw him a challenge. That's not ideal. The ability to take a lickin' and keep on tickin' does not mean "takes not sun" - it could just as easily be "High Def" and is usually better built that way. Likewise the ability to lose limbs or even most of the body without longterm harm does not necessarily mean "Takes no stun" or "Does not bleed" - it could just as easily be a special effect on regeneration. And again, it's probably better built that way. Takes no stun, in particular, is a handy GM tool, not a stop power because it's an absolute in a system that generally does not allow absolutes. That said, as a GM, you can always allow it - just don't expect sympathy when it turns out to have been a really, really bad idea. Also, don't under any circumstances, allow the player with it to take regeneration - I'm serious about that cheers, Mark

Re: Player Characters who might need Automoton Powers New with 5th - you are right, prior to 5th, Automatons had no EGO score, implying no way to buy it up. Cheers, Mark

Re: Lordship Ranks For a simplified (very simplified) Japanese social structure go here: http://www.geocities.com/markdoc.geo/Gaming_stuff/Sengoku/sengoku_front_page.html and then choose the link "Background" in the top left hand corner. cheers, Mark

Re: Help with Islanders Probably because on most islands, the commonest trees are not actually great bow-making materials and there weren't any horned animals to do the horn/composite thing with. Australian aborigines from the far North used (and still use) the bow, but their neighbours didn't - so it's not that they didn't know how to make bows. Add that to cultures which placed a lot of emphasis on ritual combat and champions fighting it out hand to hand, and you get a bunch of guys who simply aren't that interested in bows. That'd make your eyes water cheers, Mark

Re: You may have to work a while to forget this: Jackie Chan as Chun Li You don't remeber? That's from City Hunter. You actually saw that one with us, years ago at the Key in Georgetown. cheers, Mark

Re: Sea, Bay or Straight? I'd call the bit in the middle a sea and the giant bay thingie a "bight" as in "the Bight of Benin"* Cheers, Mark *as in "Beware beware, the Bight of Benin: one comes out, where fifty went in! "

Re: Herophile Fantasy art Actually, you are getting noticeably better! Keep up the good work! cheers, Mark

Re: Daily Art Findings The artist says "All i can remember about this picture is that it took very very long..." I'm not frickin' surprised! cheers, Mark

Re: Area of a hexagon You're right - I did misinterpret what you had written. The figure makes it easy to see. And running through the math, you are correct. But where was the flaw in my master plan??!!! Looking back at my own math, I see: L2 = L1 x sin a2 or L2 = 100 x 0.5 sin a1 0.86 which gives 58.1 Of course what I did was simply round off (sloppily) the sine. It's .866, (not .86) which plugged into my formula gives.... 57.736 (the .001 difference is presumably because of the rounding of the Sine to only two decimals). So, in fact, both methods work and the math's right (in both cases). But I admit you are righter than me - teach me to rush through things! cheers, Mark

Re: Area of a hexagon Except that an "equilateral" triangle (from Greek "Equal sides") would have three sides of equal length. And that ain't what you've got. You've got one leg of 100 miles, one leg of unknown length and a hypoteneuse of unknown length. OK, I realise you are simply using the wrong name - it's not that important (actually for some reason, it's a common error), but what we have here is a right-angle triangle. And this is where you run into trouble... Because, the formula you want is that for a right-angle triangle, the square of the hypotenuse (the longest side) is equal to the sum of the squares of the two other sides. Which would be cool - except we don't KNOW what the length of the two other sides is (we can see they aren't equal - that would be impossible, since then the side of the hex would be also be 100 miles!). We also can't work them out, since we don't know the angles, as the acute angle (called theta) varies depending on the length of the legs. You can't just assume you know the angles, just because you have right-angle triangle - the 30/60/90 split is *only* valid for a perfect pythagorean right angle triangle whose sides have the ratio 1/2/3. And *that's* where you are getting your erroneous 57.735 miles from - you're assuming that the theta in your triangle is 60. We don't actually KNOW what that angle is. Since your 57 miles is close to the true answer, it must actually be pretty close to 60, but I don't know exactly what it is and there's no way to work it out without knowing either another angle or thelength of another side. That's why I used the one line to cut out one "side" of the hex. Since it's a regular hex, that gave me one known angle (from the hex itself) and two sides of equal length, allowing me to calculate theta (the angle where the line touches the sides of the hex. That let me in turn calculate the length of the sides. Is that clear? I've tried to write it out rather than use math, so it's easier to follow and I've attached a figure to show what I mean - I've drawn two right angle triangles, both with one leg 100 units long. One has a theta of 45, the other a theta of 20-something. So.... the correct answer is still 58.1 miles per side. Cheers, Mark

Re: Mediaeval 2-weapon fighting system - trawling for suggestions You might also want to consider if you want to go the martial art route - big bulgy muscles, a fighting trick or two and a few CSLs can be more cost efficient, than one or two martial maneuvers - and to my mind probably more appropriate than a martial art for a knight anyway. If you do this, then a couple of things to consider are: Off hand, so he gets a DCV bonus for two weapons Extra CSLs for sweep cheers, Mark

Re: Area of a hexagon

Re: Area of a hexagon Yeah - you know, for some perverse reason, I actually enjoyed doing that. probably revenge for all those teachers and lecturers who did it to me. M.

Re: Area of a hexagon Huh - I saw the thread title, noticed there had been several replies and passed since I figured the question had been answered. Today I noticed it had spawned three pages so popped in. I, too, stand in awe at the number of different answers we got. The simple formula is: 3 x square root of three divided by2 times the sqaure of the side-length Using this simple formula the area is 6495.2 square miles *if* the sides are 50 miles long. But the original question asked for the area if it was 100 miles *across*. So the sides *can't* be 50 miles long - 'cos then they'd need to be end on end and your hexagon would be um... a square. So.. what you want to know is "how long is each side" - then you can use the formula above. Triangles was a good place to go - but not equilateral triangles (because then we don't know how long the sides are!). What you want to do is draw a 100 mile long line between two points so that they enclose one angle of the hex. Like this: I\ I/ OK, it's crude, I admit, but you get the idea. The two "I"s are each 50 miles, so there's your 100 miles. Now we got one side's length. The "\" and "/" are two of your desired sides. Now, since the sum of the interior angles of a triangle is always 180°, and each interior angle of a regular pentagon measures 120° and the other two angles are equal in size, that means they have got to be 30° each. Now we have one side and all the angles, we can work out the length of the two remaining sides. To calculate the length of a triangles' side you use the formula L1 = L2 sin a1 sin a2 where L is length and a is angle. If we know one side length (L1) we can then calulate the other (L2) by rewriting the formula as: L2 = L1 x sin a2 or L2 = 100 x 0.5 sin a1 0.86 which is 58.1 miles. look at the diagram of the triangle above - that looks about right. Each side should be more than 50 miles, but not by much. So.... back to the formula above. plug in 58.1 and Yes! It's 8770.1 square miles. The exact same answer as .... nobody OK, That was probably more math than desired, but I wanted to show you how I got the answer. Math by consensus, my ***. Next you'll be comparing evolution to religion or some such nonsense or complaining about textbooks in schools Now - just for future reference, I'm assuming you don't always want to do this whole dance, so.... since the square root of three is about 1.73, the formula for a hex can be simplified to 2.6 times the side length-squared and the side length can be simplified to the "radius" of the hex divided by .86, you can sum the whole thing up as: ("width" of the hex divided by 1.72) squared times 2.6 For this example: (100/1.72)2 x 2.6 = 8788 which will give you a rough answer for area of any hex (it'll be too big but not by much and you can do it on any calculator. cheers, Mark You know, I'm amazed I remembered how to do that. I don't think I've done any trig since 1981

Re: duplicating villians? It'd be keen - drop Dr Copier into that vilian team you always liked but that your heroes whomp on all the time and let him use his area affect duplication on phase 12, so that the players have to fight 8 of *each* villian. Or he can use it *before* you get to combat so that Team Loser can be commiting crimes in 7 different parts of the city, while the originals are setting up an ironclad albi cheers, Mark

Re: "Chinese Amazons" as a Fantasy Culture For that matter what happens when a man offers *another* man "marriage by combat"? cheers, Mark

Re: Have you used anything from the Asian Bestiaries? Yeah, I'm sure you get a bonus, but would you want to block with them? For that matter, can you sling them on your shoulder like a continental soldier? cheers, Mark

Re: The latest cliché?

Re: Character "niche" Totally off-topic, but ... buy forcewall As for on-topic, choosing a "niche" is not all about having one high stat. Add to that a martial arts campaign with one max stat of 15 and everything else lower? Why doesn't he just get the d20 version of Lawyers and Librarians? Sounds to me like a control freak on the rampage. cheers, Mark

Re: What bizarre rules issues have you encountered? Interesting. 3 pages in and the best we can do with regard to bizarre rules issues is bizarre GM or player behaviour - and my observation is that that is largely system independant. Speaks well for hero system. Cheers, Mark

Re: UV vision

Re: Things I learned playing a Thief Strangely enough, in our current d20 game, I AM playing a burly barbarian thief (or as I prefer to call it, a "stealth fighter" ) cheers, Mark