Markdoc

Re: Herophile Fantasy art I'd agree that Poser 6 has greaty improved its capacities. Here's a work in progress, where I engaged in a little "poser destruction testing" - windforce, hair effects and dynamic clothing, all on one figure. Put that lot together and it starts to run slooooow.... Last night we went to see Utlagnin (the outlaw) an Icelandic film based on Gisli's saga, about a man who has to avenge his blood brother's death by killing his brother-in-law. Then his sister has to avenge her husbands death, so she gets togeter a band to take revenge. Gisli becomes an outlaw and is eventually hunted down and killed. Then his sister tries to kill the man who killed him - taking revenge for her brother. Great film! It reminded me of a series of games I ran in my campaign long ago which came to be known as "Sven Snötgöbblerson's saga" so when I got home I fired up the computer to start this. The figure is intended to be Sven Snötgöbblerson - the final image will depict him walking away from Fedt Farni's farm through a snowstorm after having slaughtered everyone inside as revenge for his family's deaths. The figure's not finished yet - he still needs furry leggings and corrected textures on the hands (or maybe I'll make him some mittens) but I thought I'd post today since I am off to Turkey for two weeks tomorrow. cheers, Mark

Re: Is Mind Scan broken? Just a couple of comments: We had a character in one of our games with exactly this combo - mindscan and mind powers (Sister Morphine - "It's nighty-night for you, bad boy!"). She turned out not to be abusive for two reasons. The first one has already been covered in depth: the difficulty of finding an unfamiliar mind in a large city or area (and the impossibility of finding mind you don't know) The second one, is that it's one thing to find someone - it's quite another to be able to hold that mental lock and still have enough oomph left over to do them serious harm. Like many mentalists, Sister Morphine had a multipower - she *could* in fact ramp up enough power to have a good shot at tracking down a target. But once she had done so, she was left with enough firepower to launch about 1d6 ego attacks, or 2d6 of telepathy (enough basically to threaten and make annoying comments or give someone a mild headache). In short, it only becomes abusive if the character can launch two big-ass mental powers at once: so watch out for this combo in Elemental controls. Other than that, it's never been a problem. Telepathy (or "mind-reaming" has always been more of a problem in my games). cheers, Mark

Re: Herophile Fantasy art One of the problems with Poser software is that it has never had good control over lighting. The simplest way to deal with it is to use photoshop - it has good tools in the "render" filters. If you want to avoid that, you can do the following: Delete all the lights in Poser (Panic! The scene goes totally black!) OK, don't panic instead make a new light - a Spotlight) and point it at the character. Generally this light should be wide-angle, medium-hi intensity and hard shadows (maybe 90%) Then aim other spotlights at the light sources - in the picture above, the flame sources. Make them narrow beam, high intensity and soft shadows. That gives an effect of backlighting. It adds alot ot atmosphere - here's an example of what I mean (a ranger from our d20 game) - the spotlight effect lets the background fade out, giving a more somber, threatening feel cheers, Mark

Re: Ch'i Ki Qi ... Yeah, what he said - with the anal addition that Ch'i is based on the older Guoyu Luomazi system of translation in which the "Ch' " combination is used to signify the chinese sound that is a sort of aspirated "k" sound (K as found in English). Hence "Ch'i" and "Ch'in". Sadly, though, many English speakers say "Chee" and "Chin" (like the thing between your mouth and your neck) which drives chinese people (well, some of them, anyway) crazy. So the more modern Hanyu Pinyin transliteration uses a "q" to denote this sound - hence "Qi" and "Qin". Same word, same sound, same meaning. Just a diferent way of transliterating it into English. The japanese transliterators have traditionally used "Ki" and "Ch'in". Don't ask me why. Was that more than you needed to know? cheers, Mark

Re: Eurostar is friggin' fast! Our team had three encounters with Eurostar. The first was a knock-down, beat-em up with the whole Eurostar team against our 6 PCs. Several people got badly wounded on both sides (Pantera again, natch, on their side and my character, a force-field manipulating brick who could generate an 8d6 HKA: yeah, we were munchkins, back then). In the end, Eurostar bugged out, carrying their wounded and we let them go because half the team was down (one needing serious medical attention) and there was significant collateral damage that needed looking after. The second one is fondly remembered as "that insane fight with the hunteds". Our armoured suit/inventor guy had been having rough time with his hunteds popping up and making his life miserable, and as we were set to confront Eurostar, he made some crack about "How come the villains' hunteds never turn up?" So, the GM rolled. Some of Eurostar's hunted turned up. So did some of our hunteds. So did some of the hunteds' hunteds and (I think) one hunted of a hunted of a hunted... I really can't recall to this day who actually did turn up but it was a huge slugfest, with agents, supers and god-knows what hurtling in all directions. We were all experienced players, and Chris (our GM) roped in his room-mate (another champions GM) to help out but it still took us all Sunday and well into Monday morning to play out. Eurostar just left, somewhere in the shrieking confusion. The third time was during a "war of the worlds" story arc - where the world was under threat from slug-like aliens with advanced technology and big-ass space ships. In that series of adventures, we ended up fighting ALONGSIDE Eurostar, which was an interesting change of pace. That story arc was also notable for two PCs (mine and Armoured suit/inventor guy - I don't mention the character's name purely out of kindness) getting nuked by one of the spaceships, while fighting in orbit. His character "died" (actually had a radiation accident and came back later as a mind-controlled villian tricked out with cool attacks to take advantage of our susceptibilities and weaknesses). Mine survived but was KO'd to GM's option. That turned out to be long enough to undergo uncontrolled re-entry, and wake up *just* before impact - which put me under again It was a great game Cheers, Mark

Re: Usning nanotech in a campaign An interesting far-future book that deals to a large extent with nanotech is Aristoi by Walter Jon Williams. It's an interesting blending of nanotech, dubious (but still fun) psychology and virtual reality. I've often thought it would make an interesting (if difficult to GM) setting. cheers, Mark

Re: Herophile Fantasy art

Re: Mega Fantasy City Map - My latest project Canberra? The City in the middle of nowhere? I've visited there a couple of times and always found it to be one of the most confusing cities to navigate - the way all the streets curl in on each other But as you can probably tell, I like to travel a lot and I naturally gravitate to old cities - I'm going to spend 2 weeks in Istanbul at the end of this month - one week working and one week doing some sightseeing with my wife afterward. I've never been there before so I am looking forward to it. Lisbon is on the list for later this year, with Prague as a possible (also London, Seattle, Washington, Ouagadougou, Bobo-Diauloasso and Addis Ababa). I think that's the lot. Cheers, Mark

Re: Mega Fantasy City Map - My latest project Umm... Feets? Beasts of Burden? Seriously, many cities - even in the modern age - have staircases. San Francisco has many. Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, and Napier, where my wife comes from also have many. So does Hong Kong - hell, Hong Kong even has *escalators* on some hillsides. There are even a few places in the latter three cities where you can only gain access by stairs - the slopes are simply too steep for many roads, and the houses are built cantilevered out into space or crammed onto whatever flat space is available. They were even more common in medieval cities which were often built on steep places for safety and which had very high population densities. In Harar - a very well preserved medieval city - there are far more street WITH stairs than without. Goods, even today, are moved by porters, donkeys or camels - even though the main road through town has plenty of auto repair shops and motorised traffic. Siena not only has many stairs but also streets that run through tunnels and in a couple of places through or under houses... The lack of wheeled vehicles doesn't mean that much - many cities in medieval or ancient times forbade the use of wheeled or animal-drawn vehicles in daylight hours or even at all, because of the damage caused to roads and buildings and because of the danger they posed if the animal should bolt. I'm reading the Valdorian Age book at the moment which spends lot of time on Elweir, the city setting - Keith mentions the stairs on the map there, but one of the things that struck me when reading it is how little it resembles a medieval city, both in layout and description: it's more like a city from the 17th-19th century (which may be intentional, of course). cheers, Mark

Re: Herophile Fantasy art And one more (it's amazing how much old crap I have on this computer...) This is another technical skills test - same restrictions: Poser only. This picture won a competition and netted me a couple of hundred dollars of donated software and 3D models. It's a Kitsune - a japanese fox spirit. cheers, Mark

Re: Herophile Fantasy art I really like this one - nice posing/style cheers, Mark

Re: Herophile Fantasy art Here's one inspired by my last long-running game - a medieval/fantasy Japanese setting. This was actually not a specific character, but a technical skills test - what could I get out of the the poser software alone - no photoshop tricks, no use of other software, which explains why the image is not as atmosphereic as it might be. Cheers, Mark

Re: Bored of the Rings HERO Ah yes.. fond memories. The line "they have long, clever fingers of the sort that are usally found around the necks of small animals or in other people's pockets" has been applied to many a halfling thief inour games. cheers, Mark

Re: ...and the Bird you rode in on... Taste? Chicken, of course! As for cooking, anything that's been ridden around for a while is probably best stewed... cheers, Mark

Re: Zoish Brewmaster Ummmm. What is a Zo, anyway? cheers, Mark

Re: Herophile Fantasy art

Re: Is TK too expensive? There is also the cost/benefit analysis. The flexibility of TK really can be very effective - unlike EB once you hit someone (with a grab) you've got them - you can keep squeezing, effectively getting continuous (or a near approximation) for free. Even better, you can use them to hit someone else. It's not purely a theoretical consideration: I have played in two games where the GM went through the same thought process you have outlined and reduced the cost to 5 points for 5 STR, and there is no doubt that in both games the TK-using characters dominated all others in combat: plus they got useful out of combat abilities from the power as well. As a GM, TK is one of those powers I am quite careful of. cheers, Mark

Re: Special Powers in Power Frameworks Actually as a GM I've allowed many of these powers into frameworks, and also used a few of them in framorks for my own characters. As noted by several other people, my criteria is "does this fit?" and "Is it unbalancing for the game?". I do tend to be resonably strict about framworks, though preferring them to be restricted to a very well-defined rationale. I rather have a well thought out framework with severl GM's permission powers than cheesy frameworks with standard powers simply defined by a very loosely-attached special effects. cheers, Mark

Re: We have the Technology (Railguns) Well given that the "weapon" is the size of a largish office building, has a firing arc of a tiny fraction of a degree, fires submicrogram missiles and has a range of a few inches, I reckon your average suit of leather armour should give reasonable protection, as long as you don't walk up and stick your finger right against the accelerator (actually you can't because it's inside a containment vessel, but you get the idea.) Real railguns do exist however: google Maxwell Laboratories' 32Megajoule accelerator - it's real tankbuster if you overlook the fact that it's only good at very short ranges (and the fact that's it's as large as a battleship gun). However, railguns are a long way from being deployed as weapons. There's a few reasons. #1 Ridiculously high energy requirements. Right now, to give an reasonbale size projectile an exciting degree of acceleration requires enough energy to light a small town for a year. #2 Arcing - the magnetic forces needed to accelerate a metallic projectile (and no other kind can be accelerated, natch) ALSO work on the railgun itself, which of course also has to be made of conducting metal. Most railguns are only good for a couple dozen shots at most (getting less and less accurate with each shot), and the larger ones usually melt/explode/ablate after each shot. That's a pretty expensive (and rather dangerous) one shot weapon #3 Momentum versus kinetic energy. The many, varied and wonderful debates about firearm efficiency on these boards almost inevitably concentrate on muzzle velocity and kinetic energy but ignore momentum, which is actually the more important component when it comes to doing harm. The railguns that exist accelerate accelerate relatively small missiles to high velocity. Result? Buttloads of kinetic energy, but little momentum. Shoot that at someone and you'll give them a nasty (and probably self-cauterising) surface wound, but it probably wouldn't be as lethal as an old fashioned slug since the vaporised target actually ablates faster than a wave can propagate in most solids (any solids? Not sure) so you would not expect huge hydrostatic shock #5 The faster you fire something the more friction effects you can expect. Most railguns end up not firing not a missile as such but a jet of plasma as the missile basically melts away. You can see that here: http://www.powerlabs.org/railgun.htm This means that high speed rail guns essentially function as extremely short range, expensive, one shot flamethrowers (though they would essentially melt almost anything within that range!) It might work pretty well in a vaccuum though... Cheers, Mark

Re: Herophile Fantasy art Damn! That's actually exceptionally good! What software do you use for modelling? To answer your question, the ability to make your own models is invaluable. Relying on other people's models is a significant limitation: it means you are essentially limited to reusing what's available. Although I am working on them, my own modelling skills are pretty limited. I can now do a reasonable job of reworking other people's models where useful (to make a troll out of a basic human model, for example). I can make basic static props without problem and do a lot of texture work myself (the helmets, swords, belts, jewellery and most of the textures in the attached image are mine, for example). But I have not yet mastered the art of handling organic-looking models nor rigging them, which means new figures are off the agenda, as are complex clothing items, for now. I'm trying, but I am a long way from there yet..... cheers, Mark

Re: Herophile Fantasy art Yeah, but you were one of the people I was thinking of who DOES have that elusive ability to compose an image fully in your head and then transfer it to the medium of your choice. Bastard. Cheers, Mark

Re: Herophile Fantasy art The differences? It's possible to make recognisable pictures with relatively little skill using 3D art. Things come more pre-packaged. So you could say the starting threshold is lower for 3d computer art. However to move beyond basic, fairly static-looking pictures requires a degree of skill. The only way to acquire that is simply by working at things. You have to either spend time requiring the computer skills for basic modelling, or cough up the cash to use someone else's modeling skills. This is another difference from hand-drawn art - and here I include "hand-drawn" with pencil and brush together with "hand drawn in photoshop". By that I mean drawn/painted as opposed to rendered. You can, to some extent compensate for your own weaknesses with other people's products using 3d rendering. However to reach basic competency, you also need to learn the limitations and tricks of the software you use and no amount of cash will help here. Just practice. I don't see that as any different between learning to manipulate a brush or pencil. It's technical skill, and in a lot of cases a certain manual dexterity is still a useful trait, because you end up "painting on the screen", very often. You also have to acquire basic skills in anatomy so that figures are posed correctly (the human eye is very good at detecting something that "not quite right" even if you can't identify what that something is - and it often ruins the image), some understanding of light and shadow so that figures and backgrounds don't seem odd (or seem odd in the right way, if that's what you want). You need to learn how to visualise how something will look when rotated or bent, or moved in relation to other things (in short, you need to understand perspective). That is also the same for learning to use traditional media. The Camelot image I posted above is a case in point - I did the picture as an exercise in learning how to do rays of sunlight. It's not there yet, but I did learn something (like - use a gradient next time, fool!) So the figures were in many ways an after-thought. The hallway and the windows and the sunlight were what I was initially aiming for. The last stage - to move to WOW! images - is identical in rendered, 3d art and traditional media. That's the artist's eye. I'm beginning to sadly conclude that that can't be acquired by practice, and it's notable that many of the artists I know who have it, work in both traditional and computer media. This is the ability to design an image in your head and translate it into an image that isn't mundane. Sounds simple, but isn't. There's thousands of people posting rendered art to the web, of whom only a handful are any good. But the good people are consistently, reliably good. They have the eye. No amount of money or computer firepower can provide that. Finally, there are two other differences between all forms of computer art and hand drawn art on paper/canvas/artboard. The first is that computer art has an "undo" function and in rendered art you can change one part without messing with the rest of an image. You can work on a scene and if you don't like an element, you can change it out with little trouble. Don't like the lighting? Change it. Decide the secondary figure is superfluous? Click delete and it's gone. Conventional art does let you make changes, of course: you can redraw, paint over or just start again, but it's not as easy. The move of many artists to painting in Photoshop comes in part from the ability to undo things easily. Secondly, - for 3d rendering, you rely on models. If you have models that suit your needs ("a knight", for example) then you can put it together, set up your model and voila! Not only can you play around with how the figure is posed, lighting and so on, but you can save it for later reuse/alteration. That makes it easy to do (for example) a series of images using the same characters. But this is also a weakness - if you DON'T have the model you want, then you either have to learn how to make it (a time-consuming art and quite different from making images - imagine if painters could only paint things they had sculpted...) or scrap the idea. In contrast, once you have mastered basic drawing/painting skills, your imagination is only limited by your technical skills, not what you have in your toolbox. cheers, Mark

Re: Class in Fantasy Interesting article. I agree with the basic idea, although the author overstates the degree of organisation of the Mafia a bit- the reality seems to have been a bit messier, with some powerful individuals outside the "fief" system. He also overstates the "chaos" of the early middle ages a bit with comments like " It should be noted that money -- silver or gold coins -- had gradually vanished from use and that Europe and had adopted a barter system to meet their basic economic needs." which we know was not true. Mints and minting rights were eagerly sought items, throughout the medieval and feudal periods, as was possession of silver and gold mines from which coins could be made (the Hapsburgs built their entire empire off the possession of silver mines) and we possess literally tens of thousands of medieval coins - a tiny fraction of what must have been in circulation. The Knights Templar and the cities of Siena and Florence (among others) got wealthy off their international banking businesses, based not only on the issuing of loans against non-money assets but also on the difficulty of transporting large amounts of coin. Surviving banking documents from the medieval era sometimes speak of cash transfers involving literally hundreds of thousands of coins. I've seen Pedro the Cruel's treasury at Almodovar del Rio. It's a big room and was reputedly filled more than 2 metres deep with coins and gold... There are also plenty of coin hoards from the medieval period. These were not the possessions of wealthy lords - almost all hoards that have been found are from agricultural areas and appear to have been buried in or around farms belonging to moderately wealthy farmers. Cheers, Mark

Re: Herophile Fantasy art Oh, very nice. Although my male character seems to be getting a better response...

Re: Weapons as Perks This IS exactly how I run my game. If you want to make a magic item (or a special item) you pay the ful cost - you can't add on a few points to an lready existing "free" item. However ifthe item itslef is special then you also have the "independant" limitation to make it much cheaper. As for looting, that's an easily solved problem. Players won't loot stuff if what they have is the same. As already noted, why take a guard's weapon when you have one that is as good or better? I ran a two and a half year, once-a-week game (with some standard old-school players yet) where looting and weapons/armor escalation was simply not an issue. That's because there was precisely one magic sword, one magic potion and one "bag of gold coins" treasure in the whole two and half year story arc. Once you get players out of the "kill and loot" mentality then that problem dissolves. By the time (a year into the story) they actually came across the magic sword, they were happy to give it away to their boss, as the whole idea of "character development through looting" had become foreign to the players. cheers, Mark