Markdoc

Re: What is the building in which a mason works called? Masons made buildings. They didn't carve effigies, ornamental touches, or, for that matter, the stones they built with, usually. Those were jobs for stonecarvers and quarrymen, respectively. Masons were a fairly specialised trade, whose job was to put buildings together, not make the bits buildings were made out of (it's why they were considered a "fine" trade). A mason was partly a builder, partly an architect, partly a designer ... not a mere tradesman. Masons did carve specialist pieces though (corner and keystones, archetraves, restpieces, etc) especially as journeymen and the humbler types would naturally do more. No doubt. I doubt they'd call it a lodge, though which had a very specific meaning in medieval times cheers, Mark

Re: Mass Combat System and Archery Units To go back to the original question, here's an easy approach to mass combat that I use. It's based on the simple idea that the more dice you roll, the more closely you approach the normal distribution for those dice. In other words, if you are rolling 200 attacks for a unit of archers, you're likely to get pretty close to the average number of hits you'd predict just from the numbers. Based on that concept I whipped up a bunch o' tables. Since I stil don't know how to do tables on this forum, here's a link to Reocities showing the tables (and explanatory text) in all their retro-90's, colourful Geocities-design-sense glory. The advantage of this approach is it gives you exactly what you'd expect from Hero system characters: 20 archers will be about 20x as effective as one archer of the same type. cheers, Mark

Re: Mass Combat System and Archery Units Why? European heavy horse of all nations had been using stirrups for about 6-700 years by the time of Agincourt. cheers, Mark

Re: Mass Combat System and Archery Units Agincourt is one of those battles which everyone knows about ... but when you ask most people, what they know about the battle tends to be wrong. There's the common picture of mounted charges by knights being turned back by hails of arrows. But all the chroniclers who were present agree that the vast majority of French knights actually fought on foot, and as noted, they walked through the hail of arrows to come to grips with - and push back - the English line. It was the stout defence by the English knights - supported by archers - that prevented the English being annihilated. The whole "mounted charges" thing was given solid form in the public eye by the lovely (but historically anachronistic) paintings by Gilbert in the Victorian era. Agincourt was won by lots of factors. Mud certainly, but mud was the result of repeated charges over the same already boggy terrain. If I had to order it, it'd be: 1. Terrain: the English had chosen a point uphill of the French, with a ploughed and muddy field in front of their lines and heavily wooded rising slopes to either side. The French advantage in numbers was essentially neutralized by this narrow front - much of the army was only peripherally involved in the battle and they were forced to send in waves of soldiers, who churned the muddy field into a swamp - and who in the later stages had to clamber over piles of dead to get at their enemies. That's not good for morale or cohesion 2. Professionalism. The English army was composed largely of veterans, and it had a single, distinct chain of command. The guy at the very top had relatively little combat experience, but he was inspirational and had trusted and experienced subcommanders. The lower ranks knew that death or maiming was the likely outcome for all of them if they lost. As a result, the English army did what it was commanded. The French army was actually made up of several factions, two of whom (Armagnac and Burgundy) had - literally - been at war with each other and who (shortly after the battle) went to war again. The Burgundians certainly didn't cry many tears to see knights from Armagnac being slaughtered! Even worse, they had not one, but two seperate commanders, who not only disagreed with each other but one of whom had bad relationships with half the army, and both of whom were outranked by many of their own subcommanders! As a result, their chain of command was fractured (to put it mildly) - and fractious - with orders being ignored or disputed or even countermanded further down the chain of command. As a result the French tossed away several good opportunities, simply because their command structure was paralysed and different parts ofthe army would not do what they were told. 3. Tactics. The English had a simple plan and stuck to it. The French Constable also had a good plan - engage the archers with their own missile troops to tire them, make them use up their arrows and then deliver a (hopefully decisive) mounted charge on the English centre. If they had stuck to that, they might well have won. They didn't. Squabbling over who would get to engage first (important because most troops served for bounty and the biggest bounty was ransom: the troops who got last into the fighting would likely go home with no pay at all) and distrust between the factions meant that the French arches and crossbowmen were set off to one side and behind the van, where they got to play almost no role at all. The mounted charge was delivered with no support, against a fresh enemy and not concentrated but in little dribs and drabs. The foot were thrown in - again without support - and when they got bogged down and then outflanked, more troops were simply pressed in, so that any coherent tactics became impossible. And ... etc. cheers, Mark

Re: Mass Combat System and Archery Units

Re: What is the building in which a mason works called? Mason didn't really have work buildings as such: if they were supervising stonecutting, they'd do it at the quarry. If they were supervising stone-fitting, mixing mortar, etc, then they'd be at the building site. Masons were, by and large an outdoor trade. cheers, Mark

Re: A campaign wishlist Attic colony yes, founded about 700 BC. But until Constantine happened along, a thousand years alter, it was apparently, a no-account, podunk sort of place (described by a reasonably contemporary chronicler as "a miserable village") Cheers, Mark

Re: These are small, those are far away...

Re: A campaign wishlist I've dropped my last FH game (after 5 straight years of GM'ing, I was getting a bit burned out on it, and the setting is now as detailed as it will ever get). The PCs are established Heroes, with some of them even having regular high-status jobs now (Head priest, Guard captain, Wealthy Merchant, that sort of thing) the ultimate baddies have been, if not defeated, at least thwarted for now. I'm going to run a short game for the next year or two, which will be pulp fantasy/steampunk set in an alternate Victorian era, while I work up my next fantasy game. I'm kicking around several ideas, but the most likely are: The Rat King. A political intrigue game set in a huge, rotting, decadent city, whose all-powerful leader appears to be going dangerously insane .. or maybe not. The last game had pretty clearly-defined bad guys and the players were, by and large, heroic. It might be nice to try something a bit darker, for a change. Air pirates! The players are a band of misfits with their own dragonship (flying ship) trying to make a living on the occasionally lawless fringes of the Martic league. Basically like Firefly, but in a fantasy setting For Glory! The Dragon-breeding warlords of the ancient city-state of Tyrantia are in a state of constant war with the barbarians from the west, their hated necromantic shamans and hordes of shambling undead ... and with each other. The players are part of a band of foreign mercenaries recruited for the wars and the nearly as dangerous intrigues. This game would have the advantage that it is in an area adjacent from the one played over in the last game, so the players would already have some continuity with the last game and familiarity with their "home area". cheers, Mark

Re: These are small, those are far away... I should point out that I think area is irrelevant, but range is not: it does - as you point out below - affect your ability to identify what you are looking at. But we already have a modifer for that - and based on gaming, it seems to be about right (not perfect, of course, but about right) Right. It also depends on the object. Finding Mars might take some scanning - especially if you have no idea where precisely it should be - because there's a fair number of Mars-like objects up there, but finding the moon is going to take 1/2 a second, maybe a whole second, tops, even though you are scanning the exact same area. cheers, Mark

Re: These are small, those are far away... Actually it's pretty easy: It's clear in Northern Europe right now - go outside and look at the sky. The bright thing in the sky that isn't the moon? It's Venus. The second brightest thing? It's Jupiter (might be too close to the horizon to see by now). You really only need to have them pointed out to you once, maybe twice, because they really are significantly brighter than the stars. There's a hell of a lot of stars up there, but they are so much dimmer, they don't really count. This is a good example of a contrast bonus. Although the area to to be scanned is unimaginably huge .... that's kind of irrelevant. Distance in this case is offset by a mofo-sized size bonus cheers, Mark

Re: These are small, those are far away... Understood - but that's largely irrelevant. Quadruple, halve, whatever. It really doesn't matter. I can scan my desk or the carpark in more or less exactly the same amount of time. Please, let's forget about area.

Re: These are small, those are far away...

Re: These are small, those are far away...

Re: These are small, those are far away...

Re: These are small, those are far away...

Re: These are small, those are far away...

Re: Can be used as... Simple test: you are in space, weightless. There is no opposing force. Grab your feet and lift. Going anywhere? No, didn't think so. Action/reaction assumes that you can apply force to something else and that something else can apply a force back. The whole "lifting yourself with TK inside armour" to me makes no more sense than trying to lift yourself by pushing at the inside of the armour with your hand. I'm honestly flummoxed as to why we seem to be talking at cross-purposes here. In the example I gave (lifting yourself on a bar) gravity was assumed. We have already established that the person is strong enough to lift themselves against gravity. Using your definitions, they should thus be able to grab their feet and hup! Away into the skies! (They'd look pretty funny flying though, and would presumably fall if they let go of their feet ) The problem with moving yourself with TK (as I see it) is that there is no feedback. Push down on the bar with your STR and you are lifted into the air (action/reaction). Push down on the bar with TK and you go nowhere. Push the suit of armour when you are outside it and you can move it away from yourself (or pull it towards you, for that matter). But you grab the entire thing. It's why you can lift a car instead of just tearing the fender off. If you are inside it, grabbing the entire thing and trying to move it away from you is akin to grabbing yourself and trying to move yourself. You can't. It looks like we have come to a point of mutual incomprehension and suggest gently that we leave it at that.

Re: These are small, those are far away... Part of this discussion seems to be driven by a misunderstanding of how senses (especially sight) work. A larger area does not necessarily take longer to search. I can look out into the hall from my office. In terms of area, it's perhaps 128X the size of my desk, but it takes no longer to scan than the desk does, because it is all in my unobstructed arc of view. I can scan the entire thing in one action, and anything larger than a pair of keys (unless it's a dull greenish-grey colour) is going to be blindingly obvious regardless of whether it's on my desk or lying in the much larger area of the hall. It might be somewhat harder to notice something small at the far end of the hall than in the foreground, though. In contrast, you could stealthily put a menhir directly behind me, and I wouldn't easily notice it, even though it fills most of the available space. However, a gunshot is going to be equally audible, whether it is in front, to the sides or behind me: the only modifiers in that case is how loud it is and how far away it is. From this we can draw some simple conclusions. 1. Distance appears to play a role in how hard something is to perceive. 2. Area scanned - in itself - is largely irrelevant. 3. Quantity of the object (whether size and colour for sight, or volume for sound) affects perception 4. Other factors (such as "obviousness") play a role at least as important and probably more important and whether a sense is 360 degrees (hearing) or 120 degrees (sight) will affect obviousness Thus a bright orange pen is easily perceptible on my desk, on my office floor, or at the end of the hall and takes almost the same amount of time to find. Six seconds (1 phase) is more than adequate to all cases. In this case, "obviousness" appears to over-ride any penalties from size and distance. There is a limit to this though - move it a kilometer away and even if you blew a whole in the end wall so I had a straight line of sight, I could not see the pen, no matter how long I looked. In contrast, the menhir will still be visible even at a kilometer (as long as the wall wasn't in the way) - but it would be "hard to detect" as long as it was behind me. Thus: 1. Obvious objects do not need to be searched for: and "in unobstructed line and arc of sensing" is the primary determinant of "obviousness". 2. Distance is the primary modifier. Even obvious objects can be hard to see at larger distances 3. Size is a secondary modifier, in that it can modify the effect of distance, but it appears to have only minor effects on obviousness. Now, clearly this is a rough guide: if I asked you to find the higgs boson, it'd be hard to find, even if one went zipping right through your face because it is very, very small indeed. So these are "newtonian" PER rolls, dealing with a distinct range of quanta. The system breaks down for very small or very large objects (the earth is easy to locate, but hard for us to get any sense of, because of its size.) To go back to the missing keys analogy, it only takes Sean a few minutes to find them - despite their size modifier - because there is also an obviousness modifier. When people can't find their keys (and my wife loses hers a lot) they don't start by searching the apartment at one end and methodically working their way through until they find the keys. Instead they start by searching "the obvious places" - pockets, bags, shelves, key-racks, etc. I almost never lose my keys or even spend more than 3 seconds searching for them because I always keep them in the same place: the fob-pocket of my pants. In this case, obviousness is the only determining factor: no roll is needed, regardless of the key's size modifier, because unlike Chad, I already know where my pants are. On the other hand, if Sean is searching someone else's apartment for their keys, obviousness is lower, unless he knows where she keeps her keys so it will probably take longer. If he's searching the same apartment for some keys she has hidden, then it will take much longer again. Thus: Keys in pocket? Obvious, no roll needed. Keys somewhere in own apartment? Roll needed but situational modifier applies for obviousness/familiarity (+3? ?5?). Keys found in a few minutes. Keys somewhere in an unfamiliar apartment? Roll needed but situational modifier not applied or is small (+1?). Keys found in a few minutes to an hour or so. Keys hidden in an apartment. Roll needed. Not only is "obviousness" modifier not applied, but PER roll is potentially modified by the Concealment skill of the person doing the hiding. Other skills (Deduction, for example: "Where would she hide my keys?") can act as modifiers. All pretty simple and all well covered by the existing rules. cheers, Mark

Re: These are small, those are far away... In real life though, unless the area is extremely cluttered (and thus inflicting a PER penalty of its own), that's likely to make a pretty minor difference. cheers, Mark

Re: Can be used as...

Re: VPP Frequency? I use them a lot. NOt so much for NPCs, oddly enough, since I usually have enough on my plate without keeping an eye on the NPCs VPP, IYKWIM But it's rare that at least one PC does not have a VPP in the game, and in the last campaign, roughly half the PCs did. I do, however encourage pre-builds (to cut down on reconfigure time) and almost always require a tight definition*. I'd almost never allow for example a VPP defined as "magic spells" or "Super powers" for the reason Sean listed. It gets boring if you can generate every single power in the book. *This applies to MP as well. cheers, Mark

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? You'll appreciate this, then! [ATTACH=CONFIG]42309[/ATTACH] cheers, Mark

Re: These are small, those are far away... Yeah, we've had this discussion before and the answer is the same as last time. The rules are quite explicit that you only need to make a skill roll or a perception roll where appropriate and never for routine tasks. The -8 for perception thus only applies when the miniscule person is trying to hide (and has something to hide in or behind: he can try and hide all he likes, but if he's standing on top of a table-tennis table in good lighting, it's not going to help). Likewise, you don't need to roll to find your car keys when they are in your pocket, but if you drop them somewhere when out for a walk in the forest ... well, that PER Mod is going to make them almost impossible to find. If only all rules questions were as easy to answer as this one! cheers, Mark

Re: Can be used as...