Markdoc

Re: Cool Guns for your Games That's a question I don't think can be answered, but not many, I suspect. As I've noted in the past, I've been shot and almost killed, and seriously? It didn't hurt much. I've inflicted far more pain on myself with a minor cut or graze. That might sound odd, but your body tends to shut down the pain response in high-stress situations. As the FBI report I mentioned noted, if somebody's excited, they'll often just shrug off wounds that later turn out to be fatal. cheers, Mark

Re: Can be used as...

Re: Cool Guns for your Games

Re: Can be used as... Here, I'd tend to agree with you cheers, Mark

Re: Can be used as... Agree 100%. Now that figureds have been split off, it's not such a problem, but that's still where the roots of the problem lie. Cheers, Mark

Re: Can be used as... My emphasis in bold: yes, when used to crush and strike. But that's only one use of TK, and in my experience not the commonest one. TK is commonly used to grab, to squeeze (doing damage, but also restraining). It is frequently used outside combat to move objects (including team-mates). And in addition, it is indirect, which killing attack is not. Mechanically, it's a very different beast from RKA/HKA. cheers, Mark

Re: Can be used as... The trouble is that this is much more than more than just "constant vs not". It's that the two powers have very different functionality and uses. Had you simply suggested a +1/4 normal damage to killing damage (or vice versa) modifier, then I'd be prepared to consider it (though, to be honest, I don't really see a use for it: as you have noted, buying two slots in your MP or VPP covers that nicely), because the two powers are quite similar. TK, on the other hands has a whole series of integral modifiers, that HKA does not: range, indirect, etc. Worse, once you add an advantage of this sort, you need to consider the ramifications when you start adding it to other powers. What about adding it to Ego blast to get an invisible, line of sight, ranged killing attack that works off ECV ... for a fraction of the cost of actually buying that? Even better, you still get the option to use regular Ego Blast! Abusive? Yes, I'd say so. I'm sorry, but the more this is discussed, the more it seems like nothing about it was really thought out in advance. I don't understand your point. Action/reaction means that when you pull on something, you also pull on yourself - hence you can lift yourself. In the context of the rules, I had always understood it as saying that no action/reaction means that you can pull (or push) on something but it has no effect on you.

Re: Can be used as... And I would argue that Hero is playable "out of the box" because 1. You don't actually need a starter scenario and most of starter scenarios are so laughably bad that you wouldn't necessarily want to run them, even if you got them free. 2. "Out of the box" means "ready to go". Many things these days that are ready to use out of the box don't come in boxes any more and most importantly 3. If you have the core rulebook (now rule books) you have everything you need - either as player or as GM I think what you mean is that it's not suitable to use out of the box for a neophyte GM, and there, I'd agree. When I picked up my first copy of the Hero system rules I already had 4 years experience running games and playing with various systems, including (shudder) C&S. But as to whether character creation not being the first thing you see .... I dunno. It's usually the first thing I look for in a gaming system. If it's not the first thing in the book, then I start reading the book by opening it to character creation and go back to the start later (if ever). I know I'm not the only one who does this! I think you could however, make character creation a bit more newbie-friendly by starting that section with a few simple characters and then (very, very briefly) deconstructing them as a guide to the system. Basically "This is how you build a character". cheers, Mark

Re: Zeppelins Such a thing did actually exist, albeit in a slightly less sophisticated form. http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-p/ao9-d.htm [ATTACH=CONFIG]42294[/ATTACH] cheers, Mark

Re: Can be used as... Ironically, though, a computer simulation is probably the only practical way that you could deliver a greater degree of flexibility and balance than the F2F games we have now, since it should be possible code a VPP-like setup that the player could use without a need to configure it on the fly. cheers, Mark

Re: Can be used as... Is Hero playable out of the box? Yeah. I had the rules in my hand for about an hour and already had sketched out my first character (it wasn't very efficient, because I hadn't read all the rules!) and started to convert my D&D game over before I even owned my own copy. I know other people who started with the rules and went from there. It's certainly not as easy to pick-up-n-go as some games, but the basic mechanisms are actually pretty simple. The devil is in the details. As for the "peak of game design sophistication" ... hmmm. That's a hard one (or more accurately a philosophical one: what is "sophisticated"?). I would argue that Hero has persevered largely unaltered where most of its contemporaries are either vanished or become different game systems, precisely because the basic design was highly sophisticated. It was, as far as I can tell, the first game where actual game design was an integral concern. But it's not been the last. There are plenty of games which show a great deal of sophistication in design. But game design consists of two elements. There's "Design" and there's "Game" and they may, or may not interact favourably - or indeed, much at all. I noted in my initial review of 4E D6D how impressed I was with the design of the game. The design team had a clear vision of what they wanted to create and the mechanisms worked smoothly to provide the experience they were aiming for. I consider it a really slick piece of design, even though the game itself was simple. Ease of entry and simple play were major design goals. Personally, I regard it as state of the art game design. Unfortunately, they designed a game that I personally don't really want to play, but that doesn't reflect on the sophistication, nor on the game. Plenty of people like it. There's also another game I hate. We've mentioned HEROQUEST before. That had some interesting concepts. I'd say there's a great deal of thought behind the mechanisms and the style of the game. It also shows sophisticated design. Unfortunately, the designer didn't think much about the game aspect: it's a well-designed game (looked at from the designers' viewpoint), which is almost impossible to use for normal gaming. There are plenty of similar examples. These have mostly failed to make any impact with the gaming public and will inevitably be soon forgotten. Is this sophisticated design? More broadly, is a sophisticated game one which has received a great deal of thought and introduces elegant new mechanisms or one which produces a beloved game? Does sophisticated mean "more knobs and whistles"? I'll announce my own bias up front: for me, sophistication is a combination that delivers whatever function was intended, as simply as possible. In this regard, I regard early Ming or classic Attic pottery as "sophisticated". We've added more knobs and whistles since then, but we have not (IMO) significantly advanced in that particular area in several thousand years. Hero system, oddly enough, meets this definition, because I have seen no evidence that you can build a system that offers a better balance between build flexibility and balance. The price you pay, of course, is in-play flexibility. Your build is, more or less what you get. It delivers - more or less - what it set out to deliver and does it as simply as I think is realistically possible. So for me, sophisticated game design actually needs to meet two goals: it needs a design æsthetic that has specific goals and it needs to meet those effectively. But equally, it needs to deliver a game that is genuinely playable. cheers, Mark

Re: Can be used as... Possible, but I doubt it. There have been games that do what you suggest: you mention a couple, and there are plenty of others (including one I worked up, myself, with a friend ). But so far, the basic choice seems to come down to three approaches when it comes to what I consider a crucial aspect of gameplay: balance vs flexibility. Some games come down on the side of flexibility: you can do what seems reasonable, given your special effect (HEROQUEST stretched that out into weird fantasy territory where even your special effect was highly negotiable). The flaw in all of the published games so far (and in our own unpublished attempt ) that take this approach is that "reasonable" does not appear to be the same for any two people on the planet. As a result, you get a high degree of flexibility and a high degree of design choice, but very little control on balance and almost no SIM. A mature, well-balanced, group who is prepared for a little give and take can make a system like this work. That describes the sort of group you get after many years of play with other systems, so it's good for about 3% of gaming groups: it's a niche product in a niche market, which is why the designers of this sort of game pretty much all have day jobs . In every other situation, the game is likely to collapses into acrimonious argument by the second session, or the third, if you are really lucky and you spend the whole first session getting the characters to meet in a bar. Another approach is to go with a fixed mechanic, which can be applied to any special effect. There's no problem saying "My TK should be able to do killing damage" because all damage is abstracted, anyway. This approach clearly works: it's one of the core mechanics of 4E D&D, though it's not restricted to that game. It's simple, but the price you pay is low SIM value and low flexibility: a disintegrate spell may be described as "You fire a green ray from your wand. Whatever the emerald beam hits disappears in a puff of gray dust." but the actual mechanic is pretty much the same as hitting the target with a big sword, or for that matter, seizing it with your TK and stabbing it . This kind of game is the exact opposite of the first one: it has an easy entrance path, but most gamers will become eventually move on from a game where options are fairly limited by the simple core mechanics. The third option is the crunchy one we are discussing here. That gives you a high SIM value and decent balance, but middling flexibility. It gives you very high design flexibility but places hard limits on design power, in the interest of game balance. I don't see any games rule set as bridging all categories because the three approaches - despite the first glance - all take much the same approach. They are trying to balance flexibility and game balance. You can get more of one by skimping the other, but I honestly doubt it is possible to have both, because they are essentially opposite ends of the same spectrum. My own feeling is actually that Hero has gone too far towards balance and too far away from flexibility, but to change that meaningfully would require some fairly drastic rejigging, and we'd need to be clear up front that increasing flexibility would be at the cost of balance/out of the box playability. cheers, Mark

Re: Can be used as... There's no conundrum - we agree, as long as you can have both powers in play at once you can do this easily. A MP with variable slots would do the job elegantly as holding power (STR) is converted to stabbing edges (RKA). A VPP would do it. Buying two seperate powers, for that matter, would do it. However, wanting both powers at once, at full power for a minor advantage? Not just no, but hell, no! cheers, Mark

Re: Can be used as... The answer was the use of the word "predefined" in Hugh's post. I agree completely that reconfiguring VPPs on the fly is only for players well-versed with the rules. I don't have any of those. I haven't had for quite a long time. Yet I have PCs who use VPPs all the time, without problem. They simply have a list of powers they can call on, and over time that list expands, as they come up with "How about if I ..." In many cases, you can use a MP the same way, and I actually prefer that since set up is easier, but VPPs are an option for players who want a bit more flexibility. cheers, Mark

Re: Can be used as... Not a problem if they are seperate powers. Big problem if both powers are coming out of a multipower which is only big enough for one, or - as in Sean's example - you don't actually have a killing attack. The original question can (to me) be summed up as "I want to do killing damage but I don't want to buy a killing attack - can I add it with a minor advantage instead?" cheers, Mark

Re: Can be used as... As a general rule, the fact that something can be abused doesn't bother me too much: especially if it takes an extreme effort to do so (continuous, uncontrollable, 0 END, NND, does body, that kind of thing). What bothers me are rules or suggestions that are abusive (or at least, significantly over-powered) in normal use. cheers, Mark

Re: Can be used as...

Re: Can be used as... While the elegant simplicity of this solution appeals, I think Sean had the correct approach in his first post: make an MP big enough to include both attacks. The utility of being able to grab an opponent, hold them grabbed (thus inflicting significant penalties on them) and then stab them at the same time sounds very much worth the extra points, and far beyond the sort of benefit you should expect from a crummy +1/4 advantage. It allows you to lift them into the air and stab them - thus forcing them to use an action on breaking free instead of counter-attacking, negating defences which are OAFs like shields, inflicting the grabbed penalty on their OCV - thus making them easier to stab, preventing them from using movement to take cover or simply get away, and in the event they do break free, potentially augmenting your stabbing damage with falling damage. And that's just the most basic grab-and-stab. It doesn't include things like holding-them-down-in-lava-and-stabbing-them-just-for-effect or using-them-as-a-sheld-and-stabbing-them-at-the-same-time or any one of a dozen other maneuvers that the crowd awards you bonus points for. To me the suggested advantage looks suspiciously like "I want to have multiple attack, but I don't actually want to pay for it" - though I suspect in this case, that wasn't Sean's actual intent cheers, Mark

Re: Cool Guns for your Games Actually, according to Capt. Fairbairn - who saw lots of people shot with both this, the Colt 1911 .45, and the Mauser 7.63 (and shot a few of them himself) in real life, the Mauser had more stopping power and was by far the most feared handgun in Shanghai. As he put it (I'm quoting from memory, so the wording may not be exact) "Nothing is so feared, rightly or wrongly, as the Mauser military automatic. The mention of the word is sufficient, if there is trouble afoot, to send men in instant search of bullet-proof equipment" - and in the same bit of text, he made it plain that he was talking of the 7.63. He put what he called the "terrible effect" of the weapon down to the tendency for the bullets to shatter and "pulp" - again his word - the target area. He has a whole chapter on stopping power in his book, based on years of experience in what was regarded as the world's most dangerous city, plus the preceding war. There's a discussion of the double .45 in another thread, where I just made the same point, so it was on the top of my brain. cheers, Mark

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

Re: Falling damage: all the right angles?

Re: Falling damage: all the right angles? Already knew about it, and had it figured into my post. There's two likely reasons he survived, both cited in the article you linked to. First, it wasn't free fall - the platform they were on fell, so they were going down fast, but not free-fall speeds. Secondly, the survivor landed on the platform, which had shock absorbing material on the underside. His brother, who fell or jumped off, it may be noted, did not survive. That the guy survived, even with the tiny edge that remaining on the platform gave him, is little short of a miracle. But I still know of no-one who's survived free-falling 70 metres onto concrete In the other incident cited, the guy who survived a 17 story fall also did not land on the concrete, but on an awning, which at least partially broke his fall (which is one thing that they are designed to do, generally). In my own experience I saw a guy (a drunken student) sit on a balcony railing and then fall off before anyone could get to him. He only fell about 15 metres, but he landed on his head - on a concrete walkway. He also survived - he wasn't even that badly hurt, at least to initial examination - because he also landed on an overhanging glass roof before hitting the walkway and the glass panel broke away, as it was designed to do. I should note that although these things are made of shatter-proof glass: the panel was still in one piece after falling 4 metres to the walkway - it had a clearly head-shaped impact area with crazed glass where this guy hit it. Had he fallen simply directly to the walkway, I am certain he would have died. Edit: and not just died, but popped his skull like a grape ... Concrete is not a landing-friendly surface. cheers, Mark

Re: Falling damage: all the right angles?

Re: Weird Adventures -- A Different Kind of Pulp Setting I've been thinking about this myself, as the next campaign I am going to run is a sort of weird adventures pulp setting (a Torchwood/Cthulu mythos/Sherlock Holmes/Tim Powers Mashup, set in the late 1800's - early 1900's) A good source to draw on for archetypes/characters is the board game Arkham Horror, where the players' characters and allies are all archetypes, based on HPL's universe: the ex-soldier, the corrupt politician, the wealthy dilettante, the explorer, the mystic old man, etc, etc. I'm planning on plundering them for NPCs and also in-game literary call-outs cheers, Mark