Markdoc

Re: Bushido Hero

Re: Why I prefer HERO System over Pathfinder/OGL/D&D for fantasy My approach is this. I prefer Hero as a GM, because it's far easier to build campaigns. I like to customise my game, and I did exactly that when GM'ing D&D back in the dark ages. There's two reasons for that. The first, is obviously that it's meant for building things from scratch. The second (and under-appreciated) thing is that because of its Supers heritage, it scales well. You can build the powerful, nigh -invulnerable avatar of the gods and the annoying talking animal sidekick, without any kludges needed. The last game I ran had several different magic systems (which was major plot element) and was generally lower-powered magically than your typical high fantasy game - but it morphed into a high fantasy game over the course of 5 years' play. I didn't need to tweak the rules at all. You can certainly do that with D&D (I know, because I have) but it's much, much, harder: the system really wasn't designed with customisation in mind. But as a player, I am equally happy playing D&D/Pathfinder because I enjoy building characters and then playing them. I actually don't have too many problems building "my" character in D&D because I know the rules well and can draw on a vast array of sourcebooks (as an aside, though I was impressed by the design vision in D&D 4E, the system didn't appeal, because it was/is very much more restricted than the earlier versions. That's good if you just want to get a game up and go, but bad if you like to customise). Customising a fantasy character in D&D is far harder than in Hero - the system forces you to plan out a character's development in at least some detail ahead of time, even for starting characters - but it's certainly doable. And for me it's a pleasure: I like building characters - it's pleasant, non-stressful intellectual exercise, and the many restrictions placed in your way by the rules simply add to the challenge. I do understand that this is not the case for everyone, though . Hero lets me customise more simply. So there you go. I don't think I could ever bring myself to GM more than a one-off game of D&D ever again. But as a player, Iam happy to swing either way. cheers, Mark

Re: Bushido Hero Thanks for the kind words, guys: Reocities has resurrected the old site here: if that's of interest, I still have my old adventure notes, NPCs, etc and would be happy to share those. cheers, Mark

Re: Recommended Book for Fantasy GMs For me, his toughness is illustrated is illustrated by the fact that he led the charge at the battle of Lincoln, reputedly taking several high-ranked prisoners .... at the age of 70. Tough mofo, no question. cheers, Mark

Re: Your "2012" Pet Gaming Projects I wrapped up the fantasy hero campaign I've been running the last 5-some years just before christmas. New project is ... I dunno what you'd call it. Victorian Hero? Alienpunk pulp hero? Anyway, it's a game starting in Victorian-era India, as the PCs are recruited by a mysterious agency called "Torchwood". It was chosen as the next game by the players who contain a high proportion of Torchwood fans. Right now, the plot is roughed out and I'm doing some background reading before starting a more detailed plotline. The last game was a sand-box style, which is why it sprawled over 5 years and ended leaving a zillion unresolved plot threads. This time, I plan to go back to a more disciplined, plot-oriented style, based on a season/episode style. cheers, Mark

Re: Help me populate a dying space colony Rainsford Zaroff made his fortune in media and since then has sampled pretty much all the delights the worlds have to offer: and he's bored with them all. His heavily modified body shows no signs of seven decades of heavily-indulged debauchery. It's also been modified to allow him to pursue the one hobby that still thrills him - hunting. Most of all, hunting the one thing that still offers him a challenge - desperate, armed humans. Omicron Eridani provides him plenty of raw material. He selects a victim, observes them and when he's ready, sends them them a message - and if necessary, to get them moving, a non-lethal warning (beartrap in the bathroom, severed head of a loved one in the fridge, that sort of thing). After that, the chase is on. Zaroff talks a great deal about "sporting chances" but doesn't like to take too many himself: he gives himself all the advantages that he can, in terms of equipment. In the end, though, the hunt has to be his, and he wants it to be thrilling - he doesn't employ assassins and he doesn't select victims who are too weak to actually make a fight (or a flight) of it. He's a sadist, but not in the usual sense. He kills without physical torture, but to really generate the thrill of the chase, his victim has to pose a challenge, so he will often toy with them a little at first, so that the "game" does not end too soon. He's also not a coward: several times, victims have almost turned the tables, but he's never backed away from a hunt - to do so would rob the whole game of any point. That can happen because he likes to confront his victims at the end: there's no challenge and little fun to blowing someone's brains out with a rifle from a couple of klicks away, when they don't even know that they are in danger. In personality, he's totally amoral, and often less than good company: he's good looking, well traveled, cultured, and something of an epicure, but totally self-obsessed. As long as you like to discuss his favourite topic - himself and his success, he can be charming. Otherwise, he soon loses interest and becomes sarcastic or even rude. He can be led into rants about the rule of the strong, darwinian selection and the rights of the ubermensch, which might suggest a less than balanced mind under the facade. The obvious use for Zaroff is as a hidden, dangerous adversary, either targeting a PC (his pre-hunt intel would have had to badly wrong somehow for that to work against most PCs, though) or when an NPC turns to them for help. Alternatively, less squeamish PCs might learn his secret - hearing him taunt a victim before the finish of a hunt, for example - and decide to try and turn him onto one of their enemies. cheers, Mark

Re: Noble Titles Meh - just go with what sounds good and justify it later. The English mint guy historically was just "Master of the Mint" but his boss was the "Chancellor of the Exchequer". The who-what guy? So try something like: "Lord Wossisname, Of the keys to the second gate, holder by ancient tenure, General of the hospital, scourge of heretics. The last two cover the pilgrim angle and are probably self-explanatory. If any player asks about the first part just explain that before the mint was moved to the mountain city of Yak-Butt, the mint had been behind the second court of the royal palace and that officers of the mint still held the ancient title ... Your players, of course, will remember him as "that guy with the name in that one place ... I think it was near a mountain or something?"

Re: Castle Bathory That works

Re: Castle Bathory The concentric wall and keep is really only typical of limited parts of Europe (and certain periods) - there's plenty of floorplans on the web with more varied shapes, but ya have to know where to look. Basically Eastern Europe (including Germany) and Iberia used terrain much more than the low countries, France and England (the home of the concentric wall and keep castle ) so their layouts are much more varied. So if you google (for example) "Moravian castle floorplans" "German castle floor plans" etc for images, select black and white images, and you'll get plenty of "bathory style" castles. This site has plenty of floorplans, plus 3D reconstructions (so to speak ) cheers, Mark Oh, and if it has to be "Bathory's castle" (ie: the one where she was walled up) this video gives a nice overhead view: easy enough to sketch the layout from that.

Re: Religion in Science-Fiction? Just to nitpick, but the Pilgrims didn't come to the US to practice their religion in peace: they had already left the UK years before they made the trip to the US to practice their religion in peace in Holland. They just couldn't get rich (or even upper middle-class) in Holland. There was no available land and most of them worked as tradesmen. They went back to the UK and arranged passage to the US as a commercial deal - in other words, they moved with the very American goal of making money. We have a pretty good idea of what they were thinking and worrying about through all those years since much of their correspondence is preserved. Not all (or even most) of the 100 settlers in their fleet were puritans: the fleet was supposed to go to Virginia to join the existing (non-puritan) colony there. They only ended up at Cape Cod due to a mixture of accidents, bad weather and incompetent seamanship. So they're probably not a great example of religious migration. On the other hand, your basic point is still sound - the Mormon trek to Utah is a decent example. cheers, Mark

Re: Campaign Rules for Anime Fantasy For anime-style characters who have that "pull something out of the hat" power, I've used two approaches. 1. A power that is powered by absorption - ie, it charges up from you taking a beating. 2. Powers with a limitation like "Can only use while at half BOD or lower" or even "Can only use when at negative BOD". That latter's a good -2 limitation if I've ever seen one! cheers, Mark

Re: Repercussions of mass-producing comic book technology But they'd do it. I was at a meeting with two patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension recently. They both desperately want to get pregnant -and are trying to do so - despite the fact that no woman with PAH has ever survived pregnancy. If they get pregnant and survive so long, the doctors will be cutting a premature baby out of their corpses. To me, that's insane (and kind of horrible), but some people are truly driven to have kids. They are not going to rational about it. cheers, Mark

Re: General Atomics electromagnetic rail cannon Well, the basic principle is sound, you just need to goose the timeline a bit. The thing about railguns (and effective weaponisable lasers, for that matter) is that right now, we don't actually have good materials to make them out of. The sensible thing - for me - would be to initiate a material science program: basic nose-to-screen science, with the goal "Make high potential lasing materials" or "Make me an efficient electrical conductor that is light, strong and flexible". You're looking for a genuine breakthrough, and we know how to fund breakthrough science - keep it cheap, keep it simple and throw lots of money at it, so multiple groups can get in on the action. Most of 'em will fail, but you simply want proof of principle, so only one has to work. Once you have your breakthrough - then you build on it. In contrast, the laser and railgun programs in the US have been all about weapons ... weapons built using technologies we don't actually have yet. Programs like that are almost guaranteed to fail, because you can't predict breakthroughs. And without the breakthrough, it's like Victorians trying to make a moon landing by building really big cannon: no matter how much time and money they lavish on it, it's never going to work. The people running these programs aren't idiots (well, probably mostly not idiots). They know this as well as I do. They also know that a materials science program might get - if it's lucky - a few million a year, while a weapons program can attract ten or twenty times as much. For the people who run them, they are goldmines. And military research programs are notorious for their lax timelines and lavish budgets. I worked with the DoD in Kenya. The army got things done fast and they got them done well - but in 6 months they blew through enough cash to keep a similar-sized civilian program going for 7 years (and I know, because I ran a civilian program as well). It's interesting: in the US a lot of money is spent on military research, but the success rate is horrible. Many companies and any decent university outperform it by huge, huge margins, and almost none of the breakthrough military technologies for the last half century actually come from the DoD's program - they come from outside and are then adopted. I think it's due to the system - to the way the projects are set up and run. So railgun technology could well suddenly become feasible next year. Or in 20 years - we can't say when the needed breakthroughs will come. All we can be certain of is that it probably won't come from DoD cheers, Mark

Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits?

Re: General Atomics electromagnetic rail cannon While I feel your geek sadness, just imagine the response when one of the senators on the approval board asks if they have managed to keep the railgun from exploding every time it's used and the answer is "Yessir! Now the cannon only explodes two shots in three!" It's cool technology, but there isn't any indication that they can turn it into a workable prototype any time soon. Remember the original development plan was to deploy a prototype .... last year. You may have noticed that didn't happen. They got a bunch of extra money with the promise to provide a deployable prototype in 2012. It's very, very clear that ain't gonna happen either - and it's been clear for at least a couple of years that it wasn't going to happen. In fact, they're not even close. At what point do you stop pouring money into a hole? cheers, Mark

Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits? A perfect example of what I was trying to say! Essentially a "destructive transfer" is not very different - in terms of consciousness - from what happens to people every day in hospitals across the planet. It's very different from a physical/legal/philosophical viewpoint of course, but I can pretty much guarantee that it it were available, it would become the standard as rapidly as the equipment could be manufactured and put in place. cheers, Mark

Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits?

Re: How (un)realistic are Street Samurai? I think it's fair to say that if Street sam.s did exist, they'd take every advantage offered. So, certainly guns are going to be your weapon of choice. But some kind of inbuilt blade or piercing weapon (a very sharp solid punch-spike that can inject phosphoric acid?) might make a dandy holdout weapon. As a primary weapon, just no. As a backup? Sure. cheers, Mark

Re: How (un)realistic are Street Samurai? Or indeed, blades of any kind: think of the German soldiers charging sgt York. Close range? Check. Holstered pistol vs ready blades? Check. They charge. He draws and kills all 6. OK, he was clearly a skilled combatant, but it makes the point. And to those who might like to argue that those were bayonets, not katanas, I'll point out that when the Royal Marines crossed rifle butts with samurai wielding katana, they beat the crap out of the samurai and made them flee hand to hand combat cheers, Mark

Re: How (un)realistic are Street Samurai?

Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits?

Re: How (un)realistic are Street Samurai?

Re: How (un)realistic are Street Samurai?

Re: How (un)realistic are Street Samurai?

Re: Long tours-of-duty on industrial/mining ships Yeah, but look back a century. Ordinary seamen signed on for 10 years. If they were lucky, that might involve a variety of short trips with liberty in between. If unlucky, that might involve 5+ years without a break except short shore leaves - and damn few of those. People adapt. Given that a mile-long ship like the Ishimura with a crew of 1000+ contains far more possibility for entertainment than a 90 foot long brig with a crew of 65, I'd say it might be rough, but it'd certainly be doable, even if there were no leaves. cheers, Mark