Markdoc

Re: How (un)realistic are Street Samurai? There is a very simple reason why swords are not commonly issued in militaries these days - and why, when they are, they are used for parade duties. Guns are better. Better at range, better at close combat, better at killing. And for small arms, easier to work with, to boot. Cyberpunk style chroming will certainly improve your survivability with a sword - but it'll amp your survivability with a gun even more. That said, the last cyberpunk game I played my character toted a katana - and even used it sometimes. Not because it's a viable weapon, because, let's face it - it isn't (and actually that was true in Kazei 5, too: anything I could kill with my katana, I could kill faster, easier and more safely with a gun). But for style. People do lots of things for style, and in a game setting where your rep counts for something - like for example badass-for-hire - style becomes more than just personal grooming. So for me? If you want a sword - carry one. It'll look good. And it's a pretty safe bet that it'll end up being more than a fashion accessory from time to time. Just carry a big-ass handgun as well cheers, Mark

Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits? People who are anesthetized lose continuity of consciousness. Yet we do not regard that as death - I've been anesthetized, and both I and society as large regard me as the same person, before and after. The same is true for millions of people. Arguably we lose continuity of consciousness when asleep, and everyone does that. A person who was anesthetized and woke to find their brain had been replaced by silicon would doubtless have the same reaction: that they were the same person - as long as their memory was intact. I think what you really mean is "continuity of memory" ... and if we postulate that cybernetic brains are possible, then continuity of memory would also be possible. So that issue turns out to be a non-issue, unless, as noted there's something special about a meat brain ... in which case you are saying that continuity of consciousness or continuity of memory aren't important, and that it's the meat that counts.* The issue of duplicates is an interesting one, but it's legal rather than philosophical. Two identical copies of the same person would be (absent drastic alterations in the current law and in our current understanding) two individuals. Two identical individuals, yes, but still two individuals. Each would meet the current guidelines for humane treatment, legal standing as a person etc. Currently, monozygotic twins, when born, are clones. Yet legally and philosophically we regard them as individuals. Siamese twins are born sharing the same body (and occasionally the same brain tissue) but they also are regarded as seperate persons. The origin of the person doesn't change that. None of those real life cases challenges our current legal or philosophical status quo. In a case where a person was cloned off another, then you could still identify an original and a copy, but so what? That doesn't make the copy - in our current understanding - any less sentient, any less of a person, etc. Once that copy is made, they will immediately start to diverge and be two different - but still very closely related - persons. The interesting questions are legal. If you make a copy, who gets your stuff? Should there be new laws, so that you can't make a copy without a legal requirement to provide for them? Can we - should we - legally redefine personhood, so that a copy actually isn't a person? I doubt that would fly, but it's a possibility. Cheers, Mark *There are precedents for this: a brain-dead human is no longer legally a person, but many friends and family continue to regard them as the same person. A person who suffers traumatic brain injury may have neither continuity of consciousness or continuity of memory, and they may even have greatly altered personality, but legally and socially, they are considered the "same person". The truth is, there is no current clear definition of what constitutes a person or "the same person".

Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits?

Re: Blasters: why?

Re: Blasters: why?

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play Right. Cyclops was frequently referred to in the early comics as "by far the most powerful of the X-men" and in one scene where he and Wolvie are facing off against a Sentinel, wolvie is about to get all stabby, when Cyclops lets rip and turns it into a smouldering hole in the ground. Wolvie says "Oh yeah - now I remember why you're team leader ..." Like all X-characters, he suffers from plot powers: sometimes he has a 20d6 AP EB and sometimes he has an 8d6 EB. Our first two Champions campaigns had plenty of swiss-army knife characters: power-armour suits, Cyborgs, master martial artists, flying energy projectors (with forcefields). For our third (very much inspired by the X-verse) we actually chose to make a team of all more-or-less one trick ponies (called The NuMen). There was: Sister Morphine - mentalist (no flight, psychokenesis, etc: just mental illusions, mind control and Ego Blast) Nexus - duplicator (Duplication, some extra speed, minor precognitive powers.) Mirrorman - mimic (Had a VPP to allow him to mimic the powers of those he touched) Another martial artist (the name escapes me) with minor energy powers and ... most notorious of all ... Wing. He had wings. He could fly. That's it. He could fly really well, though! It was a pretty fun team (well, apart from Wing ) - designed to tackle minor level threats, and having to think your way through problems instead of simply using power X was actually stimulating rather than a problem. cheers, Mark

Re: Religion in Science-Fiction? Not to nit-pick, but you've apparently confused Tel es-Safi, which is tentatively associated with Gath - the home town of Goliath - with Gaza, where Samson's story is supposed to have ended. No philistine temples have been found in Gaza, although for obvious reasons, there's not a lot of archeology going on there. There is a philistine temple at Tel es-Safi, which like some (but not all) of the other philistine temples found, does have two roof-supporting columns ... though it is unlikely that you could kill people by pushing them (even if you were really strong), because even if you knocked them out of place, all you'd do is bring down a light roof of lath and plaster, causing some nasty bruises and cuts: the two columns were not very big and like the ones at Tel Qasile were apparently made of wood. In addition, since the temple at Tel es-Safi is only a bit bigger than a typical living room, to get 3000 philistines in there, you'd need chainsaws and blenders so we can pretty safely rule it out as the site of Samson's last STR roll. It's in the wrong place, is too small and was destroyed by an earthquake - not a good match for the biblical story! You do make the point though, that, religion is likely to survive in the future, simply because so many people want it to. And in plenty of scifi stories, it's provided compelling extra material, so why not? cheers, Mark

Re: Changing the roll low to hit and skill check to a roll high to hit and skill chec I've had exactly the problem you described, with new players. A simple halfway solution is: Leave skill rolls as they are: explain them to players as "This is your target number - you need to roll under it." That seems to go over pretty well, because there's no math on the player side - it's a static number. Change the combat roll to roll high and explain it as "Your OCV is a modifier on your to hit roll, just like BAB. Your target's DCV+10 functions just like AC. " That's the kind of math they are already programmed to do and it will solve your problem: I've been through this with multiple groups. cheers, Mark

Re: What If? Fertility Control We live in a world where people - especially children - are bought and sold. cheers, Mark

Re: you cannot make this up: Swedish man arrested for trying to split atoms in kitche Shrug. If people want to buy dumb stuff to put in their house, they can. This falls into the same space as those signs I've seen in US toilets with phrases like "If you tinkle when you sprinkle, be a sweetie, lift the seatie" and "We aim to please - you aim too, please" - though it doesn't surprise me that Germans have one that issues commands instead Personally, I've never heard of spuk and - having spent plenty of time in Germany (especially in bars) over the last decade - no men there seem to have heard they are not supposed to piss standing up. I asked two German friends about this and the emails I got back were full of suppressed "Those wacky americans! What will they make up next!" - and they are both from Berlin. I think we're back in urban legend country again. And the whole point about urban legends is that they do pop up a lot. How many times have you heard the "JFK and the Jelly Doughnut Speech" urban legend? That one's easy to see, but it's often hard to work out how they got started. Here's a reverse one: Brazilians apparently think that all Americans think Buenos Aires is the capital of Brazil. How? Why? Who knows. People believe weird ****. The myth that it's illegal to pee standing up in Germany probably started with something like this: somebody once suggested that maybe it should be (no such law was ever passed). However, far from being law, German has the word "Sitzpinkler" - meaning a man who sits down to piss. It has the same meaning (though it's more abusive) as "wimp" in English. In other words, the whole "Must sit down to pee" thing is a joke in Germany. Oddly enough, one of the two mentioned that he had heard it was law in Sweden So .... a quick Google search on "Illegal to pee standing" found people claiming that it was illegal to pee standing up in ... Sweden (occasionally all of scandinavia), the Netherlands, the UK, France, Belgium, Norway, Australia ... aaaaaand some states of the US! It is in fact, illegal in none of these places, and the various sites have people from those countries going "Wait, what?" in response. So I take back my earlier statement about it probably being an urban legend. It's definitely an urban legend. cheers, Mark

Re: What If? Fertility Control It's also the opposite of what happens in real life: planned children tend to be cherished and are actually less likely to end up wards of the state. However, most fantasy games don't have states far-reaching enough to run large orphanages - so unwanted children will more likely simply be sold or abandoned. cheers, Mark

Re: Making Hero 6E More Dangerous (Skyrealms of Jorune Conversion) ? Yeah, that was one of those freak incidents where the bullet "glanced" and took his tooth out as it was ricochetting away. I survived my shot to the head in the same way - the slug hit at a very sharp angle and instead of going through making a hole in my brain, it kind of "skated" along the skull. It used up up all its KE smashing up the bone and ended up wedged between the skull and the brain. If I'd had my head turned just a fraction to the side ... well, good night, sweet prince. Bullets are actually pretty light: they can be diverted by even a twig, sometimes and they definitely bounce off bone readily enough: so shoot enough people, and you'll end up with some freakish results. With body armour though, preventing penetration is the rule, not the exception. It's why I like the North Hollywood shootout as an example - here you have at least 40 shots that hit two guys, from multiple angles. Without exception, the ones that missed the armour penetrated the body and did significant damage - and the ones that hit the armour did not. That's about as close to a controlled experiment as you're likely to get and basically tells you everything you need to know right there. cheers, Mark

Re: Making Hero 6E More Dangerous (Skyrealms of Jorune Conversion) ?

Re: Making Hero 6E More Dangerous (Skyrealms of Jorune Conversion) ? That's actually pretty realistic. Most people who are shot do not fall unconscious until they've lost a lot of blood: at which point they're only a relatively short distance from death unless it's quickly staunched. One option I suggested during the 6E debate over killing attacks was to apply the Stun multiplier only to the BOD that goes thorough defences: so you basically ignore non-resistant defences for killing attacks. That would make killing attacks lethal against soft targets, but relatively ineffectual against heavily armoured ones: which is how things like bullets and arrows actually work. cheers, Mark

Re: you cannot make this up: Swedish man arrested for trying to split atoms in kitche Rex, I think you're mixing urban legend with fact. There are not and never have been any laws like that in Scandinavia: or even the suggestion of them. Hell, here in Copenhagen, they're still trying to get guys to stop pissing in the middle of town after a few drinks at a bar (it's called "wild pissing" and has a long danish tradition)*. It's not uncommon - at all - to see guys discreetly (or occasionally not so discreetly) pissing at the side of the road, even during the day. And yeah, they do it standing up. cheers, Mark *Rejected slogan from Copenhagen tourist board "Come to Wonderful Copenhagen: it doesn't smell nearly as much of piss as it used to!"

Re: What might you find on a Sorcerer's personal Airship?

Re: official permits and such Another correction In this case "Bestall" is the old form of "bestell" as in "bestellen" (from old west scandinavian "Bestil" meaning an order or command) . So Bestallungsbrief means "Letter of Command/Letter of Orders" or in good English "Letters of Commission" - exactly what an English gentleman tasked with raising a troop would have gotten. Note: in English English "Commission" used to mean primarily a task, so a "Commissioned Officer" was one who had a specific task - for example, raising a company of troops, being responsible for defence of a specific area, etc. These days, a commissioned officer is simply an officer. It's funny, but I hadn't though until now how close the the various European names for this sort of thing were. Not surprising, when you think about it, but still. Cheers, Mark

Re: official permits and such Slight correction here - "condotto" meant "to lead" (via Italian "condurre" from the latin root "conducere" - also meaning to lead or guide). As you can see from the form, "Conductus" is a noun, and actually means a type of sacred medieval processional music The Italian word "condottiero" meant a mercenary - it came after the word condotto, not the other way round. Originally condottiero meant a mercenary captain or leader, because he had a contract to lead - a contratto di condotto. After a while, though it just meant any mercenary soldier. So there's the word the OP wants - a contract to lead or contratto di condotto. cheers, Mark

Posted without comment Cheers, Mark

Re: Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible?

Re: Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible? Earthlings have difficulty with scale. Space is really really, really big. That giant space battle we saw was was threatening maybe 0.01% of Coruscant's gravity well. Whole fleets of freighters could have been offloading, and we would never have seen them on film .... just like we don't see them on film any other time. It's still a silly planet, of course, but the space battle makes it no more or no less silly. cheers, Mark

Re: Fantasy Art Thread

Re: What If? Fertility Control It would, but the relationship is not 1:1. To take a contemporary example or two: India and China have had similar economic growth (in raw terms) for the last 20 years. China however, has a much lower population growth rate. Guess which one is richer - both at the individual level and national level. In the US, the population is growing at about 3% a year. The US economy is actually growing relatively robustly right now: more than in in many western countries. So why doesn't it feel like things are getting better? Because the economy is growing about 2% a year, and you need 3% just to break even ... So yeah, generally, slower population growth and fewer children associates with faster accumulation of wealth, for the existing population. In fact, off the top of my head, I cannot think of any exceptions to that in Earth history (though I am sure we could find some ...) I don't think that would be a problem: crime and abuse are with you always. It's just that I suspect the level of problems would be more akin to LA in the 1990's, not Victorian England, or present day Lagos. Yup. Could easily happen. And it had not escaped my notice, that the situation I had laid out is "adventuring party-friendly" That's not entirely accidental. That's key to any fantasy game! True, that's why I said that it would really only be viable in really draconian cultures. It essentially means that the gender relationship would be literally master/slave and presumably that acquiring a wife would be a matter of capture or purchase rather than wooing. Societies like that have existed in the past, but they certainly haven't been the norm (and historically, they haven't been very successful, either). Not really. 'tis exceeding rare. It has been reported over the centuries, so it's a general phenomenon, but I can't see any reason it'd be more common in this situation. Yup.

Re: Basic/Expert Spellcasting

Re: armor and endurance I've been using LTE for armour as long as the concept has been around, and before that we used to degrade people's REC if they wore armour over long periods. It's relatively simple to track, and gives "relatively" realistic results. I'd highly recommend it. The costs for LTE are actually pretty light - most people can wear some armour with no LTE loss and strong guys can go around armoured to the teeth with no problem (because your END use due to weight depends on STR) - a guy with 15 STR can wear full plate with no loss of LTE. But that's just armour. Once they start engaging in activities like climbing ropes, fighting, running around, carrying heavy packs, etc, they still usually start burning LTE. As a house rule, to avoid the "sleeping in plate armour" nonsense I houserule that sleeping in armour (or for that matter, sleeping up a tree, tied to a branch, sleeping on wet muddy ground with no protection, etc) will penalise you between 1-6 LTE, depending on the factors. That seems to model reality adequately: you can actually sleep in armour, but you can't sleep well in it and over time not getting decent sleep wears you out. One of the complaints from medieval soldiers was that they had to wear armour 24/7 if they were on the front trenches in a siege: it wore them out and they got sick. Likewise, it places a premium when doing overland adventures, on finding decent places to camp. Some adventurers I know simply fall down in their armour and sleep pretty much wherever they are. A swamp? No problem. Freezing stone? hmmm, comfy! cheers, Mark