Markdoc

Re: PCs owning slaves: Do, or Don't?

Re: PCs owning slaves: Do, or Don't? If we stick with the original series, Joseph was able to get promoted because he interpreted a dream the pharaoh was plagued by, not because there was a tradition of freeing slaves. (There wasn't, in Egypt.) Slaves were often worked to death: for example in the dreadful gold and copper mines of Nubia and Sinai, where, according to the Greeks, water was rationed and slaves died in great numbers from exhaustion and dehydration in the desert heat. We know from wills found in tombs that the children of egyptian slaves were also slaves and on the owner's death were passed on to his heirs like any other piece of property. Slaves could be freed (doing so was considered a morally good act) but there was no law forcing it. Not so, in both cases. We know from Homer that in the Greek Heroic ages the slave (dmôs) was enslaved for life. His master could free him, if he wanted - agains, this was seen as a virtuous act - but neither law or custom compelled him. The Gortys codex makes it plain that at least in that part of Greece, the children of slaves were also slaves. In the classic greek age, slavery was for much more than mining (though they did use them for mining - the mines of Laureion were notorious as a death sentence for slaves): in wealthy cities like Athens, most families owned at least one slave - the result of the extensive campaigns overseas of the Athenian league. Slave in Athens were far better treated than many places,: rape, severe beatings and murder of a slave were all illegal (though forcing a slave to work in a brothel was not considered rape and flogging was not considered unreasonable punishment). Xenophon though this was frightful, and complained about Athenian slaves: he recommended treating slaves like you would treat any other domestic animal. Ummm. I don't think 20th century prisoners of war - however badly treated - have much to do with ancient traditions of slavery. cheers, Mark

Re: PCs owning slaves: Do, or Don't?

Re: Proof of alien life? The responses are starting to come in: NASA: "Don't look at us! The guy may work for us, but we had nothing to do with this!" As you might expect, Bad Astrology has plenty of comments and links: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/03/05/has-life-been-found-in-a-meteorite/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/03/07/followup-thoughts-on-the-meteorite-fossils-claim/ cheers, Mark

Re: Drakine pics (and other ones also) A google image search for "Halfdragon" will turn up more dragonoid pictures than you can shake a staff at. cheers, Mark

Re: Inspiration from Renaissance Florence

Re: Inspiration from Renaissance Florence Oh, nobody in my game world doubts that there are powerful beings of awesome might out there. As you note, there's too many direct examples in most of fantasy gaming. But people in one culture might point to a temple of one such being and say "God!" while others say "No. No, no, nooooo. That's a demon. THIS is a God!" and yet others say "They're both gods: you can have more than one, you know!" ... and some people say "How can you tell if it's a god or simply a really powerful magic-user? What defines a god anyway?" So the average person in my game doesn't really "believe" in gods. They "know" gods (or God-like beings) exist. Likewise, temples place far less emphasis on faith - who needs faith when you can see miracles performed daily? - and more on service. But as assault noted, that doesn't lower the political stakes - it raises them. cheers, Mark

Re: PCs owning slaves: Do, or Don't? I've had one PC who owned a slave in one of my games - and subjected it to mild abuse, to boot. He was, to be fair, playing an obnoxious, untrustworthy character. It made the other players a bit uncomfortable, but in context was not a major issue (that was Hero system, so no alignment issues there). In the end, the character became so obnoxious that the other PCs turned on him. That was in context too, and solved the slavery problem! In general, slavery is a feature of "bad guy cultures" in my games, so moral issues are largely - if not completely - avoided. In a much earlier game, our PCs became (or were) nobility and most of us owned slaves (this game was set on Tekumel). And we were "good guys"! In that case it was simply in the background (much as it would be, I imagine for people raised in that culture). It was rarely discussed in the game - apart from one memorable instance. After dealing with a bad guy on the border of Yan Kor, we magnanimously told his slaves "You're all free now" to which they wept and wailed, saying that they were now homeless and clanless. They couldn't return home (they were now Nakoné: legally dead to their clan) and would all die if we abandoned them (which, actually, was probably true). I ended up taking them home and putting them to work on my family estates, though we glossed over the actual details. I think that's the closest we ever came to discussing the issue in a game context. cheers, Mark

Re: Proof of alien life? Wow. So much uninformed prejudice in one sentence. I guess the internet, mobile phones, stents, MRIs and every form of technological and scientific progress of the last few years were all invented by fairies. Who knew? Actually they mostly came out of academia, which remains the driving engine of technological advance. The truth is of course that the way you get grants - the only way - is to come up with an idea so good they can't turn you down. In medicine and bioscience, only about 1 idea in 6 actually makes the cut, and that number's going down because the competition is becoming ever more fierce. In some fields, it's less than that. Honestly? Never. Never, ever. Anyone who did so would be torn a new one by his colleagues who would then gleefully cast the carcasse of his ruined career on the dustheap, as one less competitor to worry about. Here's a hint about how the real world works. You don't get a grant and you don't get funding, for saying "Yeah, what he said". If all you have ever done is toe some line you don't get tenure, don't get invitations and you don't get respect. The way - the only way - you get those things is by treading on toes and doing something new. I started my career by getting into a fight with a professor emeritus at Harvard. He won that fight ... and then apologised to me 6 years later, at a meeting in the UK - by which time my ideas had become mainstream (and now it's a medical technology used to fight some cancers). Just opposing what was then the standard line, got my work so much exposure that I could prove my ideas. That's how the whole system works. And peer review is not "the good old boys" - peer review for leading journals includes literally tens of thousands of people from around the world, the vast majority of whom the editors don't know and will never meet. When an editor (and yeah, I'm an editor) gets a paper for review (and I get multiple papers every week: sometimes several a day), I check them for content, basic english and then select reviewers from a list generated based on their publications and specialities. I don't have time to **** about deciding who would be best to toe some imaginary party line: I choose a half dozen off a computer generated list based on their expertise and send them form letters. If the reviewers disagree, I assign new reviewers - they don't know each other and don't get names, so they have no idea, usually who else has/is reviewing. It's not like a bunch of guys sitting round in a smoky room discussing things. The process is pretty transparent - everyone involved has to put their names to what they wrote - and anyone playing favourites (and I've seen a few attempts to game the system) usually get dumped pretty smartly. In some isolated fields perhaps publications are rare enough and the field small enough for everyone to know each other, but that sure as hell is not the general rule. The most complaints about peer review are from people whose work is so rubbish it never gets published. Controversy won't hurt a paper - in fact, it will improve its chances of getting out there. If it takes a stab - that is even reasonably supported by evidence - at the field's sacred cows, it is more or less guaranteed to get published. Academia and publishing thrive on controversy. This is the stuff of fantasy. Peer review isn't shrinking. It's growing, almost faster than we can deal with. It's not just in academia - industry is more and more opening up to peer review (albeit under NDA) as a way of honing their own work. I've just done exactly that for BARDA in the US a month ago. Yup, and it was exactly that kind of pronouncement on high that peer review has helped slay. Skepticism is key to progress and always has been. Peer review can be summed up in the simple phrase "Oh yeah? Prove it!" If you can't, you don't get published. If you don't get published, you don't get grants. And if you don't get grants your career in academia is likely to be undistinguished, short ... or probably both. What really hurts western civilization is the mistaken idea that everyone's opinion is of equal worth and that ideas should be treated as equal, regardless of the facts marshaled to support them. Cheers, Mark

Re: Inspiration from Renaissance Florence

Re: Inspiration from Renaissance Florence No, of course it's not necessarily so. It's entirely up to the GM. In my game, different cultures run the gamut from "Non-temple magic is by definition the work of the devil and any such magic user must be hunted down and killed" to "Priest or mage, magic is magic. Priests just say that their magic is "divine". But how can you tell?" and pretty much every aspect in-between. My current game's plot (the next session starts in about 15 minutes!) is driven largely by the conflict caused by two different priestly factions fighting over different styles of magic ... even though they worship (in theory) the same gods and use much the same spells. That conflict is spilling over into secular politics with the various lords lining up behind temple factions depending on their history, rivalry and inclinations. cheers, Mark

Re: How Fast an Horse can Go? Persistance hunting isn't a myth - the San of the kalahari still do it. What is a myth is that persistence hunting involves "running your prey down". It doesn't. The San hunt their prey over extended periods, most of which is spent walking and tracking, not running. Louis Liebenberg hunted with the San and tracked their hunts with GPS tags. The speed of these hunts varied mostly between 4 and 6 km an hour. Not exactly a scorching pace. The trick is not sustained speed, nor "superior heat regulation" - those really are myths. Plenty of animals sweat and plenty of animals are better adapted to move for prolonged periods in hot climates. A camel can cover 100 km in scorching weather in two days - and then turn around and do it again, no bother. A human who tried to match that pace under those conditions would die. It's not about heat, either: as far as we can tell, neolithic peoples in northern probably also practiced persistence hunting. Hint: post glacial siberia was not a warm place. Likewise, the San hunt winter and summer - and in winter, the Kalahari has a mild, gentle climate during the day and is often freezing at night. Persistence hunting is all about persistence, just like the name implies. Hunts can take place over many hours. The hunters are prepared. They carry food, and water (or drink as much as they can beforehand), and can eat and drink on the move. They know the land and drive their prey away from water, eventually either wearing it down to the point they can get close enough to wound it, or simply cutting it off as it circles back towards water or the rest of the group. They work in teams, so that some can rest while the others harry the animal. They also can identify the animal by it's tracks and plan their hunt accordingly. If they don't kill on first contact, they keep tracking (that's why the San use poison arrows - even a light wound will weaken their prey). As long as they don't lose it, or they don't run out of food and water themselves, they will eventually catch it ... if they persist. And ... if the animal is slow enough, and water-requiring enough for persistence hunting to work. Many animals are simply too fast and too durable for them to catch by persistence hunting so they are stalked and shot from ambush or caught with snares. The San only try this trick on certain species, and they vary their approach with the season. Steenbok, duiker, and gemsbok are chosen for persistence hunting in the rainy season because the San say wet sand forces open their hoofs and stiffens the joints (and that's not as dumb as it sounds - I've seen myself gembok and impala with split hooves from running on river-beds: they don't live long before something - usually baboons or hyenas - gets them). Kudu, eland, and red hartebeest are chosen for persistence hunting in the dry season if they can be forced into sandy areas because they tire more easily in loose sand. Kudu bulls tire faster than cows because of their heavy horns. Kudu cows are are chosen for persistence hunting only if they are pregnant or wounded (otherwise they can outlast the hunters too easily). Animals weakened by injury, illness, or hunger and thirst are pursued any time of year. The best time for the persistence hunt is at the end of the dry season (October/November), when animals are poorly nourished and water sources few. Even so, they often fail. Liebenberg's observations indicated that the San caught an average of 25 kilos of meat per day hunting with dogs, vs 5 kilos per day with persistence hunting. David Brin didn't originate the idea of persistence hunting - anthropologists did. Brin's sin was to promote the idea that humans could outrun any animal and that they were able to do that because of miraculous cooling powers possessed by no other animal. These days, though the primary sinners in promoting that idea seem to be sites that sell running gear. Neither idea is true, and serious study of the idea by anthropologists confirms this, as do human vs horse races. The Tevis cup for example, is a 100 mile horse race across the Sierra mountains. Horses routinely turn in 14-15 hour times and they could do it faster if they were pushed. The fastest humans manage the same course in about 23 hours and they can barely move at the end. Somewhat flatter - but even hotter - is the Sultan bin Zayed endurance race. 240 kilometres, over 3 days: an 80 kilometre race each day. The last race was won in just over 10 hours. Across sand. In temperatures reaching 30 degrees (over 100 F). The shorter Al Jaber Ladies Challenge, is only 90 kilometers - the winning horses take a touch over 3 hours. Anyone who thinks humans can touch those sort of speeds, is, quite frankly, utterly delusional. Short races or long, mountains or flat terrain, hot weather or cold, the championships for speed and endurance belong to quadrupeds, and that's all there is to it. There's no speculation involved: we have the numbers. cheers, Mark

Re: Here There Be Dragons Yeah, historical depictions of monsters were all over the map. There wasn't the modern roleplaying idea of "specific monsters look like this" back in medieval times. You'll find people who tell you confidently things like "Wyverns have 4 limbs and dragons have 6" but in medieval bestiaries, you can find dragons with 6, 4, 2 and no limbs. You can find "giants" who are more or less the same size as humans, "dwarfs" who are taller than humans and "trolls" who appear to be beautiful women. There really wasn't more than a vague consensus of what various sorts of monsters looked like before the modern age. More of an irritation to me: why is the title "Here there be Dragons" instead of the usual - and more euphonius - medieval text "Here be Dragons?" cheers, Mark

Re: Skills. How much is too much? What did you start with? Yeah, what's appropriate for one character might not be for another. I usually play versatile, skill (or power)-based characters, because I like being able to do lots of things, and I am prepared to trade off being the best at any one thing, for being good at many things. On the other hand, the second-to-last Champions character I played was deliberately designed to be exact opposite: the "schlub who lucks into great power" archetype. He not only had almost no skills, but in addition, his powerset was deliberately limited (to "run fast and hit things") - no fancy power tricks That was a deliberate character design choice to give me a PC who would, a lot of the time, have to think his way around problems more complex than "Hit it with my fists of Steel". cheers, Mark

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Just got The Studio Ghibli Great collection - 16 films and a documentary. At about 2 bucks per movie, that can't be beat! We're working our way through them all*, even though I have seen some of them a couple of times before. cheers, Mark *except Grave of the Fireflies: nothing could make Kath watch that again.

Re: Barring weaponry, what's in a slightly futuristic [30+ years] APC?

Re: Barring weaponry, what's in a slightly futuristic [30+ years] APC? Kid, you're new here, so we'll cut you some slack. Posters who resort to insults as soon as they have nothing useful to add don't last long. If you disagree with my conclusions, you have several choices. You can say "Well, you're welcome to your opinion, but I just don't agree." You can look for some facts to back up your opinion. You can simply refrain from posting. You can say "I have no facts to support the opinion I just formed, but I've played Gears of War and know all about future military - here's some gratuitous insults". Hint: That last one's not a winning strategy. cheers, Mark

Re: Spirit Companion Rather than extra limb with stretching, I'd go for naked advantage indirect, with the limitation "must originate/affect from spirit companion": I'd rate the whole indirect aspect at +1/4, since it always originates form the spirit companion, but the spirit companion can be anywhere within range. The same mostly goes for other powers as well: I'd ignore summon. The spirit isn't a seperate being in any useful way - it mostly operates as a focus and a limitation on some of the caster's powers. cheers, Mark

Re: Barring weaponry, what's in a slightly futuristic [30+ years] APC?

Re: Barring weaponry, what's in a slightly futuristic [30+ years] APC?

Re: Barring weaponry, what's in a slightly futuristic [30+ years] APC? It's a damn good question, actually: one that DoD should ask more often. The answer with the GCV seems to be "even more of the same". You seem to be under the impression that I'm in favour of a giant IFV. I'm not - at least in principle: let's see what it looks like. I'm merely pointing out where the funding is going. Again, as noted, if you can find indicators that the Army intends to buy replacement Strykers beyond their current upgrade plans or that they have a development plan for a wheeled successor, feel free to point it out. They don't appear to be unsure of it - the RFPs have already been sent out, and over 1.5 billion is already budgetted in the short term. What they are unsure of is what the final vehicle will look like - since the contractors have yet to respond. It's entirely possible that the final product will be lighter than the monster envisaged (not very likely, given the spec.s though: there's only so much you can do with those requirements). It does look like it'll be tracked, given the spec.s. The marines naturally enough want a light fast vehicle because that suits their role - so I'm not surprised they don't want the GCV. However, their own development pathway is pretty limited right now. As noted, they already use stryker-like LAVs - and have been doing so for quite a while now: as noted, I wouldn't be surprised if they end up with Strykers the army doesn't want.

Re: Barring weaponry, what's in a slightly futuristic [30+ years] APC? In fact, the army and the marines have recently cancelled their joint development program - the army has apparently decided heavy is the way to go - the marines want a lighter faster, more rapidly deployable vehicle. So it looks indeed like we are moving towards a future where you have a Bradley-like vehicle and perhaps an Amtrak-like vehicle (the MPV) for the two services. Of course, it's not clear the MPV will survive, now that the EFV - which was supposed to support it - is dead. The last AoA from the marines raised the possibility of using what it called "legacy" Strykers instead, suggesting that the Marines may inherit the Strykers the Army apparently no longer wants. Financially, that makes a lot of sense, even if it offends the Marines pride Interesting concept! Another possibility, of course, if you want to go more Sci-Fi is that improved body-armour/robotics allow you to dispense with the IFV altogether and use powered armour instead Then you use a lightly armoured, high-profile vehicle - think a lightly armoured monster truck with a V-hull - designed to haul a communications suite, a squad and a big generator. It's only purpose is as a meat-hauler: high speed, long range - not an AFV. Infantry dismount at distance and carry their own support weapons. I'm not entirely being flip - it's unlikely, but possible. After all, in 1910, the warfare fought in 1940 would have been all but unimaginable. cheers, Mark

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it...

Re: Barring weaponry, what's in a slightly futuristic [30+ years] APC?

Re: Barring weaponry, what's in a slightly futuristic [30+ years] APC?