Markdoc

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? I actually compiled my first programs on punchcards (shudder). Was not sad to see the technology vanish. cheers, Mark

Re: Political/Religious Space Colonies? Yeah, none of the penal colonies actually survived very long, unless - as was the case of Australia and what later became the US - they were able to demonstrate the potential to be financially viable. In Australia's case, it wasn't the gold rush, which came later, but the demonstration that you could grow high quality wool - and that there were vast areas of "unowned" grassland where sheep-farming could be relatively easily set up. Edit: of course by then the incorrigible criminality of the australian mindset had already developed, never to be eradicated! cheers, Mark

Re: World without horses Sure there would be - didn't you read Ovid? You'd just have to make your donkeys magically. cheers, Mark

Re: Political/Religious Space Colonies? Actually the US got the vast majority of its immigrants because people thought they could make money there. And that's the primary reason most immigrants move there today. Refugees fleeing oppression make up about 1% of the US immigrant intake and as far as I can tell, that's probably always been, more or less, about the proportion. After all, the biggest group of immigrants to the US today are Mexicans. I don't think they are coming to found colonies and make their own laws. Even in the US's own history, people think of the Pilgrim Fathers as sailing off to New England to establish their own colony .... overlooking the fact that that wasn't actually their plan and didn't happen like that. They left Holland, not England. They planned (and paid for) passage to Virginia, to set up just north of the recently-established colonies there. They ended up getting stranded in New England by bad weather: something they were unprepared for. That's partly why they almost starved in their first year. It's also largely myth that they were poor huddled masses fleeing religious oppression. They were nonconformists and had been oppressed in England - but they had moved to Holland more than a decade before deciding to move to America (building up a little colony at Leiden). In the end, they decided to move to America, not for religious reasons, but - as Bradford wrote, primarily for financial reasons (specifically of finding a better, and easier place of living - many of the Pilgrim Fathers were unemployed in Holland and supported by their brethren). Like most colonists who went to the New World, the trip was a business deal: they negotiated with the London Company, received a royal charter and accepted a contract that stipulated that the investors who underwrote the venture, at the end of the seven year contract, would get half of the settled land and property, which the colonists would work for them. In other words, the pilgrim fathers came to America as corporate workers. Amusingly, because the contract wasn't fully ratified before they departed, and because they hadn't ended up where they had expected, they decided that they were no longer bound by the old contract - stiffing the investors back in England, who'd largely paid for their trip. The Pilgrim Fathers: contract breakers and freeloaders. Gives the whole thing a slightly different spin, doesn't it? In truth most of the early settlement in the US was either corporate or governmental. It wasn't until the 19th century that it was cheap enough for individuals to move en masse. cheers, Mark

Re: Political/Religious Space Colonies? Depends on the cost. If it were really cheap, then I can see lots of groups trying. If it were more expensive but not the equivalent of many billions in today's money, I could see the larger religious groups going ... but I don't think they would. When we look at the history of colonisation on this planet, large, established religious groups tended not to send out colonies themselves, though they could certainly have afforded to. Instead, they sent representatives to other people's colonies. They were embedded in their own societies: there was little appeal in establishing an isolated colony of their own. Instead it was the fringe groups like Mormons, Hutterites, Pilgrims, etc, who were escaping real or perceived oppression, or even smaller utopian groups. If space travel were cheap enough for (say) 100 moderately wealthy people to raise the funds, then I can see the modern equivalents of those groups going. cheers, Mark

Re: One person versus a starship?

Re: 5th Ed: Flying Dodge I've been using a simple house rule for a long time to cover this. Dodging - however defined - is simply an attempt to get out of the way of an attack. So I simply run it as: Dodge +3 DCV, 1/2 move, can be aborted to. Can include movement, but requires a DEX roll at -1 per 2 metres. Movement does not prevent HTH attacks from taking effect. Flying dodge then simply becomes levels in DCV that require movement to activate. Simple, straightforward and consistent. You can try to "dive for cover" away from a haymaker, but that simply counts as a dodge. You can also "Dodge behind that car" to try and get cover from someone shooting at you or to get out of an AoE. Thematically it's the same action, so I really don't see that we need different rules to handle it. cheers, Mark

Re: One person versus a starship? Oh - end even by hero board standards, we are way off topic here - if you'd like to continue the discussion, perhaps post a new thread in Fantasy Hero? Cheers, Mark

Re: One person versus a starship? Sorry, but that's not correct. In their analysis of battle armours, Hardy and Williams were both - very specifically - NOT dealing with jousting armour, which they discuss seperately (in Wiliam's case) and not really at all (in Hardy's case). Then your memory is faulty, on this point. I've been to the Higgins too: it's a nice collection, if somewhat small (Williams measured nearly twice as many harnesses for his analysis as they have their entire collection and his figures overlap with those of Hardy). Indeed, Williams used some of the suits in the Higgins for his study (for example, the Italian Harness called "Accession Number: 2607"). However even so, your figures are wrong - I still have the exhibit catalogue from our visit. The "Tapulbrust" breastplate from around 1540 has a thickness of 2.1 mm. An unnamed breastplate (just called "Accession Number: 145.c") from Germany of about the same era has a frontal thickness of 2.8 mm, up towards the top end of the scale (It's pretty durn heavy too, though not the heaviest in the collection). So the figures clearly exceed your earlier guess, even without a complete listing. Note that I am only looking at the medieval/renaissance suits here: many of the suits in the Higgins are reproductions from the 19th and early 20th century, so are not necessarily accurate (the kid's armour,for example, that so many people like). I also was not counting the ceremonial armors and jousting armours which are respectively lighter and heavier than battle armor. . Agreed with this (with the exception of the point about penetration - that's dependant on target and circumstance: which is why you can't simply make a blanket statement). Still, KE is apparently the most important factor when it comes to penetrating, but it's not the only one (round composition, footprint, etc). However the point being made is that we can see that period armour did stop bullets that had far more energy - at point of impact - than modern handguns can generate. Which really makes no sense if you assume that the armour gives 1 PD. We also know that muskets - which contemporaries thought would defeat 95% of all armour - can generate around 3000 J, comparable to modern rifles. Again, the only consistent argument is that good quality medieval armour would provide decent protection against smaller firearms and little against rifles. That sounds more like 3 or 4 PD than 1 to me. If I had one, I would have posted it . The closest we have is the old mild steel bullet proof armour which we know was 1) reliably able to stop bullets from handguns and carbines, but not the heaviest handguns or rifles 2) of similar thickness and lower quality than the best medieval/renaissance plate (though to be fair, better quality than the bulk of medieval armours) You keep making statements "Pre-industrial revolution steel was generally much weaker in strength (both yield and tensile) and had lower toughness than modern steel" - yet when presented with figures showing higher toughness for the best medieval armour simply repeat it. Cites, man, cites! Where's your data? We have data - and I have cited it - using modern toughness and tensile strength measurements that directly contradicts your belief. cheers, Mark

Re: One person versus a starship?

Re: One person versus a starship? Both of these points are untrue. While medieval steel was in general, not as good quality as modern steel - and certainly not as consistent - the best smiths were able to generate steel of hardness similar to modern steel. You're also wrong about thickness: the classic works on the subject of medival armour penetration (at least in English) are Hardy and Williams. Hardy measured multiple breastplates from the 14th and 15th century and found that the average was 2.3-3.2 mm, median for center front 2.8 mm. Williams measured different armours including a number of earlier suits and found they ranged from 1.5-2.5 mm, with a 2.1 mm median. so the median for armours was actually almost twice the thickness you suggest was the maximum (that's for Breastplates: Cuisees and guardbraces were typically thinner, Armets and simlar helmets significantly thicker). If you are inteesed in the topic, I can recommend Robett Hardy's Longbow: A Social and Military History and Alan Williams The Knight and the Blast Furnace: A History of the Metallurgy of Armour in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period. Edit - oh and as an aside, a musket generates about 3000 J of energy at muzzle - more than most modern small arms. The advantage of a modern assault rifle is not greater penetrating power (it doesn't, in fact, have that) but finer machining and consistently performing ammo, meaning much better accuracy, much, much lighter weight, faster firing and reloading times and ammo that you can carry around without sweating too much about it getting damp. Indeed, these advantages (apart from the ammo) are why the assault rifle replaced the much more powerful and longer ranged bolt action rifles in the first place. It's about utility, not KE.

Re: One person versus a starship?

Re: One person versus a starship? Actually the best quality plate provides pretty decent protection against bullets - certainly enough to stop musket fire, and at range, enough to deflect modern small arms fire. It's also hot, heavy and requires a lot of maintenance. Modern armour is a far better match for a modern soldier's needs, of course. cheers, Mark

Re: The Theory of Intersteller Trade by Paul Krugman I'd rep the two OPs, if I could - the Krugman paper is hysterical. I particularly like "This ... is a serious analysis of a ridiculous subject, which of course is the opposite of what is usual in economics" Though imaginary figure 2 comes close in the hilarity stakes It should be noted that the Krugman paper is not an economic analysis - it's simply an extended joke, as indicated by its dedication: William Proxmire was a US senator strongly opposed to any funding for space research. He does make one serious point: that actual interstellar trade, even under the most generous assumptions, is likely to be impossible simply because of the time/energy constraints. The second post is intended to be a serious analysis. That said, the 11 billion dollar bottle of wine, though it has some interesting ideas, is clearly written by someone who doesn't understand economics or case-study design: he takes trends which are historically exceptional (the rapid growth in world prosperity for example) and extrapolates them far, far out into the future. For example - contrary to his cheery analysis, where he assumes global increases in prosperity of 3% per year more the next half millennium - the trend rate of global increase in wealth has been falling since the early 60's. You'll never get super-expensive wines, for example, because a) wine expires, so prices have a natural cap and the price of the most expensive wines in the world have been falling relative to income for decades (as a result of increasing market size and maturity). Precious works of art are the one thing that I can think of that are directly linked to income in terms of increasing price both because they generally don't age poorly and are by definition limited in number. But they probably can't sustain trade alone: so the conclusion to be drawn from this document is what I noted in the recent discussion: interstellar trade is probably impossible, unless we invent some sort of cheapo FTL drive. cheers, Mark

Re: The Theory of Intersteller Trade by Paul Krugman No, not all colonisation was financially motivated. Many colonies were founded purely for military reasons. New Zealand is a good example: the British government was prepared to write it off, because it was not seen as financially attractive (in fact, by far the vast majority of private colonial attempts went bankrupt). They changed their minds when the French established a colony there. The British government poured funds in to establish a sizable colony right next door to the French one, with the goal of running them out of the area. And in fact, when the French left the British turned off the funding, pretty much. It's more accurate to say that only those colonies that were financially successful survived - the world is littered with the remnants of colonies that were established and then abandoned either because they wee not worth the money required for upkeep, or because their military utility had passed. cheers, Mark

Re: How would you do a wish? In general, I think wishes are best handled as "GM fiat" because the whole point of a wish is that it breaks "reality" - in this case, the game system. In D&D - the game that introduced wishes as a game element - they have with every edition reduced what you can wish for, until they did away with them entirely. The reason, of course being that you can use them to break the game. Many of the effects of wishes can be modeled simply (I wish I was Handsome! = +20 COM - yeah, COM is still around in 6E . That's a whole 10 points), others can be modeled less simply, but still fairly straightforwardly (I wish I was invulnerable! = a good chunk of points on defences). Many wishes can be handled by transform. But modeling things like "I want to go back in time and prevent the evil bad being released by killing arch-mage Tuneval when he was 2 years old" ..... that's an adventure hook and possibly a campaign destroyer, not something you can simulate with a mechanic (well, other than EDM, which I agree is a bit lame). But it's lame simply because no system can model a power whose definition is "Gives the ability to go outside the system". cheers, Mark

Re: THE HERO SYSTEM GRIMOIRE: What Do *You* Want To See? That's actually a pretty good idea. Most magic systems (or characters) will have a set of limitations which is fairly standard - add them to those listed and you can calculate cost pretty much on the fly. cheers, Mark

Re: THE HERO SYSTEM GRIMOIRE: What Do *You* Want To See? It's less work than you'd think - I did this for my online fantasy grimoire, which was updated for 5th Ed relatively easily and seems to be pretty widely used. So what I'd like to see is spells presented the same way. Have spells listed with only the modifiers required to define the spell - a fireball, for example requires area of effect, to model the iconic version, while Doomkill requires area of effect and a nasty side effect (range is variable!). Neither of them "require" gestures, or a magic wand to be instantly recognisable: those are things that could be used to produce that spell, but they are not a defining feature. That way things like gestures, incantations, require sacrifice of a live baby, etc, can be added as is required by the magic system. If "common limitations" like that are added in, it makes the spells not only bulkier in terms of space required, but also less user-friendly, since typically every spell will need to be modified to fit it in with whatever magic system is being used. I own all of the Fantasy hero books, but I almost didn't buy the Grimoire, for precisely that reason: a fair chunk of it was text about modifiers that I wasn't going to use anyway. Oh and one more thing: HDC prefabs. I use the prefabs for spells from my own Grimoire (thanks guys!), probably more than any other. If the grimoire is good, I'd buy the .hdcs in a heartbeat. cheers, Mark

Re: Is 6th Edtion worth the money? I'm still running 5th (because we are 5 years into an ongoing game, and I don't feel like doing a bunch of conversions). However, I've bought 6th and plan to convert the next game I run over to it: the current game should finish within the next 6 months. On the whole, I'd say it's a solid buy and presentation is light-years ahead of the old 5th lines. cheers, Mark

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Smart fellow, Speer. Sociopathic, but smart. I have to admit I loved that series as kid. I used to watch it with my Dad, who liked reminding me he played a bit part in the original film It was one of the very few things I made sure I didn't miss on TV (We didn't have video recorders back then, young 'un!) Anyway, if you are interested in the period (and in the people) I recommend back to back watching of the documentary "Hitler's secretary" which is an interview with ... well, Hitler's secretary ... and the film "Der Untergang" - a fictionalization of the last days in the Fuhrerbunker. Many of the people who appear in the newsreels of The World at War are either discussed or portrayed in the two I have mentioned. It blew my mind how many of the people - like Speer - at the centre of those events actually survived, and then went on to lead ordinary lives. Hitler's personal secretary, for a start. His personal bodyguard - the man who burnt his and Eva Braun's bodies - for another. cheers, Mark

Re: World without horses No beasts of burdens doesn't mean no plows: plenty of cultures have used human/drawn plows - I have in fact seen then still in use on the Rwandan border. It does mean you need more people - a horse can do the work of about 8 people and an ox of about 14 for that kind of work. That means plowing is only practical in areas rich enough to support large populations and that farming is far more likely to be a community activity. Outside those areas, you're back to the use of planting spades. The knock-on effect I can see is that your civilization is more likely to look like medieval asia or renaissance-era Mexico than medieval Europe in terms of population distribution. Many, if not most, activities will be less efficient without animals, land transport will be a bit slower and as a result, population densities will be higher, and new territory will be broken in more slowly (because a single family could not simply take off and stake a new claim easily: breaking in new land would go far easier with a larger group). I'm guessing that socially this would mean kin groups are even more socially prominent than they were in Old Europe. In cities and heavily populated areas, simple technology could replace a lot of that though - windmills, water mills, aqueducts, canals - the latter two would greatly increase the ease of transport, but are very labour intensive to build an maintain, so only possible for large states. What might be helpful is if we knew more about the geography and culture you have planned. In my current game, the players are in a setting where there are no large animals. There are large riding birds, but they are not suitable as plow animals or for carrying heavy loads. That has some consequences for my game: the upland areas are thinly settled, because the lack of plow beasts makes them uneconomic. Most trade moves by ship (possible because the setting is an archipelago of islands of various sides) and the population is more urban than rural - any really fertile land has a fortified town or city plonked down nearby to guard and exploit it. The result is a series of kingdoms that have quite high population densities, but still have open areas nearby. I still have "knights" but they fight on foot in phalanxes, or from ships, not on horseback. As a result the "knightly weapons" are the spear, the longbow and the two handled axe or greatsword. There are various other changes, but those are the major ones. cheers, Mark

Re: World without horses

Re: World without horses Short distance? We begin to see the disparity - Pony express stations were 10-25 miles apart - so your "short distance" for a horse is a marathon for a human. No question about who's faster over marathon distances then. But what about ultramarathons? People always bring up "long distance" but where's the data? Actualy, we have the data and it doesn't look good for the human runner - a highly experienced very strong, seasoned runner can do a 100 km ultramarathon in about 22-23 hours if the terrain is not too strenuous. A horse and rider will cover the same distance in less than half that time - and be in good enough condition to do it again the next day. In the US, horses routinely manage 100 mile endurance races in under 10 hours. Far faster than the time it takes humans to make the same distance - and that's across the Sierra mountains: so much for "rough terrain advantage". And the horses are not allowed to be pushed too hard - any sign of distress and you are out of the race! Still, I am willing to learn new stuff: are there any actual examples of humans outpacing horses in races? There's lots of arguments on the net about "how we're the ultimate long distance runners" and lots of cites of the discovery article about how we could, we might be able to ... but no actual data. As lawnmower boy pointed out the only horse vs human race I know of gives the humans a head start and pits professional runners against local girls on their own horses ... and the professional runners still lose 90% of the time. Over longer races, the average speed advantage of the horse actually increases, and in 2 day races horses turn in speeds no human has ever come close to matching. Maybe I'm missing something but it sure looks like puffery from here. cheers, Mark

Re: World without horses You're right - the "humans faster than horse" meme does seem to trace back to Dave Brin . Historically, horse-based transport - even over very long distances - has always been much, much faster than human based: compare the pony express for an eye-opening idea of how fast that can actually be, and the ancient persian version was not very much slower. There's no evidence to support the idea that humans are faster over distance and of course they are nowhere near as fast over short distances. The big leveller is not speed, but food and water: horses need a lot of both, so if (for example) you are moving armies around, the speeds are not so different simply because the army moves at commissariat speed. Still, that shouldn't matter to our hypothetical horseless society when it comes to shifting messages around. Reporters at the early Olympic games in ancient Greece carried messenger pigeons so that reports of the games could be transmitted home to their city the same day the events occurred. Pigeon post (with multiple pigeons) typically moves at about 300 miles a day, or about 50% faster than horse post and about 120% faster than foot post. The Romans (and others) used signalling towers (heliographs) which put horses to shame and the semaphore increased the precision of signaling even more - a simple message could be semaphored from Deal to London in under three minutes - a distance of about 110 kilometers. In the 1880s, British troops in Afghanistan sent daily reports to headquarters in Delhi via a heliograph system - over 1000 km a day, over very rough and hostile terrain. And that's before magic enters he picture ... cheers, Mark

Re: World without horses I think we can agree that this is pretty true