Markdoc

Re: NO everyman skills

Re: Armor Wars Exactly! This is the whole point. If the army was using supertech against the villain, what would the heroes be doing? Kicking back watching it on CNN, probably, which doesn't make for a compelling storyline. We know the Hulk is uncontrollable by regular military. We also know that Stark's Hulkbuster armour can go toe to toe with the Hulk .... ergo IIRC the army actually had Hulkbuster armour at one point, though not many of them. Yet oddly enough, these incredibly powerful units, unstoppable by any conventional weapons, are not used in combat, so the military sends conventionally armed soldiers out to fail and die instead. As I've commented, it makes not one atom of sense - except as a genre convention designed to showcase heroes. That does remind me though - I forgot another Marvel battlesuit maker - La Roquette, who made his own Hulk-combat capable suit. Dunno whatever happened to him. cheers, Mark

Re: Armor Wars Actually, just thinking about this, we can demolish the various arguments one by one, using just the Iron Man series as an example. 1. Only one man can make battlesuits. Nope. Obadiah Stane, Doom, Justin Hammer, De Witt, Edwin Cord, Joey Cosmatos and various unnamed government scientists (the Firepower Armour, IM strikeforce, etc) have built suits that have either temporarily defeated Iron Man or at least gone toe to toe with him for a prolonged dustup. Others have cannibalized old suits, and rebuilt/retooled them (Ironmonger II, Ironmonger III, Firepower II, etc, etc) And I have even left out the various clones, alternate universe pop-overs and aliens on earth who have made their own 'suits, and the supergeniuses who could if they wanted, but don't. There's probably others I have forgotten. 2. They're too expensive. Nope. We even have a figure! Obadiah Stone commented that it had taken him half a billion to build the prototype Ironmonger suit. But that was his whole development and prototype program, which suggests a suit costs at most, slightly more than a modern fighter aircraft. He had already planned mass production and sales indicating that the cost must have been achievable. Tony himself produced the Evader armour and sold it for those who needed protection ... but couldn't afford high quality bodyguards! It was no Ironman suit, but it flew, was proof against small arms fire, amplified the user's strength and speed, was sealed for upper atmosphere and underwater operations, had a combat and flight control capable AI - and fit into a briefcase. Yeah baby! Hell, forget the army, I'd buy one myself. 3. They can't be mass produced. Nope again. Obadiah Stane was in fact in the process of setting up mass production lines when Iron Man shut him down and had already started taking orders. In addition the Guardsman armour, and the Mandroid Armour, the Ultimate Rocketman armour, the Evader armour, etc have all been mass-produced. Stark even invented, sold and mass-produced for the army - a light cheap exoskeletal suit (the Stark Battle suit). That one turned up in the armies of small foreign governments too, so it certainly wasn't too expensive. Indeed, the whole Iron Wars series was built around the concept that near Iron Man level armour could be mass-produced. 4. They're not worth the cost. Yagoddabekiddinme. We're talking about suits that can fly, protect the user from small arms fire (or in some cases, tank fire) increase the wearer's reaction speed, feed them useful intel, and in some cases, teleport, reach LEO or carry serious tank-busting artillery. We get to see their effectiveness time and time again. Even the cheapest Stark designed suit - the Stark Battle suit - was shown tearing up military units ... in the hands of a relatively untrained civilian. In fact, we routinely see 'suits piloted by people with no combat experience trashing regular military and SWAT teams on their first outing. In terms of deterrent value they're nearly up there with Nukes. Think about it. Genericstan is protecting terrorists. The US starts to make threatening noises, and the reply is "Try anything and we'll launch battlesuit-armed elite soldiers into major US cities. OK, we only have 12 of them, but they are all prepared to die for their generic fatherland and the damage done to take them down will be enormous". Does that cover it? cheers, Mark

Re: NO everyman skills Oh that wasn't meant to be a direct response - just that I (and a couple of fellow GM's) have used this house rule in quite a lot of heroic games covering a lot of genres from dark ages northumbria (semi-realistic, no magic, etc) to science fiction (Judge Dredd, Strontium Dogs knockoffs) as well as standard fantasy, and pulp. I was just making the point that whatever genre, this approach seems to work relatively well. As an aside, I first came up with this idea back in the mid-80's when we were playing the Judge Dredd setting because it was so frickin' expensive to give PCs all the skills we thought Judges should have. The GM for that game (great game BTW!) is on the boards as Sir Ofeelya.

Re: NO everyman skills It is indeed. I've been using PSMs (Professional skill modifiers) for a couple of decades now and strongly recommended it in the 6E discussion on skills. It's never proved unbalanced in play, for 3 reasons. 1. It allows you to get an 11- roll for 1 point. That's fine for background tasks (see my comment above) which means routine tasks can be handled, often with no roll at all. However, for mission critical skills, you'll want to spend more - and if you want a 16- or 18- roll (especially in heroic games) that 1 point price break isn't a huge giveaway. What this means in practice is that players will have a small number of core skills at heroic or legendary levels - but it's significantly cheaper to get a whole bunch of supporting skills. Without PSMs, I noted that PCs still tended to have a small number of core skills at heroic or legendary levels - but they skimped on the background. 2. I restrict access to the skills available. The rule of thumb is "What would I expect everyone with this description to have?" not "What could someone with this description possibly have?" So, to take your ninja master example, anything to do with martial arts (well, not the maneuvers themselves ) poisons, smoke bombs, disguise, misdirection - all that jazz. However, when I think of ninjas, I think of stealthy fightin' guys. It might be entirely plausible for a modern ninja to have systems operation, KS: computers and modern firearms KS's but I would (depending on setting) probably not allow those under "PSM: Ninja master." In addition, for a professional skill modifier there has to be an actual profession, or a way of learning the skills. I wouldn't allow PSM: adventurer unless there was an actual adventuring guild somewhere training people, because that definition is so broad as to be meaningless: a brawny adventurer with a big sword and heavy armor will likely have a different skill set from a slim stealthy adventurer with a dagger. 3. Skill based characters are expensive and once you have covered the basics, you typically get less bang for your buck as you get more esoteric skills. Giving characters a break on skills is not going to hugely enhance their efficiency - in truth, it merely makes them less inefficient However, I like players whose characters have lots of skills - it opens up possibilities. And players love getting something for free - even if they have to buy three skill just to break even. So anything that encourages them to buy skills is a good deal IMO. cheers, Mark

Re: Armor Wars . "Tony Stark did it! In a cave! Out of spare parts!" Seriously, if a single guy can build a suit in his basement - even if he's a real schmot guy - then the world's major governments have the resources to do the same. And the build a suit/copy a suit trope is rife in comics. So we know it's not impossibly hard.

Re: Armor Wars This is a reasonable approach - although for comparison, one single recent weapons program - the F35 - budgetted 323 billion, which would get you well over 600 suits and change - enough for 4-5 full companies of battlesuits. The Iraq war cost enough to field several thousand suits, while the roughly 6 trillion estimated to have been spent on the US nuclear arsenal would get you enough suits to provide every active division with about 1300 suits - let's say 10 armoured companies per division .... Just sayin' In reality, countries have shown a willingness to spend stupefying amounts of money on arms, if they think they will be effective. However, putting a really high price on them, or requiring their construction to use very rare materials, or requiring a very high level of skill and physical competence to use them does keep the suspension of disbelief to a much, much lower level cheers, Mark

Re: Armor Wars Sure, the comics in fact don't let supertech out of the box, because it's part of the setting. It's a genre trope. Readers accept it, because it's a genre trope. But it's not realistic, as you just pointed out yourself. I should point out that I have no problem with it. I know it's unrealistic, I know it makes no sense .... but I don't care. I'm reading a comic book where people can mutate to shoot energy beams out of their eyes, for pete's sake, where verifiable Gods walk the streets and yet people still go to church like nothing had changed ... none of that makes the slightest sense, but that's OK: I can willingly suspend my disbelief. Ummmmm .... that doesn't represent anything like the position I have taken. The position I have taken is that if supertech and ritzy batttlesuits existed and costumed crimefighters proved their effectiveness, by - let's say - going successfully one on one with tank, eliminating a pack of insurgents with minimal collateral damage and then successfully evading some F15's, then the military would be interested* ... and if interested, would spend a whole lot of money to build and deploy that tech. Kind of like the US did with nukes, now that I think of it. Actually, exactly like the US - and everybody else who had the technology - did with nukes. Indeed, exactly like the Iranians are trying to do today, even at great cost to their society and economy. Again, you're setting up an argument that simply supports the point I am making: if the technology demonstrates clear military potential people will want it it - want it badly enough to risk their economy to get it. This applies even more strongly to battlesuits - they are, in the world view you have just laid out, the perfect weapon - the firepower of a tank, the threat of a nuke, the deployability of a drone and a gigantic force multiplier exactly at a time when numbers are a crucial issue .... without the collateral damage, without the deployment difficulties, without the political fallout. Nothing I said suggests that having developed these weapons, the country would go on a killing spree. It didn't happen with nukes, I have no reason to think it'd happen with somewhat less destructive technology. However, nukes were developed, refined and deployed by the tens of thousands at vast cost to the economy - exactly like battlesuits would be, if they existed. cheers, Mark *In this context I use the word "interested" to designate "droolingly fall in love with, and spend anything to acquire"

Re: Armor Wars Because war is about winning, and if you don't do it, the guys who do, will take you apart. Riiiiiight. So in a world where supers - both Heroes and Villains, do exist, and paranoia about their capabilities is justifiable, you're saying the military would not attempt to redress the balance, because they somehow trust these civilians who keep their identities hidden more than their own people. You know, that doesn't make any sense. Haven't you just argued convincingly against your own position? Doesn't that paranoia suggest the populace would be desperate to deploy supertech to provide normal humans with some protection? They would, of course, just as I have been saying: if the means were there, people would use them. I say this, because in real life, they always have. cheers, Mark

Re: Armor Wars

Re: Armor Wars Yes, but as the Germans discovered in 1918 and the Poles discovered in 1939, what that is can change in a very short period. cheers, Mark

Re: Armor Wars

Re: Not D&D We don't know this - just that they were never mentioned. In fact, I don't recall any reference to organized religion in LOTR. It just makes the point that religion doesn't need to be part of an heroic story. As to your second point, I agree that people (humans, anyway) will always ask "where did we come from" and "What happens after we die?" but the answers are likely to be different in a world with magic. If mages with second sight look back as far as they can and report "We looked unimaginably far into the past and there's always been an earth here, with people. The sun was small and kind of yellowish, but otherwise it doesn't look that different." then you probably wouldn't have creation myths - just a quiet confidence that the earth has always been here and probably always will. People who pushed creation myths would be politely smiled at and condescended to as ignorant bumpkins. Alternately, if they can look back and see the world being created, or everybody knows that the world was here when humans arrived on sky chariots .... well, there you have it. It's just a matter of setting the game world up as you want. cheers, Mark

Re: Not D&D Exactly. Also, (for example) if you can go the edge of the world, peer down and see the turtle, that renders creation myths and debates on "our place in the universe" moot. You know where you are ... on top of a giant turtle! cheers, Mark

Re: Armor Wars Actually, the only thing I didn't like about IM2 was that Hammer was such a tool - so to speak . Had he been less clownish and his tech less pathetic, it would have added a bit more drama to the showdown. cheers, Mark

Re: Helmet that blocks mental attacks Presumably his helmet is lined with tin-foil cheers, Mark

Re: NO everyman skills I've taken a slightly different route, although my games also tend to be skill-heavy: I allow players to buy "professional skill modifiers" - I also interpret skills fairly broadly and assume that someone with a decent roll (14-) doesn't need to make a roll under normal circumstances. To compensate, I use both bonuses for appropriate situations and penalties for very bad situations fairly liberally, so players really only need to spend significant points on what they see as signature skills for their character. What this means is that Ninja Master can buy "Skill Mod: Ninja Master" and get all relevant skills at -1 cost. In addition he can buy PS: Ninja Master 14- and get all the (non-combat) skills one would expect - he knows a whole bunch of stuff you'd expect someone in that role to know. OTOH, if he wants to use specific skills in stressful situations - in combat, to puzzle out an ancient ninja riddle of vast import - in other words, course-of-game-affecting stuff - then he should spend some points, because a general skill like PS: Ninja Master won't cut it. On the other hand it's fine for knowing what bits of Fugu not to eat, etiquette at the Ninja masters annual banquet, Who's Who in the world of ninja-ing and how to make smoke bombs at home, etc. cheers, Mark

Re: Promoting Other Cool Game Stuff: TOWN Oh, you needn't worry - those are rarely applied today cheers, Mark

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

Re: Not D&D

Re: Humans Need Not Apply: Campaigns Without Humans Actually, I think a game set in the world of Poul Anderson's Broken sword, where a three-way war between Elves, Trolls and Goblins was ongoing, would be pretty cool. There are humans in that setting but they are largely irrelevant: with a few exceptions the war is playing out under their noses, invisibly. cheers, Mark

Re: General Atomics electromagnetic rail cannon Cool! I had seen the first one before (that's where the still I posted comes from) but I hadn't seen the second one. cheers, Mark

Re: 5 Civilizations That Just Disappeared Ummmm.... this is in an article with Lemuria. Just sayin' cheers, Mark

Re: Armor Wars Ah. Well in that case, the question becomes "Wait - we're playing Shadowrun? I thought this was going to be Champions?" The thing is , if you apply logic to supertech/aliens you shift the game to something else: that's why most comic book writers ignore it. Me, I'd actually be good with a supergame set in a logically-extended setting - with supertech, severe culture shock and humanity starting to adjust to a universe that was suddenly much, much bigger and more crowded. In fact, I'd be more than good - that sounds awesome. cheers, Mark

Re: NO everyman skills What I have done for many years is have cultural everyman packages, and when a player chooses a background, they get that package. Typically, a culture will have some, but not all "everyman" types (Townsman, villager, noble, priest, barbarian, etc) to reflect the fact that a foundling raised in a temple in metropolis will probably have different background skills from a child raised by steppe nomads. Some everyman skills (climbing, conversation) are likely to be common to all of them - others will not be. In truth, it rarely comes up in play, but is does do so from time to time. cheers, Mark