Markdoc

Re: The Singularity?

Re: Balls of Steel To me, this is pretty straightforward: the character wants very specific items. They are not something he can easily acquire from the general environment and therefore - by definition - not "objects of opportunity". The same would apply if he got his gadgeteer buddy to whip him up a set of "HKA laser claws" and wanted it free as "laser claws of opportunity". As to cost, it's a 12d6 EB, so I'm guessing oh ... about 60 active points, appropriately limited. cheers, Mark

Re: Firearms in fantasy?

Re: What's in a Name?

Re: A couple of brain cells connected...

Re: The Singularity?

Re: Firearms in fantasy? Also remember that bayonets were a relatively late invention, and the kind that you could stick on your gun while still being able to fire it, an even later invention. In the early days, you carried a sword as well as a gun, so once the gun was discharged you went to the sword. cheers, Mark

Re: What's in a Name? Uhh - "Soldatenmangel" means "Lack of soldiers". Is that what you wanted? cheers, Mark

Re: Solar Systems Like Ours in the Minority I don't have time for that! cheers, Mark

Re: Lessons from Byzantium

Re: The Singularity? As I understand it, the singularity is not just the point where you can no longer predict the future any real distance ahead - that's been the case through most ofthe last 1,000 years - but the point where technological change becomes so raoid that it is no longer comprehensible to humans at all. That's to say, the point where changes in technology and society that are happening right now are so many and so rapid, that they become unpredictable and difficult to understand even at the time - no one person can get a realistic picture of what's actually going on. It's like you buy your new phone and it has an app for "Phleboggling" and you have no idea of what it's for. So you go to look up "Phleboggle" on Google and it tells you that if your Muntz is configured for local phleboggling - which is apparently different in different parts of the world - then you can log into Tachynet and then proxy to your local provider via your squilletting account, so that you can call even if you don't have a local cell signal ... you might be able to work it out eventually, but by then the knowledge will probably be obsolete. A lot of people feel like this has already happened, so the idea of the Singularity has a certain resonance. Practically, however, I feel like we are seeing a slowdown in many aspects of technology, in that we are refining and enhancing many technologies, that were groundbreaking a few decades ago, but relatively few new technologies have been developed recently - the web being one that does spring to mind. What the singularity folks seem to ignore is that knowledge has rarely, if ever progressed in the kind of curve they extrapolate from, but in a series of fits and starts often with highly productive periods where one new dscovery kickstatts new developments in many fields followed by a wait (of determinate length) for the next conceptual breakthrough. cheers, Mark

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero Because in most cases, when the GM places the characters in a physical situation, the external environment is dictated by the GM - but he's essentially asking the players "OK, what are your characters going to do in response to this situation?". When he places them in a situation where PC actions are dictated (in part or whole) by die roll, now the internal environment is also dictated by the GM - he's essentially saying "OK, here's what your characters are going to do". Very, very, verrrry different situations, and not really analogous. Realistic, certainly. Challenging? Probably. But fun .... probably not. In that regard, it's like the discussions about realism in modelling death/injury. We could certainly make our physical simulations more realistic and challenging, if we wanted, but my experiences in that direction suggest that it's at the cost of fun. cheers, Mark

Re: Firearms in fantasy? Can't help with the number of shots, but most flintlock users used to carry one or two extra fints with them suggesting that a) failure was not unexpected, it wasn't that common (or they'd have had more than one or two). A failure requiring some reknapping on an 8- would probably cover those possibilities accurately enough. cheers, Mark

Re: What's in a Name?

Re: Lessons from Byzantium Historic digressions apart, I have thought for along time that pre-modern empires were a pretty good model for star-spanning empires. I was thinking early european colonial rather than Byzantium, but either works, assuming near-lightspeed travel. You identify a likely planet. You don't invest a huge amount in it, since it might be a bust. Instead you send out a bunch of rough and tumble expendables who may or may not succeed in establishing a foothold (or you sell the rights to a group who wants to do it). Then you forget about them. If they are successful, they'll call home eventually. But it will be years, or more likely decades, before you hear anything. Even once you get into contact, any contact will be intermittent, with a delay of years between when the message was sent and its arrival. As a result, planets - even those nominally part of a single political entity - would be run pretty autonomously. As long as the ships arrived once or twice a year carrying whatever it might be that is worth transhipping plus a package of news, the controlling power back home is likely to be happy. I was thinking of models like the early Spanish outposts in South America, or the colonial companies in Asia and India. Guys who went to the colonies signed up for contracts that ran years to decades, the colonies ran their own military policy, with their own armies (sorry: policing forces ). The guys back home might appoint and send out a governor - or not - but whatever, they'd have only a faint idea of what was going on, and that idea would aways be out of date. Likewise, the people in the colonies would have little idea of what was going on back home and in a short time, home would be wherever they grew up. Barring sudden unexpected discoveries, though they'd also likely always be behind the technology curve (at least for a long time) giving them an incentive to stay connected. Of course this distance would make rebellion seem like a plausible idea in times of economic trouble - if you rebel now, and stop sending stuff back to the homeworld, the homeworld doesn't find out for 10 years. You get ten years worth of free supplies that are already in transit and it'll be 20+ years before any kind of investigation force turns up - if they even bother to send one. cheers, Mark

Re: Lessons from Byzantium

Re: Lessons from Byzantium The idea of using them as a model for your galactic empire is a good one - but it should be pointed out that "puny little byzantium" was the "great Roman empire". For centuries after the western half of the empire had gone down the gurgler, Byzantine armies marched under banners bearing the logo SPQR, standing for Senatus Populusque Romanus ("The Senate and the People of Rome"), the language of the court (and church) was latin, as were the laws. In the 11th century, Michael Psellus, writing his history of the byzantine emperors started (without any post-modernist irony, because it hadn't been invented back then) "When Basil came to power over the Romans..." Their Frankish and Turkish allies/enemies called them Romans too. In a lot of ways, it's more correct to call the byzantine empire by the name "Eastern Roman Empire" - and for the last couple of centuries they co-existed, the Eastern Roman Empire was the senior partner. It ended up controlling most of the former Roman Empire (under the Latin-speaking Justinian, it stretched from what's now Spain to Iran (including all of Italy and Rome itself: it lacked only part of Western Europe to have included the entire old Roman territories, plus a little extra! It wasn't until the last fifth of the empire's existence that they got squeezed down to rump state. cheers, Mark

Re: What's in a Name? The alternate Gloranthan name is Dark Folk, which gives a slighty better vibe, in some ways, IMO than Troll: too many players these days see "troll" and think "big, dumb and regenerates" - where really, only the first the first applies. Grue's not bad (though be prepared for Sergio Aragone jokes) but you could also just stick with Troll. I use it in my game and the players have learned that "troll" just means any large magical, man-like beastie. cheers, Mark

Re: What Happened to the Hominids Who Were Smarter Than Us? Players: "So you're telling us that you guys actually run the world? So where's your hyper-advanced technology?" Boskop: "We no longer need it" cheers, Mark

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Twilight Watch - the third in the series of Russian fantasy novels that started with Night Watch. Simple, fast, easy read: I enjoyed it, and I'm relatively hard to please when it comes to fantasy novels, these days. It has all the same characters and setting as the first two books, but avoids being formulaic. cheers, Mark

Re: A couple of brain cells connected...

Re: Fantasy or Pulp? The writing style, the audience it was aimed at, the tone and the characters, principally. People have been tying to make Holmes into a pulp hero for several decades now (witness the recent movie) but Doc Savage, or the spirit, he's not. Arthur Conan Doyle certainly wrote pulp - the Lost World series is definitively pulp, but I've never felt that since an author once wrote pulp, that all they wrote must be classed as pulp. cheers, Mark

Re: [Vehicle] The Ram What about autofire? cheers, Mark

Re: Fantasy or Pulp? Maybe. But many of the authors you mention - Vance, Arthur Conan Doyle, Heinlein, Philip K. Dick, etc etc, don't give me the slightest pulp vibe. I guess it's a matter of taste. cheers, Mark

Re: Postapocalytpic Antarctica (Problems/Questions)?