Markdoc

Re: 15 Da Vinci War Machines Yes, now you mention it . cheers, Mark

Re: Kamarathin: Magic items

Re: 15 Da Vinci War Machines It's also worth noting (for people who mostly remember da Vinci from his portrait as an old bald guy with a big beard) is that he got to meet his first patron (Ludovico) because he was chosen to deliver a message. And he was chosen in part because of his "divine beauty" and his "flowing golden locks". No, really, I'm not making this stuff up! My picture of Leonardo, drawn from the letters and reminiscences of people who actually knew him is a bit different from the stereotypical picture of the old sage. I see him as your typical alpha. Tall, good looking, smart, self confident. We know he liked parties And he could sing and play the lute pretty well, by all accounts. Add to that a real gift for observation, a genuine gift for invention and a genius for visual flair. Top it off with a quick, easily-bored mind. He was exactly the sort of guy renaissance princes wanted around court to fill in at parties, hang out with, tell them how great they were, etc. Leonardo was the kind of guy who was always trying something new, rapidly getting pretty good at it, but then getting bored and moving on to something else. Even his paintings, in many cases he sketched the outlines, did some basic coloring and then moved on to something else, letting his friends and assistants finish. Michaelangelo, who was a bit obsessive compulsive thought Leonardo was a boastful dilettante (which is unfair) but where Michaelangelo was a master at two things and worked compulsively on his projects, Leonardo was pretty good at lots of things - and finished very little of what he started. cheers, Mark

Re: 15 Da Vinci War Machines I think it more likely that Michael is right. These were simply "what-if" sketches, not actually designs. It's important to remember that despite the myth of Leonard the Inventor and Leonardo the Scientist that sprang up over the last century or so, he actually made his living as a painter. Almost none of his claimed inventions were ever made - those that were made didn't work Leonardo apologists gloss over this sort of difficulty by writing stuff like "A difficulty encountered in the creation of models is that often Leonardo had not entirely thought through the mechanics of a machine before he drew it, or else he used a sort of graphic shorthand, simply not bothering to draw a gear or a lever at a point where one is absolutely essential in order to make a machine function. Matters like this were probably so obvious to a person of Leonardo's skills that he didn't need to record them" which rather flies in the face of his very detailed rendering of many details. It's much more likely that never having built or tested his models, Leonardo was not aware that it wouldn't work - like his idea of letting people walk on the bottom of the sea by having a snorkel suspended by airbags. Leonardo claimed he had tested the idea - but we know now that if it had ever been tried it would rapidly have been found to be impossible. I have no doubt that Leonardo was a genius. However, I suspect that his genius included a genius for self promotion. He wrote a famous letter to Ludovico il Moro describing all the wonderous inventions he would create if Ludovico would hire him. Ludovico did hire him. No inventions were forthcoming. His grandiose dome was built (smaller and in a different style) by someone else. His giant marvelous statue never got past the planning stage. Nor did his fortress designs or his weapon designs, or his water powered mills or his plan for diverting the Arno. He ended up as Ludovico's party coordinator and designer. When Ludovco lost his job and his palace, Leonardo fled to Venice where he got a job as a naval architect, designing defences which ... you guessed it - were never built, and were mostly impractical (I particularly like the giant floating wall). From there he went back to painting, for which, without doubt, he had a real genius. When the painting business got thin, in the wake of the successful French invasion, Leonardo wangled a meeting with the French king and got a job with him, promising to build a mechanical lion that could walk and roar. The mechanical lion - can you guess? - never progressed beyond a few sketches. Leonardo remained a royal favourite anyway for his wide knowledge and painting skill. There's no question he was - as Girl Genius' Jægermonsters would put it "a very shmot guy" - but Cellini, who knew him said he was remarkable not as an architect or an inventor - which he wasn't great at - but for the breadth of his knowledge and as a philosopher. cheers, Mark

Re: 6E: Weaponmaster, Deadly Blow, and Killing dice

Re: Independent limitation in 6E

Re: Tokusatsu HERO...building a setting. Man, I keep reading the title as "Tonkatsu hero" and thinking "Yum ... I could go for a tonkatsu udon." cheers, Mark

Re: 6E: Weaponmaster, Deadly Blow, and Killing dice Snippage! Aid works fine - it's an especially good way to simulate a spell or power that adds damage to an attack, or a mighty blow that requires extra effort. You can also use CSLs, or you can simply buy a larger HKA and limit it (real weapon, OIF or OAF etc). There's multiple ways to simulate the "does more damage with regular weapons" shtick. Pretty much the only thing I never considered was "Buy another dice of KA and just add it to a different KA" cheers, Mark

Re: 6E: Weaponmaster, Deadly Blow, and Killing dice

Re: Reactions to 6e Yeah, the answer to reading on screen is has to be "get a bigger/better monitor". I have nice bright hi-res LCD, which is big enough to have two pages open at greater than 100% - and still have the index open on the side. I now find I prefer reading technical .pdfs (like games rules) on-screen rather than on paper (and it didn't use to be that way). The text is bigger, and I can jump back and forth, and find stuff far faster than I can with a stack of books. That might be a financial problem for some people, but the screens are getting cheaper - I paid over 5 grand for my first big LCD computer screen and it was smaller, lower resolution and way more expensive than the one I have now. cheers, Mark

Re: A Dark Golden Age game A couple of suggestions. First, you might want to check out the British Comic Strip Zenith, which has a dark WW2 background told in flash-backs, as a prelude to the modern day adventure. Second, rather than down-power the Heroes, make your protective field a "power-booster" (in other words, a big ol' transform: into a heroic type from Nazi mythology). This does two things: it lets you throw legions of "powered up" agent-level villains at the Heroes, if they should venture into the protected zones, without worrying about hordes of Nazi supers over-running the battlefields elsewhere. It means that the Heroes will be reluctant to enter the areas frequently (too much exposure could transform you into a Nazi Supervillian!) and will put them under time pressure any time they do. It's also a good reason, in a setting where death is likely fairly common for Nazis to capture allied Supers rather than execute them out of hand. Capture them and ship them off to the zone to be converted into Nazi supers! Of course, fellow PCs can rescue them and once removed from the field, they will eventually revert to normal Etc, Etc. cheers, Mark

Re: 6E: Weaponmaster, Deadly Blow, and Killing dice Glad to hear this - Deadly Blow was so grossly underpriced, that I had to ban it in my games: this sounds like a much needed fix! If the increased cost is a problem for existing characters, do what I plan if we switch our current game to 6E. Rebuild the characters under 6E. Give the players the choice of dropping some abilities or just give their PCs the extra points up front to retain their existing abilities and then just dock them 50% XP until that's paid off. cheers, Mark

Re: WIP Aigulf Greens

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far Steve Jackson has been quoted as saying that without Munchkin the company would probably not have survived, suggesting that their RPGs are not highly profitable. I'd love to know what DoJ considers a "successful run", though I understand if they don't want to release such numbers. IIRC, when WOTC was discussing sales, they indicated that 3E sold 1.3 to 1.5 million core rule books and that 4E looks likely to do at least as well: certainly the initial two printings of the 4E core sold out very rapidly. cheers, Mark

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far Steve Jackson has been quoted as saying that without Munchkin the company would probably not have survived, suggesting that their RPGs are not highly profitable. I'd love to know what DoJ considers a "successful run", though I understand if they don't want to release such numbers. IIRC, when WOTC was discussing sales, they indicated that 3E sold 1.3 to 1.5 million core rule books and that 4E looks likely to do at least as well: certainly the initial two printings of the 4E core sold out very rapidly. cheers, Mark

Re: Help with scale for an airport I've spent all too much time at O'Hare. You're probably not far off: I'd guess about 30 metres - say 100 feet - or maybe a little more. However, much of the space on both side is taken up by small shops/kiosks, so the space in-between is only about half that in many places. cheers, Mark

Re: The Seven

Re: Magical Engineer Commandos

Re: Magical Engineer Commandos Sure, you can't beat the GM - and it's pointless to even try The mindset behind Magical Engineer Commandos is to do the mostest with the leastest, to be quick on your feet, to swing more than your CR should be able to - and to defeat the evil GM's minions, but do so in a way to leave her goggling and saying "How did you just ..." What puzzles me is that our D20 group (that which I just described) is evolving into a lean, mean fightin' machine. The Hero group, in contrast - which is over half of the same people - nearly got munched to death by a bunch of 25 point bijoux monsterettes a few sessions back and last night got scattered and somewhat beaten up by 2 125 point harpies ... They panic, have no clear roles, tend to scatter all over the map, don't work well together - and have been playing together longer. Clearly, mindset is everything! cheers, Mark

Re: Magical Engineer Commandos I think it's less lack of specialization - if I read his OP correctly - than the team/military mindset. The current group I play in is like this. Everyone has a speciality (mine's recon/commando) but there's also overlap - so most of the fighter-types have some degree of healing or self-buffing, the two healers subspecialise in knowledge skills and archery support, respectively, the mage is our artillery support, but subspecialises in knowledge skills as well, and so on. Essentially, the support team is (main role/minor role) Research/Healing Healing/Ranged Combat Ranged Combat/Research and the close combat team is Fast assault/Infiltration Heavy assault/Defense Heavy assault/Defense So everyone specialises, but there's some subbing, so that we can operate effectively as two teams if we have to, or continue to function if any one member goes down. The only thing we lack backup on is the infiltration role. A good example: in a recent session, we came up against a well-organized team - as soon as the alarm was raised, their grunts (who were actually pretty tough) formed up in a defensive formation in front of their surviving spellcaster, who had planned on providing support, while their best fighter and a couple of big monsters go after our spellcasters. All in all, a pretty reasonable strategy ... which fell apart as soon as we showed up. The first thing that happens is my character goes over the heads of the grunts and is right on top of their spell caster before anyone else can react. He's too busy trying not to be dead to provide any sort of magical support. The other two fighters immediately close up to protect our spellcasters and all 4 of them wipe out the opponent's offensive. I could do the reckless offensive thing straight away without any discussion, because I knew the others know the drill - close up on and protect our spellcasters. In turn, they concentrate on wiping out the enemy's counter offensive, without worrying about me, because they know that I know the drill: once the enemy's spellcasters are down, I'm going to tackle the grunts - but also go all defensive, so the chance of the swarming grunts actually landing a finger on me are slim - and if I do get hurt, I have some healing capacity to keep me going. The goal is not to kill them all, just to tie them up. And finally, when the enemy's counter-offensive is broken, the grunts who are all trying to kill me will be nicely bunched up for massed magical fiery death - while I acrobat or teleport my way out of trouble. Teamwork, or as they say, force multipliers. Not coincidentally, a lot of our magical gear isn't armour and weapons so much as the quartermaster stuff that was mentioned: handy haversacks, boots that increase movement, hat of disguise, vessels that provide magical food and drink, magical books or crystals to enhance our research capacity, spells to resist cold or heat. We can operate in practically any environment (not underwater or in outer space .... yet) and can move rapidly, so that when we fight, we can dish out maximum pain, as quickly as possible - and if we don't want to fight, we can move away just as quickly and then disappear. We're nothing like a conventional fantasy group from any novel I've ever read - more like a Ranger Section. cheers, Mark

Re: Sixth Edition Showcase #8: APG Goodies

Re: Sixth Edition Showcase #6: Defense Powers We told you already. Don't you remember? cheers, Mark

Re: Confused about 6th edition May contain traces of nuts. cheers, Mark

Re: 15 Da Vinci War Machines

Re: 15 Da Vinci War Machines One of the things that always amused me about the tank you illustrated - it has all of these guns .... but enough space for a crew of two as long as they don't pack any ammunition or powder! cheers, Mark