Old Man

Re: Looking For Input On Potential New Fantasy Product

Re: Looking For Input On Potential New Fantasy Product You know, I totally missed Spence's post from two pages back. Had I seen that I could probably have just said "+1" and saved myself some time.

Re: The cranky thread Sometimes I wish I believed in it too.

Re: Looking For Input On Potential New Fantasy Product I'd be less worried about page count and more worried about keeping the price down to where it might be an impulse buy. That probably means black and white softcover, but I also want to stress the importance of art and layout in the book. Hero books have almost totally ignored this for all of recorded history, reaching its nadir with the 5th ed. Grimoire, which looked like a Word document I'd see in a government office. Art and borders and headings are all critical to establishing the mood and 'feel' for the game. It has to look like something you'd want to read, and it's going to be sitting on the shelf next to some really gorgeous Pathfinder books. Seriously, one easy way to tackle this project would be to take 1st ed. FH, update it to 6th, and make it pretty. I'd buy that. Some powers, advantages, and disadvantages will have to come out, and the entries for all of them will have to be cut down and renamed for fantasy. But the silver lining there is reducing complexity and intimidation for new players.

Re: Looking For Input On Potential New Fantasy Product I've held off on commenting on this until now, but my vote is very solidly for Fantasy Hero Complete. I don't see what is to be gained from forcing new players to go buy a superhero book in order to play fantasy. 1st ed FH proved that you can put the entire game in one book, so let's do that. Especially since Hero has always had the problem of being perceived as a supers ruleset shoehorned into other genres. My vision for FH Complete would be to provide the minimum required for impulse buyers to start playing FH immediately, and still be a complete game. If that requires stripping out perks, talents, and even powers, so be it. (I can't remember ever using Tunneling in 25 years of Hero gaming.) It would have to include ready-to-run characters and an introductory scenario, and a brief list of standard spells. It will probably have to be vaguely tailored to a specific setting--I'd pick Tuala Morn--but still be able to work with generic fantasy once the serial numbers are filed off. I'd consider defining specific spells from other systems in the standard spell list, such as Cure Wounds and Fire Sphere, to ease the conversion process. Industry insiders may say that large numbers of new gamers for HERO to tap into may not be there--but we should try anyway. And there are plenty of RPG gamers from other systems to plunder besides. FH1 didn't get me into gaming, but it did get me into Hero, and once here I have never looked back.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER As an x-ray source or an electrocution hazard? Or because of the electric bill?

Re: Quote of the Week From My Life. Interesting. I have played many space combat games--Silent Death, B5 Wars, Starfire, Battlefleet Gothick, Star Frontiers, Full Thrust, and of course SFB. So I'm always interested to hear about other systems.

Re: The cranky thread

Re: Quote of the Week From My Life. Which game?

Re: Musings on Random Musings All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.

Re: Musings on Random Musings You are, are you? You don't mind all your tax money going to fix the damage? You won't miss polar bears and coral reefs? Anyway, the worst case scenario for 2100 is a two-meter sea level rise, though it seems like every climate change estimate so far has been much too conservative.

Re: Musings on Random Musings He went there for their sake. If not even Log can save them, then they are beyond saving and are best left to the inexorably rising waters of the sea.

Re: The cranky thread

Re: The cranky thread It would be, but since you hit like a girl, it's okay.

Re: The cranky thread You do not talk about Fight Club!

Re: The cranky thread

Re: The cranky thread I can relate. I have spent most of a lifetime holding the always angry in and I've become awfully good at it. But he's always there, clawing away at the back of my mind. He's kind of like nuclear power--a great source of energy, if you can keep it harnessed. Unfortunately my anger doesn't come with planetary level super strength and invulnerability.

Re: Musings on Random Musings If science explains lightning, then the sheeple will have one less reason to fear the man in the sky. Fear of the man in the sky is the primary means of control we have over the sheeple, therefore scientists must be burned at the stake. QED.

Re: More space news! I thought it was common practice to walk spotting rounds onto the target and then fire for effect? Nice to see Dave Tholen's still working and in the thick of things.

Re: Musings on Random Musings I think Ben Franklin came to fear lightning at some point in his career. Or at least respect it. I don't empty my bowels at the thought of it, but I fear lightning enough to get inside when it's lightninging out.

Re: The cranky thread I spent part of Christmas Eve wandering around the backyard leaving carrots, glitter, and oats on the ground. Seriously whoever thought of reindeer food better not admit it around me.

Re: More space news! I feel as though laser developments are really flying under the radar. This particular weapon sounds like it is very close to being militarily useful against small boats and slow aircraft. Directed energy weapons will have profound effects on air combat. You can already disable manned aircraft with a $30 laser pointer.

Re: More space news! If you can't take the heat, stay out of the stellar core.

Re: Quote of the Week From My Life. The four year old: "Dad?" "What?" "Can you pick us up later?" "Pick you up? From where?" "Space." "Space?" "Yeah." "Who's taking you to space?" "We're just going ourselves." "How are you getting there?" "Driving." "Driving? In what?" "The car." "I don't think the car can go to space." "Sure it can." "How?" "Just like regular driving, but you turn up. It's simple." "I see. I guess I never tried that before." "Yeah." "But I don't think there's enough gas in the car to go to space." "Oh, okay. We'll go later." "I hope so, kid."

Re: The cranky thread I am the last person on Earth who should be trying to blow sunshine up anyone's ass, but here goes: Things are improving. What happened to the girl in the link, that's horrific--but the resulting outcry? That's new. Women haven't been recognized as full humans for even a century. Women's suffrage is about that old. Women working? Seventy years tops. Forty, more realistically. Equal pay? Not yet, but we're getting there. A few hundred years ago, women were possessions. They were the spoils that lamented after I cut down their menfolk. Now they are the ones who cut down the enemy menfolk. Certainly the rest of the world lags behind the shining light of the West, and progress is never fast enough--but humanity is moving in the right direction. We just need to keep the momentum up. In your lifetime you have seen marriage rights for gay people, cures for chicken pox, the extinction of polio, communications technology that is pure f-ing magic. I'm writing this on my phone in a damn Taco Bell and it will reach all of you milliseconds after I click 'post'. Every day the vast majority of you seven billion humans completely fail to kill or rape anyone. More often you help each other or even invent stuff. It's astonishing! Could it be that you humans, for all your stupidity and clumsiness, are actually basically good? There is still work to be done--but take the long view, and see all that humanity has accomplished so far, and realize that you have all contributed, if only slightly, to that progress.