Old Man

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Ian or Iain?

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? I've heard good things about it but have yet to catch an episode.

Re: Fantasy Economies: How closely should we examine them?

Re: Musings on Random Musings Bassists are underrated. Are there any successful rock bands with no bassist?

Re: The cranky thread FWIW that's probably Honda Corporate leaning hard on the service providers to follow up, not the service provider themselves being overzealous. I like that they follow up, but then again, they're not calling my cell phone either.

Re: The cranky thread He said "most", not "all".

Re: Hit Locations What you have to watch out for, though, is the greater randomness of KA resulting from the lower amount of dice. Sure a 6d6 HA to the head maxes out at 72 stun, but it's really unlikely. The 2d6 KA to the head will do at least 55 stun every 12 rolls. I personally am guilty of exploiting this effect by piling ludicrous extra STUNx on top of a 1d6 KA (no bell curve at all). Cold cock your opponent 1/3 of the time with next to no chance of actually killing him. Worked great in Champions games where killing is frowned upon for some reason or other.

Re: Fantasy Economies: How closely should we examine them?

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... The Road by Cormac McCarthy. A man and his son travel across a postapocalyptic hellscape in search of food, shoes, and hope. Won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. There is no question that Mr. McCarthy is a really good writer. His tricks of avoiding the quotes key and not having chapters help to foster an atmosphere of silence and relentlessness that pervades the story. But more than that, the book manages to convey a great deal of nuance and meaning with some very spare text. Were I to write a novel, I'd like to be this efficient at it. I picked up this book thinking, hey, Pulitzer winning PA book, how can I not read this? It is an excellent and moving adventure story. But heads up: it may be the bleakest story ever written. This book makes Road Warrior look like a Boy Scout camping trip. It makes the Galactica reboot look like a commercial for Carnival Cruise Lines. The Postman, Lucifer's Hammer, Dies the Fire, Ivan Denisovich, even Nineteen Eighty Four aren't even close for sheer epic hopelessness. Make no mistake, this book is about the end of the world. You've been warned. A very good book if you think you can handle it.

Re: Running group combats Hopefully each participant will have their own weapons and armor. It'll be really expensive if you have to provide them. Also make absolutely certain you have each of them sign a waiver, and if possible, you'll want to have some EMTs present. ... In Fantasy Hero, assuming we're still at skirmish level and not actual mass combat level, the typical shortcuts are: - Stunned, Impaired, or Disabled combatants are considered dead. - Ditch Hit Location if you're using it and go with average armor value. - Stun--forget it. - Use morale--have badly wounded or isolated combatants attempt to flee, and have one side give up after taking 50% casualties or so. - Lock in everyone's combat levels (if any) and work out the the fixed to hit rolls. Then roll all the to-hits in rapid succession or even use sets of different colored dice to roll them all at once. I find that using d6s with pips, you can quickly spot clear hits and clear misses, and you'll only have to count the borderline cases. This, again, is for skirmish level RPG fights. True Hero System mass combat goes further and treats entire units as individual combatants with CVs of their own, combat maneuvers more suited to units, and morale as well as physical damage. But that is beyond the scope of this post.

Re: The cranky thread Long weekend = neighbors break out the karaoke machine.

Re: The cranky thread I used to really love fireworks. At my apogee I was launching 8" shells from a sandbag-supported tube in the middle of the road for New Year's 1999/2000. Then I had a kid who was a light sleeper. Who developed asthma. Now I'm less of a fan. Still I'd be okay with them if people would only use them on the days they're allowed to.

Re: The "Nice Happy" Thread Had I not gotten this job three weeks ago, I would be putting my house up for sale right about now.

Re: "Neat" Pictures

Re: Fantasy Economies: How closely should we examine them? Who says they can't use them?

Re: The cranky thread Have you tried amputation?

Re: The cranky thread My standard response to these is to "panic", mash the brake, and look around. Ideally I'll do this long enough for the light to change or for cross traffic to appear (if it's a stop sign or driveway pullout).

Re: The cranky thread I wouldn't despair for our whole society, just the parts that involve software. Like aircraft. And medical equipment.

Re: The cranky thread My understanding is that cows can get through any barrier that is less than 12 DEF. Resistant.

Re: I have a dream. (and MAN was it wierd!) I hurried out of the auto shop into the bright midday sun and hopped into my car. It was amateur night at the fight club, and I was running late. The car started easily and was running noticeably smoother than it had when I'd dropped it off. So far so good, I thought, as I sped through the city, tossing the car lightly through turns and intersections. It was a great day for a drive. Too bad I had to go to work. I flung the car into my parking space and jumped out, striding purposefully in the back door. It was dank in here, in stark contrast to the bright bustling city outside. From the sounds of things the first fight had already started. That was all right--those two weren't pros, but they weren't newbies either; they knew how to handle themselves. It was the newbies I was worried about. I went into my office to grab some paperwork and other things, and spent the next few minutes rushing around the bowels of the building. It was amazing how much stuff you needed just to host a simple bare-knuckles fight. By the time I got back up to the floor, the crowd noise had changed, and not in a good way. I went to see. It was the first pair of real first-time fighters, and in the first round one of the girls--the dark-haired one, I think her name was Laura--was already reduced to covering up against the wall while her opponent beat on her. It was a horrible fight, and the crowd was letting them know it. I headed for the locker room. There was nothing I could do for that fight, but I could set up the next one. Obviously no one else was going to. I found the next two girls sitting there, dressed and taped up, but obviously nowhere near the right frame of mind. In fact, they looked terrified. Randy Couture was here too, helping out even though he had long since retired. I cleared my throat. "Girls, let me talk to you for a minute. That fight outside isn't going to last much longer, and you're up next. Very soon you're going to be fighting each other in front of that crowd. But I want to put that aside for a moment, and instead of talking about the next five minutes, I want to talk about tomorrow morning. When one of you wakes up tomorrow, you will have lost tonight. That's just the way it is. But let me tell you something. You may think you came here because you want the money, or because you like hitting people. But the real reason you signed up for this is because you want to find out what you're made of. "That's commendable. 99% of people will live out their lives never knowing what they could have accomplished, simply for lack of trying. You're in the 1% who have taken the chance to find out. Don't waste it! Win or lose, the only thing you might really regret tomorrow morning is that you didn't try hard enough, didn't find out what your limits were. Don't give up. I've seen a lot of fights, and trust me, comebacks happen. You're not out of the fight until the end of the fight. So fight until the end of the fight. This is your chance. Good luck out there." I glanced at Randy, and he nodded in approval. The girls seemed more confident as they headed into the arena. I went back to my office and dropped off the last of my stuff. As I left, I heard the roar of an appreciative crowd. Must be a hell of a fight. I hopped back in the car and sped off into the city. Shortly I found myself in a race with three other cars piloted by punk kids. I glanced down and noticed that the auto shop had installed a bank of switches. I flipped the one for nitrous and took off, totally smoking the other cars. All the lights were green as I sped through the city. It sure was a nice day for a drive.

Re: The cranky thread In other news, I spent 90 minutes this afternoon while the helpdesk girl struggled to install the flash player plugin on my work laptop. An operation that usually takes about 90 seconds.

Re: The cranky thread I've found smokers, sometimes, are almost deliberately inconsiderate--almost as though they were rebelling against The Man that keeps them from smoking indoors. They're such a harassed minority, you see, that they deserve to be allowed to litter on your lawn and pollute the lungs of anyone downwind. And of course they have long since destroyed their own sense of taste and smell, so they have no idea how offensive the stench is.

Re: I have a dream. (and MAN was it wierd!) The limousine was made out of flesh. Its complexion was the mottled pale skin of an older, balding caucasian man's scalp. Indeed, there were clumps of white hair toward the front and back of the car, as though the whole thing had been covered with hair at one point. It had the layout of a car from the twenties, with the tall engine compartment and separate fenders; the driver's seat was about halfway back along the car's length. Even the tires were fleshy, like the body of the car, only with black hair that had worn off the part of the tire that would have had tread on it. The driver, a portly caucasian man in a light colored suit with a balding pate that matched the car, leaned lightly against it, waiting patiently for his passenger.

Re: I have a dream. (and MAN was it wierd!) Oddly, many politicians accomplish the same feat.

Re: Musings on Random Musings 99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer...