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Baron Wulfraed

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Posts posted by Baron Wulfraed

  1. On 6/30/2023 at 10:42 AM, Geoff R Evil said:

    OK after discussion with my group, here is the list of honourable objectives I have set for my truth first Humakti.

    1. never lie

    Geas die roll 61

     

  2. 8 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

    Bad sequels to great films will always be talked about, that doesn't say anything to the merits of the bad sequel. People still talk about Highlander 2, but only, like here, in the context of it spoiling the great film whose legacy it pooped all over.]

    • Highlander
    • Highlander 2: There should only have been one
    • Highlander 3: The Apology

    Though #2 did have some great bits with Connery.

     

    • Haha 1
  3. 4 hours ago, clarence said:

    I’ve played quite some Traveller over the years - mainly the original version from 1977 - and it’s no secret that it inspired M-SPACE in many ways. But there were also things I never quite liked, things that I wanted to improve in my d100 take on sci-fi.

    Starship Design. The rules in Traveller always felt like they required a degree in engineering. The modular approach in M-SPACE is more like playing with LEGO blocks. It’s easier to understand, faster and much more fun. You can make 10 ships in the time it takes to create a single ship in Traveller.

    Part of the charm, to me...

    Though I will admit that one of the first major things I did with M$ Multiplan on a TRS-80 Model III/4 [upgraded] was incorporate to create a spreadsheet with all the design tables and look-ups. I could go down the core features (displacement, desired maneuver/jump, etc.) and the spreadsheet kept track of cost and space required.

    Granted -- actually laying out a deck plan was not covered...

     

  4. 22 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

    It is a bit confusing but once you figure it out, it is okay, as it is the same process for all careers. Oh, and since I've got you spending money, might I suggest you take a peek at Spica Publishing's career books? They add more careers, and some alternate tables and rules for chargen.

    It may just be the way the book is laid out (the quick glance I took in the PDF makes me think they spent more time on background art and then tried to fit the text around the art, then in straight-forward text presentation -- just an impression, I could be wrong; awaiting bound paper copies). I note they did not include even a half-size blank character sheet in the core book -- another packet I'll have to buy (I own a 13" wide photo printer, and could print tabloid sized character sheets if I had a PDF of one).

    22 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

    Well, since the OP was wondering the merits of M-Space over Traveller it probably is on topic to note what can be done with Traveller for comparison.

    <SNIP>

    Traveller has grown somewhat over the past decade or so, and has a lot of options now too, but M-SPACE still as more options and flexibility.

    More than the old basic six career paths 🥴 Though succeeding in getting through a full 20 years career still means one starts playing with characters that would be taken out of play in many other game systems for old age 😲; so in that I suspect M-Space will win. (I did note this version of Traveller did list some interstellar drives that function other than Jump -- at >TL15, of course [of course, a non-3rd Imperium setting wouldn't need to be tied to the old "TL15 <> Imperium max"]... So Star Trek "warp" is available now*)

     

     

     

     

    * side track -- back in my FurryMUCK era most of the creators of "starships" (basically a MUCK "room" that could be contained in, and moved between, other rooms) followed ST "warp" as the explanation for how the ships moved. Someone had set up a sort of situation with a "region of space" that was surrounded by a warp-blocking field -- we were considering if my Jump-based scout might be able to penetrate where they couldn't. They managed to work around the field before my next on-line session time.

  5. Non sequitur: This entire thread is dangerous... I've just dumped $240 into four of the Mongoose volumes (core, high guard, both aliens) and suspect I'll want to add a few others (3rd Imperium -- since a quick glance indicates the core is rather setting neutral, equipment catalog, and maybe one basic scenario as I'm not up to creating a campaign [I've always been a player, not GM] and try to get family into it).

    Character generation looks somewhat confusing (in comparison to the tables in original Traveller with the career specific expansion volumes/MegaTraveller). And some confusion in ship computers too (page 161 first mentions "computer/5bis" for basic type-S scout, but next paragraph refers to a "Model 1/bis". The smallest computer listed on page 181 is the "computer/5" -- leaving this one to assume that "model 1" is a typo carried over from original Traveller or that one should take the computer/# and divide # by 5 to get equivalent "model").

    My apologies for the Traveller focus in an M-Space thread: I'm at least familiar with T1-T4, and Mongoose fits the earlier ones in that series better. Wonder how badly I'd have to stretch things to recreate the type-SN Elusive Unicorn 🥴

    • Like 1
  6. 6 hours ago, Rob Darvall said:

    The Bird, Argent

    on a field, Vert

    surmounted by a Chief, Or

    with three eggs, Gules

    Being 'defiance in the swamp surmounted by the golden hope of survival as a people'.

    Typically, the blazon starts with the field and works up to the charges laid over the field. Don't know if "eggs" passes as heraldic. Since a chief, by definition, is the top portion of the shield/whatever I don't think "surmounted" adds anything. "with 3 eggs" is ambiguous -- on the chief, randomly scattered? I'd probably blazon that as:

    Vert, the Bird (I'm presuming you mean a particularly hand gesture), Argent
    on a Chief Or, three eggs, Gules.

    {I'd probably change the chief to a base -- making it a nest of eggs... Base Vert, eggs Or [golden eggs on grass]; need to rework the field and "bird" to avoid color on color... field argent, bird gules... bright sky with a angry red "bird"}

    • Like 2
  7. 6 hours ago, narsilion said:

    Three golden eggs (or feathers?) in a blue field

    Azure, three roundels, 1, 2, or

    (assumes the "eggs" are stacked

     *
    * *

    ... could also be "in bend" -- diagonal)

     

    per bar, argent and azure, three roundels in base or

    (silver sky, blue water, three golden orbs}

    Then again, this is coming from the mind that came up with:

    vert, a unicorn rampant inverted argent, on a chief argent 3 roundels 1,2 vert

    as a sort of challenge from an SCA room at a gaming convention. Someone asked if one could have a juggling unicorn as a device and basically was told "if you can describe in heraldic language". I took it to an extreme (though never tried to see if an SCA herald would pass it)

    unicorn.png.860b8f8c51c68f14ff7f9af7e077e861.png

    Unicorn standing on its head juggling three balls with its hind legs

  8. 11 hours ago, Bahntah said:

    I am reading through RQ2/RQC and trying to understand all the options in character creation.

    If a character joins the mercenaries, the book lists the weapons and armor of their company. They gain skills relevant to those weapons, but no details are provided about the armor.

    Back in the day (real RQ2 hardcover) my GM basically had us start characters as 16 year-old punks finally allowed to go out on their own. We never used the supplemental prior experience rules. Our first combat experience -- barring random encounters -- tended to beating up the operator of the "troll bridge" a half day out of town. Of course, they kept reinforcing the staff until we finally conceded it was better to just pay the troll.

    Weapons & Armor? We started with tree branches (wooden clubs: "Light Mace", maybe "Singlestick") and the equivalent of a poncho made of thick carpeting (basically what became the under-padding when we gained access to real armor: "Leather Hood", 1pt "Leather" or, per footnote, quilted) -- or whatever we could buy with the "starting money" on page 12 (and pretty much no body was allowed the three noble categories -- most hoped for Barbarian as horse [mostly], armor, and weapons were included). Oh, and base equipment -- page 15

    • Like 1
  9. 7 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

    Eeek! I missed one! 😁

    Well, more than one, as I also forgot Traveller :The New Era, GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars, and and Hero Traveller.

    Also one I thought I mentioned Marc Miller's Traveller.

    Even GDW dropped "Traveller" from the 2300 franchise, renaming it to just 2300 AD as it was just too different. (Stutterwarp,  or whatever it was called, anybody?)

  10. 23 hours ago, rsanford said:

    Two reasons, first is that some of the best Traveller scenarios I have read seems to rely on a kind of ship design / ship construction mini-game that I think might be hard to emulate in other systems. M-Space has something like that (it’s super cool) but it’s not sufficiently compatible with Traveller that you could easily reverse engineer and leverage the ships found in many Traveller supplements (feel free to correct me if I have it wrong).

    Which Traveller variant? I've not kept up with the market (I have the hardcover version based on the original 3 black booklets with many of the black add-on volumes, MegaTraveller, Traveller: the New ErrorEra, and what was sold as "Marc Miller's Traveller"). Ship design rules varied between all of them (and getting a usable ship out of MM'sT was probably very difficult as it went back in time to before the original mileau, so tech levels were lower -- even a TL10 scout ship in MegaTraveller could barely move out of its own way). Heck, original Traveller's lower-model ship computers sound like a perverse hybrid of a TRS-80 and an Atari 2600 (having to swap cartridges to go from course plotting to piloting modes?! I'm surprised they didn't use Apollo era flight computers: wherein the programming was literally hard-wired [wires that went through or around magnetic rings; the bit value depended on if it went through or around the ring] and the only crew access was providing parameters for the fixed program)

    Didn't like T:tNE -- my mind just balks at some of the explanations for "Virus" (like -- it physically infects computers using biological components, yet is transmitted via radio!)

    Character generation is almost as complex as RuneQuest -- especially when using the service tables that have per-year events for each four-year tour of duty. I think I actually had more fun creating characters and ships than in playing.

    Just for giggles (if my R-Pi web-server is reachable):

    http://baronwulfraed.microdiversity.freeddns.org/unicorn.htm

    http://baronwulfraed.microdiversity.freeddns.org/wr_biog.htm

    • Like 1
  11. 20 hours ago, Andrew M said:

    Balancing encounters is judgement and luck. I have had a party of experienced well equipped warriors be routed by a few trollkin with crappy weapons and skills but really good dice, and had Lunar Runelords in Iron armour and with skills and spells of doom killed by a single arrow.

    All you can do is guess, make sure if the pc's are outnumbered then their opponents are very much inferior and if they are going to have a strong numeric advantage that their enemies are really good if you want them to put up a fight. The nature of RQ combat rewards ambushes and other attempts to maximise an advantage and makes the pretense of something like CR impossible.

    The RQ2 Treasure Factors (page 104 in the "Classic" reprint) could give a means of balance, though it may take some time.

    First, compute the treasure factor of the PC's party. (One time at start of session, update after post-session experience rolls)

    Then tweak the encounter/opponents so that they are a comparable treasure factor. That would, in theory, balance the relative strengths of the two sides.

    • Like 1
  12. On 1/16/2023 at 5:22 PM, Akhôrahil said:

    Warhammers and rondel daggers will penetrate through plate. This is fairly immaterial in Glorantha though, as except possibly for dwarves, no-one will be fully covered in armor.

    Even a dull steel broadsword can easily penetrate the bottom of a cookie tin! (At the time I purchased, sharpened was not an option, they have an edge that looks like the back of a pocket knife blade). SCA demo/lecture room at a gaming convention, I'd loaned Hungry and Reluctant to the weapon display rack. Hilary of Serendip was doing a comparison of various swords, and at one point (as I recall) was comparing Hungry with her custom made sword (matched the balance/weight of her rattan fighting sword). During fighting demos, she used to tap her sword against the cookie tin to mark time -- to show how fast/often strikes were made. In the room, she loosened her wrist allowing Hungry's blade to drop onto the cookie tin -- it put a three inch slit into the bottom of the tin, where her sword would only make a small dent on the same action! A "cold chisel" edge would like allow for dicing up car fenders -- especially the thin metal used these days.

     

     

    (Hungry and Reluctant can be seen at http://wlfraed.microdiversity.freeddns.org/swords/swords.htm)

  13. 15 hours ago, davecake said:

     Why a cult whose pride, and biggest myths, are about standing firm and continuing to fight can’t have Vigor or Protection? Why, if Yelmalio are supposed to be so effective because of their perfect training and esprit de corps, why Humakt gets Morale but they don’t? 

    I could suggest it is that selfsame "pride" -- "We don't need no stinking magic assistance!"

    • Like 1
  14. I suspect my previous comment wouldn't actually work in Gloranthan languages, as it plays upon the homonyms (you, yew, ewe). In written English the difference is obvious, but consider a priest offering verbal advice to an initiate candidate -- "you must know you" can easily be misinterpreted ("ewe must know yew"? are we beating the sheep with bows?).

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