rust

The "Doppelbock" brewed at the monastery of Scheyern, a very dark and

malty beer with 7.1 % alcohol.

The Smiley from Hell

STR 0

CON infinite

SIZ 0

DEX 0

INT 0

POW 200

APP -250

HP: Indestructible

Move: 0

Damage Modifier: not necessary

Attacks: Blasphemous Sight 100 %, semi-permanent stun, permanent brain damage

Armour: not necessary

Spells: Maximum Disgust, Return From Death, Shock Viewer

Skills: Look Incredibly Ugly 100 %, Disfigure Posts 100 %

Sanity Loss: 10/1D100

True, but I was thinking more about something like finding out why the remotely

controlled robots of a seafloor mine do no longer react to any commands, or what

happened to that aquafarmer who went to visit his kelp fields and never returned

home.

While reading through the Serenity RPG that I got as a part of DTRPG's Haiti Aid bundle,

I realized that a profession like the Companion would fit very well into my Varun setting,

too.

A professional escort, somewhere between prostitute and geisha, seems appropriate

for a remote colony world that has to deal with human desires, but wants to avoid a

red light area with its crime.

Since my setting's culture is based upon the culture of the real world India, the title of

the courtesans could be taken from the Indian mythology, for example Apsara for the

female ones and Gandharva for the male ones.

The main professional skill could be Courtesan, a Communication skill with a Base Chan-

ce of 20 %. Additional common skills could be Etiquette, Insight, Perform (Dance), Per-

form (Music), Science (Psychology) and perhaps a few Knowledge skills.

Thank you very much, a very interesting idea.

My players had terraforming engineer characters in a previous setting, so it would

be very nice to have "The Terraformers" as a kind of eco terrorist group in this

one. >:->

By the way, I have been looking through Wikipedia's lists of international

real world organizations, and this here is my favourite one, the Concate-

nated Order of Hoo-Hoo:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concatenated_Order_of_Hoo-Hoo

Think the only people wh wear shark suits are people looking to get in close with sharks and no PC should want that.

I have a tendency to send the PCs to places they definitely do not want to go,

and there usually are some nasty creatures nearby ...

Thank you very much, I put it on the list.

I doubt it's the best solution. From what I've seen in the past, sharksuits don't work very well. The force that a shark inflicts with a bite can break bones and cause life threatening injury even through the armor-if it doesn't tear.

The repellent is actually the most effective deterrent. The sharks that are mostly likely to attack a man, are capable of getting through a shark cage, if they really want to. The case just takes someone off the "convenience food" list.

Thank you for that information.

It is interesting that there are so very different reports about the shark repellants,

but this could well result from different shark species reacting differently to them, I

think.

As for shark suits and shark cages, I was somewhat absent minded and thinking in

terms of the materials available in my science fiction setting, which are much stron-

ger than a normal shark like creature could handle, but the fact that a bite is able to

cause a lot of damage even if it does not penetrate the suit is a good point - I will put

it on my "How to torture player characters" list. >:->

While we are at it, what about a shark suit instead of shark cage and

shark repellant, probably the best available solution to the problem:

http://www.neptunic.com/

I love this kind of thread.

So do I - and thank you for the many nice ideas, my Varun colonists will have

more and far more exotic visitors than they dreamed of in their wildest night-

mares.

Thank you very much, many good ideas.

I like especially the Destabilizers and the Orbitals, these are groups I myself would

not have thought of, and therefore their existence in the setting will surprise the

players, who know my usual "style" and expect "more of the usual".

Thank you very much, Sdavies2720 and Seneschal.

The scientific community that considers hyperdrive a danger for the galaxy, the virtual space

organizations and "Mr/Ms Environmental Regulations" are great ideas.

Something went wrong with that spell - this was no resurrection, this

must have been a kind of demon summoning ... :shocked:

Okay, two weeks of posts were sacrificed to the Gods of Open Source. Do we get something in exchange for the sacrifice? Divine magic? A skill? A special ability?

A Special Ability: Immunity from SAN loss caused by the sight of incredibly ugly smilies.

From now on and for all time no smiley, no matter how ugly, can endanger your SAN.

You have endured the look of these ones, and it simply cannot get worse.

Still working on that Varun setting ...

In my view a plausible modern or science fiction setting should have a number of

interesting governmental and non-governmental organizations, both to support

the characters occasionally and to make their life a little more miserable at times.

Since many games are combat oriented, it is easy to find ideas for military units,

mercenaries, bounty hunters and all that. Unfortunately there seems to be much

less material for purely civilian organizations.

What I have so far are the Colonial Authority (supervises new colonies), the Free

Trader's League, a media organization and some science foundations, but there

could and should doubtless be many more organizations in that universe.

So, if you have an idea what else could be there and could be interesting for a

campaign (= no roleplaying clubs or rabbit breeder circles ...:cool:), please let me

know.

Thank you.

P.S.: These smilies are truly hideous.

Indeed. Having just finished the basic descriptions of all the native creatures of Varun,

I have realized that there will be an unpleasant surprise for the colonists: Not a single

one of those species has the potential to be domesticated or trained for any useful

purpose - their biochemistry makes them useless as food, and their lack of social in-

stincts makes them untrainable.

On the other hand, this could well become a nice adventure hook, for example as the

reason for expeditions to other worlds to look for creatures that could survive on Varun

and serve as livestock, trained anmals or pets: "Go and bring us a number of 'aquatic

cows' or 'aquatic sheep', and we urgently need them the day before yesterday ...".

Any other type of things you would like to see?

Underwater survival gear would be nice, stuff like shark repellant, "bangstick" (those with a

shotgun shell that is fired on touching a target), shark cage, but also things like flotation bags

(to transport stuff under water and keep it dry), underwater camera, diver sled, and so on.

While it is comparatively easy to find informations about arctic gear or desert gear, it seems

to be somewhat difficult to find good informations on this kind of stuff in one place.

What kind of extension is ODF?

Open Office and Star Office spreadsheets, I think.

Please take a look at this offer from Drive Thru RPG. Various roleplaying game publishers

are offering a bundle of stuff with a total value of about 1,500 USD for only 20 USD,

with all the money going to Doctors Without Borders on Haiti:

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=78023&SRC=haiti

How about restoring the latest pre-upgrade backup into your TEST area, dumping off anything after the latest date we now have into a text file, an posting that for peeps to mine and re-post if they think it vital? (Any mileage or interest in that, anyone?)

It would be nice to get a chance to look at those posts again and to make notes of what

I missed when they were still there. However, after some bad experiences with other fo-

rums' problems, I suspect that what we have now is already the latest pre-upgrade back-

up.

The Home page is now accessible to me. :thumb:

Big bug, fixing it now. No extensions where allowed by default...

Anyway, I've added: doc, docx, odt, pdf, rtf & txt.

Help me, what other extensions do we need?

What about the graphics ones, like jpeg and png ?

I feel rust's pain on this one. He's posted an absolute shed-load of stuff for his SciFi setting - and it's been totally wiped.

I do not miss the material I have posted there, because I do of course have that material here,

too. What I really miss are all the excellent posts from others with their ideas and proposals for

the setting. While I made notes, I did not copy the entire posts, and so quite a lot of good ideas

went into the Internet Nirvana.

The Home page still tells me that I have no permission to access it.

Unless the Home page consists only of a message that tells me that I have no permission

to access it, I seem to have the same problem as Byron Alexander.