Mister Apocalypse

Hey, what happens if I "Go Advanced?"

Kill the Wiki! I find wiki's more trouble to edit than they are worth. Working in HTLM is easier. As for the software upgrade, what are the advantage of the new software? Is is worth upgrading? It might not be worth the hassle if you/we aren't going to gain something from it.

Long ago I asked about the merits of low roll wins in opposed resolution rather than high roll wins. The conventional wisdom has it that low roll wins is overly biased towards the lower skilled character. I did up a spreadsheet that does the math and gives the percentages of character A or B winning an opposed roll, and the math behind low roll wins, isn't nearly as biased as conventional wisdom. Yes, the lower skilled character's chances of success improves, but where or not this is an unfair bias remains to be seen. For the spreadsheet, I defined the conditions of the contest as follows: Character A: the lower skilled character's skill% Character B: The higher skilled character's skill% Condition 1: Both Succeed [%=AxB] Condition 2: A succeeds, B fails [%=Ax(1-] Condition 3: A fails, B succeeds [%=Bx(1-A)] Condition 4: Both fail [%=(1-A)x(1-] Ignoring critical,special successes, and fumbles (the inclusion of which would favor we wind up with: A winning condition 2, B winning condition 3, both splitting condition 4. The only difference between roll low and roll high is in condition 1 (both succeed). We can break down codition 1 into: Condition 1a: the cases where both players roll under A%, where the odds are even [%=AxA] Condition 1b: the contested region, where both succeed but B rolls higher than A. [%=AxB-(AxA)] So since we are ignoring specials, both players would split Condition 1a, and the only difference between the two methods is with Condition 1b. In a nutshell, the difference between roll low and roll high is in who win during condition 1b. With roll low, A wins, while with roll high B wins. Here are some results at various skill ratings for A and B to show the differences between the two methods: 1) A: 10%, B:90% Low Wins: 14%/86% High Wins: 6%/94% 2) A: 40%, B: 80% Low Wins: 38%/62% High Wins: 22%/78% 3) A: 20%, B: 50% Low Wins: 38%/62% High Wins: 32%/68% 4) A; 30%, B: 70% Low Wins: 36%/64% High Wins: 24%/76% 5) A: 40%, B: 50% Low Wins: 47%/53% High Wins: 43%/57% Now in theory the breakdowns for opposed rolls should probably match up to the relative % in skills. That is if B is twice as good as A, he should with twice as many contents, (for a 33%/67% breakdown). Likewise a case where one character has a slight edge (40 vs 50) should result in a slight advantage (44%/56% breakdown) According to the results, roll low is closer to that result, and roll high is unfairly biased towards the character with the higher skill. Once you start to factor in for criticals, special successes and fumbles, the odds will shift even further towards B, with B's superior special and fumble range, giving B significant more wins during cases where both contestants succeed or both fail. For roll low, this just about sets things to right, but for roll high, it heavily biases the results towards the higher skilled character. For example, in the A: 10, B:90 scenario A will win practically none of the cases where both succeed or both fail, as B's special success range overlaps As win range (so A must roll and 01) and A's fumble range costs him most of the both failed cases. As a result with roll high, A:10, B:90 comes out with A having a less than 5% chance of winning. So, if anything roll high is unfairly biased, not roll low.

I think the reason behind that was because Traveller uses liquid hydrogen for fuel. Liquid hydrogen has a mass of about .07% that of water, and so would take up about 13.5-14 m3 per ton. Be glad that they rounded off the numbers a bit. 13.5m3 is not 500 ft3. FYI, since Traveller bases everything around liquid hydrogen, the final masses are going to be too light anyway, probably by an order of magnitude. So you could get away with a guesstimate. What I would do is take the total volume of the structure and multiply it by a density factor to get an approximate mass. Water, for example has a density of 1 and steel is about 5.5 So if you wanted the average density of the dome to be able the same at water, you could multiply the volume by 1 to get a mass. If you image the dome to be about as clutter as a car you could use .15 for a multiplier-that is about the same as a car. I use .125 for BRP Spaceships, so you can just divide the volume by 8. It can probably save you a lot of time, headaches, and will probably be close enough.

Give the the detail and the GM can use what he want's and cut out the rest. I think the trend among gamers is to move towards computer RPGS, where they don't need to reach much of anything nor need very detailed stories. But then, I think the trend towardsa less reading is the same as the trend towards less math.

Resent them for what? Why should dolphins act like humans and be sneaky and hostile? It might be better storywise if they were friendly and helpful, but the dumb humans never listen. For example the dolphin could advise strongly against adapting the environment to suit humans, warning of bad repercussions. The humans don't listen and end up introducing some Earth lifeform that grows unchecked, mutates and threatens to wipe everything out. For instance, kelp. Only it turns out the local life forms can't eat Earth Kelp, and the Earth Kelp is wiping out the native equivalent. This threatens the survival of the creatures that rely on it for food, and the predators that rely on them, and so on up the food chain. Or the humans deliberately wipe out some local predator only to get drowned in the local herd fish, who breed like rabbits and now have no natural predator. It would be funny if the dolphin just kept shaking their dorsals and saying "We told you so."

In English the title song may have been the best part. It was saccharine sweet 60TVs stuff, but it was usually better than the stories. You'd think the father would have banned those kids from going into the water. It's almost as bad as telling Timmy to go play with Lassie over by the old well.

"Flipper goes to Varun"

Or you could pull a "World of the Worlds" and have some local bacteria wipe out the whales, or vice versa. It would be funny if Earth whales carries some bug that wipes out the native lifeform that they were supposed to feed upon. BTW, How smart are dolphins in this campaign? If they are fulling intelligent as opposed to fixed INT, they could be core members of the resarch team.

Or someone forgot to play the electric bill? Why do I get the feeling that Atgxtg is going to end up as a Great Old One? He that sleeps upon a cot measured only in megawatts -The Arkham Electrician

It depends on how similar Varun is to Earth. Generally speaking form fits function. LIfe forms would evolve in a fashion that would that would suit the enviorment. So the more a planet is like Earth, the more likely it is that the biochemistry would be similar. Note that I'm speaking of tendacies here, not absolutes. Obviously, none of this has been proven. It reminds me of one of the old Traveller: 2300 settings. It was a world where the amino acids were different and it made all the local food indigestible by humans. Have to decided how this will affect plant life? Are the native plants edible to humans or to eath marine creatures? Or will the colonists need to raise plankton? I'd be leery of making things completely incompatible, or else the humans will just wipe out all the local flora and fauna and replace them with imports from Earth. If on the other hand, the local life forms have some desirable characteristics (like maybe their natural armor plating has a very high tensile strength, better than the synthetics available) but that the creatures are difficult to deal with (they keep eating the scientists, or excrete a chemical that is poisonous to plankton or some important Eath fish, or maybe they just keep clogging up the equipment), then the humans will have to suffer and find a way to work around it. Since I have already mentioned the finances of the colony, a few more words on how I imagine this part of the setting. In the Traveller universe it is easy for a small group of people to use their sa- ved money, some ship shares and the skeleton of a business plan ("We will do profitable interstellar trade and get rich") to get a bank loan of several dozen million Credits to buy a spaceship and go gallivanting through the galaxy as free traders. If one accepts this as plausible, a much bigger group of people (about 560) should be able to use their saved money, their colony shares and a detailed business plan ("There is this water world in the Demidov Cluster ... crystals ... mining ...") to get a bank loan of several hundred million Credits for a coloniza- tion and mining project, I think.

Yes and no. A habitable world would be extremely attractive in an of itself, but odds are if a planet is capable of supporting life, it probably will. So it would be odd if such a habitable world didn't have some sort of native lifeform.

It does need more play testing through. It spits out numbers but we've got to see how those numbers look for actual designs. Maybe I should try to recruit some more testers?

I agree. But Mongoose Traveller isn't the same thing. I saw rust's sub design and immediately realized that it would float. Apparently whoever designed the new vehicle system was not aware that a ship must weight as much or more than the water it displaces to be able to dive. So all the subs written up in the rule book would float. STAR HERO actually has a system for creating starships. It a bit simplier than the HERO power system. There is also something for BRP that rust has acess to that hopefully will work for his spaceship designs.

And even more books to bring it back. The problem wasn't with the concept, but in DC's execution of it. DC used an alternate Earth as a way of making it's Golden Age heroes concurrent with it's Silver Age heroes. All at a time when it's heroes were the most powerful, and the writing was at it's most silly. In contrast Mavel has used multiple Earths, including one in our solar system but on the opposite side of the sun (ala Doppleganger) without any more problems than otherwise exist in a long going franchise.