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seneschal

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Everything posted by seneschal

  1. seneschal
    My question is, who is the target market for that $120 prestige product and how many of 'em do you actually expect to sell? Will you make a profit on your expensive-to-produce end-all-be-all package? Both Magic World and Call of Cthulhu 7th have been presented as entry level games intended to draw in new players. Are we expecting newbies just dipping their toes in the BRP waters to shell out that kind of dough? The most I've ever paid for RPG materials is $70 for two Classic Traveller reprint books, which gave me waaaay more material than I ever gamed with in high school and college. My usual limit for a game book is around $40. The Traveller stuff was purchased in part with birthday gift money; I paid $30 out of my own pocket. As you can tell, I'm an old fart and cheap to boot. But as other posters have said, a modest black-and-white, well-written and well-edited book providing enough background and inspirational material to launch and sustain my campaign is what I really need, not an expensive tome of pretty pictures or a soon-to-be-crushed box filled with soon-to-be-lost board game elements. Now, over the years I've probably spent more than $120 on a game, but not all at once. A solid, affordable base game with interesting affordable supplements would be more likely to get my money. Again, Game Designer's Workshop presented Traveller as a complete game for $12, but then came out with a host of supplements costing only $5 or $6 apiece. You bought the bits you liked and probably ended up spending a fair overall amount in the end. But you didn't have to choose up front whether to invest that sort of money in an untried product.
  2. seneschal
    Also, remember that this is a one-way, one-shot trip. There is no going back home for more supplies or taking off for the next planet if this one doesn't suit. Presumably, the arrival crew would examine the solar system's celestial bodies on the way in and chose the most amenable one. But there isn't enough fuel to head for the next system if the mission planners guessed wrong hundreds of years ago. Good musings on whether the ship need be able to land on the surface. However, like Clarence I'd hate to leave all that irreplaceable hardware in orbit. If you have a fleet of landing craft, they would probably be pre-packed with equipment and people at the mission's launch. Once they are all down, there is no going back to the ship to grab something you forgot. It would require too much fuel and a type of ship you don't have to get back up there. While landing a battleship in the wilderness is risky, at least you have everything with you once you are down.
  3. seneschal
    True, and even easier to build a dispersed structure like the international space station. But both are hard to land on a planet. Which is easier? To build a single streamlined ship that can land in an atmosphere? Or to build an un-streamlined one packed with enough smaller craft to get everyone and there supplies to the surface?
  4. seneschal
    Ten people awakened periodically to make sure things are okay sounds good. Youve given them more spacious accommodations than I would have but since it is only for ten people at a time it really doesn't waste space in the grand scheme of things. Good job. Keep in mind that WW2 battleships could be 700+ feet long. And our ark sleeper might have been built in orbit, where its length would be more manageable during construction.
  5. seneschal
    Don't forget hibernation facilities for the (is it 10 total?) crew. Unless they are among those 2,000 colonists.
  6. seneschal
    Ah, the difference FTL makes. Online I found the plans for a 1,300-passenger Jump 1 sleeper ship for Traveller: http://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/shipyard/classic/david-shayne/coldcoffin.html It has minimal cargo space and more guns than I think necessary, but its function is to transport large numbers of workers to developing systems that lack a sufficient labor force. So it isn't intended to go into the unexplored beyond. But it all fits into 1,000 tons, large for the original Traveller rules but small for the later High Guard rules. Sitting down with my copy of High Guard, figuring 2,000 hibernating passengers needing 4 tons of cargo each, maneuver drive 6 to get there as soon as possible sub-light, suddenly I need a ship of 40,000 to 50,000 tons to contain it all. And since Traveller fuel requirements power the ship for only four weeks at a time, that 130-year trip is going to need a whole lot more tonnage just to keep the nightlights on.
  7. seneschal
    Funny, but how about some useful suggestions for the OP from you BRP veterans? To be fair, Dragonball Z characters are hard to model in any role-playing system because they are so outrageously over-the-top. Goku already possessed superhero-level strength and agility as a child in the first Dragonball series. As an adult, he cranks it up waaay beyond 11 with opponents to match. If they didn't spend so much time boasting, their battles would have long since crumbled the Earth to talcum powder.
  8. seneschal
    Both Time Lord (mentioned above by A.I.) and the venerable Villains & Vigilantes took this approach. The idea in V&V is that you play yourself, with powers. Since superheroes in that game are basically Average Joes who happen to have one or two unusual abilities, it isn't much of a stretch. Same with time travel, apocalyptic, horror and other campaigns in which the player-characters are ordinary people caught up in extraordinary situations. I think sladethesniper's averaging game stats by other players suggestion is a good salve for fragile egos; works best if the group consists of friends who know one another fairly well. That said, I'm in the "I play to escape reality" camp. As I've mentioned elsewhere, when I role-play I want to be able to one-punch King Kong, out-think Sherlock Holmes, bounce off walls like Bruce Lee with a gut full of Red Bull, ooze so much suavity that I make James Bond look like Don Knotts, and of course, always get the girl.
  9. seneschal
    I'd say you can't be too careful. Four tons of cargo per settler sounds about right, even if you've got robots, too. I was thinking you'd need room for farming and construction equipment, all kinds of machine and hand tools, and temporary pre-fab housing as well as the personal gear. After all, colonists can't be sure what the local materials are or how plentiful they will be. Food for three months is not nearly enough. Both the Jamestown colonists and the 19th century central plains settlers needed to bring a year's worth of food for themselves and for their livestock -- and to pray that the first year's crop came in plentifully. Our star pioneers can do no less. Haven't thought about the gravity angle. The ship's high thrust would provide at least a modicum of gravity in the direction of travel, even if you didn't have grav plates or a rotating section. "Down" would change when the ship decelerated at its destination. Re: sails. Any sort of drive system, even magnetic or solar sails, will eventually get our space ark to its target solar system. Once it is up to the desired velocity it'll keep on going without the need for additional fuel until it needs to decelerate. The tricky part is how do you power the computers and life support for hundreds or thousands of years during that long voyage in the cold and dark? If your journey is "merely" between planets you can use solar panels, although you'll get less juice the further you are from the sun. Between solar systems that isn't an option. Some sort of slow-burning, long-lasting nuclear pile? Unrelated, but in retrospect I find it strange that the Valley Forge -- designed to maintain and nurture habitats filled with valuable, fragile plants and animals -- was packed to the gills with thermonuclear bombs conveniently placed to destroy the ship and its contents. Makes no sense.
  10. seneschal
    I was thinking of a sleeper ship, part of a fleet of five. So, 2,000 frozen colonists, crew members that get awakened periodically to check progress and maintain the ship (requiring only spartan accommodations), cargo room for all the tools and gear they'll need to build a colony (including frozen livestock), a reliable computer to maintain ship's course and duty schedules, and fast sub-light engines used mainly at launch and arrival as the ship would coast through space once it got up to speed. The ship would be streamlined so the pilot could land the whole thing on planet, allowing the colonists to slowly cannibalize it for parts. No armor and weaponry; this is a civilian ship and can't afford the extra payload.
  11. seneschal
    Batman and Chuck Norris, after initially trying to beat each other to a pulp, would eventually team up to battle the aliens who had set them against one another as part of the most recent invasion scheme.
  12. seneschal
    Having deck plans for for a really huge ship like the Valley Forge from Silent Running or Earthship Ark from The Starlost has always been sort of a holy grail of sci-fi gaming for me. But when you look at it, even GDW's Azhanti High Lightning, which purported to give you specs and deck plans for a massive interstellar cruiser, actually mapped only a fraction of the ship. Doctor Who's Ark in Space only showed you a few key areas of the Nova space station. How much of the U.S.S. Enterprise have we ever actually seen in all Star Trek TV shows and movies combined? And that's a much smaller vessel than a space ark or even than a Star Wars warship. Most gaming supplements (as well as movies and TV shows) tend to take the Metamorphosis Alpha approach and treat the big ship as a discover-as-you-go mega-dungeon, the actual contents of which are sometimes determined by random die rolls. Essential portions demanded by the plot may be mapped out in small, manageable bits, but the rest of the vessel is often a "here there be dragons" blank that could contain anything -- from nests of old but functional video game consoles to the Brady Bunch alive and well and living out a life of suburban sunniness.
  13. seneschal
  14. seneschal
    This is a job for Superworld rather than Dragon Lines. I would build your super warrior with two or three increasingly strong alternate forms with strongest as the base character. In play, however, he starts out as the weakest -- a normal if athletic guy who is really good at martial arts. After each seeming defeat he "powers up" by switching to the next form. "My God, he's above 9,0000!"
  15. seneschal
    So, after our discussion so far, anyone up to writing up a space ark, either with BRP Mecha, River of Heaven, Cthulhu Rising or BRP Starships 2.x? Bonus points for deck plans. http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/deckplans.php
  16. seneschal
    The novel "Beowulf's Children" deals with the effects of cellular degeneration on the crew of a sleeper ship. The colonists arrive and survive to raise kids but the once brilliant scientists are affected by brain damage caused by the freezing process. Their adolescent kids disrespectfully accuse them of having "ice on the brain" when they are out of earshot.
  17. seneschal
    Now, sleeper ships originally were proposed for interplanetary journeys with much shorter travel times. For instance, there is some talk of putting astronauts into hibernation during a future trip to Mars. That's a round trip of only about two years (9 months each way, and assuming a 3-4 month stay on Mars until the planets align properly for the return). Old time sailors spent years at sea without sight of land, so freezing the crew to avoid boredom or aging seems silly. On the other hand, it might reduce muscle and bone loss during transit due to lack of gravity. Is the payload for hibernation equipment less than the payload for food/water/air needed for a two-year jaunt? Hmmm. http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q2811.html http://www.space.com/24701-how-long-does-it-take-to-get-to-mars.html
  18. seneschal
    Yeah, I was going to mention this possibility, too. This sort of "ark" is called a seed ship. Upon arrival at its destination, an army of robots builds a settlement on the new planet and plants crops while potential colonists are created via in vitro fertilization. It assumes the reproductive materials survive the journey undamaged by freezing and cosmic rays and the existence of a practical automated artificial womb technology to grow and deliver the babies. Aside from the psychological effects of not having physical contact with a human mother during gestation, the kids would also have to deal with being raised and tutored by mechanical parents very much unlike themselves. Can you say "detachment syndrome"? Even if they survive to adulthood, the first generation colonists would likely be sociopaths. Re: an EM drive, a journey of "only" 130 years is much more do-able no matter which ship method you use -- as opposed to a trip of 2,000 or even 74,000 years. Mechanical and systems failures with the ship due to normal wear and tear are less likely. The time frame is within the reasonable "shelf life" period for the crew of a sleeper ship; less worry about cellular degeneration during hibernation. And it solves a lot of the problems with a generation ship. Now, the societal structure and goals of the arriving colonists could still be radically different than the folks who launched the expedition intended, but the chances of forgetting the mission or even forgetting that they are on a ship is greatly reduced. Think about it: 130 years is 1885 until now, 2015. Generations have passed, but we still remember the events and personalities of the 19th century, still read a lot of the books and sing a lot of the songs written then, and while our society and culture have changed it is still recognizably derived from what came before.
  19. seneschal
    Yeah you've got to have the tech at the other end to "download" the digital crew back into meat bodies. Again, if you can do that, you probably have the technology to do faster than light drives. The anime "Expelled from Paradise" deals with the scenario but without space travel. In this case, the elites avoided a global apocalypse by being uploaded onto an orbital satellite while survivors on Earth's surface adapted to a harsh new environment. At the beginning of the movie it appears that the digital aristocrats have it made while the meat body dirtsiders are hard scrabbling. As the story progresses, however, it gradually becomes apparent that maybe "Paradise" isn't as peachy as advertised.
  20. seneschal
    Lately I've been fascinated with space arks -- big ships intended to take colonists to another world. Preliminary research indicates you'd need 10,000 to 40,000 people to establish your new home. The numbers avoid genetic drift and provide a cushion against deaths caused by disease, accident, or violence. All these hardy pioneers need not travel on a single giant vessel; the mission might be safer if you have five ships each carrying 2,000 people than one carrying all 10,000. There are two basic approaches to slower-than-light transport. Sleeper ships (the "Ark in Space" from Doctor Who, the Botany Bay from Star Trek) carry colonists in some sort of suspended animation -- drug-induced hibernation, freezing, etc. The ship's computer awakes part of the crew periodically to check and maintain the vessel and to enable passengers in heal cellular damage accrued during hibernation (otherwise they have a limited shelf life and arrive sick and crippled). The second approach is a generation ship (the Warden from Metamorphosis Alpha, Earthship Ark from The Starlost) in which passengers are expected to reproduce and pass on their knowledge and the mission guidelines to each succeeding generation of inhabitants. Genetic diversity could be boosted by carrying a supply of frozen human eggs and sperm, enabling medics to periodically artificially inseminate colonists to add variety to the population. Oddly, my research indicates that a society advanced enough to build a successful generation ship would also have the technology to construct one with faster-than-light drives. A sleeper ship avoids all the societal problems of staying on mission with a generation ship. However, the technical challenges of both types of transport are great. Even if you get up to speed then coast your way to your distant destination, you'd still need an outrageous amount of fuel to maintain even the minimal amount of life support required by a sleeper ship over thousands of years. And no matter how advanced your engineering and well-crafted your construction, stuff is eventually going to wear out over that long a period. So, have any of you included space arks in your campaigns? If so, how did you handle these questions? Or did you just ignore the complications (as most movies and TV shows do) for the sake of having your stalwart adventurers encounter a weird situation?
  21. seneschal
    It all started with Dreamworks' Monsters vs. Aliens, pitting pastiches of famous movie monsters against, well, you know. Then there was Cowboys vs. Aliens. The Avengers movie was essentially superheroes vs. aliens. Now Netflix is airing a series entitled Wizards vs. Aliens, in which Harry Potter types oppose the obligatory invasion. So, what cross-genre match-up do you think would make an exciting campaign?
  22. seneschal
    But it looks like a game of Risk. Ditch the funky dice and haul out the D6s.
  23. seneschal
    Apt One of the few Martian creatures to bear fur, the apt is the apex predator of Barsoom’s northern polar region. It is a six-limbed, centaur-ish animal that walks on four stocky legs but has powerful arms extending forward from its shoulders ending in functional hands. The apt’s broad, gaping maw (it reminded John Carter of a hippopotamus) rests atop a long, muscular neck. The top of its head is dominated by two large, oval-shaped compound eyes. A downward curving horn or tusk juts from beneath each eye. The fur is white. Apts are bigger than Earthly polar bears, with particularly large specimens standing 8 feet high at the shoulder. They attack by grasping prey with their hands, then either goring or biting. Given the size of their jaws, the horns seem unnecessary. Despite their natural aggressiveness and ferocity, apts can be domesticated. STR (4D6+15) 29 CON (2D6+9) 16 SIZ (6D6+24) 45 INT 5 POW (3D6) 10-11 DEX (3D6) 10-11 Move: 12 Hit Points: 30 Damage Bonus: +4D6 Armor: 4 (thick fur) Attacks: Bite 55%, 2D6+DB; Gore 30%, 1D6+DB; Grapple 34%, 1D4+DB Skills: Spot 65%, Track 40%
  24. seneschal
    I tried to learn the system (now known as Rolemaster 2 or Rolemaster Classic) back in the 1990s. I figured out how to make basic fighter characters for the material I wrote for ICE but never really grasped it. Much later, my son and I tried to create characters with Rolemaster Express. After about a week we gave up. I just don't get it. By that time, ICE was also selling HARP and a revised Rolemaster Fantasy Role-Playing, which wasn't exactly the same as Rolemaster Classic. They have a massive back catalog, though. It is good they're not letting it go to waste. However, back in the day they had a definite presence in my local game shops. Today it is as if they never existed.
  25. seneschal
    Updated the character descriptions for NPCs Madam Mimi and Heather Hadley. I originally began Cinderella: Reloaded as a BRP adventure contest entry. But then Chaosium announced they were focusing on science fiction. I suppose BRP and Traveller are equally gritty, filled with nasty weapons and creatures and fragile, human-scale heroes. Trolls? Call of Cthulhu? Are you sure we're talking about the same scenario? By the way, Ella Enchanted the book was quite different and much more serious than the Anne Hathaway movie. And the trolls, only semi-intelligent and possessing a sort of mind control, didn't turn out to have hearts of gold.
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