seneschal

This is why I like Tolkien's take on dragons. In a lot of games, stories and movies, dragons are merely huge, dangerous beasts, like Godzilla. In The Hobbit and Farmer Giles of Ham, however, they are also sentient beings that heroes can talk to, bargain with, and (maybe) outwit. Bilbo manages to discover Smaug's weakness and pass the info along to someone who can use it to advantage. Farmer Giles -- with a mixture of bravado, luck, hard bargaining, and a magic sword -- manages to not only stop the dragon's attacks but gets it to become an (unwilling) ally against a greedy king. This opens up a whole new range of adventure possibilities. What if, instead of trying to poke the dragon, the PCs persuade it to invest venture capital in their latest trading enterprise? The Good: They now have (within limits) vast resources and credit to launch world-spanning enterprises. The Bad: If the deal goes sour, if the investment doesn't deliver a profit, or a sufficient profit, their "silent business partner" gets noisy real quick. If they thought having the thieves' guild after them was bad .... On the other hand, the dragon might save their butts from the guild or from another monster at the last minute in order to protect its business interests. Maybe they can bribe the dragon not to eat the princess or the whole castle -- "Sure, I'll hold off this time, for an exclusive royal monopoly on (valuable commodity). Deposit the profits in my Swiss bank account." What? You don't think a dragon would take logical provisions to protect its fortune, increase its net worth, and avoid income taxes?

Never been a D&D-er. Unfortunately, even in other genres my players have tended to be "charge the bear" types. Why negotiate with the galactic smugglers when you can start a space bar fight? In fantasy literature, however, things are quite different. Jack the Giant Killer used trickery, traps, magic items, and lots of fast talk to defeat his numerous foes. Reed Richards (Mister Fantastic) actually talked Galactus into not eating the Earth. (Try that tactic in your next Call of Cthulhu game!) The heroes of countless giant critter films managed to figure out said critter's weakness (they always have one) in time to exploit it and defeat the monster before the movie's end (but not before countless National Guardsmen have been eaten first). Somehow, my players rarely think that way. They've taken out a few pirates/goblins/wolves/Klingons and have become cocky, eager for a direct physical confrontation with the biggest of Big Bads. Wicked witches routinely get bested by pre-teenage girls. Tiny hobbits and cowardly robots defeat evil empires. Why should they be afraid?

The personal force fields in the old Futureworld module acted like armor, but what sort of attacks they protected the wearer from had to be pre-set in advance. A character could be prepared for and protected against lasers but get clobbered by a rock instead. The devices used energy drawn from a pool of power points. In answer to your question, all of the above. I'll have to peruse the Force Field rules and see what our default options are.

Haven't seen Enemy Unknown but have played the original X-COM. The game's aliens are just plain grim foes, even the low-level ones. My "successful" missions involved a lone survivor limping back to base, often without alien corpses or gear to show for it. There was a critter in the original game that turned dead soldiers into snot zombies. Ewwww!

Thanks for posting your mini-scenario and weapon stats.

My 15-year-old son, without any knowledge of this discussion, sat down to watch the same BG episode,and his reaction was the same as mine: "Robots wading waist-deep through a river? No way!" The scriptwriters acknowledged the issue in part. The Cylon commander was eager to get off the planet because its dampness was causing himself and his troops to rust at a rapid rate. Given that the environment the adventure occurred in appeared to be the equivalent of England or Canada, if the Cylons ever did locate Earth they'd be very uncomfortable. However, in an earlier episode set on a snowy ice world (always winter and never Christmas), the damp climate didn't seem to bother the Cylons at all. Maybe they had an extra supply of STP.

Who would want a robot that breaks down every time you go to a different planet. I don't know about robots (never got that book) but Classic Traveller was kind of quirky in this respect. While air rafts (anti-gravity vehicles) were ubiquitous and usable anywhere, ground cars (trucks, automobiles, etc.) were manufactured for specific planetary conditions and wouldn't work well if taken from one planet to another. Strangely enough, this wasn't the case with other ground vehicles such as ATVs (armored personnel transports).

I watched an episode of the original series Battlestar Galactica in which a Cylon patrol casually forded a river to chase down a crashed Colonial pilot. Given that they are at least cyborgs and possibly full robots, this struck me as somehow wrong. Then I thought of how blithely R2D2 (Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back) took a lengthy dunking in an alien swamp and kept on ticking despite being so sodden that it spat out great masses of mud and muddy water upon its return to solid ground. Then I thought of a Doctor Who episode I saw where Dalek troops concealed themselves just beneath the shallows of a lake to attack from ambush. Now, I know that waterproof robots can and are built; we're using them to find famous shipwrecks and explore the ocean bottom. On the other hand, I also know how mere humidity can really mess up a cell phone's day. Water and electronics just don't mix well. I can see Lost in Space's B-9 environmental control robot being able to shed rain and handle soggy ground. It was designed to explore harsh, unfamiliar environments. But Cylons and Daleks are space soldiers, and R2D2 was designed to perform maintenance on other machines. Why would they be watertight? In the case of R2D2, it definitely wasn't watertight but it survived anyway. Wish the keyboard I'm typing on now was that durable. Thoughts?

So, Ulysses grabs a modern compound bow and immediately breaks it in half by accident because it draws too easily. Meanwhile, the modern Olympian might as well be trying to bend a steel girder and is working up blisters trying to pull the Greek's famous weapon.

Just randomly wondering whether a modern graphite compound bow is significantly better than its ancient equivalents? Better enough to provide some sort of bonus to hit or to damage? How would a modern Olympic archer armed with modern gear compare to Robin Hood, or Ulysses, or the ancient Persian hero Rostem -- all legendary archers? Would a modern bow, in the hands of a Magic World, RuneQuest or Legend character, be considered a magic item?

Thank you for sharing fond memories. I got into Traveller (and later Champions) around the same time. Sadly, never got 'em for Christmas. Despite the fact that I avoided fantasy in lieu of science fiction and superheroics, my parents looked askance at my new hobby. I had to buy my own stuff with my own paycheck, never got 'em as Christmas or birthday gifts. My family studiously ignored my lists (with specific suggestions on where to find the requested game titles) and gave me garish sweaters instead. They also insisted that the objects of my desire were too hard to find -- despite the fact that I'd told them exactly where to find them. I think they were afraid I was going to become the family warlock even though I wasn't playing games involving dragons and magicians. As Charlie Brown might have said, "Sigh!" This year, I ordered three titles during Chaosium's most recent sale, using a gift voucher from last year's adventure contest. The books are sitting on my shelf, but it just isn't the same when you get them for yourself. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Merry Christmas! Heh, I came up with something similar for Hero System when doing an adaptation of the Candyland characters. Mine were man-sized gingerbread cookies armed with peppermint stick halberds.

I'm no Cyberpunk or Cyberpunk 2020 expert, but the basic premise was that the more gear you had implanted, the more machinery you had replacing your body parts, the less human you became. It was a psychological and emotional thing. So all those nifty gadgets came with the penalty that you risked losing the ability to relate to normal people. I'm sure BRP's Sanity rules could be massaged to give the same effect.

Mister Lightning Fingers doesn't hale from Monster Island, does he? His companions look as if they'd escaped from the Island of Doctor Moreau. See, this is why we need Astounding Adventures published ASAP. Where are our valiant Mystery Men now that we need them?

Been watching Mobile Suit Gundam: The Movie this week. Suddenly realized your Robot #1 was what the bad guy spies/saboteurs were driving. Thanks! Note to self: Combat aboard an orbital L5 colony is a really bad idea for all concerned. Take it outside, buddy! You do realize that the publication of BRP Mecha could tip the balance of everyone's Call of Cthulhu campaigns? No more worrying about it; when The Stars are Right, mankind will refuse to give up the Earth without a fight! No matter what happens to the regular military, some hot-headed college kid or group of giggly tweener girls will manage to scramble into the cockpit(s) of the nation's latest experimental fighting vehicle(s) to give the aliens some well-deserved pain and suffering.

An obsessed suitor in a jealous rage? Works for me.

Here's her theme song ...

Since the culprit is probably an NPC villain, I'd hand-wave the game mechanics, assuming the bad guy is heavy duty enough to pull it off and still be a threat. Also, there's the possibility that if the glass golem character does need to be re-cast for some reason, his old nemesis could arrange for him to be molded into something other than human form: an animal, a coffee table, a full-length mirror, a fancy decanter and goblet set, a shelf full of ashtrays at the local market. The young noble would still be sentient, still be mobile, but the effort to get his assorted components to work together could provide both challenge and humor to the campaign. For example, the villain confronts the other characters only to be assaulted by a virtual squadron of flying ashtrays, hurling themselves off the display counter.

Piercing or impaling attacks -- arrows, spears, swords -- would tend to glance off his slick, smooth body. Blunt, crushing attacks -- clubs, maces -- would do terrible damage, however.

And he probably shouldn't throw stones ...

Another way to do the "hard but brittle" shtick would be to give him 5-12 points of Armor (kinetic, electricity, light), depending on how tough you want him to be. Glass is a poor conductor of electricity, so your golem would tend to shrug off electrical attacks such a wizard's standard-issue lightning bolt. He'd also tend to refract or deflect light-based attacks, so zapping him with a laser isn't useful. Heat-based attacks would be his Achilles heel. On the other hand, he's brittle, so the relatively low Hit Points based on having no CON (0 CON+SIZ/2) would be appropriate. So he's hard to hurt, but if he does take damage he risks being broken. I'd handle damage/destruction/healing the same way it was for the Scarecrow and Tin Man of Oz: He can't heal damage but must be repaired by a glass maker, a trade that certainly exists in a medieval-ish setting. As long as the bulk of the pieces are recoverable, being shattered doesn't kill him. He just has to be melted down and reformed, something that might occur magically once he's in a semi-liquid state. Adding some additional glass won't hurt him, either. If the pieces are all or mostly lost, however, so is he. The glass golem can't swim (he's too dense) but might be able to walk across the bottom of a body of water as long as he doesn't get mired in mud or quicksand. He'll have trouble walking on soft ground or snow. If he gets stuck, he can't drown or suffocate, but his friends will have a time getting him out. His weight and brittleness make horse riding problematic (getting thrown would be a real bummer, unless he happens to be in that inconvenient marsh at the time). While his increased STR offsets any penalties to his DEX (just to keep the bookkeeping down to a dull roar), Stealth is going to be difficult on stone or hardwood floors (clop, clop, clop). Being changed to glass doesn't lower the aristocrat's APP; he's just as handsome as he always was. But he does have an unusual appearance, since he's presumably now a mobile transparent or translucent glass statue. Better beef up his Fast Talk or Seduction skills, just in case folks get spooked at first sight of him.

I'm not familiar with Lemmy Caution but Marlowe and Hammer were as much a product of the pulp magazines as The Shadow, just different titles. The Spirit -- a hero of the Sunday newspaper comics section -- fits in as he's a masked detective with no overt powers (except that his enemies can never quite kill him, hence his name). You could toss in DC Comics' Slam Bradley and any number of tough guy heroes from radio shows, too, such as the daredevil trio from I Love A Mystery. I'd start off using SIZ+CON for Hit Points. Maybe give 'em 2-4 points of kinetic Armor just because they're "tough as nails" and injuries that would kill a lesser man cause them mere flesh wounds. Use the mook rules other posters have already worked out for henchmen. Of course the master villain is usually a long-winded fellow who attempts to talk Our Heroes to death rather than simply shooting them as any sensible criminal would. Round things out with police contacts -- such characters often had a love/hate relationship with the force because of past events, but they managed to keep their private detective licenses because they caught the crooks the cops couldn't.

The Malleus Monstorum for Call of Cthulhu seems a natural. It's the official BRP monster catalog. Berlin '61 was written by an active duty soldier, so it has a good gun section. And the Delta Green and The Laundry series are both devoted to government sponsored monster hunting.

Killer Tomatoes Sources: Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978), Return of the Killer Tomatoes (1988), Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1990 TV show) Attack of the Killer Tomatoes Theme Song - YouTube Genetically modified vegetables turned on their human consumers in 1970s southern California, endangering San Jose and San Diego, among other communities. The country survived the onslaught because scientists discovered that the killer tomatoes are vulnerable to certain musical tones. Although it was unknown at the time, Professor Mortimer Gangreen, horticulturist supreme and classic mad scientist, had intentionally created the killer tomatoes. Ten years later, he made a second attempt at botanical invasion by transforming his fruity fiends into human form via music. His third scheme thwarted in 1991, Gangreen was imprisoned but his spherical minions broke him out the following year. He fled to France, where he attempted to use a tomato army to make himself king. How do tomatoes manage to be effective predators without visible sensory organs, limbs, means of locomotion, or mouths? Never mind, just run! In the early stages of their life cycle, killer tomatoes are indistinguishable in size and coloration from ordinary grocery store produce – um, except for the fact that they growl, climb sheer surfaces like snails, leap like squirrels, and are voracious pack hunters. After numerous successful hunts, they reach the size of sports balls or large pumpkins, less effective at climbing but much faster on level terrain. Once they reach 60-80 pounds or more, killer tomatoes become solitary, swift ground hunters and begin acquiring sentience. Rare specimens, veterans of many kills, ultimately gain human-level intelligence and a frightening resistance to physical damage. These monsters can range from 500-800 pounds. Small/Medium STR 1D6 (4) CON 2D6 (7) SIZ 1D3 (2) INT 5 POW 3D6 (10) DEX 3D6+6 (17) Move: 6, swim 4 Hit Points: 5 Damage Bonus: -1D6 Armor: None Attacks: Bite 70%, 1D6 + 1/2 DB Skills: Climb 70%, Dodge 60%, Hide 60%, Jump 65%, Knowledge (Pack Tactics) 40%, Sense 65%, Stealth 50%, Swim 40%, Track 50% Large STR 3D6 (11) CON 2D6+6 (13) SIZ 2D6+6 (13) INT 1D6+2 (6) POW 3D6 (11) DEX 3D6 (11) Move: 10, swim 6 Hit Points: 13 Damage Bonus: +0 Armor: 3 (fibrous peel) Attacks: Bite 70%, 1D8 + ½ DB; Trample 55%, 1D6 + DB Skills: Climb 40%, Dodge 60%, Hide 60%, Jump 55%, Sense 65%, Stealth 70%, Swim 40%, Track 65% Huge STR 3D6+10 (20-21) CON 2D6+6 (13) SIZ 3D6+10 (20-21) INT 2D6+3 (10) POW 3D6 (10-11) DEX 3D6 (10-11) Move: 12, swim 8 Hit Points: 17 (34 SIZ+CON) Damage Bonus: +1D6 Armor: 8 (fibrous peel) Attacks: Bite 70%, 1D10 + 1/2DB; Trample 60%, 2D6 + DB Skills: Climb 25%, Dodge 40%, Hide 40%, Jump 35%, Sense 70%, Stealth 70%, Swim 40%, Track 65%

Yep, "Starbirds, Birds of Prey" slim case is what I've got. G, I mean, gee.