HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: dfrancis@tronsbox.xei.com (Dennis Heffernan)
Subject: Re: Improvisation!
Organization: Xanadu Enterprises Inc.
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 04:10:47 GMT

In article <4802@balrog.ctron.com> smith@ctron.com writes:
|"Changing reality" - so what?  This is not any sort of objective reality in
|the first place.  I made it up and I can change it.  If it's fun and playable,

	Of course it is.  How would you like to try solving a jigsaw puzzle
with pieces that keep changing shape?

|As for the "if the players" bit, the players won't get the idea unless they
|_already_found_proof_.  You may not have meant to leave it there, but there

	Nonsense!  Players constantly go off in completely stupid directions.
Anecdote:  three PC's in my Supers campaign witnessed a co-ed getting killed
by a new drug.  The normal line of investigation here is to go talk to
friends and family of the girl, right?  Well, one of them went
street-crawling in a part of town nowhere near the girl's home or college
(to be fair, it _was_ where she dies), and another went to talk to a
crimelord he has a friendly-foe relationship with.  The third just tried to
pick up a cute lab tech.  What's worse is that this isn't the stupidest
thing any of my players has every done....  (I was ready for the first two
of 'em, BTW; had to improvise the action with the third. ;-)  The first had
convinced himself that he was dealing with someone from that part of town.
The other one decided that the crimelord must have had something to do with
it.  Both were wrong, and neither one had the slightest bit of evidence.
They were following (kaff) "instinct".  As a rule, players routinely
convince themselves that their pet theories are correct in _spite_ of the
evidence or lack thereof.  It is usually possible to read whatever you want
to into a situation; I always arrange the clues so that only the
pre-ordained solution can be correct, but the PC's don't always retrieve all
the clues, and they don't always believe (or _want_ to believe) what they've
found when they DO have all of them.  (I've also had players see through my
scenarios like used nutragena -- so it goes.)

|it is, or they wouldn't have found it.  Now perhaps they are wrong.  Perhaps
|the proof they have found is purely circumstantial.  But also, perhaps it
|is right.  Which way leads to the better game?  If it's the way in the notes,
|they were wrong.  If it wasn't, maybe they were right.

	The better game is the one wherein the GM plays fair.  Improvising the
plot, _ESPECIALLY_ in a mystery, is not fair.

|
|>	However, when I draw up a mystery, there aren't any holes.  That's what
|>the 11"x17" flowchart is for. ;-)
|
|Maybe you can make that playable and fun, but that sure doesn't sound like
|the starting point of a shared fantasy to me.

	Why not?  Because it means that the players (gasp!) might NOT figure it
all out?  Failure has to be part of the game, or there's no point in
playing.


dfrancis@tronsbox.xei.com   ...uunet!tronsbox!dfrancis     GEnie: D.HEFFERNAN1
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"That's what the short ones are FOR." --Murphy Brown
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
From: jbm@sei.cmu.edu (Jason Mahoney)
Subject: Re: Role-players who powergame
Organization: Software Engineering Institute
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 18:32:43 GMT

In article <1992Aug05.062608.1642@ecst.csuchico.edu>, tdunn@ecst.csuchico.edu (Tim Dunn) writes:
> Mad Chris writes:
> >Actually, I have one powergamer in my group who can role-play perfectly
> >well. Anyone else encountered this type? They make their characters little
> >Gods, but when it comes to the role playing situations - they deliver.
> 
> Yeah, there's one in our group as well. The funny thing is, the guy is
> not the average munchkin. One of the funnier quotes that he's been part
> of is "Oops, I did it again didn't I?" He doesn't mean to minimax, but
> he is fairly cautious about his game, and even when were were trying to
> do a combat session, he tries to roleplay. This one situation he managed
> to gross even himself, hence his quote.
> 
> 

---- Whenever I roleplay I always do some research on the type of character
that I choose.  I basiclly try to become that character's personality for the 
gaming session. For example, in one campaign I played a minatour and thus took
on the strong, brut, greedy personality.   When it came time to hand out
treasure, or when we had a confrontation I always jumped right in and whacked
just about everything that I could.  But then again I did have a 22 strength
score( at my highest level(magically enhansed)).

---- My friend (and D.M.) has been roleplaying and D.M.ing for about 12 yrs
now and if anyone is a power player--HE IS! Just as an example, he had an old 
character who was a Trollan named Orko (just like the He-Man series) who he
promoted to godhood and thusly incorporated a huge list of Orko spells into
some of his original campaigns.  Let me tell you, the way he played Orko at 
times had us rolling on the floor for hours at a time. 

     So my advice to you is to have fun with the characters that you play by
taking on their assumed personalities. But be sure not to get them confused
with reality!!



 ______   ___  ___  _________          e-mail me at: jbm@sei.cmu.edu
   ----\    / /    /------              aka "Chevy Van Halen"
        \  / /----/              "WAHHHHHHH WHEEEEEEEEEEEEE RAOUUUUUUU WAH WAH
         \/ /    /                WAH WAH WEEeeeee......Yeah!"-Eddie Van Halen
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
From: braca2@cspyr1.cs.adfa.oz.au (BRAY CHRISTOPHER)
Subject: Re: Improvisation!
Organization: Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra, Australia
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 07:02:32 GMT

mkkuhner@phylo.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) writes:

>I think the strict-preparation argument is a little silly, because
>there's no way to prepare to such a level of detail that you won't have
>to improvise, so if improvisation is lethal to the campaign, all our
>campaigns are dead.  You may decide the gem is there:  how many carats
>is it?  What clarity?  How many facets?  Is there dust on it (indicating
>it's been there a while) or has it been disturbed recently?  What kind
>of wood is that floorboard?  How thick?  Any knots in it?  You may not 
>think these things matter--but the players may ask them anyway, and they 
>may even be correct in thinking they're important.  (Perhaps one of them 
>knows a spell which you've forgotten about, requiring a clear diamond of 
>no less than 2 carats.)

Reminds me of a case where a fellow PC (11th level mage) killed off some 
Drow.  He found that each of them had a ruby, with an engraving of a 
spider.  Fair enough, he thought, they are drow. This was improvisation
on the GM's behalf.

Now this mage is a bit of a power gamer, and is planning to create replica's
of himself, which is a pretty scary thought (:).  The GM decided then that
the final component of this spell would be a ruby placed in the skull of 
these dopplegangers (pardon lack of umlauts).  Cool says the mage, I'll
just use these ones with spiders on them, they seem to be of a high enough
quality....

	...  In some dark plane Loth stirs as she finds she has 6 new 
devotees, powerful ones too.

I see that as a GM using improvisation to a good end, the encounter with the
Drow was not improvised, but the treasure was - and he made something use
ful out of it.

hook

Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
From: m91kgh@tdb.uu.se (Karl-Gunnar Hultland)
Subject: Re: BTECH Novels
Organization: Dept. of Scientific Computing, Uppsala Univ.
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 07:42:43 GMT

chem7l@jane.uh.edu writes:
: I've noticed that FASA has started numbering their latest BattleTech novels as
: one series, but I know there were several BattleTech novels published before the
: new series began.  If anyone knows the names of any or all of these earlier
: novels, and where to get them, please mail me.

Decision at Thunder Rift - Out of print (reprint soon)
Mercenary's star         - Out of print (reprint soon)
Price Of Glory           - Out of print (reprint soon)
The sword and the dagger - Out of print
Warrior: En Garde
Warrior: Riposte
Warrior: Coupe
Wolves on the border
Heir to the Dragon
Blood of Kerensky: Lethal heritage
BOK: Blood legacy
BOK: Lost destiny

and the newly numbered series

1. Way of the clans
2. Blood name
3. Blood right ?!?
4. Wolfpack
5. Natural selection


All that still are printed could be ordered directly from
FASA
P.O. Box 6930
Chicago, IL 60680

pay by check, VISA, MASTERCARD or DISCOVER no C.O.D deliverys

No I only wonder, were can I get the Sword and the Dagger
(the only one Idve missed so far)

			Karl
-- 

Karl-Gunnar Hultland              Vox Dei, Vox Populi
m91kgh@bellatrix.tdb.uu.se
Xref: sparky rec.games.frp.misc:3927 rec.games.frp.advocacy:1775
From: tbarnes@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (thomas wrentmore barnes)
Subject: Re: Improvisation!
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 19:34:28 GMT

For most games I do a lot of preparation before the campaign gets
started, and then mostly wing it from scenario to scenario once the
campaign starts. 
   Last fall I ran a WWII spies game (PCs were British agents in
Occupied France). Before the campaign, I did lots of research on British
espionage and Nazi counter-espionage during the war and used it to get a
sense of what the players would be doing, what they would be equipped
with and how the Nazis would try to stop them. I also got a sense of how
the espionage campaign would realistically "flow" (ie The Nazis shut
down some major networks in fall of 1942, so in Fall of 1942 the
characters would have to lay low and survive Nazi raids. In June 1944
anything goes, because the D-Day breakout is going to happen
soon...etc.).
    I got really good maps of the area (I was lucky and got a photocopy
of an actual Wehrmacht map of the major town in the campaign) and made a
list of major institutions, NPC contacts and basic missions the PCs had
to accomplish.
    Then, when I set up my scenarios, I would make maybe 1/2 to 2 pages
of notes before play started, "flow-charting" the action and giving
combat stats for possible opposition and allied NPCs. How or when the
PCs accomplished the steps of the adventure and when, where or if they
encountered enemies was unimportant.
    During play, I used the roll 3d6 and improvise method. 3 = really
awful, 10 = so-so, neutral, unremarkable, 18 = fantastic. Roll as often
as needed for whatever characteristics you think are important in a
situation. (How is security around a captured prisoner in a Vichy jail
3 = A company of Sturmtruppen and 5-6 Abwehr agents nosing around and 
interrogating him in a locked, guarded cell. 18 = One sleepy vichy
policeman with a bottle of wine and an old pistol.) You get the idea.
One of the party's most useful contacts was generated in 2 die rolls as
a random encounter using this method (You have an encounter. How much
trouble will he be? Roll = 18. How competent is he Roll = 16. = Former
WWI trench-fighter and poacher, just waiting to strike back at the
Germans for what they did to his family well connected with the local
farmers.)
From: jsalter@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (joshua salter)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: HERO's cheesy $ flow cost...
Date: 19 Aug 92 20:55:35 GMT
Article-I.D.: usenet.Bt90sn.Krw
Organization: Indiana University


	Why does HERO allow someone to be fabulously wealthy for 20 cp, yet
make an AK-47 cost 5 points as a power? If you were fabulously wealthy, you cou
could just buy an AK-47, hell, buy ten. I think that the cp for being rich are
incongrous with the aforemntioned AK-47 price. Or vice versa. Can someone put
forth a clear answer on which price to use and how to adapt the other one?

	HERO is riddled with problems, but is the best I have seen so far...

								-jsalter
From: ratinox@splinter.coe.northeastern.edu (Richard Pieri/Stainless Steel Rat)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: amber question at bottom
Date: 15 Aug 92 15:41:25 GMT
	<1992Aug13.230519.9941@midway.uchicago.edu>
	<BszHuy.Eyx@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Aug14.202442.10654@orionsci>
Reply-To: ratinox@meceng.coe.northeastern.edu
Organization: 3WA, Boston Office. Or Nu Meta Chi. Take your pick.
In-reply-to: goodwin@orionsci's message of 14 Aug 92 20:24:42 GMT
X-Get-A-Clue: Have two, they're small.
X-Signature-Virus-Protection: Version 1.51
X-Posting-Software: GNUS 3.14.1 [ NNTP-based News Reader for GNU Emacs ]

>>>>> "BG" == Ben Goodwin <goodwin@orionsci.UUCP> writes:

BG> Question:

BG> Reading the stats on Merlin, Dara and other half chaosites, I was stunned.
BG> Merlin has chaos stats for all attributes except for psyche in which he
BG> has a measly 4!  Martin, sone of an amberite and a shadow human or some
BG> such is a normal amberite.  Merlin, the son of Corwin and a chaosite is
BG> a wimp (attribute wise).  Same with Dara.  What gives?  Sounds like an
BG> error to me!

Not really. Merlin, Dara, and Martin are built on 100 points, just like the
PCs characters would be. They're of the same generation, after all. You
should remember that these Attributes are for the three when they first
show up; again, like PCs.

--Rat

||||| | | | |  |  |  |   |   |    |    |    |   |   |  |  |  |  | | | | | |||||
                                                   __        ___ 
Richard Pieri, Northeastern's Stainless Steel Rat/   | /| / /   | The Worlds
Internet: ratinox@meceng.coe.northeastern.edu   /__  |/ |/ / /| | Welfare Works
    UUCP: ...!northeastern.edu!meceng!ratinox  /   | /| / / / | | Association:
  BITNET: UA_RLP@NUHUB{.BITNET}               /__  |/ |/ / /  | | I will solve
  USNail: 14 Westdale RD  Holbrook, MA 02343 /   | /| / / /___| | any problem
 ICBMnet: 42 deg 1 min N, 71 deg 0 min W    /    |/ |/ /_//_____| for you.
From: praxis@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (Laura L Perkinson)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: SRun: Firearms range (was Mag 3 Cyber Eyes in Combat
Date: 13 Aug 92 20:36:52 GMT
Organization: HAC - Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore


	Hmm, I'm no expert, but I'd assumed that the range modifiers for
firearms had nothing to do with vision. Vision mag or rangefinder shouldn't
help, because a pistol should still have big problems hitting something
100 meters away.
	Or am I totally clueless on this point?
		Nightfall
From: dfrancis@tronsbox.xei.com (Dennis Heffernan)
Subject: Re: Gurps Supers is still broken : was Re: Best Super system
Organization: Xanadu Enterprises Inc.
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 00:50:44 GMT

In article <1992Aug11.222022.27411@news.columbia.edu> jhk6@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (John H Kim) writes:
|	Champions ambushes are quite nasty due to the x2 STUN multiplier. 
|Good chance that a number of people will be knocked out by the first shots 
|as a result - if they are killed or seriously wounded here then much more 
|force was used than neccessary to take them out. After that point, the 

	Not from the ATTACKER'S point of view!  And that's what we've been
discussing here, isn't it?  If you're going to blather about genre
conventions, then we're right back to what I said in the first place:
ambushes are deadly, unless you crock it.  You have to crock it in Hero too;
why don't the villains just kill everyone once they're knocked out?  You'd
think that after hearing about Batman's seventeenth great escape from a
fiendish deathtrap that someone would wise up and just put a bullet in his
brain.  You can whine "but it's not genre!" all you want, but it ain't the
Hero System rules what's gonna keep him alive here.

|Space). The question is, given an *average* situation, what will happen. 

	An ambush is not an average situation -- it is a planned encounter.
Thus the GM can take steps to influence the outcome, whatever he wants it to
be.

dfrancis@tronsbox.xei.com   ...uunet!tronsbox!dfrancis     GEnie: D.HEFFERNAN1
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I don't understand why you make such a big deal out of everything...haven't
you learned; if it's not happenning to me it's not important?" -Murphy Brown
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
From: dv52151@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Axly)
Subject: Re: SRun: Firearms range (was Mag 3 Cyber Eyes in Combat
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 19:35:34 GMT

keller@shera.Tymnet.COM (Pamela K. Keller) writes:

>In article <Bsy79v.4ML@news.cso.uiuc.edu> dv52151@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Axly) writes:
>>As for whether Vis Mag 3 could work, I can see it working. You would look
>>around with your normal range of vision, but when you pick a target, the
>>sighting would slew out to give a full size image of your target. This would
>>work really well if you also had a rangefinder.

>The part that bothers me from the original post was an implication that the 
>person with Vis Mag 3 was firing a SMG while running and was expecting
>to have short range accuracy.  If the short range accuracy is produced by
>makeing the target easier to see, what happens to everything else in the
>field of vision?  How fast does the mind adjust to this change in visual
>perception?  Can you use this kind of targeting and run at the same time?

You'd have a restricted field of vision until you fired, and then it would
slew back to normal visual ranges.
How would the mind deal with this? *shrug* Samurai are brainfried anyway.
 You can't fire any weapon while running in the SR rules. It would
be a little distracting while moving, but the +1 mod to your target number
covers this IHMO.

Axly

Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
From: juola@bruno.cs.colorado.edu (Patrick Juola)
Subject: Re: What price a soul?
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 17:20:54 GMT

In article <Bsz8Jv.E46@math.uwaterloo.ca> jglarson@watmsg.uwaterloo.ca (Johan Larson) writes:
>I'm designing a Gurps character who has the interesting feature
>of having traded his soul to the Devil 
>for some specific advantages.  As part his part of the bargain, 
>the character has to kill one person every week, or he will lose the
>abilities and suffer other grievous consequences.
>
>I'm trying to fit this into Gurps by having a disadvantage
>Demonic Agreement added to the game.  My problem is cost.
>I'm not sure how much this disadvantage should be worth;
>none of the disadvantages in the Basic set seem comparable.

First rule of disadvantages -- you buy the effect, not the special effect.
It's simply a Vow, possibly with attendant Bad Reputation.

	- kitten
From: ward1@husc8.harvard.edu (Lester Ward)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Shadowrun Astral Adepts-
Date: 19 Aug 92 22:27:35 GMT

holmes@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Krishgan) writes:
>  What you made, I and a few of my friends here call an "Assensing Adept"
>  as that is basically all your -boyo- there can do.

>  I have to agree with Rat here, this thing you made is not much beyond a
>  "dead target."]<<
>    -Reflex

If you say so. All I can really say--without sounding too arrogant--is that
there is much more to Astral Space than the game mechanics. I have not yet
(ever) been in a sr adventure that I could not have brought to a grinding
halt with a few actions in Astral Space. It's all in how you use it.

BTW, I was under the impression that 1) your astral defence pool is always
equal to whatever combat skill you are using, and 2) (un)armed combat is
always available to you in astral, regardless of opponent. (This pool goes
away in SRII, BTW.

When making this Adept, I actually left some things out to avoid making him
too powerful.

Wordman

"Remember the golden rule, Buffy: it is much easier to kill one vampire
 than it is to kill ten."
From: thornley@nano.cs.umn.edu (David H. Thornley)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: HERO's cheesy $ flow cost...
Date: 20 Aug 92 16:12:04 GMT
Organization: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, CSci dept.

In article <Bt90sn.Krw@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> joshua salter <jsalter@silver.ucs.indiana.edu> writes:
>
>	Why does HERO allow someone to be fabulously wealthy for 20 cp, yet
>make an AK-47 cost 5 points as a power? If you were fabulously wealthy, you cou
>could just buy an AK-47, hell, buy ten. I think that the cp for being rich are
>incongrous with the aforemntioned AK-47 price. Or vice versa. Can someone put
>forth a clear answer on which price to use and how to adapt the other one?
>
Hero supports two declared styles:  superheroic and heroic, corresponding to
comic-book style superhero campaigns and everything else.  In the superheroic
genre, a character must pay points for what he or she uses, primarily to
keep consistent with the comics, where superheros don't generally equip
themselves with whatever weapons they can buy.  (If this bothers you, think
of it as paying for your normal style of fighting.  If it bothers you too
much, you shouldn't be playing comic-book superheros.)  In the heroic style,
a character is welcome to use whatever equipment he or she can without
point cost, which most of us find much more realistic (although less suited
for the comics).

You are also quoting only one of the three Hero wealth systems.  One is to
start all players equally, one is to assign wealth to characters based on
their background, one is to charge points for wealth levels.  I would
strongly recommend the second for superheroic campaigns, as money is
comparitively unimportant, and the character who starts as a multimillionaire
is not really better off than the bum.  For heroic campaigns, I like the
one you quoted.

For example, in my favorite Champions campaign, I am playing a grad student
(who can turn into steel) while another character plays a wealthy romance
writer (who can turn into a demon).  The wealth levels assigned are what's
appropriate for the character, and they really don't mean anything, since
whatever money can buy is available by GM fiat and plot considerations
anyway.  In the local 30s campaign, my character spent 10 points on wealth,
and this proves to be very useful.  He has excellent equipment and can
hire almost any expert he wants.  (Of course, in a 50-point game, spending
10 on money is a serious investment, so it had better be useful.)

DHT
From: a_copeab@ccsvax.sfasu.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Improvisation!
Date: 17 Aug 92 16:06:21 CST
Organization: Stephen F. Austin State University

Since I started GMing in 1983, I have found myself improvising adventures more
and more. I'll come up with a basic plotline, a cast of characters (detail
varies), and a specific setting, and then let the players have at it. I stopped
detailing every little thing years ago, because (1) its hard to predict player
actions sometimes, and (2) when I use a detailed adventure (ie, module), I
find myself trying to force players back onto The Path when they start doing
something not covered in the module (this is also why I really don't buy
modules anymore). 

Brandon Cope

Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc