HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: hibschmn@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Johann A. Hibschman)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Vampire and Werewolf combat
Date: 9 Sep 92 14:46:44 GMT
Organization: Princeton University
Originator: news@nimaster

Warning!  This article contains descriptions of nasty game mechanics.
Read at your own risk.

	A few days ago, after hearing many many good things about
Vampire, I went and picked up both Vampire and Werewolf (there went
the budget).  I liked them both very much, but I've been unable to
put together a workable combat system out of the two.

	For those who don't know how White Wolf's Storyteller system
works, all rolls are made with d10's.  You grab as many d10's as your
skill and roll, trying to beat a difficulty number as many times as
possible.  Any ones rolled negate one success.  Players can take
roughly 6 wounds before keeling over.

	In Vampire, after a weapon hits, damage must be rolled vs. the
victim's Stamina+3.  This is all well and good, until you get werewolves
walking around with 6 stamina, whereupon they become indescructable,
with a one-in-ten chance of actually being damaged by a blow.  Not only
that, they still get a chance to soak the damage.  This is
probably why White Wolf dropped the damage roll in Werewolf (although
they make a few references to it throughout the text).  However, in
Werewolf, a werewolf with 7 strength (not unusual in Crinos form) has a
bite which does a base 9 damage, plus at least one success, for a total
of 10.  Anything hit by this would have to make at least 4 successes on
their soak roll to avoid instant death, a nigh-impossible feat for even
another werewolf to accomplish, considering the high base damage.

	Gunfire can be equally deadly, but I can accept that.  Guns
should be deadly, but I do want to find a method of handling damage
where the first hit in a werewolf-werewolf battle doesn't end it.
That's just not sufficiently dramatic for my tastes.

	Any hints?

---
Johann Hibschman
hibschmn@phoenix.princeton.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
From: cmeadows@nyx.cs.du.edu (Chris Meadows)
Subject: Re: SR:  Magic/tech interaction
X-Disclaimer: Nyx is a public access Unix system run by the University
	of Denver for the Denver community.  The University has neither
	control over nor responsibility for the opinions of users.
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix at U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 92 06:21:43 GMT

In article <1992Sep10.060855.28210@u.washington.edu> mkkuhner@phylo.genet
cs.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) writes:
>In article <uplink.716091255@cwis> uplink@cwis.unomaha.edu (John M. Sche
beler) writes:
>
>>   Nope.  Sorry.   The creators of Shadowrun have stated that it is
>>Canon; the matrix is the matrix, magic is magic, and never the two
>>shall meet.
>
>This is true; on the other hand, our campaign cheerfully ignored it,
>substituting the idea that mixing magic and high tech works, but has
>progressive warping effects on the human being involved as the two
>incompatible powers struggle for domination.
>
>This turned out to have lots of potential for horror.  Only one PC ever
>crossed the line herself and combined the two, and she (arguably) went
>quite mad as a result.  The rest stayed strictly away from what they
>called the Black Path after seeing a few examples of it.
>
>The rules we used computed Essence costs both for being magical (mages,
>adepts, metahumans) and for having Cyberware, applied somewhat different
>penalties to each, and kept track of the sum of the two to assess Black
>Path effects.  I can provide a rough outline if anyone's interested,
>though they were pretty loose rules.
>
>Sometimes you can get good stuff by ignoring the Canon.  It's worth a
>thought.
>
>It's the only campaign I've ever been in where the PCs routinely
>destroyed any software, magic items, or cyberware captured from their
>enemy (a corporation whose research into the Black Path had gone far
>beyond the bounds of sanity).  Use it?  No way!
>
>Mary Kuhner mkkuhner@genetics.washington.edu



On mixing technology and magic...

It's not exactly cyberpunk (or even Shadowrun, if the two genres are
slightly different as some maintain), but in Palladium's Rifts, magic
and technology are mixed, in the art and science of Techno-Wizardry.
Techno-Wizards are able to cast spells on/into bits of machinery that
they put together, allowing them to power laser guns or motors with
their "Potential Psychic Energy" (P.P.E.; Rifts' equivalent of Mana).
Of course, the Techno-Wizard guns or motors have to be specially built,
and don't work without magic (or psionics, in some cases).

Though there are contrasts, I feel that Rifts and Shadowrun/cyberpunk
do have some interesting similarities.  Both take place after major
wrenching changes to the planet (nuclear holocaust/coming of magic for
Rifts; the Awakening for Shadowrun); both involve bionics/cybernetics
to enhance the performance of humans; and both involve magic.  Rifts'
magic is closer to the original D&D-type spells than is Shadowrun, of
course.  In one Rifts supplement, I even read some things about some
sort of cyberspace, though it is not described at all...

Interesting, eh?

---Chris Meadows
From: swann@acsu.buffalo.edu (Stephen Swann)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Let's talk REAL sci-Fi systems
Keywords: The best
Date: 13 Sep 92 01:09:41 GMT
Organization: UB

In article <bn6yjsl@rpi.edu> cleggp@aix.rpi.edu (Paul Jason Clegg) writes:
>In article <BuDznu.2IE@acsu.buffalo.edu> v057qkmm@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (BABBLING SAGE) writes:
>told Larry I put my pistol under my jacket and walked up to the front of
>the house, with a guy in our van covering us with an automatic weapon, but
>out of sight.  He convinces me I need to put on my armor.  He basically
>commandeered my character into putting my armor on.
....
>trying not to catch too much attention by walking up a man's house in a
>city in full battlearmor and a rifle.
>
>I think the main problem is that Larry's got a playing style more closely
>related to hack & slash than he thinks; his concept of roleplaying is to
>carefully describe HOW you kill your opponent.  
....
>sink anymore of my money into a game system designed by a whole team of
>bloodthirsty, misguided, deluded hack & slashers.

Y'know this system is actually starting to sound like it might be fun.
It's got lots o' bug-eyed monsters, a weapon supplement that sounds
more voluminous than the rule set, a gunboat-diplomacy approach to
role playing, and a group of game developers who seem more interested
in blowing things up than to bothering with nuances like character
personality (thus the cardboard-cutout races to provide instant pop-up
character personas).

It sounds like a riot, if you were in the right mood for it.

<players go into sleazy dive bar in full assault armor>
GM:  A Vandarian Snorple-gump walks up to you at the bar.
Players:  WE SHOOT IT!
<brief, very violent firefight>
GM:  You see the bartender lunging for an alarm box on the wall.
Players:  WE SHOOT HIM!
<more bombings and killings>
GM:  The police are starting to arrive in armored trucks and hovercraft.
Players:  WE SHOOT THEM!
etc etc etc...

Bluerazor's right - no elfish bullshit here, just lots of people shooting
each other, like a good game should be.  ;-)

-- 
Steve Swann                 |    Speak to me in many voices; make
swann@acsu.buffalo.edu      |      them all sound like one...  -BOC
From: jjohnson@ccscola.Columbia.NCR.COM (Jeffrey H. Johnson)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: GURPS Combat - Step & Wait vs. All Out Attack
Date: 14 Sep 92 14:10:59 GMT
Organization: NCR CCSD Columbia SC

In article <1992Sep12.172328.12146@Princeton.EDU> woodhams@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Michael Woodhams) writes:
>In article <1992Sep11.200317.6004@ncrcae.ColumbiaSC.NCR.COM> jjohnson@ccscola.Columbia.NCR.COM (Jeffrey H. Johnson) writes:
>
>[discussion of all out attacks - no defenses lasts until end of this
>turn, or until all out attacker makes another action]
>
>>We played the way Marsh describes at first, until we noticed that the player
>>who goes last could take an all-out attack at no penalty, since he would be
>>able to defend immediately after his attack, since it was the beginning of a
>>new turn.
>
>You could say that anyone who has made an active defense this turn has
>forfited their right to make an all out attack. It still helps the
>slow people a little, as they can abort the decision to all out attack
>any time until they swing. e.g. consider a fast and slow fighter
>dealing with an unexpected attack: El Fasto the famous elven fencer makes
>an all out attack at the start of the round and skewers his opponent
>through the left eye socket, then the Slice N. Dice the Barbarian
>comes out of hiding in the bushes with a battle axe steps out and makes
>El Fasto coleslaw. "Tank" Sherman, the dwarf in a can, doesn't defend
>against a fencer, intending to all out attack. Slice comes out, and
>Tank decides to use those active defenses after all.

Yeah, you could run it this way.  But this still has the effect of making
slowness an advantage in combat.  Consider the same situation except no one
is hiding in the bushes.  El Fasto makes his attack and is vulnerable for
the rest of the round, and sweats as the GM makes his "are-there-people-in-
the-bushes" roll.  Tank, on the other hand, with a move of 1 (barely), knows
that he can make his all-out attack with impunity, since anyone in the bushes
would have already made their attack.  (Even with the Wait manuever, the
hidden opponent wouldn't be able to step out and attack, right?).  I'd rather
not let the slow combatants rely on their lack of speed to keep them safe
when doing all-out attacks.

Jeff
--
Jeffrey H. Johnson
jjohnson@ccscola.columbiasc.ncr.com

		"More human than human is our motto."
			-- Dr. Eldon Tyrell
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc,rec.games.frp
From: dzik@access.digex.com (Joseph Dzikiewicz)
Subject: Re: GURPS Will Rolls
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 12:13:22 GMT

In article <BtxpGu.KDu@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>, (Dave Deitrich) writes:

> In the GURPS Basic Set (don't remember the exact page) it flatly states that
> any will roll greater than a 14 is an automatic failure.  Yet, in a lot of
> the sample characters me and my friends have seen we find things like IQ 15
> and Strong Will +3.  Isn't this a waste of points?

The will above 14 might be used to offset minuses to the will roll.  For 
example, if the character you describe has to make a fright check at -5,
he would have to make a 13- roll instead of the 10- he would have to
make without the Strong Will.  However, if he had to make a fright
check at -1, he would need a 14- whether or not he has the Strong Will.

(I am not sure if this is what the rules intend, but it is the way 
my group plays it.)

Joe Dzikiewicz
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
From: mark@trillian.jsc.nasa.gov (Mark Manning)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Net.Book.WMI
Date: 9 Sep 1992 20:35:06 GMT
Organization: Simulacron I

As the (somewhat) official collector of the Weenie Magic Items,
I hearby declare myself ready and willing to accept all entries!
So send me e-mail telling me about your stupidest magic items,
your weirdest magic items, or even your best magic items.  I will
enter them into the database I have and send you a printout containing
all of the items collected so far to date.

You can e-mail me at any of the following addresses.  I'll respond
when I get the message so you won't be left in the dark. :)

mark@cheers.jsc.nasa.gov
mark@trillian.jsc.nasa.gov
mark@arthur.jsc.nasa.gov

Remember!  I don't care HOW dumb the magic item was.  Most of these
are just as dumb or funny or whatever!  Don't forget also that
you do not have to restrict yourself to standard D&D things.  Oriental,
Middle Eastern, anything is ok with me.

Later.
From: v076jy2p@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (Cosmo Of The Cosmos)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Sci-Fi Suggestions
Keywords: battlelords
Date: 9 Sep 92 17:51:00 GMT
Organization: University at Buffalo
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41

>>ANYONE WHO THINKS THEY HAVE AN OPINION ON THIS BATTLELORDS GAME,
>>	PLEASE TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK!!!
>> i would like to see some discussion of this game as everyone seems to 
>>ignore it when ben or one of those other guys mentions it
>Well, here's my (quasi-professional) opinion of the BattleLords game:
>Points against:
>The character races are all basically devoted to wiping each other out.
>None of the character races, as presented, could survive as a culture in the
>     way Simms expects us to believe.
>Zero support so far.
>    (Simms:  When am I going to be contacted for playtest material, since I
>     signed into that little notebook of yours at Council of Five Nations?)
>Incomplete rules for non-military actions.
>    (No specific rules for interacting with computer systems, robots, et al.,
>     and horribly insufficient rules for vehicles of ANY type)
>The values of some skills are "way out".  
>    (No starting character, save a pure human, may obtain even level 1 in
>     Cybernetics Engineering, due to a combination of high skill cost and
>     high skill cost prerequisites.  A pure human can get level one, iff
>     they have only the minimum prereq's and MAYBE one or two "little" other
>     skills.)

Hi Ho,
	Psy 302 is over and I'm going to continue from where I left off.
This chap has pointed out a few things That i was going to.

The major problem is not the system, but the way Larry runs his company.
He is the editor-in-chief, head honcho, big cheese.  Everything that
is produced by OSD goes past his desk.  The problem is that it takes
a long time for anything to get done.  Larry doesn't trust anybody
else with anything.  The majority of work was done by Larry all by his lonesome.
I think he likes it that way.  He thrives off stress.
	Not enough support?  Don't worry, he'll get to it.
	Not enough rules?  Don't worry, sooner or later he'll make some up.

As for the skills...
	I've found the system works well.  Besides, if you have cybernetic
engineering, what the Hell are you doing in a combat zone?  Get your ass
in a nice safe lab where you can make oodles of money, and live to enjoy it!


As for the races...
	Yep. Well... in normal life, they'll live together alright.
But I fear that the Alliance is... *OOMPH*  Oh, hi!  No I wasn't going
to... *WACK* OK, OK!  Anyways, read Lock-N-Load.  You'll pick up a
whole lot of info on the state of affairs in the alliance.


in short...  Its still in its infant stage.


						-Rob G.
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
From: jjohnson@ccscola.Columbia.NCR.COM (Jeffrey H. Johnson)
Subject: Let's stop talking REAL sci-Fi systems
Keywords: The best
Organization: NCR CCSD Columbia SC
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 92 12:23:07 GMT

Hey, guys -

What started off as a good series of reviews for Battlelords has quickly
turned into a "yes-it-is no-it-isnt" contest.  Maybe we could scamper over
to .advocacy?  (Note in particular the Keywords: line above, which was
kept from a previous post).

ObMiscFRP:  Speaking of real sci-fi (were we?) - has anyone tried to run
 a campaign set in Asimov's Foundation universe?  What adventures did you
run?  Did any characters from the novels show up, or were you just using
them for background?  (If you followup to this, PLEASE change my subject
line to something sane, like "Foundation and FRP").

Jeff
--
Jeffrey H. Johnson
jjohnson@ccscola.columbiasc.ncr.com

		"More human than human is our motto."
			-- Dr. Eldon Tyrell
From: nigel@rs733.GSFC.NASA.Gov
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Let's talk REAL sci-Fi systems
Date: 11 Sep 92 19:36:15 GMT
	<LAVONIUS.92Sep11181615@kruuna.Helsinki.FI>
	<BuFCBD.1w6@acsu.buffalo.edu>
Organization: Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md, USA

In article <BuFCBD.1w6@acsu.buffalo.edu> v057qkmm@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (BABBLING SAGE) writes:

>>   
>>	   grenade to the head: quite fatal in most cases. helmet can save
>>   you, if its a hi-tech device.
>>	
>>Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't 40+ mm G's anti-TANK weapons, there 
>>wouldn't be much left of a soldier in a 'deadly' game as you claim this to
>>be. Unless the deadliness is just confined to cool weapons...
>> 

Er 40mm grenades are probably anti-personnel with limited anti-vehicle
capbility...at least when I think of 40mm grenades I think of those
things that you shoot out the bottom of a M16 or out of an automatic
grenade launcher.  I'm not sure you could kill even a BMP with the
thing unless you dumped one through a hatch.  RPGs are a different
story as those seem to be shaped charged warheads rather than frag or
concussion.

>Ah. Well I must admit to not reading this carefully. An Anti-personnel
>grenade to the head in battlelords can be survived. Any hit by an anti-tank
>weapon to your character will result in his demise.

Anyone using the pharse "realistic combat system" in the same
paragraph as "you can survive having a grenade go off next to your
head" has a markedly different definition of "realistic" than I do.

Even assuming powered armor one would assume that anti-personnel
weaponry has kept pace with armor development and a "grenade" of the
period probably will include armor piercing properties that the effect
of the grenade will be lethal to anyone in the area.  After all you
aren't going to be fielding weapons that can't kill the bad guy...even
with a near perfect head hit.

Cyberpunk/SciFi games should be very lethal...it may retard character
development near the beginning but tends to lead to player
development.  At least to the point where frontal assaults are not the
PC tactic of choice...

"Hmmmm...your banzai charge has killed three guards before you get
hosed down by automatic weapon fire...I guess the 2.3 million in
cybernetic increases was not a good investment for Asakura
Corporation...make up a new character and due to management pressure
no new investments will be made in gaijin cannonfodder so nix any
cyber enhancements until next quarter...if profits go up we will
reconsider further expenditures."

> 
>Bluerazor

Nigel
--
Nigel Tzeng
.sig under construction
From: bkoike@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (Bryce Koike)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Covers
Date: 14 Sep 92 21:09:07 GMT
Organization: University of California, San Diego

In article <BuJtMy.1vG@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca> badorion@watyew.uwaterloo.ca (Brian A. Dorion) writes:
>In article <15091@mindlink.bc.ca> Nick_Janow@mindlink.bc.ca (Nick Janow) writes:
>>How important are covers?  Will you ignore a game with a plain cover, and buy a
>>game without checking what's between the covers as long as that cover is fancy?
>>--
>>
>>Nick_Janow@mindlink.bc.ca
>
>Hi Nick!  In my experience (14 years of gaming, 7 of them as the owner of a
>game store) covers are very important.  Artwork is extremely important in
>selling games.  Good artwork is an indication that the publisher cared enough

	Not necessarily.  A nice, simple cover can work nicely as
well.  (A few GURPS publications come to mind, Palladium's fantasy
RPG, and a few more.  Vampire's cover is simple, but looks very
nice.)
	It helps a LOT if the cover looks professional.  I tend not
to purchase games that look like they were thrown together, and a
non-professional-looking cover is often a major turn-off.  (I mean,
how do I sell this new game to my players if they look at it and
say, "Duh, this cover is lame!"  Maybe they shouldn't be so ...
materialistic, but that's often how it is...)
	And, of course, the AD&D handbooks are another example...

>quality of the game.  A game can be very hurt by bad artwork (cover or
>interior).  

	Snazzy artwork can help to sell a game (Shadowrun, Rifts,
Vampire) by looks alone, but bad art won't always kill you (interior
art in Vampire, and some of the art in GURPS books).  Bad COVER ART
will.
	Of course the snazzy artwork plan probably only helps if you
advertise, sell posters, etc, etc.
>
>Brian Dorion
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
From: arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee)
Subject: Re: Permenant damage in HERO
Organization: Johns Hopkins University CS Dept.
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1992 01:00:11 GMT

In article <1992Sep11.173005.21649@bmerh85.bnr.ca> basestu@bnr.ca (Jean Giblin) writes:
>Let's just take that 'killing the person to reverse the transformation'
>thing to another example, shall we?  How about:  transform into toad,
>reverse procedure:  kill toad.  To me, that the reversing procedure is
>worse than the transformation itself sorta flags it as being a bit
>munchkin.

Not really....

If you transform someone into a toad and reverse the procedure by killing the
toad, the person isn't in the same condition they're in before the
transformation.  The reversal has not only reversed the transformation, but
injured them in addition.

The same applies to "poke the eye out" for reversing a transformation that
blinds someone.

If you transform a corpse into a living person and reverse the procedure by
killing the transformation, the person _is_ in the same condition they were
in before the transformation.  The reversal has not done any _additional_
harm at all.

>Anyways, as for my ideas for ressurection, I came upon the summoning
>thing, and liked it.  But the problem I found (with the transformation
>as well) is that it did work, but there's nothing in the rules that
>says that the result would be a PLAYER character.  Just because you
>have something that looks and works exactly like the player, doesn't
>mean the player should control him.  If that were so, we could have a
>summon power that summoned duplicates of ourselves WHILE WE WERE STILL
>ALIVE which we would use a PCs too.. sounds unbalancing.

That doesn't mean _resurrection_ is unbalancing.  That means "summoning
duplicates while the player is still alive" is unbalancing.  
--
"the bogosity in a field equals the bogosity imported from related areas, plus
the bogosity generated internally, minus the bogosity expelled or otherwise
disposed of."  -- K. Eric Drexler

Ken Arromdee (UUCP: ....!jhunix!arromdee; BITNET: arromdee@jhuvm;
     INTERNET: arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc