It's got switches on the fucking ceiling for christ's sake.

I think it was a flaw of poor strategic thinking. The military guy said he's going to make this happen, and already has a fleet of very SOTA combat aircraft and highly-trained people. It seems reasonable to assume, under normal circumstances, they could have succeeded at their plan with limited casualties, and he had a personal, emotional stake in the matter. The business guy went on the best information provided - they can succeed with the materials provided, which is cheaper than 'jury-rigging' a multi-billion dollar satellite or equiping a rock with the guidance necessary to hit its target, or the resulting environmental fallout which might complicate further work in the area (vaporizing your future mine site isn't very good). This is also ignoring that there were things floating in the air which would have made any 'attack from above' vector difficult.

Both parties made bad decisions. But I doubt it would take 10 years for them to return. Probably about four, long enough to finish filming and post-production


Topic on hand... My book says "basic vehicle maneuvers, such as driving to the local stuffer shack or taking the old helicopter for a little sightseeing hop". To my own chagrin, I would assume these craft have automated systems which cover 90% of the standard aspects of flight. *HOWEVER*, it would not take much at all (even a minor, random glitch) for them to be up drek creek. When your only method of entry and egress is a strange machine that you expect to be using while under fire or while damaged, it's an AWFULLY good idea to know how to use said machine.

Ingress and Egress.

Given that objects the size of office buildings regularly get swallowed up by Earth's atmosphere and burn away to nothingness, you'll need a very high Force spell to get it moving very fast, or a very large object to target, the kind which would get noticed if it moved. Oh, and then there are the Background Count issues you mentioned.

We aren't using space shuttles in 2060 any more than you drive model Ts now. That tech is 80 years old.

A modern jet-liner also has switches on the ceiling. The majority of them you can safely ignore if your only goal is to fly, as they control radio beacons, weather data, GPS, lights, etc. It takes a bit more to get the engine started and to pull up the landing gear, but the basic controls are pretty straightforward (as a note, i think it would be HILARIOUS if the station got suspicious because the shuttle approached for docking with the landing gear still down). However even a rating 1 pilot program should be able to walk through the (fairly static) startup routine.

Apaches are more complex again because they have iff, dedicated radar and weapons systems you don't get in a commercial craft.



I liked that repeating 'e' thing I had going

So the vehicle rules are about as ridiculous as the firearms rules or the computing rules when compared to real life. Is anybody surprised?

So you declare that take-off is a Pilot Aeropace+Handling+Reaction test. What's the problem?


Oh, and how about activesofts? Of course, you do want to negate glitches on reentry...

...or they summon a bunch of magic volcanoes. Yes, in space.

This is a fair counter-point to the complex suborbital argument. Airliners are fully capable of auto-piloting themselves today, and generally only utilize the pilot and co-pilot when coming in for a landing, or taking off (the two more statistically significant times for catastrophic failure / error) - and in airports with that new microwave system, they can supposedly land themselves, too. I think it's fair to say that a sub-orbital flight will be sufficiently sophisticated to require a drone brain to execute the flight, and a flight crew to make small adjustments (passenger comfort, system debugging, avionics supervision) instead of actually "flying".

The dropship / orbital translation vehicle in Avatar is a good example of this. The cockpit as dominated by large holographic instrumentation and what looked like computer systems, rather then joysticks and heads-up displays (although I'm sure they're there, too.) You can't "fly" a suborbital, you can just operate the guidance system.

It's that that we're surprised. It's that we - or me, at any rate - is saying, "You have to apply some common sense when dealing with gray areas." Shadowrun is not D&D or even Exalted, where there are rules to delinate every situation and the authors are expecting you to always deal with things in an explicit way. It leads to ridiculousness like average people without firearms training being able to put a light pistol to their head and withold dice for a called shot to their ear canal and miss, or worse yet, hit themselves in such a way as to be a minor inconvenience:

Agility 3, Pistols 0. Pool of 2 (-1 die for defaulting), +3 for 'point blank'. Witholding 4 dice for very confined area. Result, 1 die to roll. Usually he will miss his own head. And if he does hit, he cannot kill himself. He must spend edge to hit himself. And with an average edge of 3, he will STILL usually need to pull the trigger twice. And that's assuming no hits on his body roll.

You absolutely cannot point out a rule that is designed to be based on common sense and GM judgement - that being the very PURPOSE of the rule - and then point out it's dumb if you don't apply common sense or judgement to it. It's ridiculous to do so.

I meant five years to return to earth, five years to come back with a fleet to bomb the crap out of Pandora.

I played in a Paranoia First Edition game where we were at one point trying to decapitate another PC for Treason. You'd think that a group of Troubleshooters armed with Combat Knives could successfully stab someone, but no. Eventually, out of complete desperation, one of the players decided his character would try to cut off his own head in the hopes of rolling so badly that he accidentally cuts off the other PC's head. He rolled a 100% - critical botch.

Of course, Paranoia is a game that deliberately eschews common sense rules in favor of random violence and slapstick comedy.

Two to the power of two hundred and sixty-seven thousand seven hundred and nine to one against?




This is a lovely idea. Especially if they're unversed in orbital navigation and don't realize where they docked at first.

Maybe it's Lofwyr's plan to begin with and he's been manipulating the group the whole time, out of amusement.


-np

Precisely.

(Note: I knew the reference would be made, and would have made it myself had I been able to recall the number)

I don't think so, they had no towel...

Well. For those who want to know how it went:

They managed to smuggle the ingredients up in a water bottle. Binary explosives, small amount. They set them - I gave him the opportunity to design his spell, but he critical glitched repeatedly and did not elect to test the spell. He thought the spell was fine, he based it entirely on a formula from a metaplanar quest and cast it back on Earth, masking it hard. They were caught, thrown in Space Prison and awaited interrogation. Eventually, our mage's turn came up first. They decided to just kick him out the airlock since he was being "clever" and they needed an example. He died with a smile, thinking he'd be fine. The rest -barring one- are all dead, having suffered the same fate all at once when it was clear who they were.

You know why? He burnt all his edge. All eight points of it, using stored karma he was saving for a point of strength right there in the airlock. Two points to survive getting tossed into space - a critical malfunction surrounded him with a cloud of oxygen, which was heated by jets of superheated exhaust from the station. Not pleasant, but he could breath. Because of the venting atmosphere, there was a tiny modicum of pressure, but he still needs months of reconstructive work which he can't afford, and is going to end up deep in debt to the sharks. Two points to get through the atmosphere - wreckage hit him and he rode it down the gravity well, forming a primitive heat shield. I do mean a lot of wreckage, and he didn't even get cooked. Wreckage that was still venting atmosphere and was constantly heated. He survived the impact - another two points - because on the way down, he fell onto the back of a Greater Roc, which proceeded to drop him onto the back of a North American Wyvern when he fell off, and then onto the wing of a fixed wing airliner. Which proceeded to dump him onto an LAV and onto the ground. Damn resilient trolls. Oh, and the last two points were burnt when S-K swept the crash site, because woodland creatures carried him away, fed, bandaged and clothed him and sent him on his way to a clinic with a merry song and dance because by that point I was about to cry.

I swear, I should just learn to play Exalted.

Props for the TPK.

I have to say, I love that "Space Prison" is capitalized.

Damn good link... no you don't explode... No the 'temperature' of space isn't the problem'
The problem is the vacuum and its effects on gases and liquids (water and blood 'boiling' into gas, which is the same as sweat evaporating from your body... producing surface cooling... and things like eyeballs freezing up).


http://www.damninteresting.com/outer-space-exposure


On background counts... a 12 point BGC is NOT +12 drain... it's +12 FORCE to the drain calculation (EG: +6 drain... since it's force/2). Magic 1 left mage, casting force 2... calculate the drain as if it were force 14 (12+2). I'm only stating that, because I've seen people state it and haven't seen a post correcting it.



On the smurfs... had the displeasure of seeing it. Waste of 3 hours of my life... The orbital drop was the first thing I relayed to my dad... that the entire thing was just special effects eyecandy.
1. First rule of space combat. He who controls the gravity well can destroy the planet/moon at will by dropping things.
2. They're shipping INTERSTELLAR loads here...you're telling me they can't park an orbital crowbar launcher?! Really nukes not even necessary.
3. Failing that, can't use one of their orbital shuttles as a bomber....

4. floating islands... only good explanation for that is they have some kind of superconducting material which forms them... EG: they're superconducting ore deposites which remained after the rocks around them were washed away in all those waterfalls... (where's the water coming to power those anyhow!... purdy but just as bad as Star wars and it's asteroid worms). Superconductors could lock into planetary magnetic fields and 'float' in them. Would also explain problems w/ sensors.

5. The smurfs are absolutely opposed to fire... USE IT... you could get one hell of a wildfire going... what are they going to do... dig a firewall or set a counterfire?. Hell dropping a rock is good enough to start a firestorm, even if you don't hit the target.

*double*

How did a troll have 8 points of Edge when the racial maximum is 6, 7 if he possesses the Lucky positive quality? You also can't spend Edge you don't have (i.e. burning karma you were "saving" for an attribute). It sounds like you were overly soft on this magician.

There are just some situations where survival, in any form, is just not an option (and I'm usually lenient in this way!!). This is one of them.

At the very least, I'd make him re-roll anyway while his character is in traction/hospital and recovering.

- J.

I thought the Troll wasn't the mage. The mage died with a smile. The rest of the team died... except for this unusually (and rule-breakingly) lucky Troll.

Not sure... I guess it might have been somewhat along the lines of 6,5,4,3,2,1,1,1. Once the Edge attribute got to zero, the character immediately spent karma and bought the Edge back to 1 and so on.

Doesn't seem quite right... once an attribute hits zero you're dead. (edge 0, you have a stroke... you spontaneously combust... some other unlikely event happens...).

I could see buying the edge from 1->2 repeatedly, but not from 0->1.

You can have Edge 0 (read the Borrowed Time negative quality). However, a troll cannot have Edge 8.

- J.

Sending them out of the airlock is in my opinion something that wouldn't be used, at least on a space station in low orbit : a 80-kg corpse (or worse for a troll) is a navigation hazard I wouldn't want to have floating around. At a minimum I'd make sure they have enough downward/retrograde velocity to end up burning in the atmosphere soon.

About the edge-laden troll : in my opinion his burning of edge wouldn't result in what you described : without some sort of propulsion, it would take a long time - days at least and probably months - for his orbit to decay enough for reentry. Far more than whatever oxygen supply he could get.
I'd rather have him spared and sent back to hearth to some unpleasant destiny - where his remaining ege could do more good. Maybe giving him a cortical bomb, some brainwashing and then use him in an iranian mine-clearing squad sort of role. (if someone doesn't now the reference, during the Iraq-Iran war, Iran used waves of suicide volunteer to clear mineflieds by detonating them)

Apparently you missed the whole "We're here to mine unobtanium,"* which FUCKING FLOATS in electromagnetic fields, just like how you described.

*Un-obtain-ium. If you missed the reference.

This wasn't the magician; everyone is dead bar this one. Like I said, the magician died with a smile on his face thinking his spell would work, despite being flawed. The survivor is our face. He has 8 edge because of a session that he role played supremely well, I gave him an additional point of edge to his maximum and he had Lucky from the start. He also purchased a point of edge there in the airlock (I threw up my hands and said fine).