Navy is still getting rid of M-60s. My Dad used those in Vietnam. I got trained on it before the M-240. From what I hear, the army is supposed to have all the good stuff but that might just be more of "the grass is always greener". The spec ops guys do get all the good stuff though. Ridiculous amounts of money on their gear.

I've said it before, hopefully won't have to say it again - having issues with a book/product is just fine. Slamming the authors is not. Many of them are Users here.

Also, I will point Carl Sargent co-authored Black Madonna which high lights the much maligned Leonardo. Tir Tairngire is one of the more heatedly debated sourcebooks, written by Nigel Findley. Not everything from the past is gold (depending on tastes, YMMV), and not everything from the new guys is bad. If you don't like an author, that's just fine. You can give your recommendations without name calling.

Fair enough. The 'corrupt' was out of line. I'll lay off that.

I never said Sargent and Findley produced only the best in SR writing. However, their work was professional, as in of such a nature that it could be presented to a normal publisher and meet normal standards. War!, not so much.

But the work in War! certainly is not in any way up to the standards even for weekly assignments in university, not to mention publication.

Sengir--Based on the table from p. 183, I'd be hard pressed to go past an 8 for Object Resistance, but since the table gets vague after 5+, it becomes very open to GM adjudication.

As far as Slow is concerned, the way I read it, everything within the area of effect is slowed down, which means that the paratroopers start falling very slowly immediately (a la Feather Fall) and then stop sustaining it when they reach the ground. A really narrow view on the wording could be said that it only works on blasts/bullets coming from above the user. Because the spell saps energy relative to the manasphere, a blast which was parallel--two people shooting at each other--is unchanged, but one towards the manasphere--sniper in building shooting down at a target--is slowed.

If the runners had a large hill nearby (like rapelling down a cliff) then the manasphere may bend to create a pocket of defense from lateral gunfire.

(This reading is purely meant to provide GMs with a semi-logical argument for nerfing the spell as written rather than handwaving it out.)

They do, yes. But they're the ones who see all the action, even if we never hear about it.

"Slowed relative to the manasphere" is clearly meant to be talking about frame of reference, as in, slowed relative to the frame of reference in which the Earth is stationary. Because otherwise you could make an argument that when you use it, everything in its area of effect can only move 1m/s and thus "falls off the earth" as it hurtles through space.

Umaro--Yes it is. I don't actually agree with the "really narrow view" that I suggested, but was providing arguments for GMs who don't wish to simply handwave the spell out of the game. As a feather fall or reverse levitate, I think the spell has merit. For balance purposes at my home table, I will remove the bullet/explosion immunity, but that's just me.

5+ (or was it 6+) obviously does not say how far up it can go, but I think at some point the sheer size of something should start to matter. If you want to affect something big, it required a lot of magical juice.


Exactly that's where I see the problem - if it slows the jumpers to 1m/s in an instant, hitting the spell area does not sound that much different from hitting the ground...

Remember, though, when you think about today, you see the military with equipment made by the lowest bidder. Except for private military companies, who often have some of the best equipment money can buy.

In SR, the PMCs ARE the military, to a large extent. Megacorp forces far exceed actual national military forces.

There is a vast difference in equipment that can be fielded when you are a profitable company, as opposed to a resource drain.




-k

Sengir--It comes down to either "Magic changes Physics" or the team casts it before jumping out of the plane, which is more of a HAHO jump and a prayer that a metahuman signature doesn't get picked up on radar. I went with the first option, but acknowledge that it is far from the realistic option.

I agree that the spell is unbalanced. Humorously, the one thing it doesn't work against is Stick and Shock, since that does damage from electrical shock, not velocity, making the already-more-effective-than-real-bullets SnS even more good. I just dislike the attitude of thinking that houserules are such a terrifying thing that people feel the need to justify their houserules as bizarre readings of the rules instead of just saying "I'm houseruling this because it is broken."

I just imagined a team "falling" out of a plane at 3.6km/h. The whole 20 kilometers.

All in all, this spell reminds me of the "Stasis Field" (can't remember what it was really called) in The Forever War: It doesn't slow neural signals like in the novel (deadly, in case you didn't guess), but slowing heart contractions or vibrations of the vocal chords already has enough "WTF?!" potential.

Or push a sniper out with a lawn chair and a six-pack. Sit down, have a drink and provide cover fire from several klicks straight up. Late at night, with a ruthenium tarp beneath him to prevent viewing from below, and you have an "eye in the sky" for a couple hours.

Blimps don't need to be mages.

Also I will forever regret using the ruthenium sniper blimp as a table example for using the vehicle mod rules...

Unfortunately, from an outside POV both the cover fire and the sniper will have the same speed relative to Earth. Which means that from the sniper's POV, the bullet is not going to move anywhere. Even more interestingly, what happens if a jumper is in the standard belly position and tries to bring one of his arms under his body? That would mean his arm is moving faster towards Earth than the limit allows

I rather liked that one and it touched on enough stuff that when people were all like "You have to read the DaVinci code!" I was able to be all like "meh, been there done that." Although I will grant you that not everything back in the day was golden.

why?
have you SEEN the Batman Animated Series?
Blimps like that BELONG into this setting . .

Does Magic follow the General Rule of Relativity or the Special?

Not when they're build on a Yamaha Rapier frame, sport signature masking, mount a laser and are invisible to the naked eye.

Agreed on the Batman style blimps though.

OK, now you're closer on Batman Beyond.
STILL completely valid in my eyes ^^

I hate to say it, but I kinda enjoyed the Dragon Heart Trilogy. Maybe I was just in the right frame of mind at the time, but it was just trashy enough to be a good read.

Only if the mage is stupid enought to not dodge the slowed down bullet

why am i now kinda thinking of the last superman movie trailer, where the bullet hits his eye?

In general it follows relatively weird physical rules, and then there are the special cases...

No one can defeat the Quad Laser...

'm sorry, i don't follow? O.o

Aqua Teen Hunger Force, from back when I still watched it. A very slow final attack.

Ah, never watched that.

Well, you should.

No, seriously, you should!

With his (or her) slowed-down dodge?

Slow does not restrict effectiveness of Defense, just the damage caused by attacks.

Aaron as in Aaron Pavao, writer and presumed author of the rules?

If you are, could you please tell us what the intent of the Slow spell was? A magic air cushion, or an instant immunity to bullets for mages?

Can I say I find this policy rather bizarre? Consider films - people group together films precisely because the same director was behind them, you can recommend a movie because it's a Hitchcock movies, and by the same token anything directed by Uwe Boll is likely to be an audiovisual plague delivery mechanism that you'll pay for the privileged of. So my question is, can I make a specific technical critique that an author lacks technical proficiency (like Uwe Boll), has poor romance scenes (George Lucas), or has a consistent history of good product (like Hitchcock), without breaching the rules? The bizarreness is the inability to do the same thing with books is strange.

I'm totally on board with avoiding personal attacks, but I don't get the ban on technical critiques.

Odd that Doc, they have a POA&M in for those? Cause that I know of the MTOs ae out for the latest SDC so everyone will be over to 7 by Dec 2011

Probably - it's been a while since I've been on the Nellis flight line.

I'm not too keen on it either, but my guess is that the trigger was calling the clique "corrupt", which isn't an inherently technical critique. Still shuts down a fair bit of discussion, but I can see how attacking it could seem like a good idea at the time.

~J

More like the Quad Glacier.

As moderators we have had more than a few discussions about where to draw this line. The rule of thumb we have come up with is that if someone isn't a member than we consider them a public personality and all bets are off. Lucas, Hitchcock and Boil are not members, nor are Loren Colman, President Obama or Michael Jackson, so say what you will.

But many of the freelancers, production staff and the current line developer are members (active or otherwise) and we feel they are entitled to the same protection under the ToS as any other member. Calling them corrupt (or what have you) may be verging on a grey area, but isn't constructive or professional and doesn't really contribute anything to the discussion anyway.

But we are all for constructive criticism of the product, the production, editing, proofreading or writing. Constructive being the key word. Realize that you all have a valuable opportunity here to talk to the people that are making the game you love. Calling them names isn't going to make them want to listen to you.

Alright, honest question here. I feel the rabble is roused enough and I just want clarification.

Can we site specific issues in published work by members of this board and voice our opinions? I can see "They (CGL) are a bunch of assholes who smell bad and have lousy taste in socks" to be an unconstructive insult. But if I say "Jason Hardy needs to read these books before he pimps them in a press release." is that ok? It addresses a fact, a real measurable thing, and opens the subject up for discussion by the member.

Yes I think that is reasonable. So long as people understand the fine line they are treading and make a thoughtful effort to stay on the right side of it. Obviously it is all dependent on the content post by post, but things like that are within the terms of service and I think helpful.

I'm reluctant to answer you, given your recent posts. You asked nicely, though, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and try to make it worth your time.

Another edit: My Shadowrun work is work for hire. That means I make the words and design some of the systems, but it doesn't belong to me and I don't have the final say over things. I am not any kind of authority on how the rules work or what anybody's intention was except mine.

One of the original design guidelines was "bigger, better." Peter and John wanted f'in' scary stuff. We already had a lot of equipment in there, and I wanted to throw the magicians (and adepts and technomancers) a bone, too.

Slow was initially a mass levitate spell (which is where the 200 kg per hit limit came from). That was obviously pretty damn crazy already, so I limited the effect to a slowing one.

It occurred to me that the slow spell would protect against bullets and shrapnel (I believe it's mentioned in the spell description). I was unconcerned, though, because a lot of things protect against bullets and shrapnel (various barrier spells are really good at it, for example, as are walls). Players have come up with all sorts of clever ways to mitigate those problems, so I had faith in players to handle this one. Players are so ingenious; I recall a story about how an AD&D player overcame an enemy protected by an anti-magic shell by polymorphing a boulder into a small rock and casually tossing it at his target.

Anyway, I've thought of a few ways to get at a target protected by a slow spell. Sorcery is one way, of course. Gas attacks work fine. Spirits with Engulf. Bayonets and many other sharp things that go into soft things that scream and bleed aren't any less dangerous; I tried to make certain that it was clear that forces were not affected, just speed, so you can still shish-kabob someone with a spear or fillet them with a monowhip, it's just more agonizing. Edited to add I'm pretty sure that a compression wave propagates, rather than moves; a physicist can probably tell us how much the air in a location moves during, say, an event caused by a concussion grenade.

I'd love to hear other ways to neutralize the advantage granted by the slow spell. That sort of geeking out is the kind of conversation I dig.

Any other (polite but pointed) questions?

I see where you're coming from, but there's still an issue I see. Spells are kind of unique in that if a magician sees it, they can learn to do it. Even if they hear about it (and have GM permission) they can make that spell. It's a lot harder to control than a Thor shot.

I also dislike some of the back peddling that I see happening. You're not doing nearly as bad as some folks, but when you mention yourself that you may need to consult a physicist on the mechanics of a spell, something went wrong and it needs more work. Like you said though, you don't work in a vacuum and it isn't fair to lay the blame entirely on you. I'd be interested in a better look at the current development process at CGL if your willing to share.

Personally I like the idea of a mass levitate spell even more. Maybe with a special permanent effect like Mana Static that causes it to function for a number of rounds equal to the force after the spell ceases to be sustained. But during that time it just gently takes anyone effected to the ground. Throw a big enough drain modifier on it and it's uber while not game busting. Also makes tactical sense as it has the magciian hitting the LZ and freeing himself up for combat as he switched out of a utility role.

True, but that's just the cost (or lack thereof) due to scarceness. Magicians have to pay other costs as well, not just Drain and karma, but opportunity costs as well. Turn to goo is a hella powerful spell, but it isn't often used because there's another spell that works as well or better. As far as slow is concerned, I think the self-healing, nearly-free-hardened-armor physical barrier is likely to be more efficient at defending against attacks at sufficiently high numbers of hits.


With all due respect, I'd like to correct your assertion. I did not back-pedal on the physics, I just said that I didn't know how fast individual air molecules moved during a compression wave event. I'm a big fan of research and due diligence, so I the math on the physics (for example, figuring out how much energy would be unleashed when a tungsten telephone pole hits the ground at terminal velocity). I admit that my fluid dynamics is rusty, but to be fair I only needed it for my post, not for any writing I did for WAR. Rest assured, if I had needed it, I would have done the research.


I'm not sure it's my place to talk about internal stuff. Besides, I don't know much about how it works. I get to talk to some folks via Skype or email from time to time (it used to be weekly; I miss those geek-fests), but other than that, my words go into the black box, and they come out all shiny and illustrated and stuff.

Everytime someone brings physics into discussions on Science-Fiction as it relates to things that obviously break the laws of physics as we currently understand them, or into magic in any way shape or form, God kills a kitten!

...

I hate cats, so keep right on doing it. (Actually, it's cats are trying to kill me, and I like as much support from on high as possible. BTW: It's an allergy, and they love jumping at me, claws out.).

Yeah, but physical barrier isn't a half ass levitate as well. Slow also had the (arguable) ability to stop all bullets at Force 1. That needs some work.



You were not specifically back peddling, that was being done on the Auschwitz piece. But if there is a calculation or a mechanical understanding that makes a spell more clear, it needs to be in the description and not in a web forum. That's more what I was referring too. I'm sure you do research, and I understand the Leadership rules are yours. Grats on those, they work well and were sorely needed.



Thank you, even that helps.

Working in IT and dealing with communication between distant sites I can see some of the hallmarks of communication break down in the work coming out of CGL. Hearing that they aren't holding even weekly calls says something. I'm sure there's communication between freelancers and development outside of that, too. But experience tells me that you can't slack off on the scheduled official "face time" without losing something.

I would classify it as _extremely unusual_ for a line developer to have a weekly meeting with all freelancers, or even just all the writers.

A weekly meeting during a project for those working on the project? Perhaps. Focused meetings when necessary? Absolutely. But weekly meetings that require people to be there who don't need to be there (and in the case of freelancers who aren't paid to be there) ... ugh, not a good use of people's time, IMO.

They should raffle those M-60s off to the public. An M-60 is the perfect centerpiece for any interior design emphasizing the classical or the old fashioned.

Typically a demilitarized weapon is sold to a museum for a piece, or slagged. Which goes to show that you can get what you want with enough money. M-60s typically don't make good table pieces though. Not enough room for the roast, and there's always that one whiney guy that doesn't want the machine gun pointed at him all evening.

I mostly meant projects, and I understand the time constraints of freelance writers.

Does Posthuman use online collaborative writing tools? You've talked about 37signals before and I was able to get a few projects at work up and running in Basecamp. I really like it. I know CGL was using it last year as well, but I don't recall hearing much about it lately. Properly used, tools like that can go a long way to increasing communication and alleviating the need for increasingly high fidelity real time communication.

With all the time between releases it's disheartening to see the books by CGL getting released in the state they do. That's mostly why I wonder about their process and if Jason is taking steps to improve it. While I'm not a big fan of the current developer I recognize that there are a lot of people that are going to pick up these books and not know the whole story. Poor work can have long reaching effects, even after things are addressed and changed for the better. Look at the auto companies in the US and the continued perception that they are inferior to imports. It doesn't even matter that "US" cars are being designed and built overseas and my father moved down to Kentucky to make front end parts for Hondas. That perception can stick around long after quality is restored and improved.

Which is probably going to happen to those M1 Garands the South Koreans are trying to sell to the US Civilian Market. Seems the Gun Control Freaks are mad because they "Were military weapons" and all that.

Personally, I want an M-60 on my lap, as I rock in my chair on the porch... That'll learn them damned kids to stay off my lawn!