From: Chad Chirhart [seahawk@visi.com] Sent: Monday, August 23, 1999 2:48 AM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - Access Denied Q I have a question for those who would know. Has Access Denied shipped to stores in the US yet? I haven't seen it show up at a local game store yet. If it has I guess I'll have to bug them to get one in for me. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Chad Chirhart seahawk@visi.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Jens Alm [jens.alm@af.lu.se] Sent: Monday, August 23, 1999 2:07 AM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - character balance / 2nd ED. * Must control myself * Must not write another note on character balance * * damn, failed! * OK, here I go again, feel free to ignore my mad rantings anyone. Actually. I don't think of Blue Planet as an open character creation system. FUDGEs subjective character creation system, that's open. Blue Planet, IMHO, is not open, it's unbalanced (there's that word again). Blue Planet does not _allow_ me (within the rules, of course, the GM can do as he sees fit, but we are talking about the rules themselves) to make a Native Sellout that is as "good" as a Native Warrior (yes, stats-wise, there are other aspects, but I think we've discussed that). You aren't allowed to make more than a few selections (Origin, Background, Education, Occupation, tada!) that will influence your characters stats and thereby, the GM has to sidestep the character creation system in order to create game balance. Hmm, I thought I was done with this discussion, but obviously I wasn't :) -- Jens Alm Student of Medicine, Lund University, Sweden jens.alm@af.lu.se *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Kintaro Oe [kabael@bu.edu] Sent: Monday, August 23, 1999 8:48 AM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Access Denied Q >I have a question for those who would know. Has Access Denied shipped to >stores in the US yet? I haven't seen it show up at a local game store >yet. If it has I guess I'll have to bug them to get one in for me. yeah, it's out. I was lucky enough to find it in Boston the other day. They may not have ordered it kabael kabael@bu.edu ICQ #24193592 "See this watch she gave me? It still ticks away." -eels, Elizabth on the Bathroom Floor my friends and my creations: http://members.xoom.com/McGuffins/ the Thirteenth Legion: http://come.to/dvie *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Heivilin, Jim [banzai@missouri.edu] Sent: Monday, August 23, 1999 10:02 AM To: 'blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com' Subject: RE: [BLUE PLANET] - character balance / 2nd ED. > -----Original Message----- > From: christopher gribbon [mailto:c.gribbon@dundee.ac.uk] > Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - character balance / 2nd ED. > > What I am trying to say is that, while I do understand that playing the underdog *can* be > enjoyable, certain people may not enjoy playing characters who are under-powered in > comparison with the rest of the party. Equally - while playing a character who can do > everything does seem attractive, it also gets boring after a while. > Some of the most enjoyable role playing I've had has been when I've botched a roll because my skill was 40 instead of 80 or 100. And even with a still of 80, some of the most interesting results have come about from a botched roll. Peacekeeper Captain Peotr Kasprov was lying in the sand with a level four wound to the leg. Enter the forensics expert who had a very high medicine skill. Well, the dice were conspiring against me and he rolled a 97 on his first aid roll. "Oops, while trying to patch him up you nicked his femoral artery and the bleeding is a lot worse." So, the evil GM we had being who he was, he allowed the player another roll to see if he could clamp the artery. This roll wasn't so bad ... it was only a 95. Oops. So the Native Patrolman (those of you who've played Natural Instinct know him, Teku) pushes the doctor aside and tries his first aid roll (on a skill of 40). He manages to stabilize things but they get to try out one of those cool medical toys, the Cerebral Cryo-Oxygenator (CCO). They put it on and call for a sub-orbital shuttle for extraction. The end result was that I had amnesia. It's going to take me six months to recover and while I have all my skills, I've lost all knowledge of who I was or had been. Now that is a cool turn of events and could lead to some really fun role playing. Jim H. VoiceID: Peotr A. Kasprov Captain, GEO PeaceKeeping Forces Commander, Detachment 142, Dyfedd Poseidon, Lambda Serpentis II kasprop@commcore.dyfedd *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Heivilin, Jim [banzai@missouri.edu] Sent: Monday, August 23, 1999 10:14 AM To: 'blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com' Subject: RE: [BLUE PLANET] - character balance / 2nd ED. > -----Original Message----- > From: Jens Alm [mailto:jens.alm@af.lu.se] > Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - character balance / 2nd ED. > > is not open, it's unbalanced (there's that word again). Blue Planet does not > _allow_ me (within the rules, of course, the GM can do as he sees fit, but > we are talking about the rules themselves) to make a Native Sellout that is > as "good" as a Native Warrior (yes, stats-wise, there are other aspects, but > There's nothing to say you can't poke and prod and come up with whatever you want. I personally (when I play and when I GM) twist and turn and force the rules to do what I want. To create the vision I have of the game/campaign/whatever I want to play. Andrew Latimer from the website Red Sky Campaign isn't built on only one template. He was going to run a charter service (inherited from his uncle who disappeared) so he needed to be part guide and part pilot. So I merged the two professions and produced something somewhere in between. He does okay at flying and okay at guiding but not outstanding in either one. And his weapons skills are pretty much laughable. During one encounter the dolphin's remote did more fighting with more success than Andrew. However, Andrew survived so I win. In fact, in one situation it was great fun. Bad guys(tm) were accosting our office buildings and I followed one and shot him in the butt (thinking to only wound him and thus be able to interrogate him later). Well, in this case I got too good a roll and inflicted a level 5 wound to his lower abdomen. So he's bleeding all over my lawn and then I try to do first aid (again on a skill of 40). "So now that it's clear this is his colon I have in my hand ..." Oops. Remember, we're all doing this to have fun. And when we play we make the rules do what we want if they aren't written that way. Nothing is carved in stone. Jim -- Jim Heivilin, 884-3898, IAT Services, Systems and Applications Group, -- University of Missouri, mailto:banzai@missouri.edu *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: christopher gribbon [c.gribbon@dundee.ac.uk] Sent: Monday, August 23, 1999 11:18 AM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: RE: [BLUE PLANET] - character balance / 2nd ED. >Some of the most enjoyable role playing I've had has been when I've botched >a roll because my skill was 40 instead of 80 or 100. > >And even with a still of 80, some of the most interesting results have come >about from a botched roll. > >Peacekeeper Captain Peotr Kasprov was lying in the sand with a level four >wound to the leg. Enter the forensics expert who had a very high medicine >skill. Well, the dice were conspiring against me and he rolled a 97 on his >first aid roll. "Oops, while trying to patch him up you nicked his femoral >artery and the bleeding is a lot worse." > >So, the evil GM we had being who he was, he allowed the player another roll >to see if he could clamp the artery. This roll wasn't so bad ... it was >only a 95. Oops. So the Native Patrolman (those of you who've played >Natural Instinct know him, Teku) pushes the doctor aside and tries his first >aid roll (on a skill of 40). He manages to stabilize things but they get to >try out one of those cool medical toys, the Cerebral Cryo-Oxygenator (CCO). >They put it on and call for a sub-orbital shuttle for extraction. > >The end result was that I had amnesia. It's going to take me six months to >recover and while I have all my skills, I've lost all knowledge of who I was >or had been. Now that is a cool turn of events and could lead to some >really fun role playing. The reverse can also be true, of course - when someone who has virtually no chance at success manages to succeed. I ran the CoC campaign "Walker In The Wastes" once, and generated a party of 8 for a group of 4 players (so they would have spare characters around tocompensate for the typically high attrition rate of Cthulhu campaigns). On of the starting NPCs was an explorer called Sir Edward Babsterville. Sir Edward turned out to be superhuman. Naturally, he would succeed at all the roles the PCs failed; the players attributed this to his NPC status and refused to play him when they ran out of other characters who'd been there from the start. He even managed to succeed in a "Pilot Balloon" roll despite the fact he had no skill in it at all (due to the "01 always a success" optional rule) and saved thge entire party. By the end of the campaign, his Sanity had *increased* to 99 (unlike everyone else's), he had a "Pilot Balloon" score of over 20 (despite never having taken any lessons), and the party referred to him as "Sir Edward Man" and had his character sketch re-drawn with him in a super hero outfit. Christopher Gribbon Vision Research Laboratories Medical Sciences Institute University of Dundee Dundee DD1 5EH UK (01382) 344 229 ____________________________________________________________________ "A scientist is meant to be disinterested, pure; his ambition merely to descry the cement of the universe. He isn't meant to use it to start laying his own patio!" - WILL SELF, The Quantity Theory of Insanity *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Ankfix@aol.com Sent: Monday, August 23, 1999 11:56 AM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Access Denied Q In a message dated 8/23/99 3:55:03 AM Eastern Daylight Time, seahawk@visi.com writes: > Has Access Denied shipped to > stores in the US yet? I haven't seen it show up at a local game store > yet. If it has I guess I'll have to bug them to get one in for me. > My store has had it for a couple weeks, so I guess it's time for you to start bugging. :-) - Fixer *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Tun Kai Poh [t_poh@hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 23, 1999 8:42 PM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - character balance / 2nd ED. >* Must control myself * Must not write another note on character balance * > >* damn, failed! * Heh, neither could I, so I'll bat some of your ideas back across the table... >OK, here I go again, feel free to ignore my mad rantings anyone. Heheh... >Actually. I don't think of Blue Planet as an open character creation system. >FUDGEs subjective character creation system, that's open. Blue Planet, IMHO, >is not open, it's unbalanced (there's that word again). Blue Planet Right you are. BP isn't as open as Castle Falkenstein or Fuzion. Then again, it is more detailed. does not >_allow_ me (within the rules, of course, the GM can do as he sees fit, but >we are talking about the rules themselves) to make a Native Sellout that is >as "good" as a Native Warrior (yes, stats-wise, there are other aspects, but >I think we've discussed that). You aren't allowed to make more than a few >selections (Origin, Background, Education, Occupation, tada!) that will >influence your characters stats and thereby, the GM has to sidestep the >character creation system in order to create game balance. Yep. I think one problem is that although we get some cool _components_ to build a character, one of these components, the profession skill template, is very large, so the spread of skills (and the quantity) is nailed down here. This, combined with the fact that the only other major source of skill points comes from education, really limits the character generation process. Big components which provide fixed point quantities are inflexible. You can't have a character with huge amounts of skill points unless you take certain uber-professions like Covert Operative or GEO Shock Trooper, and criminal professions (especially Thug) are inherently inferior to law enforcement - it's like living in the Lensman universe! The education categories cause some problems, too. Right now it's not possible for a 50 year old character educated in the "school of hard knocks" to have more skill points than a 22-year-old college graduate - not without fiddling with the system, which requires GM assistance. Higher education does give more skills in real life, but since the number of education packages is in no way tied to character age (not even in the form of a weak recommendation) the abovementioned scenario happens quite often. My solution is usually to give the "school of hard knocks" character some Military and Vocational Training packages, which in a way are the ideal character generation components for this sort of thing. In fact, I've found that the vaguely defined Vocational Training education option is often vital for rounding out characters like the Thug, Journalist or Native Sell-Out, by giving them points in the skills that their templates don't allow them. I only wish the use of Vocational Training packages could have been given more attention in the chargen rules, since they serve as the best way to balance out character skills. >Hmm, I thought I was done with this discussion, but obviously I wasn't :) Neither was I, apparently. Kai Poh Malaysian Lagomorph _______________________________________________________________ Get Free Email and Do More On The Web. Visit http://www.msn.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Tun Kai Poh [t_poh@hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, August 23, 1999 8:49 PM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: RE: [BLUE PLANET] - character balance / 2nd ED. >Remember, we're all doing this to have fun. And when we play we make the >rules do what we want if they aren't written that way. Nothing is carved in >stone. Okay, yeah, it's possible to have fun with _any_ ruleset. I remember some high old times in my old D&D Basic Set games. But since, as you say, fiddling with the rules happens often enough, why not make it _easier_ for beginners to fiddle with the BP rules without having to guess? What I'm suggesting is, I dunno, some sort of guidelines, like: "characters should not have less than 100 or more than 200 skill points from Education for every 20 years of age without a really good excuse", and encouraging under-educated characters to have multiple Vocational Training packages to make up for it. These kinds of chargen suggestions are not fixed in stone either, but they provide a rough yardstick for beginning GMs to keep parties somewhat balanced. Kai Poh Malaysian Lagomorph _______________________________________________________________ Get Free Email and Do More On The Web. Visit http://www.msn.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message.