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Post by avarius on Feb 16, 2007 18:01:28 GMT
I think I know what you mean by different "races". It's reasonable to assume that each tribe would adapt in accordance with their environment , e.g cave dwellers might develop nocturnal vision, nomadic tribesmen would perhaps be more resilient to the climate and have a greater affinity with animals, etc.
So even discounting religious factors, there is potential for a highly eclectic roster of character class, with which to start your adventure.
It's also worth bearing in mind that one of the main skills of a competent shaman was to manipulate information or events into religious propaganda, with which they could serve the tribes best interests.
Anyway, I won't keep pestering for more info, but if you do manage to get it (or them, depending on whether or not there are multiple volumes) completed, I'm sure everyone on this site would be very interested in reading the finished article.
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Post by Doomy on Feb 16, 2007 20:05:34 GMT
It's also worth bearing in mind that one of the main skills of a competent shaman was to manipulate information or events into religious propaganda, with which they could serve the tribes best interests. Or their own.
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Post by insomniac on Feb 17, 2007 6:10:09 GMT
That's not what I meant. I literally meant different species of hominids (human beings are a type of hominid). These species actually existed, though today, in the real world, humans are the only surviving species of hominid.
All players will be members of our species, Homo Sapiens Sapiens. (Furthermore, they will all be members of the same tribe, the Dwahari). However, other hominid species will be part of the plot.
You will be happy to know that one of the Shaman skills is Empathic Mastery, which is partially described as follows: "Those who possess this skill have mastered the ability to read emotions from body language, tone of voice, and facial expressions, as well as the ability to manipulate people based on their emotions."
Thanks!
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Post by avarius on Feb 19, 2007 23:05:00 GMT
It's funny, but this thread has made me cast my mind back to the early nineties. Two role playing games were released by MB games to entice a more casual audience. Space Crusade and Heroquest.
Perhaps to an aficionado of RPG's, these games may have been perceived as being a trifle simplistic and maybe even a little puerile but I've lost count of the number of evenings that were surrendered to mammoth Heroquest sessions. Quite often, we'd expand the parameters of our questing far beyond the limitations posed by the board and the rulebook, venturing through forests, mountains and sometimes even the ocean.
The point I'm making is that some of those quests could have easily been transposed into gamebook format ( hell, one or two of them were good enough to become novels). I was wondering if anyone here knows whether roleplaying game has ever been used before, to lay the foundation of a GB?
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Post by outspaced on Feb 19, 2007 23:29:42 GMT
There were three HeroQuest gamebooks ( details) by Dave Morris. I'm currently engaged in an ongoing HQ campaign since a friend of mine bought all the (UK) expansions as well as the Dark Company box. I'm 9/10 of the way through Kellar's Keep, and I know there's nasty stuff ahead (Ogre Horde, Wizards of Morcar). TSR made their own HQ knockoff called DragonStrike. It was a fatally flawed game in that the eponymous overgrown lizard came out far too early in each mission, and was too tough. If you alter the # of turns stated by a factor of 1.5, 1.75, or 2 (depending on the mission), the game was alright. What is nice about it, and an improvement over HQ, is a greater selection of spells and treasure cards, and four different full-sized boards (city, plains, dungeon, castle). Just a shame it's impossible without drastically altering the uber-hard gameplay.
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Post by Doomy on Feb 20, 2007 9:58:16 GMT
I was playing around with one of the computer adaptations of Heroquest last week and noticed that it doesn't allow characters to heal between missions. That Barbarian isn't as mighty when he starts with 1 Body Point. Surely this isn't how the rules have it?
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Post by outspaced on Feb 20, 2007 10:23:02 GMT
AFAIK you're supposed to heal between missions. The Gremlin computer adaptation of the game is woefully shambolic. And I'm being kind. There is a free fan-game being written, and it looks great (it looks exactly like the game board) with 3D isometric sprites, but there's currently no link to it, so I can't easily help. :-\ Take a look at the post from Feb 18 at the bottom of this forum thread. The links to the latest version of that game are usually in Pst #1 of the first page of theat thread, so you might want to bookmark that for when it's available once again.
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Post by Doomy on Feb 20, 2007 11:14:04 GMT
I have to agree that the Gremlin version of HQ is a mess. I persevered bravely for a while, but ultimately gave up playing it because of that problem with healing, as well as some other issues (all that isometric line-of-sight stuff really doesn't work). Gremlin's take on Space Crusade is superior.
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Post by beowuuf on Feb 20, 2007 19:19:10 GMT
The Gremlin computer adaptation of the game is woefully shambolic. Space Crusade had a similar little quirk, in that you could never, ever roll a natural 2 2 using the white hit dice. Apparently they thought a 1 in 36 chance was @ 0
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Post by Doomy on Feb 20, 2007 19:48:05 GMT
Space Crusade had a similar little quirk, in that you could never, ever roll a natural 2 2 using the white hit dice. Apparently they thought a 1 in 36 chance was @ 0 I didn't know that. Is it true of all versions?
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Post by beowuuf on Feb 20, 2007 23:23:54 GMT
Well, the version I had which my friends and I played to death so many, many, many rolls! It was the amiga version, and it was annoying, since you knew from the board game your bolter guys has a slim chance against some of the nastier critters, while in the computer game they were just fodder!
Do not recall if the mission:dreadnought engine was updated or not, we didn't play as much with that one. I have a feeling it still had the quirk.
It was odd how, after being so faithful to the firts game, the second game ignored the expansion set and had its own weapons and new creatures
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Post by Doomy on Feb 21, 2007 10:05:08 GMT
Of course it also makes a commander with a force field invulnerable to about half the ranged attacks in the game, so it works both ways.
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Post by beowuuf on Feb 21, 2007 19:19:15 GMT
Lol, yes, this si true - then again, those aliens pretty much last two seconds anyway unless thye swarm you!
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Post by Gazguz on Oct 18, 2008 8:51:22 GMT
Hydroshock bullets are made up of tiny pellets like those in a shotgun load suspended in a plastic matrix. On impact the plastic shatters and the pellets spread and cause damage while removing any risk of overpenetration so that the bullet doesn't go through the target, through the wall behind them and then kill someone in the next room like a full metal jacket round might.
Entered service in 1916 and used a very mild Japanese rifle round... the 6.5 x 50mm cartridge. From the Avtomats barrel its 120 grain projectile travels at about 670m/s which makes it less powerful than the 7.62 x 39mm AK-47 bullet.
Make ammo rare and expensive and give the weapons 3 shot magazines or something.
My mistake... a keyhole is where the bullet is not properly stabilised by the weapon it is fired from so it is either under stabilised or over stabilised and therefore yaws in flight so that when it hits the target it hits it on an angle instead of squarely point forward. I was thinking of a cloverleaf... ie when bullet holes are so close together that the holes they make overlap and form a cloverleaf shape on the target.
Could call them full metal jacketed and soft nose. Usually the only ammo I come across that actually has a hollow point is .22lr or pistol ammo. High velocity ammo has a rounded tip of soft lead which is basically the exposed core of the bullet sticking out of the jacket.
Or you could name them the way the military names them... anti personel and armour piercing.
The problem isn't balancing... if everyone has the same access to weapons then the problem is survival isn't it?
Having soft nose or hollow tip ammo greatly decreases penetration, and not just of armour.
The problem would be a limit on how much ammo could be carried on a mission. Also what happens in some missions where you lose all your gear... ie tossed into the sea during a storm etc. Besides I think those crafty chaps who live in Bor might come up with something similar once they had clapped eyes on what you had and after seeing it work a few times.
Magic that stops enemy arrows should also stop bullets for the same reasons.
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