Neko Miyako

   Well, first up for today its another horrible character for Legend of the Five Rings - Neko Miyako, a high-ranking Cat Clan Samurai. Given that - over the last 50+ sessions - the characters have built up a tremendous experience point total and an awful lot of acquired advantages, Neko’s point total is quite impressive. Like many of the other characters, Miyako is pretty focused. In her case, it’s simply on skills: what she’s good at, she’s quite impressively good at.

Sessions 31 and 32: Ride the Whirlwind

   First up was the Mayor. Sadly, with an already-overwhelming project load, no one was really willing to listen to the Mayor’s complaints about “Satan” - even if he was starting his own advertising campaigns - with slogans “Come to New York, Annex of Hell!”, bumper stickers “I (Satanic Heart) New York”, and even billboards “Come and visit New York, Satan’s home away from home!”. New York didn’t need this. Unfortunately…

   The Chauffeur was busily involved with setting up a foundation for the rescue, advancement, and legal protection of lycanthropes - a project that

The Faerie Rade

   Well the Champions game will be starting up about 7:30 at the University of Tennessee library, as usual. Despite the ongoing interludes - with parents, alien mercenaries, dragons, junior heroes, and werewolves - things will be moving into some larger-scale complications.  Hopefully I’ll be able to update the campaign log late tonight or early tomorrow morning.

Battletech Level Four: Aerospace Fighters

   Well, for today I’ve finally gotten the next chapter of the Level Four Battletech Rules - Sample Aerospace Fighters and an assortment of rules on Munitions and Bombing - converted into something that will display (more or less) properly in current browsers. Only one or two more chapters to go, depending on whether or not I decide to combine the tables and notes.

Federation-Apocalypse Implements of Destruction

   This list provides some benchmarks for various classical weapons. Its worth noting that - in the Federation-Apocalypse setting - simple inanimate objects are treated differently from living creatures and active constructs, such as vehicles. There are detailed systems for the important stuff. The landscape and scenery can be dealt with far more simply without any real loss to the game.

   Secondarily, most of these benchmarks are for classical, 20′th to 21’st century gear. Modern Core equipment may be considerably more effective than the classical stuff, up to the limits of what’s physically possible - or at least up to the limits of what isn’t suicidal to use as a personal weapon.

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Classical Stuff:

• 1d6: Molotov Cocktail, Light Pistol, Arrow, Mace.
• 2d6 (1d10, 1d12): Dynamite Stick, Incendiary Grenade, Machine or Heavy Pistol.
• 3d6 (2d8, 2d10, 1d20): Modern MiniGrenade, Superheavy Pistol, Shotgun, Assault Rifle, Hunting Rifle, Medium Machine Gun, Flamethrower.
• 4d6 (3d8, 2d10, 2d12): Modern Military Grenade, Sniper Rifle, Elephant Gun, Heavy Machine Gun, Vehicle Flamethrower, Minigun, Plastic Explosives. Attacks at this power level have a roughly 50-50 chance of instantly killing normal people and will almost certainly leave them dying even if they survive the initial attack. They’ll also blow out light interior walls and doors without a problem.
• 5d6 (4d8, 3d10, 2d12): Vehicle-Mounted Rotary Autocannon, Recoilless Rifle, Demolitions Charge.
• 6d6 (5d8, 4d10, 3d12): Rail Gun, Photon Grenade, Bazooka, Light Artillery, Satchel Charge. Attacks at this level will blow up cottages, demolish light stone walls, and smash the trunks of sizable trees.
• 8d6 (6d8, 5d10, 4d12): Heavy Artillery, Light Shaped-Charge Anti-tank Weapons, Anti-Vehicle Mine. Attacks at this level will almost certainly kill normal human beings and may well leave few identifiable bits. They’ll also blow holes in stone or concrete walls and blast open ordinary safes.
• 10d6 (8d8, 6d10, 5d12, 3d20, 35 Points): WWII Battleship Gun, Superheavy Artillery, Direct Hit from a Shaped-Charge Antitank Weapon, Blockbuster Bomb, (assorted) Vehicle Energy Weapons, Antimatter Radiator (Especially destructive to Electronics), Rail Cannon. Attacks like this can usually be counted on to destroy modest heavy-construction buildings or medium-sized light-construction strutures and will make substiantial craters.
• 15d6 (12d8, 10d10, 8d12, 5d20, 50 Points): Cruise Missile, Singularity Grenade, Fusion Cannon, Core Missile Launcher (Shaped Microfusion Warhead), Antimatter Beamer. Attacks at this level normally destroy sizable buildings and inflict considerable damage to the area.

   Many of the 15d6-category weapons affect sizable areas, albeit usually at lesser levels of effect. While the total energy involved continues to increase beyond this point, it can no longer be effectively directed against individual targets - regardless of the weapons system in use - hence most of the energy released by the 20d6+ effects goes into affecting larger and larger areas. Magic and Psionic effects may bypass this limitation: they don’t have to obey the usual laws of physics, hence they can cause immense amounts of damage to relatively limited areas.

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The Heavy Stuff:

• 20d6 (16d8, 13d10, 11d12, 7d20, 70 Points): Neutron Bomb, Tacnuke, Heavy Microfusion Warhead, Antimatter Needler (yes, that’s a Core hand weapon). Attacks at this level will usually cause severe damage within a radius measured in hundreds of feet.
• 25d6 (85 Points): Fission Bomb, Meteor Swarm spell, Singularity Cannon. This sort of thing inflicts massive damage to small cities and causes huge numbers of casualties in populated areas.
• 30d6 (100 Points): Fusion Bomb, Relativistic Slivergun. Reduces major cities to rubble.
• 35d6 (125 Points): Antimatter or Total Conversion Bomb, Cometary or Asteroid Strike. Attacks of this kind wreck areas hundreds of miles across.
• 40d6 (140 Points): Stellar Flare, Planetary Collision, Anime Super Energy Cannons. This sort of thing can be expected to destroy continents or planets.
• 45d6 (160 Points): Nova, Brane Collision, Death Star blast. May cause severe damage to nearby planets and usually destroys any planet it hits directly.
• 50d6 (175 Points): Supernova, Neutron Star Collision. Sufficient damage to destroy a star, often inflicts notable damage to nearby solar systems.
• 55d6 (190 Points): Gamma-Ray Burster, Seyfert Flare. This sort of thing destroys small star clusters and inflicts massive damage to substantial portions of the local galaxy.
• 60d6 (210 Points. Usually considered automatic death by massive damage): Struck by Cosmic String or Domain Boundary, Big Bang. Pretty much destroys everything it touches.

Battletech Level Four

   Well, once again the old files are being uncooperative: I still have two major chapters left - the aerospace chapter and the equipment tables - and both are being pretty difficult to convert. Still, hopefully they’ll be up tomorrow.

FA: Sessions 12-13 Log

   Back in the New Imperium, Kevin finally found time to make his pitch (after taking some fairly extensive precautions against is being spied on by the house: if they wanted to know, they could either await him going commercial or bloody well ask). There were sixteen kids from Baelaria (who saw it as a chance to

Political Maneuvering

   Well, tonights Legend of the Five Rings game - and the next few sessions - looks likely to be devoted to the beginning of a Rokugan-wide reorganization, as various plots come to fruition, promises and favors are called in, and the clans begin choosing sides. The list of major figures has just gotten far too long to handle as a lump: I’m going to be filling out a print version as we go and posting it up here as time permits.

Ninsei’s Secret Diaries

   Well, once again its time for an installment of Ninsei’s private musings. While the “diaries” have no real existence in the game world, the various players in the Legend of the Five Rings game are invited to comment: this sort of thing is an excellent way to explore the characters a bit more. As a work in progress, this segment will once again be relegated to its own page for easy editing.

Xaliotl: The d20 Version

   For today, we have the original d20 version of Xaliotl the Fire Mage. Xaliotl was written up for the Atheria campaign, and was one of the most specialized characters in the game - relying on a single (albeit powerful) healing spell and blasting things into ashes as solutions to every conceivable problem, up to - and possibly including - what to have for dinner in the evening. This may not have been ideal - in fact, his background quite strongly implied a near-complete inability to function in any situation other than a raging battle - but in a party of adventurers he more or less found his niche. Of course, they were still careful to keep him away from anything except the fight scenes.

Xaliotl, the Champions Version

   For today, and continuing with the alternate d20 and Champions versions of characters, we have the Champions version of Xaliotl - a powerful fire mage who’s been ported over to Champions as a young Celestial Dragon. There really isn’t any terribly good reason for that, but the player kind of thought that he fit in as well and - since the original d20 character was pretty specialized - there were enough points left over to get the basic Celestial Dragon template, so why not?

Going Ballistic

   For today we have another of Clint Walkers old Champions characters - Ballistic, or Cassandra Lane. Apparently he got the his inspiration on her out of an actual comic book, albeit one I’m not personally familiar with. Ballistic only played a modest role in the campaign initially, but her assorted arsenals, created by the same psychic talents which created her various “hunteds” (giving “driven by personal demons” a whole new meaning), continued to play a role until very recently: they meant that anyone in the Mansion/Base/Orphanage could readily find some powerful military-scale weapons whenever they went looking for them.

The Darkmage

   For today, I’m putting up the character sheet for the Darkmage, from the Old Mandate. Like most characters built around sizable power pools, his design is deceptively simple. Still, over the course of his adventures, and his thousand-year struggle against the corrupting power of Tyrannon, the Darkmage defeated numerous enemies, sealed dozens of powerful mystic nexi away from Tyrannon, helped contain the elder malevolence of the Wyrm Crown, defeated the Seven Horsemen of the Apocalypse, accidentally unleashed the power of the primordial darkness across the solar system. temporarily became female to give birth to a daughter by Oberon, lord of Faerie, was overwhelmed by Tyrannon’s ever-growing strength, and finally reawakened to voluntarily give up his immortality, sacrificing himself to seal the gateway which Tyrannon had turned his body into. I’m putting up his original character sheet both for the players who continue to adventure in the campaign the Darkmage helped shape and in memory of his player, Clint Thomas Walker, 1980-2008.

Comparitive Kristianity Part II

   Well, despite delays, the original d20 version of Kristin is now up for comparison with the Champions version. Since this is the original, it also includes some of her history and background, unlike the Champions version.  

Comparative Kristianity

   For today and tomorrow, I’ll be posting two versions of Kristin Stanwell - a favorite character of one of the usual players - in both the d20 version (using the rules from Eclipse: The Codex Persona) and the Champions version.  Why? Because (1) the player likes both, (2) its interesting to compare the two, and (3) I couldn’t resist the dreadful pun in the title once it occured to me.

Local Characters

   Sorry, too many of the local players are wanting assistance with their character designs to put anything up here today.

Flight of the Raven

   First up for today, we have a selection of Raven’s friends, allies, and enemies from an assortment of campaigns.

   For announcements, the Champions game will be tomorrow evening - starting about 7:30 - in the University of Tennessee library as usual. Given that most of the current legal plotlines have concluded, its back to villainousorganizations, supernatural menaces, the collection of evil artifacts left over from the Darkwar, liaisons, upset parents, rival demigodlings, and similar problems, along with the occasional Junior Superhero adventures, since Yuki has begun taking the children out in small groups for “heroing practice”.

Session 30: Trials and Tentacles and Bears, Oh My

   So: straight from the Chinese Hells to Vasilkos trial at last. Very little of the evidence - such as it was - was in dispute. Vasilko had transformed three

General Chaos

   Due to a bit of chaos in real life, there won’t be any major updates for today. We did get a nice review of Eclipse: The Codex Persona over on the Lulu site. With any luck, there will be more than that tomorrow.

Federation-Apocalypse: Sessions 10-11 Campaign Logs

   While the Tomb Guardian was willing to wait while everyone discussed their options (causing Kevin to assume he must be out of a video game, and used to being paused while the players talked), he wasn’t about to allow even non-destructive surveys, much less poking around looking for relics - and the mask he was wearing was what Shayn was after anyway. There was a bit