I was walking along one of the roads in central Skyrim and happened upon this.

--G.
no sign of the merchant or the parties responsible for the spill
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

They're clearly running after the giant CabbageTone harpsichord that nearly ran over a girl in the road.

------
Authors of our fates
Orchestrate our fall from grace
Poorest players on the stage
Our defiance drives us straight to the edge

Serana. Babe. I love you. You're perfect.

But I am trying to play as a ninja this run, and so help me Arkay, if you ruin one more stealth approach I've just spend the last five minutes setting up by charging in front of me just as I'm about to fire, alerting all the bandits, and taking my own first shot in the back while you're at it, I am going to fus ro dah your ass halfway back to Coldharbour. Talos wept, woman.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

(that was meant to be a reply to the OG post, of course. good job, Ben, how many years have you been using this dumb software?)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

...

*Sighs.* Fine, I'll do it.

"MY CABBAGES!"

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

I was thinking of posting "And for years after, the Dragonborn would swear that he could hear the distant cry of 'MY CABBAGES!' any time he thought of that strange encounter."

>Was also reminded, when I reached the end of the main quest yesterday,
>of how satisfying it is to just walk up to Mankar Camoran and shank
>him before he even finishes his patronizing little speech. "And so
>you come to me at LAAARGH" dead. "Oh, I'm sorry," (wipe blood off
>sword) "you were saying?" There's a moment like that in the Mages'
>College storyline in Skyrim too, when the Thalmor guy starts a
>speech but the game doesn't compel you to hear him out - probably both
>unintentional on the designers' part, but just richly satisfying. :)

I'm currently playing with a mod that adds very early firearms to the game, and let me tell you, this moment is even more satisfying when you can blast him in the face with a fucking hand-gonne. (The mod calls them arquebuses, but the models look much more like gonnes, albeit with an odd firing mechanism adapted from the cocking lever of the Dawnguard crossbows, so that they can share the same player animations.)

For even more fun value, the one I used in that scene was one of the unique variants, Dov, which adds some fire damage and emits an even bigger fireball than the standard ones. "So you made it out of there alive. I'm afraid I'll have to take—" BLAMMO

You'll take a quarter-pound* of lead** to the cranium is what you'll take, buddy boy.

I admit, from the moment I saw that mod in the available list, I knew it was going to make that specific scene exactly as satisfying as it did, in fact, make that specific scene.

--G.
* at a guess; the model's bore looks to be about an inch, which would be 4-bore under the old system
** OK, the ammo is crafted from iron, because lead doesn't exist in the game, but, I mean...
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Way back in 2007 I wrote:

As Thag approached, Camoran stood. "I have waited a long time for you, Champion of Old Tamriel. You are the last gasp of a dying age. You breathe the stale air of false hope. How little you--"

Thag had heard enough. Ever since he arrived in this strange realm, where the dead were reborn only to die again (and rise again, like daedra), he'd had to listen to this fool's blather. The sound of Camoran's voice had come from the air, gloating and speaking of things that meant nothing to the orc. Now Thag was here, armed and angry, right in front of him... and rather than preparing for battle or striking Thag down with the power he claimed to have, the elf was still talking.

For that alone, he deserved to die.

>the elf was still talking.

"I'd give real money if he'd shut up."
—Leonard H. McCoy, MD

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I'm trying to comprehend the energy transfer from a quarter-pound of metal hitting somebody, even at a relatively low velocity. I know it wouldn't actually do so, but I'm imagining it sending the target flying in an utterly cartoonish fashion.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

>I'm trying to comprehend the energy transfer from a quarter-pound of
>metal hitting somebody, even at a relatively low velocity. I know it
>wouldn't actually do so, but I'm imagining it sending the target
>flying in an utterly cartoonish fashion.

It would indeed not, IRL. A man shot with such a gun would certainly fall down, but he'd do it because he was dead with a humongous hole in him, not because the impact of the bullet knocked him over. Kentucky Ballistics has a series of videos in which a 4-bore rifle is applied to, e.g., semi-realistic ballistic dummies, and boy howdy. It's hilarious to see what that thing does to them, and then immediately sobering when you remember that they're designed to demonstrate what it would do to a person.

That said, it sure as heck does send them flying in Skyrim. I think the game uses the crossbow animations for both firer and target, but the arquebus weapons are somehow coded to impart way more knockback than regular crossbows in the process. This is especially satisfying when the cinematic "kill cam" procs and you get to watch the bandit tumble end over end over end in loving slow motion while your character nonchalantly reloads the gonne.

--G.
ragdoll, livin' in a movie
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Kentucky Ballistics has
>a series of videos in which a 4-bore rifle is applied to, e.g.,
>semi-realistic ballistic dummies, and boy howdy. It's hilarious to
>see what that thing does to them, and then immediately sobering when
>you remember that they're designed to demonstrate what it would do to
>a person.

Yeah. Both impressive and horrifying. Though if I'm cross-referencing correctly, the 4-bore is a "stopping rifle", where the entity to be stopped is like an angry hippopotamus, in the timeframe of "now, if not sooner", so I'm not surprised it would do horrible things to a body weighing about 1/10th of the intended target.

>That said, it sure as heck does send them flying in
>Skyrim. I think the game uses the crossbow animations for both
>firer and target, but the arquebus weapons are somehow coded to impart
>way more knockback than regular crossbows in the process. This
>is especially satisfying when the cinematic "kill cam" procs and you
>get to watch the bandit tumble end over end over end in loving slow
>motion while your character nonchalantly reloads the gonne.

I could see the WDF making a round using Overtechnology to do specifically this; call it "The Defenstrator" or something, and it isn't supposed to kill the target (it's more for targets that aren't really killable, at least with a reasonably man-portable arsenal), but instead launch it far enough away that it goes from an "immediate" problem to an "after teatime" problem.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

I'm kinda thinking of Milly's giant cross baton rounds in the original Trigun show. Taking all that mass and velocity and spreading it out enough that it doesn't merely punch through, but push.

>
>I could see the WDF making a round using Overtechnology to do
>specifically this; call it "The Defenstrator" or something
>

I just imagined something about the size of a photon torpedo or concussion missile that has the standard propulsion system and a one-shot warp core. It latches on to the target and takes it for a ride at warp 7 or so. It wouldn't buy hours of time, but a few minutes might make all the difference.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

Propelling a target with an effectively point source warp core is probably going to do a lot of damage to it anyway. The astrodynamics would be terrible.

>I could see the WDF making a round using Overtechnology to do
>specifically this; call it "The Defenstrator" or something, and it
>isn't supposed to kill the target (it's more for targets that
>aren't really killable, at least with a reasonably man-portable
>arsenal), but instead launch it far enough away that it goes from an
>"immediate" problem to an "after teatime" problem.

Way back when I was in high school and running a Heroes Unlimited game that included the more compatible Palladium games I had a player who ended up with something like that.

One of the books were were using was the pre-revision Ninjas and Superspies, which modified the HU "Ancient Master" character type. Mainly by giving you three of the more detailed martial arts at elevated levels. Well, one of my players managed to find a mix that gave his character a push attack that would throw someone back one foot per point of Chi. Typically that wouldn't be so bad, perhaps 20' at first level. Well, he optimized his martial arts picks to get a whole bunch of doublings and triplings of his Chi... he started with just over 5000 with doublings happening with his first two level ups.

So you had a starting character who could walk up to someone and say "goodbye" as he sent them flying a mile away. (No damage, but the game was set in Toronto so it wasn't strange to be within range of Lake Ontario.)

>Well, one of my players managed to find a mix that
>gave his character a push attack that would throw someone back one
>foot per point of Chi. Typically that wouldn't be so bad, perhaps 20'
>at first level. Well, he optimized his martial arts picks to get a
>whole bunch of doublings and triplings of his Chi... he started with
>just over 5000 with doublings happening with his first two level ups.
>
>So you had a starting character who could walk up to someone and say
>"goodbye" as he sent them flying a mile away.

I have a soft spot for first-edition Ninjas & Superspies, since it was one of the games my little gang played in high school, but it is absolutely Perfectly Balanced With No Exploits™. :)

Also, this reminds me of the time Derek was playing in a superhero game (I can't remember which one at this remove in time; probably either Champions or Villains & Vigilantes) and discovered that you could add optional knockback to any psionic power. Any psionic power, including one called "Ego Attack", which was basically just insulting someone hard enough to cause damage.

The resulting mental image was of his character sending a villain flying by scowling at him and yelling, "You suck!"

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Probably Champions, adding "Does Knockback" to an Ego Attack is literally an example in at least the 5th edition Hero System rulebook.

As a rule of thumb, if you can describe something you can build it in Hero System. That's why there's the old joke of the first step in character creation being to put the rulebook away.

(Oh: An insult so harsh it actually hurts would be Ego Attack, Incantations (-¼), Visible (-¼), other advantages/limitations to taste.)

"I cast vicious mockery, nat 20, let's go."

>I have a soft spot for first-edition Ninjas & Superspies, since
>it was one of the games my little gang played in high school, but it
>is absolutely Perfectly Balanced With No Exploits™. :)

Speaking of "soft-spot" games which have silly exploits, you have Deadlands: Hell on Earth, which is best described as a "Post-Apocalyptic Spaghetti Western"- think Fallout, but with 80s/90s pulp instead of 50s-ness, and actual demons.

In this case, Deadlands has the Boiled Leather Duster, which is the best armor in the game. Forget your flak vests, drop that infantry battlearmor, get you a boiled leather duster and watch your enemies despair. This is because Heavy Armor reduces damage dice to the next smaller dice per level (equivalent to -1 damage per dice), but Light Armor takes a straight amount off the damage total (-4 for a duster). So a weapon with 4 dice of damage (7.62mm weapons in Hell on Earth) is affected just as much by a flak jacket as a boiled leather duster.

But wait, it gets worse(better?)! Many large-caliber bullets have Armor Piercing, which negates 1 level of Heavy Armor per point of AP. However, not only does AP not negate Light Armor, Light Armor causes weapons with AP to drop 1 dice of damage as the bullet didn't hit anything hard enough to make it expand or tumble.

Thus, the end result is, if you're wearing a flak jacket ($500 to buy if you can find one) and somebody unloads an AK-47 into you, you take 4d8 damage, but if you're wearing a boiled leather duster ($100, or free in specially-marked cows if you have the Tanning skill), you take 3d8-4 damage.

I could blather on about Deadlands all day, both good and bad things, but that would require an audience interested in obscure, complicated, and mildly problematic RPGs from the turn of the century.

Also, I'll let Nerissa sum up how it feels to be able to say "turn of the century" when referring to the 2000s.
"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

This reminds me of a time our local powergamer decided to pull out RIFTS and declare a "no holds barred" game- he was going to GM a game so hardcore we'd have to break the game to survive. We were limited to drawing from 2 books.

Alright, fine, let's see what we've got here. First thing I found was a Samurai who could strike for an insane value of like 6d6x10 MDC by spending a Power Point of some sort. But the only way to get this Power Point was through intense meditation and it was assumed you'd only ever have one of these Points, and then only rarely. So then it was just a matter of flipping through the other books to see who also generated the same kind of Power Points. Turns out the Atlanteans do, and they get, iirc 3 a day or so.

To sum up, our powergamer ran a solo "intro" for each of us, to demonstrate how screwed we were and explain how we all ended up in the same prison to form the party. Instead, I snuck up to the assault APC he sent to fetch me and cut it in half so hard it exploded, taking out the troops inside and then just . . . walked away.

disclaimer: this game was literally 20 years ago and I haven't played with RIFTS since, so I apologize if I have some of the particulars wrong
"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

Fus...RO DAH!

I once saw a hilarious vid on YT years ago where someone was playing Skyrim and accidentally stood in front of one of the monks on Greybeard Mountain. He got blown completely off the mountain and was falling for -minutes-.

------
Authors of our fates
Orchestrate our fall from grace
Poorest players on the stage
Our defiance drives us straight to the edge

I just played the last mission in the Dawnguard DLC, where you do battle with Serana's father, the ancient vampire lord. I remember this fight as being a major pain in the ass because of all the cheapass tricks Harkon has to prolong it.

My present character has gotten so good at archery that I shot him once (with a vanilla crossbow, not even an arquebus) the moment I finished loading into the cell...

... and did so much damage that, as soon as he finished all the scripted dialogue and moves he does at the beginning of the fight, he immediately disintegrated. He was a dead(er than he already was) man walking throughout that entire pseudocutscene. Epic.

--G.
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Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

My current character is an Argonian, and this has given me the perspective to notice that the writers of a fair bit of the dialogue in the game could not keep consistent track of the fact that the player character might not be human. In fact, if you go by the playable races available and set aside possible bias in player selection, any given player character is only 40 percent likely to be human, since of the 10 playable races in the vanilla game, only four of them are human. (Or three and a half, if you buy into the lore that Bretons are so good at magic because half of their ancient ancestors were elves.)

I choose to believe that Caratacus the Younger just gives people his blankest look when they say things that tag him as human, such as when Serana notes that she could turn him into a vampire to get him into the Soul Cairn, but she doesn't expect he wants to abandon his humanity for the sake of the mission. Or in response to any of the various hints scattered around the game as to the prospects of romance and/or availability of sexy times. He's a bipedal crocodile. He's probably read somewhere that humans and elves mate recreationally, but it would no more occur to him to do that than it would occur to a human to sleep underwater.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

> He's probably read somewhere that humans and elves mate recreationally,
> but it would no more occur to him to do that than it would occur to a
> human to sleep underwater.

And in both cases, I'm sure each would think that doing so would do the other a great bit of good.

As for the wording, I think it's just a lack of the English(all?) language (and maybe a little bit of writers skill) that there's no easy way to convey the concept of 'humanity'.

I created my one and only Skyrim character as an Argonian, but in my mind she was actually a very lost and confused basilisk from Tamora Pierce's Tortall setting; they are explicitly kin to that setting's dragons.

And mine was a weeb Akaviri samurai, descendant of the Nerevarine (who, as you might recall, was last seen heading in that direction), returned to her ancestor's homeland to sort out this whole dragon problem and also the Blades. Alas, once she'd done all of that, she was - in a rhyming echo of her distant ancestor's fate - poisoned by her "allies" who'd discovered that having an actual living Dragonborn around, with stubborn opinions of her own, was much more inconvenient than a heroic legend.

I like to think that by becoming thane of all the holds and buying/furnishing all the available homes, most of which I then hardly ever visit, I am providing housing for several worthy housecarls who would otherwise be sleeping on the floor of the Jarl's palace. I am the Robin Masters of Skyrim, and they are my Thomas Magnums.

(And on the three properties where you can hire a steward, I even have a Higgins as well. :)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.