MW1e: Attack By Natives

The first edition MechWarrior RPG has a general weekly encounter table. You have a chance to be attacked by things, to receive reinforcements, and a number of other events, all being more or less likely depending on your current assignment.

There's no table to determine the players' current assignment, but you have to figure that most forces are in garrison, so the chances of getting some other kind of duty should correspond with the chance of an equivalent event happening to a garrison. If the Garrison Events column gives you a 3/36 chance of being attacked by natives, then I figure that's equivalent to a 3/36 chance of being assigned to Pacification Duty.

Now, whatever assignment you're on, if you roll the "attack by natives" event and get attacked while in your 'Mechs, you roll 2d6 (then modify the result depending on your assignment) to see what support they get. I wanted to know just how often the natives had 'Mech support.

I noticed something peculiar.

internet forums: be excellent to each other, and party on

I used to frequent a forum which had sometimes heavy-handed moderation. The rules there boil down to "don't be a dick." This axiom, known as "Wheaton's Law," was formulated by Mr. Wheaton for competitive environments where people all generally recognize (if not explicitly share) the same goals and social norms--things you simply can't assume to any degree of precision on an internet discussion board.

I think it's better to distill them into something adaptive and proactive:

Relax. Be friendly and helpful. Put each other at ease.

Pathfinder Character Sheet, Revised

The World of Darkness campaign died. The same group's been running a concurrent Pathfinder campaign, though, so they adopted me into that.

I made my own character sheet because I find the official one difficult to use.

Apparently I'm the only who uses an actual character sheet. One guy writes his out on loose leaf, another reads his from excel, and the rest are using tablet apps.

If or when I play a spellcaster, I'm going to print spells out (because I don't know what they do) on the back.


[March 20 Update:  fixed the "Flat-Footed" AC calculation, and made a number of other, smaller changes.]

[April 6 Non-Update: I realized about a week ago that "CMD" should include dodge and deflection bonuses. I'll fix that when I change characters in a few months. (Luckily I left enough room there to just pen them in for now.)]

my year in cinema

I've been meaning to watch Tucker & Dale vs Evil and Cabin in the Woods. I'm thinking it might be fun to try them back to back.

I don't remember which movies I had planned to see this year. Whichever they were, I'm sure they mostly weren't the ones I actually saw:

• Edge of Tomorrow (2014): SO MUCH FUN. (I didn't notice that the farmhouse was the one from Looper, but I did notice a curious lack of ballistic missiles.)
• Guardians of the Galaxy (2014): Watched this and this months before seeing the movie. From how it impressed my friends, I expected it to be more than it was. Still very fun. Animators obviously very proud of all those close-ups showing off Rocket's fur. The low aerial view of planet Xandar reminds me of a similar low aerial view (and similar ground view) used for Caprica in nuBSG, and the low aerial view of planet Morak reminds of a similar low aerial view of Crematoria, from Chronicles of Riddick. Speaking of which, Vin Diesel is once again cast as a man of few words and wooden expressions. Hey! I knew I recognized Nebula's actress! Didn't realize it was Amy Pond, though. Didn't realize the green Orion girl was Uhura, either.

Have a 'Mech: 1st Somerset Strikers LAM

On New Year's I saw that I have an awful lot of BattleTech notes sitting idle on my computer, and so I've decided to clean them out, fill them out, and post them. First up is an LAM.

It's 50 tons, moves 4/6/4 on the ground, 5/8 in space, has two ERLLs, a C3 Master, and fuel is a bit on the low side.

At 1136 words the fluff is right at the limit for TR:3025. I could probably shave a line or two off to fit. Were I writing it for a shorter, 550-750 word entry, I'd probably design a second LAM and split half the fluff out to the new design.

Sorry about the small font in this image, you can find the original HTML here. (When I was replying to comments there, I saw that the smaller font on the "reply to post" screen made my two columns line up miraculously well. I just had to take a screenshot.)

that gum you like is coming back in style

I was hoping that snowlessness would last into January, but I am enjoying how my windows frost over into translucence every day. Time to start wearing sunglasses outdoors again I guess. Wonder if wearing blue-mirrored sunglasses all the time deprives me of vital blue light.

Anyways! I had a ton of forced idle time to kill the last few months. Spent some of it watching TV shows:

• Doctor Who Season Finale (2014): Unsatisfying. It tugged all the heartstrings it was trying to tug, but filling two whole episodes with crazy plotless wish-fulfillment just grates my nerves. I'm glad the Christmas episode extended the two-parter into a three-parter in exactly the way I expected it to, and the Christmas episode is pretty good overall; but, in my eyes, it's not good enough to redeem the two episodes preceding it. 
• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D season finale (2014): Disappointed. Nice feint with the character death, but the end result is super formulaic. Not to mention the protagonist (who I hadn't previously viewed as a Mary Sue) gets spectacularly more Mary Sue-ish. Also a little bit irritated I couldn't see what happened to Flower Girl. 
• Farscape (1999-2003): Very good show. Y'know how most sci-fi shows have a single sci-fi gimmick per episode that they spend the episode exploring? Farscape puts two gimmicks into the background for each episode, develops the plot on top of that, and develops character relationships endemically to the plot. It also makes theme an undercurrent to the plot (in stark contrast to this season of Doctor Who, which does the opposite). My only complaint is that in the first season or two, it seems like the protagonist is never wrong, and he often outdoes other characters within their areas of expertise. (Fortunately they lampshade this later on.) Plus: Jim Henson's Creature Company.
• Once Upon a Time (season 3, 2013-2014): The Neverland season is sooo sloooow. I only got through it by watching at double speed. 
• Almost Human (2013-2014): Fun. Almost like a police procedural version of Blade Runner. My only complaint is that the Die Hard episode matched Die Hard too closely.
• The Americans (season 1, 2013): Felicity as a 1980's soviet spy/family drama. I enjoyed it, and am very glad it's getting a third season.

Summertime Space Travel

Earlier this year I figured out the rules ye olde DropShips and JumpShips used to construct JumpShips. It's pretty similar to what Chris Hartford(?) devised for BattleSpace.



The common assumption is that Chris couldn't find any rhyme or reason to the earlier stats. But JumpShips were pretty easy to figure out, so I think it's equally likely that he found the system and decided to change it.

DropShips are harder. (One confounding factor is that transit thrust seems to be independent of combat thrust.) I took a break from working them out to do some astrography; unfortunately, that was interrupted, and all such endeavors remain disrupted for me through the present. I hope to resume normal activity in a few weeks.

Notes about DS&JS:

• Bridge mass of the Scout, Invader and Star Lord round up to nearest whole ton. (The Star Lord entry accidentally copied its bridge mass from the Invader's entry.)
• The Scout's Bridge was calculated for a 79,000 ton ship, its engine for an 80,400 ton ship. [Edit: alternatively, its engine is a typo (1930 tons for 1920 tons) for an 80,000 ton ship.]
• The Merchant's KF mass was given as 11,000 tons instead of 110,000 tons. (A zero was left off the end.) 
• The Invader was listed as 152,000 tons but its bridge and engine were calculated for 153,000 tons.
• The Star Lord was listed as 274,000 tons but its bridge and engine were calculated for 275,000 tons.
• The Monolith was given as 380,000 tons but its bridge and engine were calculated for 370,000 tons.

Edit: and apparently the spreadsheet inset, which looks fine on my browser, looks ridiculous on others.