Dear Marge...

[hattra]

Forgot one thing - get a written valuation on the property now, so you can work out what percentage of the house she now owns - that way there's no arguing in the future over what her 20k is worth. Keep it to yourself, but file away for future use. That way you've got the two figures - 20k as a percentage of the mortgage, and 20k as a percentage of the value of the property - use whichever is of greatest advantage to you.

[Lucifer Box]

Good advice, Hattra - thanks. Will certainly do that.

Saw the sister-in-law this afternoon and I think I managed to snap her out of her "oh the poor man hasn't got much money and I feel mean asking for my stuff back" attitude. She has agreed to tell him on Monday that he has until the end of July to stump up the readies. Remains to be seen if she'll go through with it, but she has a clearer idea now of where she stands.

[Board Game Geek]

Traveller ?

OMG...now that was a seriously nerdy game. Even the traditional Dungeons & Dragons geeks paled in to insignificance compared to the Traveller players.

For a start, they wore ripped and holed Grateful Dead t-shirts, and had trainers that had fallen to bits and toes were beginning to poke out of them. They also smelt and had long, shoulder-length hair, and liked "prog rock" bands like "Rush" and "IQ". Some even liked that really pretentious band called Marillion.

The Traveller players were on a different planet (ironicially). They all had PHD's in Astro-Bio-Mollecular Physics, and made Stephen Hawkings look like an intellectual pygmy.

I remember one game with such a group.

We needed to get our spaceship to take off from the planet.
Sounds simple. In D&D (Space version) you'd roll a dice, add your Pilot skill to it, and try and hit a target number.

Not in Traveller. Oh no no no no no.

Step 1. Calculate the mass of the ship. 1 hour spent totting up all the character equipment weights, plus the weight of any ship board equipment.

Step 2. Calculate how much fuel we had in the main tanks, the aft tanks, the spare tanks, etc.

Step 3. Calculate the Fuel to Weight ratio, and how much thrust and for how long we could maintain it for. Stop the game for 3 hours whilst the Gamesmaster rolled up a detailed planetary system, to eventually end up with the water vapour content of our particular planet.

Step 4. Spend a hour arguing with the GM that a Spectral Class G star could not possibly have a Gas Giant of 12,000 km diameter in size, 2.3 Au's from the Primary Star and ALSO have a gasesous index of 0.213. The GM would concede and agree that it should be 0.214.

Step 5. Begin engine initiation, with final pre-flight checks to ensure our spatial radius from the planet was at least 100 diameters from terra firma before we could safely engage hyperspace. Another 2 hour discussion with the GM, with two players arguing that due to gravitational pull, (which they would smugly mention was not in the traveller rules), the distance to hyperspace engagement should be x/z(^10)-(L*T)+W squared cosine arc(pi)

Step 6. After nearly 12 hours of afternoon gaming, we were off, our magnificient ship blasting off from the launch bay, piercing the atmosphere like a gigantic silver dildo.

Step 7. Abject horror when the player responsible for the ship's technician realised that he had forgotten to activate the near-object asteroid collision system.

Step 8. The GM didn't forget

Step 9. Roll new characters.

[WageSlave1]

BGG, I understand there's a new version of D&D that's been around for a couple of years now - 3rd edition? What's it like?

[Lucifer Box]

In D&D (Space version) you'd roll a dice, add your Pilot skill to it, and try and hit a target number.

Sounds to me like you were playing with a bunch of knobs, BGG. That's exactly how it is in Traveller as well: Roll two dice, add your Pilot skill level, and try and hit the target number. In fact, Traveller is generally credited as being the first game to introduce a skill based system of that type so I don't know what they were up to.

[WageSlave1]

In fact, Traveller is generally credited as being the first game to introduce a skill based system of that type so I don't know what they were up to.

Lucifer, first there was your history of HP, followed by a detailed knowledge of model age in 70s porn, and now a history of RPGs. I worry about you, mate; you're in danger of becoming as sad, gormless and feckless as me.

[Lucifer Box]

Dear Marge...

Well, I did live in Birmingham so it helped to pass the time.

[hattra]

OMG...now that was a seriously nerdy game

Our games weren't a bit like that - probably because we all had a sense of humor (all the GM's competed to get laughs) and were more into the role-play (quite a few amateur actors among us) than the technology - we even had GIRLS playing in our group.

We played with the original rules, which were a lot simpler, I think, than the later stuff. We didn't bother with all that calculating masses stuff - if we had a ship and a pilot, we just took off - THEN the GM found some highly amusing way to kill us all.

We all started on D&D and I think we had the idea that the rules shouldn't get in the way of the story. More than likely that was because, when we started (in 1975-76 IIRC), we had to write our own rules - so we kept them minimal. We had heard about the idea of a role playing fantasy game that some guy in the States had come up with, but couldn't get hold of the (original D&D) rule books for quite some time after.

[Board Game Geek]

BGG, I understand there's a new version of D&D that's been around for a couple of years now - 3rd edition? What's it like?

It's superb m8 for many reasons.

The most important being the complete overhaul of the game mechanic system and the introduction of skill based and character class based feats.

This system, which is based on a D20, has revolutionised the RPG industry with a common game mechanic, making the rules transparent and adaptable to whatever genre you play in.

The d20 system is Open Source, which means any games company is free to use it to develop their own RPG.

This allows the players to only learn one set of rules, whether they are playing a space opera type of game, a sci-fi type of game, traditional fantasy types of game, or any other genre you can think of.

Of couse, there are ancillary rules specific to each genre and setting, which build upon the generic core rules, so that you do feel like each genre is different.

There is now a skill based system which dovetails neatly in to the overall game mechanic. It's based on achieving Target Numbers.

Eg...you want to move silently ? Roll d20 and add your Move Silenty skill rating. Achieve a Target Number set by the GM. Sorted.

Combat is streamlined...allowing for more fluidic action, rather than the having to calculate THAC0, less the bonus of the weapon, plus the modifier for the AC you are going for, less the modifer for something else, etc etc.

Roll d20, add your attack bonus, and the figure you get is the Armour Class you hit. Sorted.

A complete review of 3rd edition can be found here.

3rd edition for me and my group has liberated us from the inflexibility of the previous rules systems, allowing us to focus on the game, storytelling, and action, as opposed to straight-jacketing us and our free form playing style.

In short, it rocks.

D20 3rd Edition D&D

[hattra]

space opera

Another good one - anyone remember/ played that?