yep.. only 'naturals;' that effect anything   are  1  and   100.. to get that +3  the  'total' is 90 or better.

 Oh yes Lizzy knows nat 1's and nat 100's all too well, just rolled a nat 100, reason for the 1d20 damage that hurt.  lol.

 I might have  told this story.. But when my brother and i started  D&D   I was in my 30's..we  played  war games  and stuff.. i hand an elf thief  named  Ivyian and a dwarf  warrior named Reedrick.

we  ha da Battle, bar fight, two guys ran out... Brother  Mage  took out   one with   Magic Missles.. and  my elf  chased  the other  guy who was  wounded..  I threw my  dagger rand got a  nat  20.. and  rolled  5 ( 14+1  for well made)  10 damage killed him..DM was mad  because that guy was supposed to  'report back"

 smetimes you  get nats when you need it..sometimes its when you don't!

There's a special perverse kind of pleasure that comes from the dice screwing up the GM's plans...

One of my college roommates created his own fantasy setting and kinda kit-bashed his own set of rules (which was a combination of stuff from D6 Star Wars, D&D, Stormbringer, and a couple of others...basically, he took his favorite parts of every gaming system he'd ever played...)  He also had his own magic system put together and came up with a lot of intriguing magic items...

The most dangerous thing, as the name would suggest, was Chaos-based magic, because depending on what the dice did for you, the results could either help you, help the bad guys, change something that was completely inapplicable to the current situation, etc...  I had a character who was an assassin, and had a bunch of Chaos-arrows in a quiver that magically replenished them.  I tried to use them as rarely as possible, because I've had bad experiences in the past with those kinds of wild-card magical items.  But we ended up tangling with a minotaur lich...and those arrows were the only thing I had that could even touch him, basically.

So, the fight starts, and we're about three rounds in.  Every time I roll the dice to see what those arrows do, I'm holding my breath.  We have, thus far, held our own...nobody has seriously hurt him, but he hasn't actually hit any of us yet...and then he casts something that slams ALL of us.  Nobody's dead yet, but most of us will be dead if he hits us with that again, and even the best of us can't take two more hits like that.

In desperation, I grab another arrow and fire, and hit...and roll the results.  The arrow COMPLETELY heals all damage...

I start apologizing to everyone, thinking that I've just undone everything we've accomplished so far and now there's absolutely no way in hell we're gonna beat this guy...and then I notice the GM's look of absolute shock, as he's looking down at my dice, and shaking his head.  And then someone else reminded me what happens when you HEAL UNDEAD...

I completely innocuously obliterated his Big Bad, at the start of the fourth round of combat...he was expecting the fight to last most of the evening.  He even gave me the arrows KNOWING I WOULDN'T WANT TO USE THEM.

This was the same GM who once told me, "I've learned that when you start asking questions that seem to have nothing to do with the situation immediately at hand, bad things are about to happen to my bad guys," because I had a history of coming up with really unconventional ways of getting us out of really bad situations.  This time, however, he did it to himself, literally...gave me the weapons, put us up against a bad guy so powerful that I literally had no viable option except to use them, and designed them with an option that turned them into a doomsday device for anything undead, no matter how powerful.

In all my years of gaming, I have never shifted emotional gears so quickly from "I'm sorry guys, I just screwed us all over" to "Wait...we just won?!!!"

 That's  Great!  that would have been  something to see...

 as you guys know, My brother  and  I played Avalon Hill wargames..Tactical each counter  was one   plane, tank  ect ... we   turned the WWI  came into a roll playing game..i even drew   a  picture of  highlights  of the games ( did it for   when Ivy killed the guy  with his dagger too..)

 anyway. we  would build  aircraft  using  modal  kits , some times having to   cut  and mold ect..  I was the allies.. My brother was the bad  guys.. his lane  had  better  fire  power.... well i went  with  quantity  and i had  a Duperdussin.. in RL  they only ha d a deer  rifle, that the   Guys had  to fire    side ways  so they didn't hit  prop..it was in my home defense  flight.

 in RW..Height counted  as  Much as distance... The  charts  had    'schedules '  a through d.. A was the best Guns , D was the worst.. we made out own schedule  'E"


  my brother built  a Zeppilin we  researched  it  and   came up with the weapons  arcs of  fire   and all that ( even took some things from a couple  war Movies and  the toons of books i had/read).. so  this  plane is out  gunned  and out  flown... , then heavy  hitters  are  dealing with the Fighter   was the Zepplin gets it s Bomb  run.. out of the   6 planes  i had  only  2  were left..one., was the 'kite"... My brother lost  3 of his  fighters    but had  2  and the Zepplin..it  looked like he was  going score big in this  scenario// the    flimsy little aircraft  climbed  high enough   to finally take a  shot... he was Max  range... he hade to have  an 11  to put a hole in the zepplin, but you needed  a  crit  to set off the Gas ( it has 100  hit points).. anyway 12 was a crit... I roll and  sure  enough  12..1 hit, But a crit.. 'boom' all gone zepplin.. so ..yeah.. dic e can be  remarkable   things!

There's a game called Space Hulk...it's kind of a board game created in parallel with the Warhammer 40K universe, so you have Space Marines as some of the pieces...a bunch of cards that you can lay out to create the interior of the ship the Marines are boarding...one or more players play as a squad of Marines, the other player(s) play Genestealers (aliens).  And, kind of like in the Alien movies, there's an apparently limitless supply of Genestealers.  Every round, that player pulls a counter that they put on the board face-down...the Marines can see that there's something approaching, and the location shows up on their map of the ship (so the counter gets moved face-down)...it's only when the counter comes within line of sight of the Marines that it gets turned over and you find out how many Genestealers are in that group...

The friend who introduced me to it gave me one piece of advice, for playing the Marines...you have to play to accomplish whatever objective is established (usually, it's something like, "Board the ship here, proceed through the corridors to this compartment, and destroy the controls inside, which will self-destruct the ship and kill all the Genestealers").  The Marines are NOT going to survive the game.  It's not a question of "Can I get anyone back out the way we got in?"  That's not going to happen.  Every round, another counter of Genestealers gets added to the board, and they can enter from multiple points, where the Marines only have one boarding point, and there's an extremely finite number of Marines.  You WILL get overrun if the game lasts long enough.  If the dice are unkind, you'll get overrun right away...

So, we're playing for the first time, and it's a HUGE set-up.  There's, I think, three or four of us each playing a squad of Marines and just as many people playing Genestealers (each of them adds a counter each turn, it adds up FAST).  The Marines get whittled down at a frightful pace, and within about 45 minutes of starting, what's left of my squad are the only Marines alive, heading down the hall to the objective, with an absolute tidal wave of Genestealers closing in from every angle of the board.

So, I start sacrificing men.  I've got three guys left.  Each one has, I think, five movement points per turn.  I move two of them the full five, and the third one I move two, spend a point for him to turn around, and the last two points to put him on Overwatch, which means he gets an automatic shot at anything that moves in his line of sight.  I keep moving the other two until he goes down, then I put one of those two on Overwatch and keep moving the last one.  That guy goes down.  I have just enough points to put my last Marine on Overwatch RIGHT OUTSIDE the compartment he's supposed to destroy...

And the dice ALL fall my way.  That guy has an absolutely epic turn and kills, like, twenty Genestealers in the hall as they're charging towards him, getting closer and closer (because he can't shoot at the ones behind...he's gotta kill the leader to shoot the second one...so they all move, he gets a shot.  If he misses, they move another space forward and he gets another shot...)  The Genestealers' turn ends with Genestealers two squares away from him...on my next turn, he turns around, opens the hatch, and firebombs the control room, and the game ends.

At this point, it's been me, solo, against all the Genestealer players for another 45 minutes, and EVERYONE (including me) is absolutely flabbergasted that the last Marine survived that round, because he should have been absolutely swarmed.

I think that was the night that I started using the term 'dramatically appropriate dice'.  I used it mostly talking about the Star Wars game that I was in during that same period in my life (my Star Wars GM was the older brother of the guy who introduced me to Space Hulk)...I had a character whose dice rolls would betray him at comedically perfect moments, but if there was only one chance to get a shot off and the fate of the entire party was resting on hitting what you were shooting at?  EVERY FREAKIN' TIME, those dice came through for me.  I mean, I conceived of the character as hyper-competent and a real ice-in-his-veins professional, but the dice rolls absolutely cemented the concept.  And, I mean, right from the start, even...the very first time we played, we were supposed to be meeting a contact that would help us connect with the Rebel Alliance, and we got to the rendezvous just in time to see him executed by an Imperial officer with a pair of stormtroopers.  We didn't even have time to turn around and walk away...the GM said, "You see the officer start to raise his commlink," and I said, "I shoot him."  The other players panicked...until that one shot put the officer dead on the floor and then they rushed the stormtroopers and took them out.  Kinda set the tone for how I played that character for the rest of the decade and change that we ran that game...

That's  cool.  I think if  we would have been 'space minded" we would have tried out  space Hulk.  We stayed    WWI  and  ships of  sail, Tobruk and a couple others, before  we  made the leap into Fantasy.

  One Younger Daughter's, first husband ( he was a  sand box  Marine) liked to play games, he never  did  with us though. He watched me play some Mass Effect and  said, " i don't like   games or Movies where the  aliens  are all super powerful, and  can't be killed "

 I laughed  and said " well? Real life ' they would have to be, because they would be Billions of years ahead of us...."...i mean, if they started  at the center of the Galaxy ,  until they reached  us,there would have been thousands of  places that lived  and died  before  we even saw their star's light.

 But i agreed that  all aliens  should have  some weakness, which i applied  here.

I once had a character with that sort of weird effect on dice. We were playing Harnmaster and he was a bard. Every time he performed, critical success. Every time he got into combat, critical failure. He soon decided that getting into combat wasn't a good idea for him.

Part of the overall plotline involved him getting thrown out of a major town. It was guild-dominated and he'd managed to upset the Minstrels Guild. Think it was something to do with not having joined the guild before his first performance in town (as in, before he'd found out they even had a Minstrels Guild - he didn't have an issue with joining once he knew about it, but that wasn't good enough for them!). So he got banished and told never to come back on pain of death. Off we all went.

Our travels had taken us to far flung lands then a bounch of bounty hunters turned up claiming they wanted to take him back to that particular town. We went to the ruler of the place we were in, and asked for help. They said that he had to go with them, or could fight a duel with the leader of the bounty hunters. He was horrified and asked if he could get out of having to fight him.

That's when the fun started. Most of us were 20s-30s but we had one kid, 17-18, whose idea of role-playing was 'fight monsters, steal their stuff' - a real murderhobo. Never did anything in character. But he then upped and went to the boss bounty hunter and told him that my bard was reluctant to fight him because... 'he was such a good fighter that he was sick of all the killing'. The GM rolled his reaction dice and the bounty hunter believed him.

::chuckles:: I've  seen movies  lke that  where  a  'lovable thief " would try to  talk thier way out of stuff like that..sometimes it worked, sometimes it  didn't

It's one of the joy's of having power armour is that you get to do "Space Hulk-y" things

Happy Pi day!

had a table top D&D game that the DM really tried to kill us.. but did award us well.  Had an outdoor fight and was hit with over 20 troll....just normal trolls. we had about 7-8 charries I think highest was a 15th level mage. plus a few henchmen (PC paladin has his 'pageboy - we made fun of his hair).  of course got in a circle mage and cleric in the middle, yada yada.  Parts went every where started regrowing, ended up with killing nearly 50 trolls and an ettin. we used a D10 & D6 to doll our d20s.  If we rolled a 0 and 6 it was a critical hit. rolled percent for double, triple, or 'special' damage (95 or above.  meant things like decap to body split in twain to cut in half at middle, all sorts). other end if you rolled a 1 and 1 it was a critical fumble (again % roll. 1-75 miss, 76-94 miss and miss your next attack, 95 or better... you screwed the pooch.  roll chart you could literally trip on your own blade and kill yourself).  any how in troll fight guy fumbled and his roll was 'take blow not meant for you'.  we looked and only thing to hit him was a troll head.  dm had to roll to hit though it was automatic but rolled a crit and did triple damage with the troll head.  same DM also would throw in Gamma World monsters now and then too.  still we did live the battle, some of us anyways.

That sounds kinda like the Aliens RPG that we tried out while I was in college...

The only game I've ever played where they explicitly stated in the beginning that all players should be encouraged to have multiple characters, because the attrition rate was gonna be HIGH.

We had an LV426-type scenario...lost contact, no information on the reason for the loss of contact and no updates on the condition of the colony when we got there.  Took a dropship with an APC down to the planet, two full squads of Marines.  The only one who survived was the Sergeant, because he sprained his ankle getting out of the APC and had to get back inside.  I think the rest of the squad survived about ten turns...

One of my characters was a heavy-gunner.  He was in an elevator when he heard a thump overhead, and looked up to see a xenomorph tearing the metal mesh off the top of the elevator...swung the gun up an opened fire...

When the elevator doors opened for the other Marines, there was a gaping hole in the floor and the smoking stump of a foot and part of a shin.  Everything else had been dissolved in acid.

That was a game where you played KNOWING you would not survive.  The objective was to die the most spectacular death you could manage.  As I recall it (thirty years later...), if you died a spectacular cinematic death, you got extra points to create your next characters...I can't swear to that, though, because we only played it the one time.  It was fun, and it sparked a LOT of stories in the group referencing that particular game, but it didn't exactly lend itself to developing really fun characters and sinking effort into role-playing them, because you knew they were almost certainly going to be dead by the end of the night, if not within the hour, and we all really enjoyed developing characters and seeing them grow and change.

::chuckles::..not  my type of game. I mean, I know it would be 'realistic' for that world..but  no fun dying!

Ok SIMS  folks.. let  try this...

it will save  time  and PMs

.................

 Each of you roll (2)  1d100 to see if you are  Hit..( no Mods there are too many shooting at you. )..if you roll a  39 or  less..they Miss.

 If  the roll is  40  or higher.  roll 1d10  for each   one that hit  for the damage done  to you..

Please mark it  as defense rolls.

............

 Offense ...

  roll 1d100 + 1/4   shooting.. if the total is   40 or more..you hit   1d10...anything over  90  is  1d10+3

 mark this as  attack roll .

.......................

 If you are hit...or you hit them.. do the  roll, i'll take care of   any adjustments.

In reply to Admiral Hack (msg # 920):

It's a great game for a one-off situation, where you need something intense and dramatic but it's all gonna be over in just a little while.  Like, I think it would be a great game to play at conventions, where you get a group of people who are going to play something that's hopefully going to be memorable, but it's going to be over relatively quickly, and nobody's invested in trying to build anything greater that's gonna last beyond that gaming session.

But it's definitely not something I'd want to play in regular rotation.  It's kind of like back when I played Starcraft...I had a bunch of maps I got from my cousin...never played through the game itself, just some of the multiplayer scenarios.  When I first started, I had to go one on one against the computer to even have a prayer of surviving...but, after a while, on some of the maps, I could go solo against seven computer opponents and have a decent chance.  But until I got to that point?  I was playing just to see how far along I could get and what kind of a body count I could rack up.

That's the only way playing Aliens would be fun...playing with the intention to make the biggest pile of goo possible before you died.  And it's something you'd have to be in a mood to play.

yep yep . all the game s we  played   had   to have scenarios that we  could use  to make it an RP  game... I wrote into 'The general' which was the house Organ Magazibne for   Avalon Hill, saying who were used the scenarios     and created   characters ect.   a the feedback was.. how to  you do the   character's stats. how do you make a campaign out of this.

 The campaign was  already there, by playing through the scenarios .  we would    draw a  card,  and that was the  scenario you would use, and you couldn't use the    same one , until you used up all there was, including the aero drome raid  i developed.

   we tried to lay 'one offs' , but we were addicted to  out  character.. I still have the Note  Books  with  each character who flew their  plain..with the kills listed.

 if i played  a  one off, it had to be something  that was a 'learning thing' and if  we couldn't adapt  it. we  , ,most likely , not play again

In reply to Roy Spencer (msg # 919):

well we would use any rule we could to our advantage... even when facing detrimental things.  I had a charrie drink this potion, next thing was my dwarven fighter had pony legs and hooves.  well I thought about it and part of our party booty were horseshoes of speed, and a set of horseshoes of flying.  so I took them.  no one argued. had normal horseshoes put on with nails set in so I could slip 2 magical ones on.  became a dwarf with the movement of a horse or could fly.  kept the extras at home. it worked. DM also wouls attack us with our own charries now and then.  vampires sucked dry and killed an illusionist in our party, came back and the shit nearly took us out. guy who originally ran the illusionist ...geez should have seen his face.  DM did lot of things, even trying to kill us he made it fun.  even when they screw up.  ever see a very large and old red dragon try and do a diving scrafe attack?  breathweapon/bite/tongue lash/horn gourd/ wing buffet x2/front claws x2/tail swipe. standard attack for fly in.  on the ground he'd add the size difference to do a 'walk through' which meant we needed 3 to 5 human sized charries to block it.  but it's funny when he rolls a critical fumble and takes its self to nearly 1 hit point as it scorpions out on a hilltop tor.  before it could get up we each got 1 hit on it.  yeah, it died.  no treasure DM said but did get experience points.  I got smart though (was awarded more points).  I stole scales, teeth, hide, horns, blood, (I was playing a magic user/ thief) and had vials and pouches and bladders empty to use for components.  Told DM and table 'It's treasure to me'.  stole enough to have some armorer make me a custom suit of armor.  and I could still use my magic.  DM hated me for that. lol

I've never been a rules-lawyer type, but if I find a loophole (or if the GM does something as a joke that I find useful), I'm all about jumping on that one...

The friend that gave my character the Chaos arrows?  He was running a Palladium Fantasy game a few years before that...set the group on a quest to find a runesword...but he didn't tell us that the sword was actually made for a gnome and wasn't even have the size of a standard human dagger.  He thought it was going to be hilarious to have us spend all this time chasing a legendary weapon, only to find out that it was too small for any of us to even wield effectively.  It wasn't a wasted trip...he made sure there was plenty of other bonuses along the way or after we'd completed the quest to reward everyone...

What he didn't count on, however, was my bard saying, "Oh, THIS is a GREAT storytelling prop!  I can make all kinds of coin at taverns, telling people the history behind this thing!"  So, I took it and hung it on a leather string around my neck, as a pendant.  And, because I took the sword, it bonded with me and I gained access to all of its considerable magic abilities...which rained on his parade three or four times after that...

(This was also the same character that, when two gods were preparing to go to battle with each other in a side dimension our party was in, decided he was NOT going to bug out with everyone else, because he wanted to be able to tell the eyewitness account of the battle.  By the time we retired that group, I'm pretty sure my friend HATED bards...*laugh*)

   I'll bring this  up.. its one  of  my fav things?  When the game started   there was Just the Hermes  and  The Harvester..and we   went hunting...there were some small misisons.. Roy meets Gresh as he  and  Stoly the Elder went to the grooto for black  Market stuff.. Shadow would show  up Later  with Hannah...

 Hannah went shopping there, getting all Kinds of  Neat  gear... Roy  got shot with a Popper,  which is a shot gun shell   fixed with  a 'tap' to set it off..  Stem kids  carried the   when they could.. Roy also met  13-14 year old  Nifty there.

...............

 move  forward ..Shade  was sent to steal  a Hammer IV... there were only 4   in service  at the Time.. Shadow hand one, that was 'infused'  with Ladt.... Captain  Si (LT at the Time) had one..  The Commander ( who is now Admiral ) , and   Fran's  father had one . that he was  keeping for  Frans, who he was trying to lure  away from the  Hermes.

  Anyway..  Shadow gets  sent in after  shore leave, dressed like the   Olympus Uppers   WC... he stole the  aircraft  and  the chase was on... Shadow escaped through the Stem.. seems someone had  a  Lock opened  near the grotto, and he   tried to escape  ,even though The Hermes  and harvester  had  pulled out....

 Senator Frans  demanded the Hermes  stop  the stolen  fighter.. it  looked like Shadow was going to get away..but the fighter Vanished  in Ion Cannon explosion, that the  harvest   had  fired  from their dec  gun turret... Those who knew  Shadow was dead.. couldn't  contact him..Hannah couldn't  contact him, even with a link thing  she  bought at  Gresh's....

  Roles  bring his  shuttle over..everyone is bummed,, Roles insist that  Hack check and sign for supplies.. and in the Shuttle is  Shadow covered in reddish  brown  Ion Dust.. Ion dust  jams  or   ruins  COM and electrical feeds....there is   a very  nice  scene  where hannah  beats  Shadow then  hugs him,,after going through thinking he was dead...

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

 now?  from three they   go to Delta prime, Home of the Mulls.. the AP as it was know then, were trying to get the Mulls to  Join them.. largrans were there to make sure they Joined the  Demons...Considering the Mulls control   the  who 'cred System".. it was very important...

  we ended up having to assassinate The LArgan Ambassador..  but we needed  away to  stop  an all out battle.. Hannah  came up with the Idea of using  Ion Dust.. and  Roy  can with that, making  poppers  as the delivery system.

  Angela might have been there.. I know she was around when we  first had  Ion dust, because  she said it affected her implants.. Roy  , Lyri and another PC  had to be evaced  out by   Stoly who have a APV type, wheeled   vehicle.

..............

 what was great was.. any/all of them could have died, but things worked out well..
 what i want to point  out, is  2things.

1... the progr4essio9n of that whole thing was a few months and some of happened   as  set pieces ( the grotto, the Upper hanger  ect ect ) the rest was Dice  rolls, RP  and  PC actions

2... i love, when players come up  with 'realistic; ways  to 'save the day" without  stupid stuff...

  Hannah remembered  what happened with   Shadow  because of the  ION  Dust..the   Hammer  IV he stole  had to get  cleaned  up with out  exposing out Hammer 3s  and 'Lady' to it...but she remembered..

 Roy getting shot  by a popper  was just a reaction roll from a Stem Kid... Roy remembered the Poppers... between those  two, those   Ion delivery system was  set up and didn't  compromise   out actions

 I was pround they pulled  that  al together, simply by remembering  the 'history' of what they had RPed through. Its nice  to be sur[prised  in a Logical manner.

The poppers as a delivery system came along later.  When Hannah used it on Delta Prime, she basically just dumped a little canister into some comm gear (like, through a cooling vent on the outer case of the gear, something like that.)  Roy's idea to use the popper came later, when we were fighting one of the Demon fleets.  They had some way of combining the ships they were using so that they enhanced each others' power output, etc...so we landed on the hull and used the poppers on the attachment points, shorted out all their connections and they had to separate to avoid a catastrophic chain reaction.  That weakened their fleet's response enough that the Delta Fleet (which was only a ship or two more than had launched from Earth, by that time, I think) was able to take them down.

 ::sigh::  yeah?  i  don';t know why i thught we used the Poppers  on delta Prime.

  any  folks  that took place  early in the games History..   its a good read, reding some of the Olympus stuff.. and   the delta prime stuff.

    we now have  a 80+ cap ships... destoyers and Corvets... we have  Tenders  .. a  whole fleet of  drop shps  with  thousands of  troops and armor.. Med tech ships, Pleasure shipAgra  ships   and   water  Containers, Forge ships   and  Emmies  Fleet of freighters  that   get loaded up  and  them spread supplie  around the ships

Recovery has been going well. Been more and more active each day, it's been slow but I am improving.

well. Take it  slow, listen to the docs. we'll be  here  when you're ready.

 Also? thanks  for popping in,  it lets us know how you are doing!

You're still here Zob... that's the best news.  Listen to the nurses and Docs.
Well on my own for a bit.  Sis is still in Cali for vacay.  and it's raining , hailing, wind and lightning in SoCal. teach her not to take me along.  lol.
Bill headed out last night, and this morning he became a grandpa! his youngest daughter had a baby girl.
I do not have therapy until friday. so I'm just being a lazy but this weekend atleast.

Boss man, let me know if I am alive. lol

going to  check PMs  and Cobble  the  stats  together.