I always did wonder about that. :-) I just figured that someone with a stat sheet somewhere had worked out that the mechanical firearm was still more reliable, more useful, more deadly than the zat gun!   I guess the gun is also upgradeable while the tech for the zat us alien.  And if I was a big-bad and knew that guns were being looted all the time, I'd have sent in a bunch of guys with zats - to die - and set them to explode on timers or on transfer through a wormhole :-)

If/when I get employed again, I'm going to have to put "Stargate DVDs" on my to buy list, so I can get more familiarity with the series.  (Catching up on the electric bill and rent are ahead of that, of course.)

Mostly I went with Afghanistan in Blaine's background because the closest thing I have to military and/or combat experience is Sebastian Junger's book "War," which is about Afghanistan in 2007.  Or the book "Blackhawk Down," which is Somalia-- I forget which year.  "War" covered more military material in general and was more recently read, and I know where the book is in my apartment.  (The local non-profit radio station here keeps covering Afghanistan and its many problems, too.)


I think I am nearly done with character creation.  I'm kind of curious where Blaine will start out.  (Hopefully not accidentally walking into the Women's restroom... :-)  )

GM - Who will be in the team I'm in?  I ask as I'm wondering how much overlap there will be in our skill sets and I really would prefer it wasn't that great that it will invalidate one or more of us? ;-)

At the moment, it is planned that you are in the same team as :

• Marcus Wright (Scientist)
• Blaine Sanders(Scout)
• Randall Thorne (Soldier)
• Me, Michael Galamore (Team leader)

We will be a five man (And woman) team. But things may eventually change even if there are little chance that they do.

Edit : Also, sorry for the slow post rate. I'm quite busy this past day and will be busy over a few weeks. But I will answer to SG-X (As I'm the GM for this team) this Tuesday. You will finally know where you are going and what you will have to do. :)
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:32, Sun 01 Dec 2013.

Ok.  And languages.  So folk know, my position would be 'Spokesperson' - a position Daniel takes on in SG-1 but one he doesn't do overly well - though due to mechanics, knows a lot of languages is not easy.   So from my team (I use 'my' as you're obviously my team, even though though I'm not the leader! ;-) ) what languages do folk know as I'd like to fill in the blanks where I can without duplicating things too much, please?

Just English for me.

We're still juggling the rosters for SG-X2 and SG-X3, trying to figure out just what roles we need/want and who we've got to fill them.

At the moment, we're looking for a Team Leader for SG-X3... Specialty/Class is irrelevant, in case anyone wants to step up and volunteer.


As for Earth languages, we're going in two ways: whatever you wind up picking will probably show up... sooner or later. Also, obscure and offbeat ones are likely to show up.

 Have you assigned Fox to a team yet

Fox is tentatively assigned to SG-X2 in the Scout role, but he could wind up on SG-X1, too.

We have 3 Scouts and 3 Scientists.

We have six roles on each team, but not every role has to be filled, and some overlap.

1. Team Leader
2. Scout
3. Mission Specialist
4. Intel/Comms Specialist
5. Linguistics/Cultural Specialist
6. Guard/Soldier

Well.  I'm not sure what Team Lead entails, but I'm always willing to lead others into traps :-)

(PS - That was actually also a serious offer - if you need one!)
This message was last edited by the player at 23:01, Sun 01 Dec 2013.

It would require some re-engineering of what has already passed, but Eddie could be a team leader.  Personally I saw him as an enlisted man, but perhaps he could be a warrant officer and run the team.  There is a history of that in special forces after all.

As for Sarah leading a team, I don't know if SGC would want a civilian in charge, but I could be wrong.

That could
 very well be the point of the team. That said, completely open for suggestions. Ours GMs know my background.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:05, Mon 02 Dec 2013.

In reply to Sarah Morgan (msg # 57):

I'm just basing that statement on all of the other teams listed being lead by an officer of some flavor.  Personally, I'm up for anything.

Hello to all the new players. So many players! How are our GMs going to handle us all?

The mixed-species team is a nice idea, but we seem to have enough people here now that we could be spread across different regular teams without trouble. Or we could take a 5th person, an ordinary soldier-type to lead us. (Nothing against Kaspar, but he wasn't exactly up for it.)


Zats: They seem to use them pretty often later in the series, IIRC. Maybe the zats are limited by energy, like the SGC has a hard time recharging them.

Languages: Hilda knows Norse (native), Cimmerian/Thracian (native), Goa'uld (native), and English (fluent). Goa'uld appeared to be the common language of the galaxy, so I figured it would come up often.

Yeah, we've considered both those ideas... dividing up the ETs a bit more and adding a fifth (character) to SG-X1. Haven't ruled either out yet, and we kind of like the ET team idea, though.

Yes, Sarah could lead a team... I won't reveal her secret just yet.

We also have a Tok'ra in the mix.

I'd just as soon NOT be lead into traps, if it is all the same to you!  ;-)

Over the weekend I seemed to be losing internet access quite a bit.  The problem seems to go in cycles, so hopefully its working now.  (I think that my landlord is trying to used a router intended for houses, not apartment buildings.  I'm guessing he doesn't know the difference.)

I may be posting slow, since I need to find employment before the end of the month when my unemployment runs out.  (I've been mostly searching over the internet, so I might be wrong about my posting rate, since I'll be at the computer anyway.)

And I forgot that someone had asked about languages!  I've given Blaine Pashto, Dari and  Spanish.  (Two spoken in Afghanistan and one from his neighborhood back in Detroit.)
This message was last edited by the player at 16:03, Mon 02 Dec 2013.

Is this using the SG system (the GM mentioned to me) where you need two int points for each language?  Cause folk seem to have a lot of languages?! :-)  Bright bunch the lot of you!

In reply to Sarah Morgan (msg # 62):

The way I read it was one point for a familiarity with a language and two to be fluent in it.  I could be wrong.

Yep, that's the way I'm treating it. Familiarity means you can usually make a Language check to see if you understand it, but can't really speak it.

I was just checking out my languages and I don't think they're right.  He should get three languages as native languages other thaenglish because of his int mod.  That should cover Farsi, Pashtun, and russian.  He then has two points in language skill to get Egyptian English as native.  Then he has a single point in Jaffa making him simply fluent in that...  The paragraph in the book is a bit confusing, but I'm mostly sure that's right...

So the book has a few typos in it that don't help but the point behind the linguistics skill is really fairly simple.

There is one skill for Linguistics.

Each language has a separate subtotal.

Each +1 bonus of Int lets you start a homeworld language at 2 ranks

Each rank of the linguistics skill is flagged for use by a homeworld language you have or a new one.

Any language with only a single rank is a considered a 'fluent' skill level, likely to communicate easily but with an identifiable accent and obviously a secondary language.

Any language with two or more ranks is effectively a 'native' language any accent is either intentional or habitual and minor and does not restrict communication.

Keep in mind also that for Earth natives the Jaffa language requires the xenolinguistics skill which also generates a separate skill total, and is not available as easily for everyone.

In reply to Vasandra Tourmaline (msg # 66):

That was my understanding...  I didn't mention that he has xenolanguage for his point Jaffa.

Okay, Vasandra has it right. I just had the terms mixed up, because 'fluent' and 'native' meant the same thing to me, so why would they make a distinction between them? After all, there are a lot of people that speak their native language yet are barely fluent in it!

So I got it wrong. I hate it when they tuck a rule into text just once and then move on.

Anyway, the rules on languages confused me when I read them the first time (probably because it was late and I was tired), which is one of the reasons I changed individual language 'ranks' to 'slots'--to try and avoid confusion.

Also, they don't really give any good reason for why you'd add more slots to a native language. If English is your native language, for instance, and you have 2 slots in it automatically, why would you put more slots into it? Why would you need English-7? To talk to geeks?

I'll go over everyone's languages and make sure I didn't screw them up.

If you read the language skill, you're supposed to roll to give large amounts of information in short periods of time so you want to raise your skill in a specific skill...  Yeah, no real point.

Well, my internet went down just as I was about to make my first in character post a few hours back.  Now that it seems to be back up, I finally posted under the "mess" section.

I won't argue with whatever is decided on languages-- all game systems seem to have trouble with them.  I'm just trying to have a basic understanding of two of Afghanistan's languages and a fluency with Spanish.  If I don't have enough points for that, then I will have to figure out what I want more, I guess.