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I should think just the item names and the page numbers of the sources would be kosher.

Those psionics rules were terrible. At least it had a psionic combat system, but it was unplayable because your power point pool was the same as your psionic hit point pool, and the cost of using your attacks was higher than the average damage they'd do to your enemy. You actually harmed...

But Newton realized that he was being embarrassingly unscientific in having to multiply entities to fit his theory. That is why he denied having such an explanation in the works he actually published in his life. Instead he responded to questions of the mechanisms by which bodies acted with...

Not to be too much of a smart aleck, but Reductionism is the sin that occurs when other people define their terms and draw distinctions. When you yourself do it, it's clarity and specificity. In science and mathematics, reductionism is a method of getting at the truth by breaking things down...

The important thing to remember about magical thinking and related fallacies is that we are all inclined toward it. It requires education and discipline to turn our minds from it. That's an important distinction, of course. Are we talking about magic and science or magic and technology...

I myself would find a campaign less interesting that simply assumed magic obviated science. This is in part because I get a serious nerd-on for retro-tech from as far back as flint arrowheads, but also because there's little reason to assume that magic would be considered distinct from science...

My own campaign setting is based on the premise that it was the equivalent of North America relative to the Forgotten Realms' Europe and Asia. The intent was not to fill in the map so much as to make fun of the fact that the Forgotten Realms is so transparently based on the real-world map. The...

I have sentimental memories of Cyberpunk 2020. One of the advantages it has over a cyberpunk built on d20 or Alternity is that it's less of an afterthought. I also thought GURPS Cyberpunk was pretty nifty, but if I were to jump up and suddenly start doing a cyberpunk game, I'd dust off 2020.

Sic tua mater altera nocte non dixit.

Although 'hippocampus' is originally Greek, it comes to English through the Latin, so we use the Latinized plural. Besides, the rule in Greek isn't adding '-podes' to make the nominative plural, it's adding '-es' to the stem of a 3rd declension noun or adjective. Thus, 'pous, podos' (the...

It's a joke. Only some of the Latin words imported into English retain their Latin plurals (antenna, antennae -- for example, and even that is getting less and less common). Bonus is usually pluralized by an English rule, as you observed, 'bonuses.' But in the Latin from which it originated...

I've made it part of campaign lore that any inn where adventurers are liable to congregate has a job board where calls for adventurers are posted. Parties tend to meet there, or at the site of the job when applicants are being hired. I've even staged waiting room scenes and handed out...

I like science fiction in fantasy, though it has to be put in with a kind of coherence. For me it needs some science to the science fiction. Steampunk is particularly nice as it reflects what was a golden age of science in our world, but a lot of the legitimate science back then is known to be...

I don't run Alternity, though I think it's a swell system that died before its time. I do run a Star*Drive game in the d20 system. I love the setting. Although it's no longer being produced, they did produce a fair number of books for it, more than the majority of settings get. Hell, if you...

Just a slight clarification: The ranks you get for Hobby and Background don't stack, right? I mean, they both give you +4 ranks in certain skills at 1st level, and the normal limit of 4 ranks at first level applies, so they were never intended to stack? Except of course if you can change...

Star*Drive is a setting in which you have a lot of corporate, national and interpersonal intrigue set against the background of a looming war with a mysterious alien menace. It would be easy to accuse it of being too generic, since it is clearly designed to accomodate whatever elements of...

I'm looking into it as a possible alternative for running my Star*Drive game. The first step, however, will be to get a feel for it as it stands. I've generated a four-page lists of steps it would require to strip my chargen spreadsheet and rebuild it to generate Modern20 characters as per the...

Here's something I'm a bit confused about: Your occupational perks -- are these ones you have while you're in the occupation, or ones from which you can choose whenever you have perk points available? And when are they available? Near as I can tell, this is the scheme: 1) Everyone starts...

Well, you got my money again, you bastards. And as a matter of fact, I do have some questions. You're saving me some trouble here of redoing the skill system myself, but you know I'd also like to do the same thing for D&D. I'm getting less and less sanguine about 4e, and I'm beginning to...

Yes and no. It does take a bit of work to be able to play a Star*Drive game in d20 Future. They provide d20 versions of the main alien races, and a number of the prominent alien species appear in the Menace Manual, but they don't have anything like the Alien Compendium. d20 Future certainly...