Subj : Re: This echo
To   : Scott Adams
From : Kay Shapero
Date : Thu Sep 05 2002 12:34 am

on Sep Sep 02 22:24, Scott Adams wrote to Kay Shapero:

 SA>         Yeah that was common but I prefer authors who at least back
 SA>         up the races with history and such :)  Not just to assume
 SA>         poof they are there.

That's one thing I like about the Lost World - it was a very tall mesa (I think 
the techincal term is "tepui" or some such but memory is hazy) that cut the 
critters off from the rest of the population so they evolved separately.  Thus 
they weren't Age of Dinosaurs dinos, they were the evolved descendants of same. 
 (Actually I don't recall if Conan Doyle pointed this out - it's been many 
years since I read it, while that IS the approach used by Greg Bear's recent 
sequen.)  Of course considering what appears to have happened to the dinosaurs, 
survival of any population up that high seems improbable in the extreme.  And 
in fact what you DO find up on tepuis is mostly pitcherplants of various sorts, 
unusual insects and so forth.  Definite signs of separate evolution, but not 
over nearly so long a timescale.

 KS>>  life interesting for the shoggoth.  They also had some Very 
 KS>> flares...) What I'd *really* like is the 1920's era encyclopedia I saw 
 KS>> in a thrift shop years before I took up gaming, but of course I had no 
 KS>> idea I was going to want it.

 SA>         You never do think of things like that till too late.  I use
 SA>         dto go to libraries and get ideas from various books.
 SA>         I liked the viking/norse riddles for example to use in games.

Yeah - I wish there was a way of recognizing things I was going to want much 
later at the time I encountered them.  Trouble is there are far more things I 
didn't want then that I *still* don't want... so what do you do?  :->

 SA>         The 2 big comedy gmaes paranoia and Toon are great for
 SA>         such things.

You should see what happens when you combine the two (something Lee Gold has 
been known to do on occasion - then again she tends to find all sorts of 
interesting things to do with Toon.  I suspect you'd have liked the New Years 
Eve Sacred Artichoke Dance, or the Toon Rose Bowl Parade entry.)

 SA>         Alien test post....boy what a universe..

Test pilot...  A character from the Teklenan, a spacegoing trade league 
somewhat similar to the Hanse, though I didn't know about that when I designed 
it. I just felt there were too many empires and federations littering the SF 
landscape, and decided to do something a mite different.  (And subsequently ran 
into Poul Anderson's take on the same subject, the Polesotechnic League, which 
I recommend the early stories from, before he got too ose.)  

I also encorporated some other fictional bits into the game universe, most 
notably the Technological Heirarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the 
Subjugation of Humanity, Dave McDaniel's expansion of the THRUSH acronym in his 
UNCLE novels.  But I also had a batch of Borribles turn up in London (a sort of 
cross between urban brownies and Lost Boys; I forget the author's name), some 
standard types like "Esperance", the wildly romantic White Russian Countess 
whose organization they cross paths with, and sometimes assist, some familiar 
settings like the Orient Express, and whatever else struck my fancy.

And I've just located my copy of the last scenario I ran (I probably have 
others around here - this is just the only one I can immediately lay hands on.) 
 I shall now post it...

--- Msged 6.0.1
 * Origin: StormGate Aerie/ (1:102/524)

.