Subj : Re: This echo
To   : Kay Shapero
From : Scott Adams
Date : Fri Sep 06 2002 07:57 am

 -=> Quoting Kay Shapero to Scott Adams <=-

 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.

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

        True.  I still think of human with dino type genre was
        The land of the lost.  A old kid's show in the '80s.
        The show had a great plot arc to it.  Where the evolved
        dinos and such.  

        
 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.

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

        Guess you decide on what's important to you. :)

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

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

        Heh.  The first game of toon I did was around '85.  It
        was at a con in a midnight game session where most folks
        were drinking.  Boy that was just hilarious.  We had
        to simply stop several times to rest cause of the
        laughter.  You can just be so utterally silly in that
        game.  Like my Rhino postman who runs out a plane
        door while in the air and forgets to fall cause he
        doens't know the laws of physics till someone tells him
        he should fall.  (my first character).  Paranoia's
        humor comes in when its not from comedy but sheer
        insanity of how things are done especially with a good
        GM that deals with props and Alpha Complex.


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

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

        Not read his stuff.

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

        Yeah those I've heard of.

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

        :)

        I'm off to do a update for my rpg...they are finally
        in the prison and trying to be stealthy...if a party
        of 16 can be stealthy at night.




.... Well, that will cut down on tourism. - Ivanova
--- Fringe BBS
 * Origin: EWOG II - RPG HQ - Best in Area!  904-733-1721 (1:112/91)

.