Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in rick_gerdes' LiveJournal:

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Friday, March 21st, 2008
7:56 am	LJ... hmmm I haven't regularly used this in... ages. Work, life, the lack of desire to scream at the world.... Anyways. I'll probably just stop reading. I regret it only because there ARE people here I follow, I've friended those folks, some friended back. It's all good. To that end I post a link: My Media Server Now I'll post media there for family and friends, photos, video, etc. I'll blog on the rare occasion the mood strikes. Also, I've revived the Broken Futures game for a player: Broken Futures It's been redone as a pulp-cabal with ideas stolen off the Pyramid message boards. It's already started with one player. Want to play? Comment/email/follow up. If I don't hear from folks... well I may look in once in a while, but not expecting to do so actively. Later... (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, December 22nd, 2007
3:00 pm	Haven't posted in a while Work, life, buyout of the parent company here... I barely had time to read my friend's page here. For posting, I'm gonna try a mobile blog that has some rss feed capability. If anyone cares it can be read mobile or PC at http://winksite.com/site/site_profile.cfm?susid=22707 Other folks postings there welcome. I don't know if I'll keep up there better than here, but I'll try. And if work ever settles, maybe I can login to a game again one day. :p Edit: Better mobile link: http://winksite.com/mage2000/desmage (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 21st, 2007
11:18 am	80's Science ROCKED! Your Score: Buckaroo Banzai 161 Heart, 174 Genius, 166 Cool, 128 Excitability Buckaroo Banzai - (Peter Weller) The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984) You are Buckaroo Banzai! Hard-rockin' neurosurgeon, brilliant scientist, and all-around cool guy. Maybe you didn't have the cinematic success of some of the other guys here, but it's okay - you're a cult classic! "Hey, hey, hey. Don't be mean. We don't have to be mean because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are." Other scientific possibilities: Gary Wallace Wyatt Donnelly Peter Venkman Jordan Cochran Egon Spengler Doc Brown Newton Crosby Paul Stephens Ben Crandall Wayne Szalinkski Winston Zeddemore Ben Jabituya Lazlo Hollyfeld Ray Stantz Buckaroo Banzai Chris Knight Link: The Which 80s Movie Scientist Test written by xxyl on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test (Comment on this)
Monday, November 19th, 2007
8:35 am	Alive If anyone was wondering, I'm still alive. A week in San Fran for OpenWorld (Oracle's shindig) and back to a backlog of development work before another cross country trip, this time to visit family in North Carolina for the long holiday weekend. In between I have to write up what I learned last week so we can start applying it for NEXT year's development. At least I'm HOME again... (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 7th, 2007
9:53 am	Life I haven't posted in forever it feels like. Minor exhaustion I guess. I've been so busy living my RL I haven't had much time for my online one. Let's recap a few points; Little girl is doing well in school. Not that we doubted but she is her father's daughter so in her first report card, her only below average mark was in sitting still and being quiet. This is me all over. She also rushes through homework and schoolwork so there's more time to not sit still and be quiet. Consequently, her work isn't her best. So we sit her down and try to be patient and make her do it over. It's working, slowly. And she's not interuppting anymore. She's learning. Yay. The boy is... well he's 3, almost 4. He has his daddy's temper, he's difficult, he's... really an angel overall, just too smart for his own good. He wants to be as big as his sister and he can't be for years yet, so.. he gets mad. But they play well together, mostly and love each other. Me... I'm not yelling as much. But it's hard. I have a temper. A BIG one, a core of sullen rage at the world based mostly on the rampant stupidity I see worldwide daily. Some days I lament the internet for showing me how moronic the world really is. It makes me so mad to see incompetence and imbecility not only ignored but encouraged! So I try to make a concious decision NOT to let it bother e. But it's so hard. Last night I told someone, it's like an alcoholic actively NOT drinking. I'm NOT yelling. I'm NOT getting mad. Ugh. I have a trip next week. 9:30am flight on Sunday, back at 3:30 Friday. A week of conferences, cellphone emails and dinners on other people's money. Woo hoo. I hate traveling. Wife is surviving her job. Some days better than others, but corporate politics and bad management practices can only take you so far. We're getting by together, we have to, we have no one else. Living over a thousand miles from any family sucks at times. A night out with my wife would be wonderful. A gaming group out here got ahold of me. They seem to want a new GM to come in for some fresh blood. I prefer the Fudge system for my online gaming (email, wiki) but I ran GURPS 3rd for a long while. 4th is somewhat different, but I've absorbed most of it. Still waiting on two more votes for the campaign and an actual meeting with the group. It's fall in Arizona which means 90 degree days and 50 degree nights. Next week that should slip to 80 degree days. Hot tub weather! I'm cruising along at work. E1 development isn't that hard, it's just tedious. I enjoy the PHP stuff more, though I keep inserting chunks of javascript into the designs for convenience. Wish I could share some of the work, but it's all behind domain passwords, et al. Reading Tim Powers, 'The Anubis Gates'. Sadly not as impressed as I'd hoped to be. Still, it has it's moments. I should finish it on the plane or before. Plenty of light reading to take with me. As always, questions, comments, concerns, silliness all read and appreciated. After the trip I'll be home a week then off to the wilds of western North Carolina for Thanksgiving and THEN I can try to be online again. Major development push will be over. (I hope.) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 17th, 2007
4:00 pm	Well that didn't last I couldn't take it. Stripped firefox back down. Desktop Sidebar and Miranda IM keep me operational with minimal impact on the desktop with maximal functionality. I need to write. My creativity needs a kick. I'm visualizing a long war between two secretive orders of Magi split on a fundamentally philosophical point of thaumatology. Now it's present day and the 'field agents' are acting more or less like Cold War era CIA and KGB, they cooperate more or less to keep the war cold while the senior members rattle sabers and make threats.... hmm... *ponders* (Comment on this)
9:49 am	Testing rebuild Every few months I get the desire to rebuild parts of my system. My phone got the remake last time, now it's my laptop. Firefox is gonna get a workout this week I think, as I try out a slew of additions to it to make it work for me. I'll snooze my desktop sidebar and see if I can live without it, productively. (Comment on this)
Friday, September 28th, 2007
2:11 pm	No recent updates, sigh. Girls was sick with strep throat. Better now. Boy shows my temper. Worse now. Girl started soccer, seems to enjoy. I'm getting NO gaming in, surviving. Work is... busy, but good. I'm still here, just, insanely busy. Oh, finished Kushiel's Dart. Not bad, predicted two major revelations well in advance. Did not predict a third with the woman opponent. Hmm. Mayhave to read the next one. Started 'The Anubis Gates', so far it's amusing to read. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 18th, 2007
1:49 pm	Space Game Engineering rule tweak After sitting on it a few days and asking a disinterested third party, here is a revision to the space ship engineering rule on 'tweaking'. Engineering tweaks No self-respecting engineer would just let his ship be if he could wring a LITTLE extra out of her. An Engineering roll can be made to temporarily trade attribute levels between attributes on a ship. A Fair difficulty let's you trade four levels down for one up. A Good difficulty gives you one level up for three down. A Great difficulty lets you pull one up for two down. A Superb difficulty let's you bump one up for a cost of one level down. This shift lasts as long as engineering rolls keep getting made, in normal use, one roll per day at the same difficulty. If the engineer stops, the enhancement fades immediately and the losses require a Fair difficulty roll each to repair. In a combat situation, roll every Turn, and if that area is damaged, the enhancement is treated as normal, and the repairs must still be made as normal. (Comment on this)
8:04 am	Test of some media embedding I made the following video a few years back as a test... now I'm using it to test some pseudo broadcast capabilities... (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, September 14th, 2007
10:33 pm	Out in the Dark option space combat rule! Thought of this while water plants today. (I have a bee issue...) Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee... The regular rules assumes that each pilot is doing what they can to balance evasion with giving their gunner a shot at firing on the opponent. This option says that the pilot can subtract one (1) from the gunner's s kill and add one (1) to the pilot roll for evading being hit. Float like a butterfly. Conversely, the pilot can provide a more stable platform to shoot from, at the expense of his piloting roll. A plus one (1) to hit for a minus one (1) to evade. Sting like a bee. Unsurprisingly, most heavy ships (Dreadnaughts?) tend to sting like bees when buzzed at by fighters and pirates. Orbital stations will always get the +1, as they don't dodge, being, you know, in fixed orbits... (Comment on this)
3:02 pm	Space Game- Engineering I'll keep tossing data on the Space Game (Out in the Dark) until someone yells at me to stop (and gives a decent reason why). REALLY long posts get a cut. Engineering tweaks No self-respecting engineer would just let their ship be if he could wring a LITTLE extra out of her. So... An Engineering roll can be made to temporarily trade attribute levels between attributes on a ship. A Fair difficulty contest let's you trade three levels down for one up. A Good difficulty gives you one level up for two down. a Great difficulty lets you pull one up for one down, and a Superb difficulty let's you bump one up for no cost. This shift lasts as long as engineering rolls keep getting made at the same difficulty. In normal use that's one roll per week. If the engineer stops, the enhancement fades immediately and in any case the losses require a Good difficulty roll each to repair. In a combat situation, if that area is damaged, the enhancement is treated as normal, and the repairs must still be made as normal. So a Good Engineer can attempt to take our sample cargo hauler and tweak a bit more out of her. Size 3 Small Cargo Carrier Agility- Superb Power- Great Sensors- Good Endurance- Mediocre Armor- Mediocre Armament- Poor Cargo Space- Good Let's say she's gotten a pirate on her tail with Great Agility and Power. She can't flat out run them, she might be able to out fly them. The Captain has to make a call. Either they can have the engineer can attempt to route power away from the Sensors (Good to Mediocre=Two levels) and Armament (Poor to Terrible=one level) and use that power to up the ship's Power to Superb, increasing their chances of running away, Or to Agility, giving the ship finer control. If there's an asteroid belt to hide in, Agility is a better bet, as two levels beat one for running away, but if it's a short straight run to 'safe' territory, dump it into power and run like blazes and hope you don't take too much damage. Assuming you can avoid getting hit while the engineer makes the adjustments! (Comment on this)
10:17 am	Space Game? Well I have one very interested player. Basic and simple rules. Several possible forums in which to run, Email being my initially preferred, as I can access it on my phone and reply when my laptop is inconvenient. I'll toss the floor open if someone else wants to consider an interstellar sort of Firefly-esque universe. Corporate raiding takes on a new tack when the Corps run planets and colonies, and have small navies... A small ship with a morally flexible crew can make a decent living doing 'odd' jobs. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 13th, 2007
3:30 pm	Character creation... No reason to reinvent the wheel. I have some simple and quick character creation rules already configured. http://brokenfuture.pbwiki.com/Fast-character-creation Short form? Sixty (60) points to spend. Six attributes: (Increases cost three (3) per level above Fair, refund three (3) per level below Fair) Reasoning Perception Willpower Strength Agility Health Gifts cost three (3), Faults refund three (3). Sample Gifts and Faults on the page referenced above. Some exceptional Gifts or Faults may cost double. Skills: Undeveloped skills default to POOR, if at all. A developed skill costs 1 'level' to raise to MEDIOCRE, and then doubling each subsequent level. No skill higher than GREAT without GM approval. MEDIOCRE +1 FAIR +2 GOOD +4 GREAT +8 SUPERB* +16 *Requires approval (Comment on this)
1:40 pm	From selenite and others. ( What the computer thinks I should be doing... ) (Comment on this)
11:16 am	I have revised the spaceship combat rules. ( Spaceship combat revised ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 12th, 2007
2:00 pm	Spaceship combat in Fudge Ship combat is a contest of skills, modified by the ships abilities. One ship's gunner rolls to hit. The other ship's pilot rolls to dodge. Ability to hit is modified by difference in Agility, Size, and Armor to Armament as follows: The Gunner adds the difference in their ship's Armament against the opponent's Armor and the difference in the other ship's size to their own. Bigger ships are easier to hit! The Pilot adds the difference in their ship's Agility to the opponent's, and the difference in the other ship's size to their own. Bigger ships are less maneuverable! Every point the gunner wins by reduces an attribute of the ship by a level. Running away is pretty simple. Compare Power, adjusted by Size, each size UP is slower, so a Fair Size 2 is Faster than a Fair Size 3. Apply the difference to piloting rolls. Each point of success in hitting the other ship is applied to the ships attributes as 'damage'. If an attribute drops below Terrible, it's considered lost or offline until repaired. Compare: Size 2 Attacking pirate Agility-Great Power-Mediocre Sensors-Great Endurance-Fair Armor-Fair Armament-Great Cargo Space-Terrible Size 3 Small Cargo Carrier Agility- Superb Power- Great Sensors- Good Endurance- Mediocre Armor- Mediocre Armament- Poor Cargo Space- Good Assuming all skills at Fair... The Pirate jumps the Cargo ship as it comes in system. The Gunner on the Pirate ship has his skill of Fair, plus the roll of the dice, plus the difference in a Great Armament against Mediocre Armor (+3!) plus 1 for the cargo ship being bigger, so Fair+4+the roll. The Pilot has a Fair skill, plus the roll of the dice, plus the difference in Agility (Suberb-Great) for a +1 and their size difference is -1, since they are bigger. On an even roll, the Cargo ship will take 4 levels of damage on the first pass! The player thinks a minute and assigns three levels to Agility and one to Armament. On the Pilot's turn, he decides to run for it! His Power is untouched and he puts the petal to the metal! His Great Power is three more than the Pirate's Mediocre Power. Even rolls and the Cargo ship easily outpaces the Pirate, but they will likely want to get patched up soon. Their ability to dodge is severely reduced. (Comment on this)
1:36 pm	Here are some simple and elegant Fudge Spaceship rules: Keeping in mind the Fudge Scale: Terrible-Poor-Mediocre-Fair-Good-Great-Superb Ship's, like characters, have attributes. Not the SAME attributes mind you... Ship Attributes: Size (Scale) Agility Power Sensors Endurance Armor Armament Cargo Space Technical Details: Power is provided by hot fusion. If the Fusion reaction is lost (usually due to scheduled shutdown or severe damage) it must be restarted using external power or batteries. For this reason, most ships larger than size 2 mount two or more reactors, to restart the reaction. Contragrav is primary source of pilot control. Fine control of direction and amount of applied gravity dictates how well the ship flies. A Poor or Terrible Agility ship handles like a barge, a Great or Superb one flies like a hummingbird. Power controls your top acceleration. The more power you can dump into the ContraGrav, the higher the acceleration you can maintain. Sensors are your eyes and ears. Radio communications falls into here as well. Endurance is how long the ship can go between maintenance checks. A Superb Endurance means the ship is a watch that never needs checking. Fair means it's a good idea to keep an engineer on hand to keep on top of little things. At Poor, the ship might need an engineer working around the clock just to keep her flying, and at Terrible she needs a shipyard, now! Armor is armor. The more you have, the harder it is to damage the ship. Armament is weapons. Projectiles, missiles. The more you have, the better you can hit someone else. Cargo Space is more or less by scale, but adjustments can be made. All attributes default to Fair. There are three 'free' levels that can be applied, then ships can be further customized by trading attribute levels, 1 for 1 between the different items. Size (Scale) -1 Missiles 0- Unmanned Courier/Fighter 1- Manned Courier/Scout 2- Pleasure Yacht 3- Smallest Cargo Hauler 4- Cargo Hauler/Destroyer 5- Heaviest Cargo Hauler/Battleship 6- Dreadnaught 7- Carrier/Bulk Hauler 8- Orbital Station/Colony ship 9- Deep Space station Example Small Cargo Carrier Size 3 Agility- Superb Power- Great Sensors- Good Endurance- Mediocre Armor- Mediocre Armament- Poor Cargo Space- Good This hauler is small, but she's got good storage for her size, mostly cause the last owners ripped out her missile bays. The damage to secondary systems in doing this cause no end of engineering headaches for her current owners, who curse the previous ones names daily. Still, with the lost weight of the missiles and the armor also stripped off, she has power to spare and she dances like a bird. Good thing too, she's had to outrun a few pirates, since she can't out fight them as is. I'm still redrafting the ship combat rules. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 11th, 2007
3:01 pm	OK, I said I'd post the various game offerings one at a tie and ask for comments. I posted one, didn't hear from anyone (not terribly surprising I admit) and promptly failed to post more. I blame a heavy shot of Real Life. So, without further time or resources, the other current items in my prospectus list: Forces of Nature 25 years ago a wash of Cosmic radiation bathed the Earth. The Van Allen Belt stopped most of it, but not all. It sleeted through the world, through the people. Major mutations occurred. Some spontaneously, others just unlocking the potential for future generations. The first thing to occur was a War. Worldwide and mostly undirected, countries fought their own people, powered beings fought each other, and they monstrosities raised up from animals affected by the radiation. (This one came to me as a sort of 'New Gods Rising' idea. a generation into the concept of super-powered humanity, the children of the children of mutation come of age and start taking over.) Tales of the Scarred Earth The burning times hurt the world pretty bad. Nothing more complex than a gas engine works reliably anymore. The scars on the land sicken and kill any but the most hardy mutants. The Republic of New Texas is a stronghold of freedom against the rest of a world going down in flames. From the pirates of Caribbean islands to the mutant tribes of the New Mexico desert and down south to the irradiated jungles of Central America, the only Law is the law of the gun, and the best guns belong to the Rangers. The characters will be members of this elite, a combination of Military Intelligence, Special Ops, and Marshal. Whether defending the oil fields of the Louisiana coast from the cannibals of the swamps, or hunting Mexican dragons out in west Texas or unraveling the conspiracies of the amoral cartels down in South America this is Old West punk. (I ran this once as a linked series of one shots, filler for a group I was in. They loved it so much it became an alternating thing. We never got to do the last scenario requested, a mutant raid on a defended oil refinery in West Texas. We DID do a Category 5 hurricane hitting an oil platform in the gulf. They REALLY shouldn't have used C4 and if they did, they should have given it to someone who knew the difference between 1/4 pound, and 4 pounds.) This Eldritch Earth When the friends discover that a vampire has taken out a friend, and now that ‘friend’ is stalking them, time to learn the rules of the great game and become players is the game, and hopefully not as pawns! Magic, werewolves, spirits both good and evil, and of course, vampires rock the night (and sometimes day!) in this modern hidden fantasy. (Ran this some, and it sort of evolved into my wiki Cabal game. It's fun in a fast and loose way.) Age of Heros First came the Age of Gods and they made the world as it is today, but their war shook the heavens and left the world a broken place. Then came the Age of Kings and it was good. They built the lands back up and people prospered, until the things came out of the dark and whispered lies and the kings warred and the kingdoms fell. Now is an Age of Heroes. Where some Kingdoms struggle to survive and an Empire grows, can a hero show the world what is the evil in their midst and root it out? Can they face the forces that toppled kingdoms and survive? From minor to epic magics, swords and sorcery, politics and espionage. (I am running this as a PBeM, and lessons learned, I'd do it a lot differently this time, not the least is changing up the rules of magic a LOT. I still love the RoleMaster rules, but recognize the 'gaming' elements better now and would use more of a narrative system for a PBeM. Those rules ARE getting used to good effect in a game over in Spain I hear though, so at least there's some good use.) Out in the Dark Gravity control and ContraGrav were merely dissertation topics due to the incredible cost in power they required, until someone figured out how to use them to jump start hot fusion. Combined with higher temperature superconductors and some engineering experiments, man's dependence on oil was lifted, right to the stars. Now ships skim between stars, surfing on gravity waves, or puttering about in system at significant fractions of light speed. Of course, humanity being what it is, it didn't take long for the first pirates to appear. Now each world is it's own domain, each system it's own jurisdiction with it's own laws and each ship that isn't military could be innocent, or a predator. No one knows where /all/ of humanity is, we've spread too wide over too long. The galaxy is ours, all you have to do is keep your ship running and make enough to eat. Oh and dodge that pirate, or become one and dodge the local authorities. More than casual acknowledgment to Firefly, David Weber, Star Trek, etc. (I'm tempted to drop this one. NOt that it wouldn't be fun, but I'm losing the luster for it. Perhaps I just need to watch Serenity again or read a Weber book.) Comments welcomed, even rude ones. ;) (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, August 30th, 2007
11:52 am	Prospectus discussion #1 I'm going to post a short series of proposed games I'd like to run at some point in the future. Comments welcomed, encouraged even. Tell me what you think! Infinity Ops Time travel meets fractured history as the Infinity Operations core team tries to fight the good fight throughout all possible histories from their secret base, code named- ‘Atlantis’. Fighting the paratime Nazi’s, the Reptoid that cannot die, and the enigmatic Sphinx’s, with the occasional help (or hindrance) of the paratime competition, MI-Infinity. High-Tech meets arcane mysteries with biological and social horror. Enemies: Nazi's- Trying to 'win' history for that 'Thousand year Reich'. Uses low tech and lots of insanity. The Reptoid- Ancient parthenogenic biological that transmits memories to her 'children'. Biological infiltration and patience. Sphinx's- Insanely twisted magi doing odd things for their own ends. MI-Infinity- Saving history for their own reasons, Queen and Country. They aren't from YOUR timeline, but they'll back your moves to protect history... to a point. After that, your histories diverge and they are enemies, not allies.