Bay 12 Games Forum

Please bold any conclusions of the meeting. if there are any, that is.

The Sky Lords are suspicious of the New Order.

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on April 24, 2013, 10:29:05 pm

The oxygen content being half...well, before I can respond, is that the total oxygen or the oxygen percentage?

Does it matter? In one case we have 50% of the required oxygen, and in the other 38%. the difference is a bare 25%

25% isn't a sneezing matter.

We want these folk to actually live out there without inventing new and colourful language to curse their creator. Having them faint if they exert themselves wouldn't be good. Forcing them to carry several litres of water whenever they leave a dam would not be good. If basic-model humans expel anything they have recently ingested whenever they look at our creation, that probably wouldn't be good either...
Lets give them ridges to expel heat, keep clothing and cleaning in mind, putting the most pronounced ridges on the head and outer limbs, with milder ridges on the torso. I think that small size is necessary, for gravitational and circulatory issues, but it would place some strain on breathing. Feathers sound good, but might insulate too well, if we could have ridges protruding from feathers without making something hideous to behold then that might be workable.
_{Lets just make velociraptors and be done with it...}

No raptors! Did you learn nothing from the mistakes of John Hammond?

I think ectothermy would be easier than ridges, and wouldn't come with wardrobe issues. Small size has lots of issues, especially with heat regulation and retaining human intellect.
And remember: K.I.S.S. Simple is also less ugly.

I'm convinced on the making them shorter vs. bone toughening question. Changing my vote to Make Shorter. I'm not 100% sure on respiratory efficiency vs. pressurized lungs. Do we have gene samples available for more efficient lungs? Something to look into. As for ectothermy, normally I would be all for it if we were designing a creature from the ground up, but in this case it seems really impractical. Consider:

1. We'd need to redo the hypothalamus to not change body temperature while still producing the required hormones that the body needs. Which means complicated and potentially dangerous brain DNA alterations.
2. We'd need to rework a bunch of proteins to accept a wider tolerance for core body temperature than is normal in humans. Again, that is a lot of work.
3. We'd have to rework the histamine response to neither cause fevers (which are not available for ectotherms) nor to rely on them in the immune system. And we can't change the histamine molecule itself, since it's also used as a neurotransmitter and for other immune system responses.
4. Beacause of 2 and 3, that means we have to basically redo the entire immune system to use different proteins, not need fever to drive out bacteria, to be more pro-active about killing bacteria to compensate for higher infection rates, but not kill of vital gut bacteria, etc.
5. Basically, what RAM said. Making them cold-blooded would mean periods of lethargy in cold, periodic sunning requirements, a change in sexual response not to get squicked out by feeling up cold flesh, and a host of other psychological changes to make the colonists feel OK about being lizard people and not become super depressed.

1. Why? Wouldn't it simply be disabling the creation of whatever hormones or proteins are used in temperature regulation, one of the easiest bits of gengineering?
2. Probably, yeah, but we could just use homologous proteins in (say) lizards.
3. True.
4. Perhaps. But it can't be that tough.
5. The psychological bit might have a point, but it never gets that cold. The temperature bottoms out around 90 Farenheight.
It certainly works better than big rays.

Scaling people down is the simplest way to deal with the gravity problem, and should also reduce (though probably not completely alleviate) the breathing problem.  It works for the same reason giant monsters don't.  We should begin by activating a recessive gene for dwarfism, the material is already there.

The problem being that thermoregulation is tougher in small creatures due to the greater ration of surface area to volume and such. This cuts for "keeping warm" and "keeping cool".

If we can revise the urinary tract to pass liquid waste off into the fecal slurry near the end of the small intestine, water can be reabsorbed as it passes through the large intestine.  This will probably require improvements to the intestinal tract to avoid reabsorbing toxins instead of excreting them.  As a small aesthetic bonus, these people will not be urinating through their reproductive systems.

Agreed. Especially since it's not mutually exclusive with uric acid.

Perhaps neither hair nor feathers are an appropriate covering for our new kind of people.  We should tailor the immune system and skin to accept growth of a kind of plant, that we will engineer ourselves.  This plant will be a hardy variety that needs minimal water and exists in symbiosis with our new breed of humans.  It will cover at least part of them, providing a shield against the sun.  It will feed itself by extracting carbon from excess carbon dioxide in the blood, and release the waste oxygen back into the bloodstream.  This should help to make the most of what little oxygen is available.  We will need to pay careful attention to conditions in which our engineered plant can grow, to avoid overgrowth and sickening or killing the hosts.

...
Hm. Heterotrophs in symbiosis with plants?
Lichenthropes.
I like the idea.


Alright, can someone assemble a list of the major suggestions and which ones are mutually exclusive?

Kill the demon that offered its servitude to Xantalos.
Attack Xantalos while commanding my forces to fire artillery at Xantalos.

Punch Xantalos in the face equivalent

Charge Xantalos with murder.

Eat the afterlife
Accept the demon's offer

[2v3v2-1;5v4] Fireiy successfully sues Xantalos! This impairs his ability to fight, letting Furtaka punch him badly!

Kill the random NPC. S/he is useless!

"You're useless."
"Gee, th--OW!"
[6v4] You murder her, in full view of town.

Build.A.Spaceship.

Wait, you're on that one high-tech planet. [3] You build an orbital shuttle.

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on March 25, 2013, 06:25:55 pm

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on March 18, 2013, 08:22:38 pm

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on December 05, 2012, 10:02:31 pm

Backstory:
"Yes! I'm in the nuclear power plant! None will expect me!"
Suddenly, his plan worked. Much faster than anticipated. The meltdown occurred the moment he pressed the inexplicable button.
"Oh dear..."

Gain superpowers!

Well, have fun in the new house! Oh, and if you discover a book with weird words, let us know before teleporting somewhere funny.

...I have an idea for my character once Stephen bites the dust.

Use my teeth to MANUALLY REMOVE XANTALOS'S SPINE. Because he is to blame for something going horribly wrong.

It's only manually if you use your hands.

You're removing his spine dentally.


Attach other end of chains to inside of TARDIS.
Take assistant and I back to the moment before Xantalos was born.
Give Xantalos's parents $100 and give Xantalos to nicer parents so he doesn't grow up to be so insane, saving the world and one poor eldritch abomination.

wait, am I missing something? Abilities are attributes, right?

Abilities, attributes, interchangeable between systems and easily confused by a GM who can't remember which he used.

Paris: Looks pretty good, and reminds me of a neat little rule that I forgot to mention earlier. Despite all the limits on guns and such, there is no limit on the ammo you bring into the Brawl Zone (as long as it's all the less-lethal plastic stuff).

And yeah, Bludgeon works for maces.