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Old 04-24-2007, 05:53 AM   #11
Mr Frost
 
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Default Re: How to build: becoming Inertialess in the Lensmen sense

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fnord-Fnairlane
If the "Lord of the Rings" is the seminal work that launched an entire genre of fiction and fantasy roleplaying, Lensman is the equivalent series for Sci-Fi and Space Opera. It is (IMO) equally influential in it's own genre.

You want over-the-top? Read the Lensman series. Considering it was written in the '30s and '40s, it has aged extraordinarily well. Wherever possible, he stuck to "physics as understood at the time" - other than psionics it's a moderately hard-science background (more so than Star-Trek or Star Wars, for example). Maths ans physics used in the series are internally consistent, though there's a fair bit of "Super Science" (TL^) in GURPS terms.

Spaceship speed? 90 to 100,000 Parsecs per hour. Note that the Milky Way is only about 30,000 parsecs across... Gamma quadrant? That's a day or so away.

Power-plant ratings? Starts at pounds per hour (IE: E=MC^2, where M is macroscopic....) increases 12 orders of magnitude during the series.

Psi powers? Every main protaganist (Lensman) has a few hundred to a few thousand points of Psi. Jedi are utterly laughable by comparison. Training and forthright determination are starkly more powerful than hokey religions.

Lack of escalation control? People start using full sized planets as battle-stations, coz they're tough enough to more or less cope with battleship guns. So then people start tossing planets as kinetic energy weapons. So a defence is arranged for important systems: Use the entire output of the systems sun as the emmitter for a plasma cannon (cooks planets real good). Thus, planets have to be tossed at substantially higher velocities (preferably more than light speed) to be effective weapons.

Starship Weaponry? Back in the "pounds per hour" era of power-plants, the good guys switch to nuclear-bomb-powered lasers (one bomb = 1 shot) to get through star-ship shields. All I can say is that the breech of those "primaries" must be pretty strong, because they're not one-shot weapons. This escalates along with power plants...

The second most powerful weapon used in the series (crushing a fortress planet between a few supra-light anti-matter planets) caused an explosion (well, more like a local destruction of the space-time continuum) around a dozen parsecs across. There was a worry it might cause the total destruction of space-time, but apparently "something" would step in to prevent this (God?).

The most powerful attack used in the series was a psionic gestalt of a few billion Lensman controlled by "The Unit". Note that your baseline Lensman (1st stage) are around about a 1,000 points, the few (4?) most powerful ones (2nd Stage) are around 4,0000 pts, the five members of "The Unit" are 3rd stage Lensman, with no sensible points total, and "The Unit" is effectively "Stage 4". They then did a galaxy wide (yes, the whole galaxy, millions of inhabited planets, thousands of Lensman per planet) psionic mind meld, and mind-blasted the bad guys.

Note: "Most powerful" attack was the result of two billion years of planning and preparation. Oh, and second most powerful attack would not have worked on final bad guys.

Seriously, no other setting even comes close. One end-game Lensman universe dreadnought could take on the entire combined might of the Star Trek and Star Wars universes (maybe excluding Q and the like) and treat the battle as a minor skirmish on the way to the main event. And there are millions of said dreadnoughts available.

It's somewhat hard to work out the exact numbers, but a Mauler class battleship has a power plant with an output on the order of at least several thousand tons of total conversion per second, and if I'm doing the math right, more like "millions of tons per second". IE: roughly one solar output. Per battleship. First you start with a total conversion power-plant rated in "pounds of matter converted per hour", then you increase it's power output 1,000-fold via the discovery of super-conductors that can handle the required power output (this allows the FTL capable planets, BTW). Note that one of the biggest issues in Lensman battleship design is your thigh-thick copper bus-bars turning into plasma due to battle damage induced power surges, thus the super-conductor thing being so useful. Finally, you use super-conducting total-conversion power-plant to run your "cosmic" powerplant, where energy out = one million times energy in. Lucky they have those infinite energy density superconductors, eh?
Or , to phrase it another way , The Lensemen series Owns !
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Old 04-24-2007, 06:56 AM   #12
carllarson
 
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Default Re: How to build: becoming Inertialess in the Lensmen sense

And with all that technology and power available, it came down many times to convincing a spider to flip a switch for you.

Immense power fought the Boskone Wars, but brains made it possible.

True, they had a lot of brains available after eons of selective breeding for their penultimates.
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Old 04-24-2007, 07:48 AM   #13
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Default Re: How to build: becoming Inertialess in the Lensmen sense

All of the above points about Lensman are true; it's a fun read and no question. I'm not all that fond of it as a game setting, because the solution to a given problem is often just more power (willpower, or what have you), and Doc Smith does love his unselfconscious triumphal didacticism, but it's fun to read. As far as consistent math goes, I was always bothered that Doc admits in-text that the hyperlight antimatter planets have imaginary mass, but still makes 'em straightforwardly smash into stuff just like ordinary objects. But he is very straightforward about admitting it.

I did feel that the old GURPS translation was occasionally committed to big numbers just for the sake of it; for instance, if I recall correctly, once one translated from the old space combat rules into standard DR and dice of damage, the Dauntless was given a DR of around 2^15,000, which means that sunbeams and antimatter planets shouldn't have even been noticeable.

But hey, that's all fixable. And I suspect these days that one could build the main Lensmen on a much more reasonable budget.

--K
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Old 04-24-2007, 10:48 AM   #14
TJA
 
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Default Re: How to build: becoming Inertialess in the Lensmen sense

Now, did any of you read throught the "Perry Rhodan" series?
It contains some ideas that are worth reading as well :)

Entities working to increase the background temperature of their Universe to finally make it collapse - just to take the next step of evolution for themself.
Creatures that did grow from entire Galaxies and stepped into the next evolution to just go "beyond" ...
Others that create whole civilisations just to have some little help in this or that minor point in their realy cosmic schemes and so on :)

Itīs badly written in many parts but had some very interesting highlights over the time!
The series started at 1961 - here a Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Rhodan
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Old 04-24-2007, 01:29 PM   #15
Kirby
 
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Default Re: How to build: becoming Inertialess in the Lensmen sense

Quote:
Originally Posted by TJA
Now, did any of you read throught the "Perry Rhodan" series?
It contains some ideas that are worth reading as well :)

Entities working to increase the background temperature of their Universe to finally make it collapse - just to take the next step of evolution for themself.
Creatures that did grow from entire Galaxies and stepped into the next evolution to just go "beyond" ...
Others that create whole civilisations just to have some little help in this or that minor point in their realy cosmic schemes and so on :)

Itīs badly written in many parts but had some very interesting highlights over the time!
The series started at 1961 - here a Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Rhodan
Thanks for the link! I keep seeing individual Perry Rhodans in used bookstores, but I've never quite been sure enough of what they were all about to buy them. Unfortunately, it sounds as though there are so many of them I'd never catch up on the story as a whole.

I feel a bit like I'm threadjacking here -- my apologies, Molokh -- but do you have a broad plot outline or something similar to which you can point us?

-K
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Old 04-24-2007, 09:11 PM   #16
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Default Re: How to build: becoming Inertialess in the Lensmen sense

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Originally Posted by Kirby
And I suspect these days that one could build the main Lensmen on a much more reasonable budget.
--K
*Pulls out GURPS Lensman*

Side note:

"Prodigious" battleship
300,000 crew.
8,000,000,000 lb/hr cosmic power power plant
5 million firepower, 4,600 DF (Space system)

Kimball Kinnison (3e)
ST: 18
IQ: 22
DX: 18
HT: 18

Several hundred points of advantages, largely the same cost 3e/4e.

Telepathy power 31, 11 different skills in the range 22 to 35, with communication skills having Intergalactic range. In 4e terms, that's 11 different powers, all with "-10% Telepathy".

Over 2,000 points in Allies....

Overall? 4,100 points in 4e.

I think the allies in Lensman where half the reason the rules were changed in 4e - K.K. has one ally that cost 915 points (his wife) - in 4e she'd be a "100% of points total, all the time".

But the 2,000 point refund from a 4e conversion of his allies is probably only going to be just enough to pay for his Telepathy powers The 3e version only cost about 500 points, due to use of 3e Psionics rules. 4e Powers based version is going to be sunstantially more than 1,000 points.

Stats, advantages and skills are going to remain pretty much the same price, probably slightly more expensive overall in 4e compared to 3e.

My guess? He'd come in at 3,000 to 3,500 in 4e.

I'm strongly tempted to write up a freshly "unnatached" Lensman at around 1,200 points. It would actually be the right points total and power level for a game I'm playing.
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Old 04-25-2007, 01:49 AM   #17
David Johnston
 
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Default Kimball Kinnison

Well let's see now. His stats and advantages would go down substantially. That would leave him with his powers of Illusion, Innate Attack w/Malediction (+150%), Innate Attack causing Fatigue w/Malediction (+150%,), Mind Control w/ Conditioning (+50%), Mind Reading, Mind Probe, Mind Shield and Telesend. He would also of course have 4 levels of Telepathy Talent and the Lens which would act a +50% modifier to all his powers, increasing the range on his powers.
Considering that he doesn't have to actually buy skill with any of his powers any more, I think he'd come pretty close to breaking even on his psi powers all in all.
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Old 04-25-2007, 04:14 AM   #18
TJA
 
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Default Re: How to build: becoming Inertialess in the Lensmen sense

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kirby
Thanks for the link! I keep seeing individual Perry Rhodans in used bookstores, but I've never quite been sure enough of what they were all about to buy them. Unfortunately, it sounds as though there are so many of them I'd never catch up on the story as a whole.
-K
There are far above 2000 booklets ... and every week there is a new one. 52 per year ... itīs hard to keep up or try to :)
Also, the stories evolve around "cycles" with 50 to 100 booklets each (sometimes more, sometimes less) and just jumping in will be difficult.
Start at number one :)
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Old 04-25-2007, 07:37 AM   #19
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Default Re: How to build: becoming Inertialess in the Lensmen sense

Quote:
Originally Posted by TJA
There are far above 2000 booklets ... and every week there is a new one. 52 per year ... itīs hard to keep up or try to :)
Also, the stories evolve around "cycles" with 50 to 100 booklets each (sometimes more, sometimes less) and just jumping in will be difficult.
Start at number one :)
Also, don't even try it without reasonable German skills, as most stuff is only available in German.
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Old 04-25-2007, 09:43 AM   #20
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Default Re: How to build: becoming Inertialess in the Lensmen sense

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kirby
Thanks for the link! I keep seeing individual Perry Rhodans in used bookstores, but I've never quite been sure enough of what they were all about to buy them. Unfortunately, it sounds as though there are so many of them I'd never catch up on the story as a whole.

I feel a bit like I'm threadjacking here -- my apologies, Molokh -- but do you have a broad plot outline or something similar to which you can point us?

-K
I'm wondering how would one build the ability to inflict inertialessness on self (or a target, for that matter). Only that.

I'm not looking for rationalizing gadgets or anything. I want to inflict a physical property onto an object.
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