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Old 01-30-2013, 12:27 PM   #41
Proteus
 
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Default Re: Pros and cons of growing your own island nation?

How about using Ritual Path Magic? I've never played with the system myself, but always been intrigued.

Would it take Lesser Control Energy to fire up a volcanic seamount? (Lesser since it will "affect normal forms of the energy [e.g. magma] in simple, believable, and natural ways", MH1 p. 32, and "a mundane bystander would believe that the effect could have occurred naturally", MH1 p. 33). Presumably one could even have the initial stages of the eruption happen faster than normal, since outside observers wouldn't be overly surprised by unnoticed growth of an oceanic volcano. (Heck, we recently found out an entire island on Pacific maps didn't actually exist; the area is not spectacularly well-monitored.)

Then I'd guess you'd need Greater Control Matter to shape the resulting island as it formed (sheltered harbor where you want it, proper balance of hard rock versus easily-eroded pumice, etc.). I suppose a Lesser Strengthen Matter could also take up some of the load, if you didn't particularly care about the end shape.

And, then, a Greater Control Energy to reliably shut off the volcano once it had done the necessary work. (Although, would that be subject to duration costs to keep the volcano off, or just be a reversal of the initial impetus?)

I really don't know the RPM rules well at all, so I'm interested in any insights to this solution.

A rough reading does make me think that Weight, from the Ritual Effect Table, could well be the killer for this option. A mile-wide disk 500 feet thick is about 11 billion cubic feet, and basalt is about 188 pounds per cubic foot, so that's about 2 trillion pounds, or a billion tons, or a ritual effect modifier of +24 (for 1,350 x 3^13 tons).
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Old 01-30-2013, 12:55 PM   #42
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Default Re: Pros and cons of growing your own island nation?

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However; build a new island chain in the artic or antartic <don't need to be big>, and make them set up to support a huge ice shelf growing over them and you could REDUCE water levels
It'll work better in the antarctic. Freezing over the arctic waters permanently would freak people out and change global weather patterns.

You could go all Mr. Burns and use a giant Shade spell to reduce global temperatures, or just locally (at the poles, frex). Localized shading won't work as well due to air and water circulation.
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Old 01-30-2013, 02:45 PM   #43
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Default Re: Pros and cons of growing your own island nation?

To take a very different approach, you could put the 500 points into Wealth and just buy an existing island... and you could probably "buy" soverignty along with it, if you spend the money right.
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Old 01-30-2013, 02:50 PM   #44
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Default Re: Pros and cons of growing your own island nation?

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To take a very different approach, you could put the 500 points into Wealth and just buy an existing island... and you could probably "buy" soverignty along with it, if you spend the money right.
And now we can resurrect the thread on building a president of a world superpower on less than 500 points.
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Old 01-30-2013, 07:21 PM   #45
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Default Re: Pros and cons of growing your own island nation?

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I don't think earth elementals are able to create earth, are they? So rather than earth elementals, wouldn't you want fire elementals, to agitate the magma from below? Or perhaps both, to arrange an eruption most efficiently?
I was thinking that the plan might be to get a whole team of elementals to build the island for you, no eruptions necessary.

I don't have my books in front of me, and my GURPS-fu is weak. What would determine the upper limit on the number of elementals a high-powered wizard could have working for him/her at once?
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Old 01-30-2013, 08:15 PM   #46
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Default Re: Pros and cons of growing your own island nation?

So, say you succeed in making your own island and all that. How will that break your GMs' game? You will now have a one trick pony on an island in the middle of the Pacific and the villains will be free to roam everywhere else on the globe.

And when you somehow manage to enter combat all you can do is threaten to start a volcano or move earth on their heads. - Tactics that will usually be frowned upon by most governments - and probably also by yourself should this combat happen to take place on your new created island.
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Old 01-30-2013, 09:21 PM   #47
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So, say you succeed in making your own island and all that. How will that break your GMs' game? You will now have a one trick pony on an island in the middle of the Pacific and the villains will be free to roam everywhere else on the globe.

And when you somehow manage to enter combat all you can do is threaten to start a volcano or move earth on their heads. - Tactics that will usually be frowned upon by most governments - and probably also by yourself should this combat happen to take place on your new created island.
The idea started when I began considering what I could do with a standard wizard out of Fantasy built on 500 points. Little things like Magery 10 and the fact that the campaign world has mad scientists that could build me a fusion power plant just to power my spells made me realize I could do damn near anything I wanted.

Drop a Volcano on them? Heh. Only if I felt like being ridiculous.

The various methods of growing an island I just find fascinating. There are a lot of areas in GURPS I haven't really looked at.
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Old 01-31-2013, 01:24 AM   #48
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Default Re: Pros and cons of growing your own island nation?

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Only when the airplanes come to shoot you down. Pouring boiling water on an anthill isn't combat - at least not to the boys that do it,
Just because combat is one sided and very short does not make it not combat. If you get points taken off a spell because it is non-combat then any use of the spell to do violence should be off limits.
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Old 01-31-2013, 05:22 AM   #49
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The various methods of growing an island I just find fascinating. There are a lot of areas in GURPS I haven't really looked at.
Well there is always the good old Create Earth trick, and corner various metal markets (iron, copper, aluminium etc) if you wanna play with non combat stuff.
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Old 01-31-2013, 08:02 AM   #50
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Well there is always the good old Create Earth trick, and corner various metal markets (iron, copper, aluminium etc) if you wanna play with non combat stuff.
It was on my list. I decided against playing the Wizard for much the same reason I decided against being a Gadgeteer - It's too easy.

FYI if anyone cares: I ended up building an espionage type that (on just 500 points) is better at most things than the old Black Ops from 3rd were. I'm having much more fun being a subtle evil than I would being a blatant one.

But the idea of being able to create my own island nation just for a place to live does have entertainment value too. GURPS is so wonderfully weird for the places you can go when you say 'What if...'.
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