GURPS Action 5: Dictionary of Danger

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

Dang. That had to hurt.

Fortunately it was just flame that burned me, as I was out of the 'line of fire' and thus no napalm, etc. But burning one's face like that does hurt, yes. I spent the next few hours holding my head under in a bucket of cold water for as long as I could. I'd cleverly waiting until the rest of the family was out before running my little experiment, and they were late home, and I was too chicken to call an ambulance.

Ugh. I never had to deal with farm animals that much. Kind of glad I didn't now.

My parents had/have a small block of land (10 acres) with an assortment of animals, a large vege garden, etc. My sisters had horses. In my experience a horse is a tool for falling onto hard ground from a height at speed.

[scc]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Hot oil is there. The author worked in a restaurant kitchen where old, congealed oil was removed by heating it up to make it liquid again and then draining it. He was in front of the drain when the machine experienced failure, and had both knees and his left shoulder deep-fat fried. He believes that 1d+1 burn is about right, because each hit averages 4.5 damage, which isn't quite enough to cripple an arm or a leg (though the potential is there), but three hits are enough to put you in the hospital with shock and have you off work for two weeks to heal.

I don't recommend reality-checking this to anyone.

Point of order, if it's sold at room temperature it's a fat, if it's liquid it's an oil, unless it's been through interesterification or winterization (To raise or lower the melting point)[the reason for these exception is that canola fat doesn't make a lot of sense].

Now as I can see no advantage to having the frying oil sold at room temperature (handling it is clearly harder) what you where sprayed with was fat, unless some really freaky stuff was going on in that frier during operation.

[(E)]

Ok here goes
A is for getting hit by a staircase
B is for Bush lawyer ( barbed and entangling)
C is for industrial wetting agent (it's hard to rinse your eyes with a frozen water bottle)
D no got nothing for this one
E is for electric fence to the back of the head while elbow deep in water
F is for post thumper, (indirectly, it's basically a 200kg hammer) plus pitchfork plus Electric shears (shearing handpiece teeth impeded in my shoulder) and several others
G nothing on that list
H is covered later
I is for a logsplitter popping four fingers
J nothing so far
K is for molten fudge
L is lion red beer bottle
M is for live vaccine to the leg
N is for nothing
O is for.... does rockfalls caused by mining explosives count, other wise just near misses
P is for probably nothing in this category
Q isn't something I've experienced.
R is for tree, chainsaw and the bucket of a 20 ton digger
S is golf ball and caber
T is for having to walk to the doctors to get a screwdriver pulled out of my back because I couldn't reach it or sit in a car seat. Fencing staple gun to the hand too
U is possibly for getting a high viz vest snagged and resulting in a Z
V is for several but the best has to be hitting myself with a quad bike that I was driving. (Hit concealed pipe, superman over the handle bars, hit bank, get hit by quad, get 27 parts of my body x-rayed)
W is for dang I mentioned the digger already.
X isn't something that's bothered me.
Y is for rescuing a dog from a landfill wastewater pond.
Z is for bull (is it gored if they have no horns?) , horse (thrown), pig (tusks), and going off list.. rams, cows, stingray, possum, goose, ferret, dogs.
There might be more, it's difficult to remember, I've been hit in the head a lot.

An enjoyable read, I just couldn't help thinking of a few situations to put players in. Oops I meant to say, put player characters in...

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by (E)

B is for Bush lawyer ( barbed and entangling)

Not combined with Supple Jack? You got off easy.

E is for electric fence to the back of the head while elbow deep in water

Step over low electric fence, get feet stuck in mud on both sides. Realise that one is slowly sinking into the mud...

V is for several but the best has to be hitting myself with a quad bike that I was driving. (Hit concealed pipe, superman over the handle bars, hit bank, get hit by quad, get 27 parts of my body x-rayed)

That's a really good effort!

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by apoc527

Wow, either all of you are just unlucky, or I have some variation of Luck...possibly even Serendipity. It's not like I live in a bubble, but I think the worst thing I've done is stick my foolish face over a beaker of hydrochloric acid and forgot to not breathe. That hurt. So I guess I've got C is for Chemicals covered.

Which reminds me of the time someone left concentrated NH₄OH sitting around in an open-topped beaker near where I was working. I didn't stick my nose over it and inhale, but that didn't matter. It was like being kicked in the face by a mule, complete with an involuntary jerking of the head and a nosebleed.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by scc

Point of order, if it's sold at room temperature it's a fat, if it's liquid it's an oil, unless it's been through interesterification or winterization (To raise or lower the melting point)[the reason for these exception is that canola fat doesn't make a lot of sense].

Now as I can see no advantage to having the frying oil sold at room temperature (handling it is clearly harder) what you where sprayed with was fat, unless some really freaky stuff was going on in that frier during operation.

In real life, when you pour oil into the fryer, it is in fact oil, and a liquid; it comes in big metal drums with a pour spout, and says "oil" right on the tin. The catch is that once it's used all night and full of adulterants, it breaks down and turns into a solid mass at room temperature. The next morning, to make sure you get it all out of all the little niches for health reasons, you have to heat it up enough to (1) liquefy it and (2) kill anything that might be growing in those little niches. It was the law where I lived.

[Michael Thayne]

Question about lasers: they're mentioned under Quantum, but no stats are given. The only actual game mechanics are for surgical lasers I guess because that's already covered in High-Tech. The upper end of Wikipedia's range for the power of "typical laser used in industrial laser cutting" is 30x more powerful than the upper end of the range for "typical surgical laser". If a surgical laser is 1d-3, using the scaling system from Spaceships, would that make 1d+2 reasonable for a large industrial laser?

[Þorkell]

Some of you guys are way more accident prone than I am. The following are all I recall.

My left middle finger is about 2.5mm shorter than the right one because when I was 13 we were having an inside/outside snowball fight at school, one guy came running in and slammed the door after him. Guess where my finger was? And furthermore the guys found the missing bits in the door later in the day.

I have a scar (about an inch long) on the meaty part of my right hand just below the thumb. I blame (board) games for this. You see I kept my dice etc. in a jar, and one day tore it apart as I was opening it. Had a cast up to my elbow because of it. Couldn't write for two weeks which was fun because this happened during the part of the year you're supposed to be at school. So I attended class and listened real good. Also had a cut on my left thumb from the same jar incident.

Had a bicycle accident in The Netherlands, and I have a scar on my left knee to remember that by.

When I was 9 years old I got a concussion on my way to school. I was walking down a staircase when my legs somehow tangled together and I fell head first to the next landing. Mom heard the thump and rushed to me, but sent me on when she saw I didn't have any extra holes or bits missing. Got to my friends building (block of flats/apartment building) and discovered then that my vision was kinda blurry and I couldn't see where his doorbell was. Lucked out and guessed right. HIS mom decided that I wasn't going to school when she saw me (apparently I was more white than is usual) and called my mom to inform her.

Had a bicycle accident, but the car wasn't going fast and only hit the bike. I landed a few yards from where I'd been, and before the driver of the car had reacted I had collected my bike and was furious as I strode on home. Driver of the car saw where I was going and followed. When we both got there he explained the situation to mom. I didn't even get a scratch.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Kromm

In real life, when you pour oil into the fryer, it is in fact oil, and a liquid; it comes in big metal drums with a pour spout, and says "oil" right on the tin. The catch is that once it's used all night and full of adulterants, it breaks down and turns into a solid mass at room temperature. The next morning, to make sure you get it all out of all the little niches for health reasons, you have to heat it up enough to (1) liquefy it and (2) kill anything that might be growing in those little niches. It was the law where I lived.

Fats/oils going liquid>solid is essentially freezing, guessing something about the cooking raises the freezing point? Oxidation?

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Plane

Fats/oils going liquid>solid is essentially freezing, guessing something about the cooking raises the freezing point? Oxidation?

It has everything to do with thermal breakdown and solid dissolution/suspension (the same happens to motor oil and transmission fluid). Basically the oil undergoes a chemical change and can (in extreme cases) stop being a liquid at room (and even higher) temperature(s).