No Surrender, No Retreat - Release Date?

Hey Dag'Nabbit

If you know that is what is going to happen, why not just change the order to ship to Texas. Then it will be witing for you when you get home.
 
Dag'Nabbit said:
I think I'm going to enter myself in the "Last to receive the book" competition. :)

Let's see, they are going to ship my book from the US. It is going to take it's dear time traveling to NY, where it will be loaded on a plane and flown to Germany. From there it will drive through Eastern Europe to finally arrive at my basecamp. PROBLEM: I won't be here when it finally does arrive; I'll have finally left for home. So...it will then be stuck in the military post office until someone notices that it has to actually go back to the states. Then it will drive to Germany, to be flown to NY, and then onwards to Texas.

Frankly, I'll be amazed if it gets to me by Thanksgiving.

I think this sort of competition is a good idea for a laugh, I'll start a thread with a poll for it here :

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3280

You guess in the poll when you'll get it, if you're the last you can be smug, and if you're last and guessed right about the tieframe you can be extra smug :D Although Dag'Nabbit's already way in front for a convoluted reason as to it's lateness.

LBH
 
PottsBr said:
Hey Dag'Nabbit

If you know that is what is going to happen, why not just change the order to ship to Texas. Then it will be witing for you when you get home.

You see, now that would be thinking ahead. Besides, I'd kinda forgotten about it until I got the notice it was being shipped to me; which happened to be the same day Mongoose announced it was out. Oh well...
 
Dag'Nabbit said:
PottsBr said:
Hey Dag'Nabbit

If you know that is what is going to happen, why not just change the order to ship to Texas. Then it will be witing for you when you get home.

You see, now that would be thinking ahead. Besides, I'd kinda forgotten about it until I got the notice it was being shipped to me; which happened to be the same day Mongoose announced it was out. Oh well...

Well, hindsight is 20/20.

You'll get it eventually Dag'Nabbit. Chin up!

LBH
 
Even if I knew it was going to take a year to get to me I'd still be happy. Because right now, I know I am going home soon. 8)
 
Picked up my Copy of No Surrender, No Retreat so I figure I can point out one of the glaring mistakes.

Lyta (my favorite character in the show)
1st Level Human Lurker / 12th Level Telepath (P12*) Which you show as having Vorlon augmentation. You give her 1st level Vorlon Servant Carrier Psi Rating, and a 9th Level Vorlon Servant 'Power Pool' without reflecting that in her game stats. This would give her 18 more Hit Points. But wait...that would put her to 22nd level or Epic level (which what I think many of the main characters should be since this is an Epic series) :D .

By the time of Epiphanies she was much more powerful than a P12 as she was able to send to Bester reeling when he was attempting to Scan the Command Staff. She even gave him a sweet little smile, like it took no effort at all. She was also able to send ahead a telepathic signal to Z'ha'dum without Bester detecting it. She even admits to Sheridan that she would have to be much more powerful than a P12 by not protesting his theory of what happened.

What is the deal with being able to pose as any Psi Rating that you want if you make it to 9th Level Vorlon Servant? They seem to do the Psi Rating tests Medically as when they tested Allysa. A Psi Cop might be trained how to gauge the approximate Psi Rating by probing a telepath and seeing how strong their shields are, but they won't know the exact Psi Rating. Psi Cops seem to be trained in many things that regular telepaths don't get from the Psi Corps Academy.

pg. 120 "When the Vorlons leave for the Rim, their servants will only be able to advance one level past their current class level being unable to continue." I don't remember Lyta ever going back to Vorlon for futher augmentation, and since she was in some kind of immersion tank to be augmented in the first place, I doubt that Kosh I or II could do that on B5. After the Vorlons left, she really found out what kind of limits she had (which by the time she took over the bar she was in was very impressive, 54 different hands that I counted, all left hands like what she was doing). It seems that what the Vorlon augmentation did was to put a telepath at the top of the Psi Rating scale for their species and then allowed them to further progress over time so that they did not become a being of energy like Jason Ironheart. He progressed far too quickly, so instead of burning out...he 'became'.

One of the things that seemed to be part of the augmentation is the fact that they had to obey the Vorlons. Once the Vorlons were gone, other than the pre-programmed limits to not allow certain technology to fall into the any hands, they were free to really see just how far their powers extended.
 
Anonymous said:
Picked up my Copy of No Surrender, No Retreat so I figure I can point out one of the glaring mistakes.

Lyta (my favorite character in the show)
1st Level Human Lurker / 12th Level Telepath (P12*) Which you show as having Vorlon augmentation. You give her 1st level Vorlon Servant Carrier Psi Rating, and a 9th Level Vorlon Servant 'Power Pool' without reflecting that in her game stats. This would give her 18 more Hit Points. But wait...that would put her to 22nd level or Epic level (which what I think many of the main characters should be since this is an Epic series) :D .

By the time of Epiphanies she was much more powerful than a P12 as she was able to send to Bester reeling when he was attempting to Scan the Command Staff. She even gave him a sweet little smile, like it took no effort at all. She was also able to send ahead a telepathic signal to Z'ha'dum without Bester detecting it. She even admits to Sheridan that she would have to be much more powerful than a P12 by not protesting his theory of what happened.

What is the deal with being able to pose as any Psi Rating that you want if you make it to 9th Level Vorlon Servant? They seem to do the Psi Rating tests Medically as when they tested Allysa. A Psi Cop might be trained how to gauge the approximate Psi Rating by probing a telepath and seeing how strong their shields are, but they won't know the exact Psi Rating. Psi Cops seem to be trained in many things that regular telepaths don't get from the Psi Corps Academy.

pg. 120 "When the Vorlons leave for the Rim, their servants will only be able to advance one level past their current class level being unable to continue." I don't remember Lyta ever going back to Vorlon for futher augmentation, and since she was in some kind of immersion tank to be augmented in the first place, I doubt that Kosh I or II could do that on B5. After the Vorlons left, she really found out what kind of limits she had (which by the time she took over the bar she was in was very impressive, 54 different hands that I counted, all left hands like what she was doing). It seems that what the Vorlon augmentation did was to put a telepath at the top of the Psi Rating scale for their species and then allowed them to further progress over time so that they did not become a being of energy like Jason Ironheart. He progressed far too quickly, so instead of burning out...he 'became'.

One of the things that seemed to be part of the augmentation is the fact that they had to obey the Vorlons. Once the Vorlons were gone, other than the pre-programmed limits to not allow certain technology to fall into the any hands, they were free to really see just how far their powers extended.

Lyta is not a Vorlon Servant. She's something else entirely. No, I won't say what.

Shannon
 
Anonymous said:
Lyta is not a Vorlon Servant. She's something else entirely. No, I won't say what.

Shannon

To quote (or perhaps paraphrase, it's been a while since I saw it)

"The telepathic equivalent of a thermonuclear warhead!" :?:

:twisted:

LBH
 
ummmmm....ok....

I guess I picked up the wrong book then...

I must be on a Parallel plane of existance...this is getting damned irratating...

Lyta was modified to be a Carrier p. 121 so that she could carry a Vorlon around.

She also has at least the Modification I of a Memory Keeper see Thirdspace.

So what you are really saying is that she is more powerful than a P14, which is what I have been saying all along...or you don't want to be around when she reaches critical mass (for those of you that don't know, that is when a nuke implodes, then explodes).
 
scottmage said:
ummmmm....ok....

I guess I picked up the wrong book then...

I must be on a Parallel plane of existance...this is getting damned irratating...

Not a parallel plane, but you are engaged in a common problem in RPGs: trying to use existing rules to model abilities/personalities who, by definition, exist outside of those boundaries.

In this case Lyta was, bless her pointed dependent-personality head, one of a handful of beings created with the expressed intentions of being the 'big guns', held in reserve until needed. However, in order to fight a war you do not just make fusion bombs. You need guns, knives, missiles...all sorts of conventional weaponry.

The Vorlon Servant PrC represents a much lower level of power: the high end 'conventional weapons' if you will. There may be (should be, could be, you make the call) thousands of them running around the galaxy on various covert missions focused on preparing the younger races for the Shadow Wars.

Lyta (and the handful of others of similar power) have very different parameters and goals. They posess some of the same abilities as your standard servant, but only because those abilities serve the Vorlons' interest. Their abilities are unique: in game terms a unique template applied by the Vorlons to the individual.

Shannon
Current Status: WoFing
 
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck...it might just be a duck!

The Carrier class is a class Lyta has at least. There may be a Vorlon Servant Released class in Wheel of Fire later, till then she would be classified as a Carrier Vorlon Servant since she said that in the show. "I allowed your people to modifiy me so that I could carry a Vorlon around inside of me."

Since she bounced Bester off her shields with a sweet little smile on her face to boot, I would say that she is at least a P14 as well.
 
Er...Guest?

You do know that I WROTE both NSNR and WoF right? I also planned out Lyta's eventual stats when I started working on NSNR almost a year ago...

Shannon
Current Status: Fixing WoF things
 
Even JMS admits to his mistakes...are you greater than he who wrote the whole B5 Universe?

See http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/eplist.html for instances of JMS' humility.

The whole idea of an RPG that is based in an existing setting is so that you can roll play a character like your favorite characters in the story (at least that is what I have been told since the first setting based RPG came out some 25 years ago...Star Trek I think was the first). But maybe all those other RPG writers were wrong and only you are right...that must be it :!:
 
(edited because my personal problems have no place on these boards)

You have the design process backwards. I designed Lyta first (as she will appear in Wheel of Fire) then engineered a PrC with some of her abilities so players could have a character become like her without having to build a unique template for each character.

If you do not find that satisfying, or would rather build templates for each character who might wish to undergo Vorlon modification, please feel free to do so. I am, after all, only an RPG writer.

Shannon
 
Hang on, guys. There is no reason to get upset or irritated in either direction. This is a place for commenary, not flames.

Come on, let's play nice and get along before the Psi Cops come. :)

-August
 
Why on earth would you have any reason to not like Psi Corp? Hmmm? :twisted:
What could they have possibly done to make you feel this way?

Corp is Mother, Corp is Father.
 
skalvar said:
(edited because my personal problems have no place on these boards)

You have the design process backwards. I designed Lyta first (as she will appear in Wheel of Fire) then engineered a PrC with some of her abilities so players could have a character become like her without having to build a unique template for each character.

If you do not find that satisfying, or would rather build templates for each character who might wish to undergo Vorlon modification, please feel free to do so. I am, after all, only an RPG writer.

Shannon

So if I understand you correctly, and maybe this is the point that is being missed out there, is that Lyta is part of a different class that will come forward in Wheel of Fire?

If so... 8)

I think where there has been some disapointment is where a new class is introduced and we believe that it is modeled after a particular character in B5. Maybe that is where the confusion happens. I know I thought that about Talia in Coming of Shadows. I thought she would be a (don't have the book here) Dark Hand.

Kind of like buying a new X (subsitute car, TV, etc.) and finding out that the warranty does not cover something you thought it would based on the sales pitch I think. There is a certain excitement from getting a new gaming book, thinking this is really cool, then reading the fine print.

I know that when I read the fine print on the Telekinectics, I was very disapointed. I thought I would get to play one of the half that was not clinicly insane. Just not worth it to play a character with that many hangups. Same with the Psi Corps experiments. Safer to play Russian Roulette. Better odds.

Before someone figures it out "Never tell me the odds!" Han Solo
 
I'm happy with the way Mongoose is developing the B5 line so far. By grafting a lot of "hangups" to the advanced telepath classes, they prevent much munchkin-ism. And I think a munchkin attitude is the last thing a B5 RPG needs. I already have a Star Wars game running where we can munchkin our hearts out. In B5, it's more a matter of choice and consequences, so I'm happy with the way they developped the telepath classes. A lot of potential power, coming with a great risk of losing it all. You want to play in the big league? Then prepare to fall as fast as you just rose. That's my two credits worth anyway.
 
Back
Top