Road structure and representation...

[rdanhenry]

There's nothing wrong with private transportation. I'm sure there would be plenty of bicycles in use.

[Juggernaut1981]

Ghostman> thanks for the nice SE-Asian example of "courier" and why Australian and probably US couriers are danger-avoiding bludgers

Also, RE: Incas... If I lived where they did, I think I'd be thinking its a zero-sum game to have carts. Too likely to roll off a cliff...

[xequar]

Savage Worlds > D&D4th
D&D4th > ALL other D&D Editions
Unplayable rubbish > ALL other D&D Editions
ALL other D&D editions > Paranoia XP
Just sayin'

Right, sorry to interrupt a good discussion on Roman roads, but...

Here are some ideas for depicting different roads you may use. In GIMP, one can get creative with the "Stroke Path" tool, which is what I did here. For the two versions of "Imperial Highway," I picked first the outside color, then did "Stroke Path" with a 15 pixel line. I then picked the inside color, did another "Stroke Path", this time with a smaller line (9 pixels on the first, 7 on the second). In the case of the second "Imperial Highway", I used black as the inner color, then I used "Fuzzy Select" on the black and deleted it (there was a line of dark grey created from the Stroke Path, which I left because I'm lazy).

I hope this helps!

[Juggernaut1981]

Savage Worlds > D&D4th
D&D4th > ALL other D&D Editions
Unplayable rubbish > ALL other D&D Editions
ALL other D&D editions > Paranoia XP
Just sayin'

xequar> I'd love to get into a long-winded debate about how 4E actually represents the true death of epic storytelling due to it's complete cotton-wool effect on the protagonist... but I feel that it is summarised best by "Epic Fail".

[xequar]

xequar> I'd love to get into a long-winded debate about how 4E actually represents the true death of epic storytelling due to it's complete cotton-wool effect on the protagonist... but I feel that it is summarised best by "Epic Fail".

And I feel that the more time one spends rule-lawyering and dealing with a broken system, the less time a campaign can focus on story.

Seriously, Savage Worlds is the greatest gaming system in the history of gaming, hands down. You can do anything with it, from superheroes to sci-fi to fantasy that still puts D&D4 (the only playable version of D&D IMO) to shame. And it's simple. The main rule book is only 140 pages, and it's very very hard to break the system (unlike the old D&D games).

But, as long as you're having fun, then good enough, eh? (and no, I wasn't being sarcastic. As I reread it, I realize that could sound kinda snarky. Sorry 'bout that!)


On topic, did we ever figure out what's going on in this world?

[Juggernaut1981]

[derail]
xequar> As I hinted at in my post, I don't really have an issue with the mechanics per se of 4E. It's the fact that the protagonists (i.e. players) are obviously protected and set up to "not fail". As said by plenty of other people (including McKee), good stories need protagonists who can, and do, fail. Conclusion is 4E = epic fail.
[/derail]

Half of this thread was a thought experiment into how society would work if we hadn't developed the car.

[surfarcher]

[offtopic]
Protected? Cotton wool?

Man you obviously haven't played in one of my games

If the PCs aren't honestly scared they are going to die from time to time there's no real game IMO.

TPK happens. Deal with it
[/offtopic]

Enjoying the rest that's been said but haven't been able to find anything actually worth contributing!

[waldronate]

[derail]
xequar> As I hinted at in my post, I don't really have an issue with the mechanics per se of 4E. It's the fact that the protagonists (i.e. players) are obviously protected and set up to "not fail". As said by plenty of other people (including McKee), good stories need protagonists who can, and do, fail. Conclusion is 4E = epic fail.
[/derail]

I would say rather that good stories need to have heroes who succeed despite the odds. Reading a story that ends "and then they all died" tends not to be terribly interesting to the audience that buys the stories. There is a niche market for masochists but it's a smallish niche.

Good roleplaying, on the other hand, needs to keep the potential for failure in order to keep the thrill but succeed often enough to keep players coming back.

I have played in games that were great fun even though we spent probably a quarter of our time generating new characters. The party went on and on despite the heavy individual losses. I have also played in games where the DM was telling a story and all actions were forced into a linear plotline. We didn't lose any characters, but the game degenerated into a relatively uninteresting series of "how can we screw the plotline" exercises. Not much fun at all.

In my opinion games and stories are similar in that they both provide the thrill of meeting challenges, but in a story the hero always wins by design and in a game you can always screw yourself over by bad decisions or inattention. If you're playing a "game" that is really a "story" then the "storyteller" will move heaven and earth to make sure that you succeed. It can work well or work badly depending on who's in charge. If you're selling "interactive storytelling" to an audience that may not be particularly gifted storytellers then you'll have to make a fair bit of effort to ensure that the "story" doesn't fail.

[Juggernaut1981]

Jaxilon> Slippery surfaces.
Problem, big problem. Slippery surfaces by design are hard to control a moving object along. Humans spend lots of time practicing it, it's called ice skating, and most people have a terrible time when they start. Compound it with an additional 400kg of inertia-generating objects and your idea comes unstuck quickly without having magic rocket-packs added to the vehicles... which gets us to the idea of "Magic makes Petrol".

Gilgamec> You can actually get some very good efficiency from modified versions of the steam engine. If it wasn't so rediculously difficult to do in the first place, we could potentially create nuclear-powered rail, but again... difficulty = high, danger = high, waste = pain in the ass.

We don't need a "tesla" system, although it could be possible to broadcast ****eloads of energy using radiowaves... the electric car, compressed air car (developed in the 19th century or earlier if i remember) and a number of other concept vehicles were developed before we got to the combustion engine.

As RobA mentioned, the IC engine is closer to a heater that happens to move things.

Many devices used in retail areas and small warehouses are actually HAND operated hydraulic equipment. Like the good old mechanic's jack. Ironically the medieval period had some wonderfully effective cranes that required no engine, no hydraulics and minimal steel. Human-powered cranes were used throughout Europe for centuries and they did a fantastic job. Advancing that technology to utilise hydraulics, newer materials, etc, etc, etc should make it fairly easy to get cranes that will be able to move things vertically a number of storeys with significant weight.

It would force the decentralisation of manufacturing, which isn't neccessarily a bad thing.

[su_liam]

Also, there's that glorified forklift that got mentioned early and then forgotten. A few little electric carts that get plugged in when not in use. You don't need a hundred-mile range to get a piano from the minitrain siding a few blocks to the house.

This set-up would have a different set of trade-offs than the private-cars-everywhere world we live in and would take getting used to, but it wouldn't be infeasible or arduous.

Commuting for an hour on a train is probably intrinsically safer and more productive. You can't read a book(or an office memo)while driving(I hope you don't try), and talking on the phone while riding a train isn't hazardous. I'm not sure that the efficiency benefits of train transport scale well to the more local lines, but it should still be economical.

For longer ranges, well... long-haul trucking only competes with shipping by train because most of its infrastructural overhead is paid for by the big bad socialist government. Eisenhower.