There are Bad Guys and then there are Villians

Some words of wisdom from Darths & Droids:

It's easy to throw monsters and Big Bads at your player's characters, adversaries who will simply do anything they can to kill them as quickly as possible. They'll use any dirty trick they can, any sneaky means at their disposal, any evil trap for the unwary PCs. They'll outgun them, hit them with their full strength, spare no expense, and hold nothing back. They'll kick the PCs when they're down. They'll be evil, nasty, rotten, wretched, and downright mean. They'll make false promises, break their word, engage in extortion, blackmail, torture, and slander. You won't be able to trust them as far as you could spit them.

Which is all well and good as far as it goes.

But if you want to make a villain, give them a sense of honour.

If you make your villains honourable in some small way, there will - inevitably - come a time when they can rub the heroes' faces in the fact that they have behaved in a way which is better than the PCs.

If your players care about their characters to any extent more than a hack-and-slasher, this is pure gold.

If you haven't heard of, or read Darths & Droids before now, take the time to start from the beginning and catch up. It's well worth the time.

[IN THE NEWS] Talking Mice?!

Talking mice? Well, maybe not today, but a team of German scientists, studing the evolution of speech and language, have created transgenic mice with the gene associated with human speech. [ScienceDirect.com]

IO9.com wrote: [link]

The researchers wanted to shed light on how humans developed our language capabilities, including the intricate thought and muscle coordination which allowed us as a species to develop complex language. One gene responsible for that development is the FOXP2 gene. Its absence leads to speech disorders, and its presence is an important component of human speech. Humans and Neanderthals are known to have a specific variation on the FOXP2 gene, though versions of it appear in other mammals and birds.

So while these experiments may not result in NIMH rodents, who knows what might happen if these mice are left to continue their line with the mutation?

[IN THE NEWS] Anti-Metal Virus (Bacteria)

I read an article today that got me thinking again about the Anti-Metal Virus Erick wrote about in Mutants Down Under Sourcebook back in '88:

LINK: Science Daily Article / io9 Article

Researchers are trying to find ways to use metal-extracting bacteria in a preemptive move to prevent struggles over natural resources.

In nature these deep sea bacteria extract metals from the sea water to form manganese or cobalt nodules and crust; the result of a process known as biomineralization. Scientists hope to harness this ability to mine the ocean floor for these and other precious elements.

It's not that far of a step to imagine that this process couldn't be perverted into some weaponized viral strain to produce the AMV that was mentioned in Mutant's Down Under. Does this send a shiver up anyone else's spine?

* * *

The first argument people inevitably make is the virus vs. bacteria argument, A virus can't affect metal! My response is that the AMV virus may not be a virus in the conventional sense. Alternatively, it may have just been given that name by some military or government entity because they like the sound of it and didn't care for the difference between virus and bacteria.

Maybe Anti-Metal Virus is actually a nano-virus. A swarm of nanomachines could concevably do what the the AMV is reportedly able to do, "metal artifacts immediately stop working and eventually rust into a useless blob." Perhaps, once the AMV comes into contact with a metal surface, the nanomacines penetrate the metal surface and start replecating (causing a localized EM field that paralizes any electronics and causes an accelerates the oxidizing process which first gums up the works and then eventally turns the oject into a "useless blob".

You could also just look at it from the ficticious (bends/ignores-the-laws-of-nature) perspective and take it as some futuristic/alien virus that actually can exist in a world populated by intelligent anthropomorphic mutant animals...

Your choice.

QualComm Bioengineering

Found this video while visiting the Science Fiction blogzine io9.com

Journey behind the scenes at Qualcomm where we learn how they built their wireless service on the backs of pigeons, wolfpigeons, sharkfalcons, and (science willing) crocodeagles.

For more information, visit: Qualcomm

If It Ain't Broke...

One thing I have realized from all the stories I've seen re-imagined from one format to another (be it book to movie, movie to television series, or movie to video game), it's that they always muck it up because someone thinks, "I can do it better!"

I should have realized, when I started taking the notes from one of my more favorite AtB stories, The Green Death, and formalizing it to share with anyone who cared to run it, that I was falling into the same muddy trap. I started adding what I thought was some extra depth that was missing from the original notes, stuff that might have been missing. However, what I really started doing was changing the story into something different. I realized that had actually happened was that now, the original adventure was missing.

So now it's back to the drawing board and try to post what I had originally intended, a quick little one-or-two session adventure that's straight to the chase.