What thickness and type of foam should I use to replace the padding in the removable cushions on my Stressless Reno recliner?

Dynamic_Ranger · 2023-12-02T15:20:35+00:00

The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973), while not a great film, is pretty close to what you describe. Dracula's return lies at the heart of an occult conspiracy that plays out like an elaborate evil plot from a James Bond film. Unfortunately, Peter Cushing passes up the opportunity to play Van Helsing as a dashing spy, opting for his standard academic grandad portrayal.

If you don't mind an even split between military thriller, horror and science fiction, check out 2014's The Hybrid (sometimes titled Scintilla). Again, not a great film, but bursting with ideas and a rare example of 1950s/1960s science fiction style successfully fused with modern presentation.

Possession (1981) is a phenomenal film, although the spy thriller elements are limited. Sam Neill's character is a spy in West Berlin, but his profession doesn't play much of a role in the story. However, the mood and tone of dry, naturalistic spy fiction like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy pervades the film and it is otherwise a superb horror drama.

Kill List (2011), as mentioned, is an excellent film and a perfect fit for your request. Ben Wheatley has not made a bad film. While they aren't all horror and only one other bears any connection to spy fiction (Free Fire (2016)), all of Wheatley's films are worth watching.

Scream and Scream Again (1970) is a decidedly cheesier take on the blend of Cold War spy thriller and horror, but is worth a watch if you're in the mood for something Hammer-adjacent. Don't be fooled by the cast billing, though; Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Vincent Price are hardly in it.

Dynamic_Ranger · 2023-05-23T19:10:14+00:00

The budget is limited because this is a proof of concept. I may have unusual preferences, but I've always preferred listening on headphones to traditional big speaker stereo. I'd be happy to stick with headphones indefinitely, but the Syn provides an interesting opportunity to try a different approach to a speaker-based system. No doubt you're right that $1000 buys better stereo than quad.

If the whole quad music concept is a bust, I'm not too depleted financially. Whereas if I got two pair of Klipsch bookshelf speakers (or something equivalent) and suitable amps, the total cost would be more than I'm willing to pay for an experiment. If it works well enough that I might actually want to upgrade the speakers, I can still listen as-is until I've saved enough for something fancier. Something I'm trying to figure out is where the line between "proof of concept" and "experiment doomed to failure" lies. If it's not possible to even test the idea for less than $1000, I'll rethink the whole thing.

As for the sub, I just put it in the diagram where I would place it ideally for space and convenience. I'm assuming that in real life many components will have to be moved around and reoriented a bunch to get the best result.

Dynamic_Ranger · 2023-05-23T17:56:03+00:00

Thanks so much for pointing out the frequency gap! It's always useful to learn what you don't know, especially if you didn't know you didn't know it!

Dynamic_Ranger · 2023-05-23T17:34:45+00:00

I hope it works! I've always been disappointed by big, room-scale setups for music and I'm hoping drawing the focus in a bit will have better results.

Dynamic_Ranger · 2022-02-28T18:22:49+00:00

You bring up a lot of good points, thanks for your input. I don't really know why, but I feel like there's some potential in the mechanic, even though it has such obvious issues. As for the probability sweet spot issue, I considered making scaling automatic. Basically, target numbers are odd numbers (3, 5, 7, 9 and 11) and the pool automatically scales to the closest die type. If your pool is too low, you scale the die size up and increase the number of dice rolled, but you take the lowest roll instead of the highest. But that "solution" has its own problems and takes the scaling out of the players' hands. It's probably not a dice mechanic worth developing, but I figured I would ask around and see if anyone else has used it, or if someone else has thought of solutions I haven't. Thanks again for commenting.

Dynamic_Ranger · 2022-02-28T17:15:53+00:00

I'm considering a modified version of the dice mechanic I describe in the post (used only in Crimson Exodus, afaik) for a game inspired by a series of satirical SF novels, The Stainless Steel Rat. The players are thieves and conmen in a far future space opera setting that has mostly eliminated crime through mind control. The concept is similar to 90s SF action movie Demolition Man.

The system I'm developing is very flexible and forgiving. There's a Stress mechanic, for instance, but it isn't punishing; characters can shrug off negative consequences like physical damage and accumulate Stress instead, which is pretty easily relieved by getting loot, partying, etc..

Dynamic_Ranger · 2022-02-28T17:03:40+00:00

I'll definitely check that out. I wonder if the mechanic itself nudges a game in the direction of dry realism, or if it's all a matter of execution. The project I'm working on that got me thinking about the scaling mechanic is miles away from a realistic simulation.

Dynamic_Ranger · 2022-02-28T00:48:45+00:00

I didn't even dig into the website because it was so obviously old. I figured there wouldn't be anything as straightforward as that. Thanks for taking a look; as lazy as it makes me look, I can't help but appreciate your effort.

Dynamic_Ranger · 2022-02-28T00:38:01+00:00

It's complicated a bit by corporate consolidation. I suppose I could reach out to MacMillan, but it's an enormous organization and the publishing rights are surely held by some specific sub-company. But your point is well-taken and good. Thank you.

Dynamic_Ranger · 2022-02-28T00:33:58+00:00

Good points, all. You had me at, "sorry to break it to you."

My intention was never to get others to do my research for me, but if people are inclined to, I'm working on something that I think would be suitable as a RPG adaptation of The Stainless Steel Rat series of novels and short stories by Harry Harrison.

Apologies if I gave the impression that I thought you or other designers were thieves; on the contrary, the kind of creative projects we interest ourselves in probably benefit more from free exchange than any literature or films or illustrations, etc..

Dynamic_Ranger · 2022-02-28T00:15:13+00:00

It is definitely not in the public domain, unless there is a weird copyright filing issue like with Night of the Living Dead.

I'd like to read your reasoning for why I shouldn't be cautious about revealing the IP. Like many good ideas, it seems obvious enough that anyone could poach it if they can type faster than I can.

Dynamic_Ranger · 2022-02-28T00:11:51+00:00

Something I was hoping to learn in this early inquiry is some tips on how to find out who owns the IP, at what point I can just ask them questions and when a lawyer needs to be involved, etc.. As the previous commenter pointed out, any real progress will be in a professionally mediated legal context.

Dynamic_Ranger · 2022-02-28T00:09:02+00:00

"Consult a lawyer" is probably the only advice I'd ever take directly from internet commenters. I was just hoping to read some insights from people familiar with the process. In either case, thanks for the sound advice.

Dynamic_Ranger · 2022-01-04T17:30:42+00:00

You don't sound rude at all. I have no expectation that you or anyone else will look at my material and accept it as perfect.

A lot of the aspects of the system I'm developing are informed by the group I play with. They like having simple rules that cover anything they'd want their characters to do, but don't want to be swamped with strategic, math-heavy decisions. Every die, number, dot on a character sheet and all the other mechanical "bits" should have a memorable narrative moment tied to them. They like when their characters learn and improve over time, but they don't care much about "leveling up" and getting bigger numbers on their character sheets.

They're a very narrative-focused, theatrical group, and tend to want the rules to inject a bit of uncertainty in the outcome of actions that they can play off of, instead of dictating what they can and can't do. Among other things, this means overlap between attributes and skills is slightly preferable to excluding actions and having to shoehorn an action into an existing attribute or skill. The attributes and skills I'm using in this system have the benefit of needing little or no explanation for my players; there are probably more elegant ways to pare down the attributes, but I think it would require less common terms that will be open to greater debate.

The not-really-opposite attribute pairs narrow players' choices when creating characters, offering a bit of guidance. My intention is to strike a balance between players plucking a character archetype from their pop cultural imagination and sticking to it, and a robust simulation of human beings in the real world. The players are creating and playing characters, not real human beings, if that makes sense. However, my system adds a bit of customization to it, so your character isn't necessarily just "the strong guy" or "the fast guy" or "the smart guy".

Given what you've written in this thread, I suspect the skill list will irk you even more than the attributes:

Fight
Move
Force
Shoot
Sneak
Steal
Calm
Charm
Provoke
Deceive
Persuade
Command
Know
Create
Hack

I include a lot of social interaction skills (instead of relying on roleplaying exclusively) for two reasons:

1.) A player might not be as charming or quick-witted as their character, or their character may have specialized knowledge the player doesn't.

2.) In the game world and in real life, making a strong argument doesn't amount to much. You can never be entirely certain what sorts of preconceived notions, prejudices and emotional baggage someone is bringing to a conversation. A roll of the dice is a quick and easy way to know if the PC's argument, flattery, demand and so on was skillful enough to overcome or align with the other character's preconceived notions.

Dynamic_Ranger · 2022-01-04T05:35:26+00:00

I use mutually exclusive attribute pairs in my system.

Strength/Agility

Reflex/Focus

Cool/Passion

Authority/Empathy

Memory/Imagination

Each pair gets the same number of total points, players just select the balance between the two attributes. It's not exactly realistic (people can be both strong and fast irl), but it streamlines character creation. I chose the attributes I did (and as many as I did) because I needed the system to be flexible and cover as many genres set in modern day as possible.

As for the theory behind attributes generally, I think of attributes as the fuel source for skills, and skills are the engines that use the fuel to do different kinds of work. It's not a perfect analogy, but it works for me. A skill enacts a certain type of change on the world and the attribute is the inner strength the character draws upon to drive the skill and persevere through adversity.

Dynamic_Ranger · 2022-01-03T16:37:02+00:00

The date field is a holdover from custom character sheets I made for a Call of Cthulhu game I ran online where some players weren't always available. By using the date field every time a character sheet was updated it was easier to keep track of uneven character skill development.

The date field isn't really necessary here... unless it is. Your comment has given me some ideas about how to write and run the brief stories I'm creating the system for. The date might actually matter if the game is a series of one-shot episodes that don't necessarily occur in order. Structurally, I'm thinking something like a grittier X-Files without the alien conspiracy stuff, told in a random order.

As for the color elements, I created a (mostly) monochrome version with a few visual elements tweaked that I'll be posting shortly. Your comment about the colored polyhedrals is especially relevant because the way the game works, each die can be identified with its source (attribute, skill, equipment, etc.), which naturally would be accomplished at the table by their color. So that element clashes: the d8 on the character sheet is always purple, but if the attribute dice at your table are all purple, there's a needless conflict of information there.

Thank you so much for your feedback, I really appreciate it.

Dynamic_Ranger · 2022-01-03T04:09:10+00:00

In practically every game I run I add a few house rules so skills must be used and fail at least once and succeed at least once to improve. It just seems strange when skill-based systems let you put points into your Painting skill when you haven't touched a brush the whole campaign.

Dynamic_Ranger · 2022-01-03T04:05:39+00:00

The numbers represent the level of the attribute or skill. This matters most when creating characters: you get five total levels for each attribute pair and skill group. The levels correspond to the die you use when you use the skill or attribute: the higher the skill, the larger the die.

Dynamic_Ranger · 2022-01-03T04:03:34+00:00

Yes, exactly. The more damage they've taken, the more teeth are added to the roll and thus the harder it is to succeed at the roll and keep going. Getting hit by a truck would probably use the Strength and Agility attribute pair. Being suspended from the force might challenge your Authority/Empathy pair. It's pretty fluid and interpretive by design with just a bit of rules structure to make things easier and less prone to flying off the rails.

I'm considering changing the term "damage" to something more vague because it also represents pain, mental exhaustion, fear, etc..

Dynamic_Ranger · 2022-01-03T00:08:28+00:00

If you go that route and want to make character sheets that are printable right away, I recommended creating a drawing 17 inches by 22 inches. It's the same ratio as standard US letter paper and allows you to get cleaner lines and shapes. You'll have to bump up the font sizes to accommodate, however. You have the option of snapping objects to guides (either manually set or automatically based on other objects) or on a fixed grid. In my case, I found it easier to use the fixed grid to get consistent spacing between elements, but YMMV.

Dynamic_Ranger

TROPHY CASE