Daleks, Bezzerkers and mechanoids, OH MY!

[DhAkael]

Just a quick observation and question here.
Am I the only schmuck on this entire board who sees the VERY close simmilarities that the Mechanoids share with both Daleks and Bezzerkers?
Cuz I've been saying for years that the mechies are just loosely altered versions of either.
Help a brother out...
Oh..and no poll, just comments please; who'd you pick as #1 villan?

Bezzerkers? planetoid sized killing machines with millions of robotic avatars bent on destruction of ALL biololgical life?

Daleks? Psychotic cyborgs bent on dominating / extermination of all that is not Dalek? Nearly indestructible unless one uses the concentrated firepower of a tac-nuke or another Dalek weapon.

Mechanoids? Supposedly light-years more advanced in technology and science than most sentient beings, yet only have mid-range MDC in comparrison to almost every other being listed in any of the books, and weapons that only go out to 4000ft. max range?

My money is on the rolling pepper pots

[shiiv-a]

*picks the dreaded Doctor Who lighthouse bots that wanna 'exterminate' ... everything in sight ....



in regards to the mechanoids ... don't know enough of them, but i'm sure that they are actually incredibly weak IF you know how to defeat them ... which suddenly EVERYONE who knows the system will pick in their weapons to fire and eradicate the mechanical baddies ...

[DhAkael]

:lol:

*picks the dreaded Doctor Who lighthouse bots that wanna 'exterminate' ... everything in sight ....



in regards to the mechanoids ... don't know enough of them, but i'm sure that they are actually incredibly weak IF you know how to defeat them ... which suddenly EVERYONE who knows the system will pick in their weapons to fire and eradicate the mechanical baddies ...

Reason why I use "OTHER" baddies aside from the mechies.
BUT I'm not allowed to name them in here, on account of the SS & Gestapo jack-booting "FUN" into the ground if you name anything not liscened to PBooks (at least stat wise).

[Aramanthus]

There are similarities between those critters. But things like that can be developed seperately

[KLM]

Either they are separate, or drop in the Terminators,
the Borg Collective and the Manhunters too.
Oh, and do not forget the Cybermen.


Or just blame paralell evolution.

Adios
KLM

[KLM]

you'll have to throw in the Borgs from star trek as well.

That's the Collective.

Adios
KLM

[DhAkael]

As was proved in Dr. Who; the cybermen do NOT rate and are NOT equal. Sure they're kinda creepy, but ultimately fall flat in the 'cosmic threat' category.

Terminators / Skynet? -meh- Poseurs! and their only reason to exist is, well, to exist... SHODAN was a far better A.I. gone 'godlike'. At one point She / IT almost did have god-like powers (Play System Shock 2 to the end; you'll know what I'm talking about). Sky net just stayed on earth and loomed menaceingly while her skelletal Arnie-Bots went out and marched like Fulchi zombies.

The Borg?! Pulllease... Star-Dreck garbage that was only half thought out and badly executed. IF they were so damn dangerous, why were they always taken out by the end of each episode by re-aligning the navigantional deflector and phaseing the quantumm intertroulator framitz on the Star Fleet ship of the week? as I said... badly thought out and again do not rate or equate.

Manhunters? Okay..getting better. MUCH more durable and they also have tactical cunning, and are not above 'scavanging' battlefileds to keep them selves operational. Very Dalek / Bezzerker in modus operandi. Not quite cosmic in scope, but getting warmer.

[shiiv-a]

old ones ... are a PF books thing ....

so what do they have in common with babylon5?

*fails to see the connection ... must be the grey cells busy at work turning the hair grey ...

[taalismn]

EVERYone has a 'Firsts','Ancient Ones', 'Old Ones', 'Really really really REALLY Old Ones', and 'THose Really Far Back When and Mysterious Buggers'...even I'm guilty of that syndrome...

[Carl Gleba]

Yeah I see the similiarities between the Dalcks and the Mechanoids. I don't know who the Bezzerkers?

I would say the Mechanoids, they have tech and psionics

Darkmax, I think they were call the First ones, or something like that. I'm pretty sure it wasn't the Old Ones.

Carl

[DhAkael]

Yeah I see the similiarities between the Dalcks and the Mechanoids. I don't know who the Bezzerkers?

Carl

Bezzerkers; created by Fred Saberhagen back in late 1960's / early 70's.
Unfortunately most of his earlier works on those planet sized killing machines is lost ("out-of-print" limbo), but there are a few more recent books that have been released.
Shiva in Steel, Bezzerkers which reprints some of his short stories (including his most famous 'The stone place').
Beleive me when I say, Mechinoids got nuttin' on these purely mechanical monsters. Humanoid life? ALL life is their target, down to the lowest prion

[Rallan]

Daleks and Mechanoids are similar? Oh my God, a TV show and a roleplaying game are both using unoriginal science fiction cliches! I always thought TV shows and roleplaying games were right on the cutting edge of SF and never stooped to using old, familiar ideas that someone else had already explored!

I mean of course they're similar concepts. The idea of a race of xenophobic wingnuts hell-bent on the destruction of all other life forms is as old as the hills, and once the concept of androids and cyborgs became a staple of science fiction it was only a matter of time until someone realised that a mechanical race of racial supremacists would be a nifty spin on things.

I mean heck, they're both basically just H. G. Wells' martians with an anger management problem

[Rallan]

Daleks and Mechanoids are similar? Oh my God, a TV show and a roleplaying game are both using unoriginal science fiction cliches! I always thought TV shows and roleplaying games were right on the cutting edge of SF and never stooped to using old, familiar ideas that someone else had already explored!

I mean of course they're similar concepts. The idea of a race of xenophobic wingnuts hell-bent on the destruction of all other life forms is as old as the hills, and once the concept of androids and cyborgs became a staple of science fiction it was only a matter of time until someone realised that a mechanical race of racial supremacists would be a nifty spin on things.

I mean heck, they're both basically just H. G. Wells' martians with an anger management problem

So, which one are you going with here? Personally, at least the Mechanoids have style. I always thought the Daleks were the lamest looking villians one could find.

Yeah, visually the Daleks suffer a bit, but that's to be expected since the design had to be something that a 1960s television series could affordably do. And even if they do look a bit too much like pepperpots, they still deserve a bit of credit for being completely non-humanoid. Back then just about every alien in science fiction basically looked like a funny-coloured human being with some weird crap on his head, especially in film and television where technical requirements and a lack of original ideas meant that they were never doing anything as innovative as what was being done in fiction.

[shiiv-a]

uhh ... can't have the cake and eat it too. it did come out in the 60's ... gotta remember that .... =p

[DhAkael]

I mean heck, they're both basically just H. G. Wells' martians with an anger management problem

Interesting... I always thought the H.G. Wells Martians to be..well... NOT borgs... but hey, guess everyone is allowed to interpret as they see fit.

[KLM]

Non-Human is good, being defeated by stairs is not.

First "Elevate" then "Exterminate!":D

Adios
KLM

[KLM]

You haven't seen the new series, have you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalek#Phys ... cteristics

Adios
KLM

[shiiv-a]

......

the originals came out in the 60's ... and that was in the last millennium ... so ... they may not have changed a lot on the outside .. but things like stairs and being in black and white is NO longer an issue ....

i think i would personally be more afraid of them than the 'newest version' of the HG Well's martian machine husk that hit the big screen lately. you gotta remember THAT was originally just a radio show that people checked into after it started and BELIEVED ...

go figure huh? .. people are \really gullible at times. and even when they were saying ON THE AIR 'this is ONLY a radio show' ... people STILL believed it to be true.

gotta love the classics for a reason. the modern day remakes loose the 'spark' ...

[KLM]

Dunno, sometimes remakes are just better, even ideawise.

But since we have to relate things, so they produce
a great deal of substandard (=crap) movies, shows, etc.
Just for our convenience

Adios
KLM

[DhAkael]

You haven't seen the new series, have you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalek#Phys ... cteristics

Adios
KLM

I don't care to either. I never did care for Doctor Who.

Ah...a Visigoth, a Philistine, a veritable HUN in our midst..sacrilage!
But what can one expect from a yank?

[shiiv-a]

oh jeez ... misfit .. for those of us above the North American belt-line [border], we consider those who reside in the 52 [?] states to be 'yanks' ...

[never was keen on the history or social studies part of school, so i'm a tad behind the times on how many states there are ... =p ... i have in fact lost actual count on the number of territoiies we in canada have ...

i THINK its three .. they split the NWT into 2 parts .. or was that 3 .. ? *shrugs* i'm still a people first ...

[Rallan]

Daleks and Mechanoids are similar? Oh my God, a TV show and a roleplaying game are both using unoriginal science fiction cliches! I always thought TV shows and roleplaying games were right on the cutting edge of SF and never stooped to using old, familiar ideas that someone else had already explored!

I mean of course they're similar concepts. The idea of a race of xenophobic wingnuts hell-bent on the destruction of all other life forms is as old as the hills, and once the concept of androids and cyborgs became a staple of science fiction it was only a matter of time until someone realised that a mechanical race of racial supremacists would be a nifty spin on things.

I mean heck, they're both basically just H. G. Wells' martians with an anger management problem

So, which one are you going with here? Personally, at least the Mechanoids have style. I always thought the Daleks were the lamest looking villians one could find.

Yeah, visually the Daleks suffer a bit, but that's to be expected since the design had to be something that a 1960s television series could affordably do. And even if they do look a bit too much like pepperpots, they still deserve a bit of credit for being completely non-humanoid. Back then just about every alien in science fiction basically looked like a funny-coloured human being with some weird crap on his head, especially in film and television where technical requirements and a lack of original ideas meant that they were never doing anything as innovative as what was being done in fiction.

Non-Human is good, being defeated by stairs is not.

They've come a long way since the bad old days. First time we saw 'em, Daleks couldn't even leave the electric walkways in their home city. Nowadays they're flying up staircases, hurtling through space, and sporting some fancy bullet-disintegrating force fields.

[Rallan]

I mean heck, they're both basically just H. G. Wells' martians with an anger management problem

Interesting... I always thought the H.G. Wells Martians to be..well... NOT borgs... but hey, guess everyone is allowed to interpret as they see fit.

Well they weren't cyborgs, but they were as close to cyborgs as Wells could come up with. Countless millenia in a completely mechanized society had seen them evolve into little more than a big sack of meat that served as life support for their brains with so little in the way of mobility and internal organs that they were almost completely helpless without the machines that they spent the vast majority of their lives inside.

[Rallan]

......

the originals came out in the 60's ... and that was in the last millennium ... so ... they may not have changed a lot on the outside .. but things like stairs and being in black and white is NO longer an issue ....

i think i would personally be more afraid of them than the 'newest version' of the HG Well's martian machine husk that hit the big screen lately. you gotta remember THAT was originally just a radio show that people checked into after it started and BELIEVED ...

Um... no. It was a novel. The radio play that accidentally fooled America was put together by Orson Welles 30 years after the novel.

[KLM]

You haven't seen the new series, have you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalek#Phys ... cteristics

Adios
KLM

I don't care to either. I never did care for Doctor Who.

Ah...a Visigoth, a Philistine, a veritable HUN in our midst..sacrilage!
But what can one expect from a yank?

Excuse me, but who is the Hun here?

If You meant me, I take it as a compliment

Adios
KLM

[KLM]

you can't be a Hun....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hun#Successor_nations

Can't I?

Adios
KLM
just joking

[shiiv-a]

heheheheeee ... anyways all kidding aside .. i still like the fact i can most likely get away with being a dual citizenship person ... *has a status card*

[Carl Gleba]

You haven't seen the new series, have you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalek#Phys ... cteristics

Adios
KLM

I don't care to either. I never did care for Doctor Who.

Ah...a Visigoth, a Philistine, a veritable HUN in our midst..sacrilage!
But what can one expect from a yank?

Hey!! I like Dr. Who

[shiiv-a]

me too ...

man did i ever have a mad crush on the ... oh the one with the dark curly hair ... and the long scarf dragging everywhere ...

then they changed him to the tall skinny bloke that did 'all creatures great and small' vet's bro Tristane ...

*sigh* ... oh man ... that REALLY aged me ...

[Rallan]

me too ...

man did i ever have a mad crush on the ... oh the one with the dark curly hair ... and the long scarf dragging everywhere ...

That'd be Tom Baker, without a doubt the most popular of the Doctors because he could do such a good job of hamming it up without seeming really really lame. And yeah, after he finished the show really did wander around in the wilderness with some increasingly bad casting choices. Although compared to some of 'em, the one you're talking about (the blond chap who was big on cricket, right?) wasn't too bad.

Most folks agree that the two after him, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy in all their cheesy question-marked glory, are the ones who really sucked beyond compare and managed to get the damn show cancelled for a decade.

And then they went and did a one-off made for TV movie with the most attractive guy ever to play the Doctor, and never gave him his own series

[DhAkael]

......

the originals came out in the 60's ... and that was in the last millennium ... so ... they may not have changed a lot on the outside .. but things like stairs and being in black and white is NO longer an issue ....

i think i would personally be more afraid of them than the 'newest version' of the HG Well's martian machine husk that hit the big screen lately. you gotta remember THAT was originally just a radio show that people checked into after it started and BELIEVED ...

Um... no. It was a novel. The radio play that accidentally fooled America was put together by Orson Welles 30 years after the novel.

LOL.. yeah... Both are relevant...including the Goerge Pal version (I refuse to acknowledge the Steven Spielburger version...ugh....)

[DhAkael]

me too ...

man did i ever have a mad crush on the ... oh the one with the dark curly hair ... and the long scarf dragging everywhere ...

That'd be Tom Baker, without a doubt the most popular of the Doctors because he could do such a good job of hamming it up without seeming really really lame. And yeah, after he finished the show really did wander around in the wilderness with some increasingly bad casting choices. Although compared to some of 'em, the one you're talking about (the blond chap who was big on cricket, right?) wasn't too bad.

Most folks agree that the two after him, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy in all their cheesy question-marked glory, are the ones who really sucked beyond compare and managed to get the damn show cancelled for a decade.

And then they went and did a one-off made for TV movie with the most attractive guy ever to play the Doctor, and never gave him his own series

I know..and the BEST damned TRADIS bridge ever concieved.
Eccelston and Tennant are damn good successors though.

[shiiv-a]

hey ... i don't do the names ... i do the 'characters' ...

i like a song .. i remember the song ... not the artist ... same with pictures ....

[KLM]

There is a small problem not address in that section... Huns were more or less mixed with the Mongols during their expansions... Would any of these successors have Asiatic blood in them?

Just pressing a joke further (for my Hun origins ):

1, Mongols account present day Hungarians as fellow nation.

2, Actually... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_ ... d_Genetics

Adios
KLM

[DocS]

An odd thing to think Doctor Who stuff with Rifts since Doctor Who is unerringly about out-thinking the bad guys....

And Rifts almost always ends up with an 'out-fighting the bad guys' focus.

Vamp kingdoms is written with some 'Doctor Who-ish' mentality, with its focus on what works/doesn't work and how common items can be used to defend yourself, etc. But since then, the majority of Rifts baddies are staved off by an ample amount of firepower, and not much else. Which is sad, since the original vision seemed to be "Things" coming out of the rifts, with many assorted strengths/weaknesses, and The Party protecting people by exploiting those elements.

[KLM]

What is more... Somehow I got the impression, that humanity
was able to survive by exploiting those special weaknessess
becuase during the dark ages MDC weaponry was scarce
at best, and somehow anti-magic (and anti-psionic)
communities survived too.

Also, it boggles me, that wild psi-stalker packs, without
vibro-blades or magic swords (hey, the tribe cannot
equip every hunter with such a device) can effectively
check monster population.

Adios
KLM

[KLM]

Probably... But that does not change the fact, that
they have no reliable source of MDC weaponry.

Adios
KLM

[DhAkael]

An odd thing to think Doctor Who stuff with Rifts since Doctor Who is unerringly about out-thinking the bad guys....

And Rifts almost always ends up with an 'out-fighting the bad guys' focus.

Vamp kingdoms is written with some 'Doctor Who-ish' mentality, with its focus on what works/doesn't work and how common items can be used to defend yourself, etc. But since then, the majority of Rifts baddies are staved off by an ample amount of firepower, and not much else. Which is sad, since the original vision seemed to be "Things" coming out of the rifts, with many assorted strengths/weaknesses, and The Party protecting people by exploiting those elements.

That's why the Daleks tend to win out in this debate, cuz raw firepower (outside of nukes) just plain don't work anymore against the pepper-pots

[Rallan]

An odd thing to think Doctor Who stuff with Rifts since Doctor Who is unerringly about out-thinking the bad guys....

And Rifts almost always ends up with an 'out-fighting the bad guys' focus.

Vamp kingdoms is written with some 'Doctor Who-ish' mentality, with its focus on what works/doesn't work and how common items can be used to defend yourself, etc. But since then, the majority of Rifts baddies are staved off by an ample amount of firepower, and not much else. Which is sad, since the original vision seemed to be "Things" coming out of the rifts, with many assorted strengths/weaknesses, and The Party protecting people by exploiting those elements.

Most RPGs lean towards brute strength rather than out-thinking. Rifts just takes it to a more unsubtle extreme than most because it's assumed that your party of three to six player characters will have enough firepower between them to win Vietnam

[Rallan]

An odd thing to think Doctor Who stuff with Rifts since Doctor Who is unerringly about out-thinking the bad guys....

And Rifts almost always ends up with an 'out-fighting the bad guys' focus.

Vamp kingdoms is written with some 'Doctor Who-ish' mentality, with its focus on what works/doesn't work and how common items can be used to defend yourself, etc. But since then, the majority of Rifts baddies are staved off by an ample amount of firepower, and not much else. Which is sad, since the original vision seemed to be "Things" coming out of the rifts, with many assorted strengths/weaknesses, and The Party protecting people by exploiting those elements.

That's why the Daleks tend to win out in this debate, cuz raw firepower (outside of nukes) just plain don't work anymore against the pepper-pots

Only because they got retconned to be the big ominous force of badassery in the new seasons. Back in the good old days there's no way a Dalek vs Cybermen brawl would've been so lopsided.

Plus by Rifts standards the Daleks aren't _too_ badass. A normal guy with the cheapest armor and cheapest laser pistol in the game can get hit by a 20th century tank, stand up, get his bearings, and blow the tank away. I think it's safe to say Rifts is just a little bit more munchkin than the Dr Who universe

[KLM]

Well, RIFTS (or even other, SDC settings' ) damage
system is a bit odd.

I mean a medium level character can repeatedly
shot in the chest by a 9mm (ie. direct HP damage)
without going down. Or starfighters have to hit each
other repeatedly to achieve a kill.

Or - one of favourite - a Protector is supposed to
devastate a planet or shatter a small moon. Yet,
its main gun's range is less than 200 km...

So - besides copyright issues - be carefull with
conversions.

Adios
KLM

[Rallan]

RP depends a lot on the GM

And a lot on the game. The rules and setting of an RPG will go a long way towards determining how people play it (after all, that's why RPG creators write the rules and setting in the first place ), and saying "hey the GM can do whatever he wants" doesn't really change the fact that most Palladium RPGs are right up there with Dungeons & Dragons when it comes to encouraging players to solve everything the explodey way.

[KLM]

Well, for Palladium's credit, characters are - usually - not
so "über", I mean if they are outnumbered, especially in
a modern firearms setting they can be toasted rather quickly.

Except that automatic dodge thingy... Which is usually
the first thing I nerf as a GM. On the other hand, I am
not above of allowing the party to rack up a huge number
of skills.
Remember, in our history, there are snipers, tankers,
fighter pilots, U-boat and Qship/commercial raider captains
who racked up an impressive kill ratio.

Adios
KLM

[KLM]

Since this topic is derailed, actually Đ&D was awarding
XP for solving problems, which included killing, other means
of defeating the oppositions, solving riddles, getting past
traps... Acquiring treasures...

Anyway, most GM's I know (and sometimes me too) do not
give XP a such, but rather tell that "Hey Joe, your character
went up a level"... Whether it is by gut feeling or GM's accounting...

Adios
KLM

[KLM]

Just AD+D, no version number (all hail Gary Gygax).

Adios
KLM

[DhAkael]

Just AD+D, no version number (all hail Gary Gygax).

Adios
KLM

I miss those days...
Back when dungeon crawling was all one could ever ask for, THAC:0 was a way of telling the "true gamers" from the hangers on...Feats were what you put your boots over
...and Palladium books wasn't even a glimmer of a speck of a concept of an idea.

[shiiv-a]

RP depends a lot on the GM

you know ... i would like to disagree with you on that point.

Role playing is an artform that is really sorely lacking in the current games on digi, in the chatrooms.

by all means, come in and lurk quietly for a week in the various rooms. you will notice that the styles are either 'i'm a guy playing a female who can't get enough ... ' ... or something else just as stereotypically incorrect about genders. we are NOT going to touch how they run the various races, as everyone has a different style. but it is how they run the genders that is the issue/challenge.

GM's run the game .. but its the players that interact with each other and the NPC's that direct the game. you get a bunch of .... icky players that can't figure out something without it being handed to them on a silver platter, then they are utterly clueless. most of them still are clueless, but hey, some of them do work at making a char work in the game.

i admit that some people WILL do things behind the scenes, thus the actions are not seen or known, but when they do interact again, most just 'assume' that it was plain luck.

example ... you roll a nat 1 against HF ... WHAT do you do?

its HOW they react to that question that will show you the people that can think of reactions to different stimuli that will say if they are good at RP .. or they are just too bored to think anymore.

[Aramanthus]

This topic went crazy when I was gone. WOW! One thing Beserkers is spelled like that. (At least in the US it is spelled like that. ) Just a note.

[KLM]

This topic went crazy when I was gone. WOW! One thing Beserkers is spelled like that. (At least in the US it is spelled like that. ) Just a note.

Which berserkers?

The crazed Normann warriors, who got their name from their
bearskin shirts?

Or those murderous automatons?

Adios
KLM

[DhAkael]

both.

Well here in Canuckville under the Tor / Baen liscence, it's spelled with the double "Zed"