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RPG science: Character tails

Now that's a tail

Got a game character with a nice fluffy tail? Those things can be good for more than just Furry decor, you know. 

At a recent TED conference, biologist Robert Full presented research into the wonders of the wall-crawling gecko. (The video, embedded below, is worth a view; you'll see both people and robots mimicking the gecko's Spidey-like climbs.) But while uncovering the secrets of the lizard's famous feet, scientists found the creature's tail enabled some amazing acrobatic feats of its own, all with nice character-design potential. Read more...

RPG science: Designing dinosaurs just got easier?

Dodges cluster bombs!

Dinosaurs may not have been as heavy as previously thought. Those are the words of scientists who found flaws in the models used to estimate weight:

"Palaeontologists have for 25 years used a statistical model to estimate the body weight of giant dinosaurs and other extraordinarily large extinct animals,” said Gary Packard, from Colorado State University, whose research will appear in the Zoological Society of London’s Journal of Zoology this week.

“We have found that the statistical model is seriously flawed and the giant dinosaurs probably were only about half as heavy as is generally believed.”

In other words, dinosaurs are just as big – long and tall, that is – as the fossils have always told us, but the flesh on those bones may have been far less bulky than thought. To make that distinction in movie terms, an Allosaur at the cinema would cheer the speedy new Godzilla over the lumbering old one as a better depiction of saurian kind. (Well, a vastly oversized saurian, anyway.)

This is welcome news to me, as massive weight has been the bane of GULLIVER's attempts to apply "natural encumbrance" rules to dino designs. Read more...

RPG science: Biology fun for creature design!

My money's on the Rex.

Clearing out some old links I'd noted, here's some good reading for game designers (or just detail-happy GMs) wanting to give good, hard biology a friendly nod:

The Biology of B-Movie Monsters

http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/2/21701757/

Wow, this is a heck of an article by Michael C. LaBarbera, professor in Organismal Biology & Anatomy at the University of Chicago. It's a layman-friendly grand tour of how size and scaling work in reality, and what that means for B-movie creatures – and by extension, game-table monsters. Scaling of area vs mass and its relevant effects on cooling, terminal velocity, metabolism, and so on; mass and falling damage; mechanical difficulties posed by huge size; and much more – it's all there. Read more...

RPG science: Biomechanics fun

I would have liked to hear the speech by the inimitable Steven Vogel on "Power from the People: Life When Muscle Was Our Main Motor", an overview of how biomechanics shaped the lives and work of our ancestors. The article at http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2007/02/archeological_biomechanics.ph... provides some interesting fodder for the dilettante game designer, though it's unfortunately brief.

Less sober: The Science of Godzilla, at http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2007/02/the_science_of_godzilla_... . The radioactive breath jet? It's all thanks to a plasma gland. Yep, a plasma gland. (How we know that, isn't answered.)

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