Dear Timmy

[gwrober]

From today's TG email here:

Dear Timmy,

How do D & D Players procreate?

Jay from Allentown, Pennsylvania, USA, Earth


Dear Jay,

Well, according to the Complete Guide to Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, the male and female both make fertility rolls (77% chance if they are human, modified by Constitution) and if both are successful, conception has occurred. The chances can of course be reduced by various means, such as by using a +5 Sheepskin of Containment.

After conception, of course, the woman should refrain from excessive instances of casting spells, using psionics, or traveling to other planes of reality, because these could pose dangers to her unborn child. How much is too much? Well, no one really knows. While you shouldn't panic about a spell or two cast before you knew you were pregnant, you should stop casting immediately once you discover you're rolling for two.

Important note! Use of our +20 Shirt of Smiting to increase your THIAC0(*) is *not* recommended! Please use our shirts responsibly.

(*) To Hit It Armor Class 0

-- Timmy

 

[eplebnista]

I got that email, but deleted it without opening it.

 

[gwrober]

They had some decent products this time, it's been awhile since they've had anything that really caught my eye...

The new 8-bit tie is cool, but I doubt I'd ever wear it....

 

[Roguestar]

That's pretty sad. And this is coming from a single, tech support white male ex-D&D player CS Student.

 

[gwrober]

Why do stormtroopers suck?
I was watching Star Wars the other night, and began to wonder something. Stormtroopers are clones of Jango Fett. Boba Fett is also a clone of him. Given that, why is it that stormtroopers can't manage to hit anything when they shoot, but Boba can?

Sincerely,
Mat
Woodend, Victoria, Australia, Earth

Dear Mat,

This is simply a case of good-guy-physics vs. bad-guy-physics. Good guys always hit what they aim at, often with a minimum number of shots, and bad guys can't hit the broad side of a barn (particularly if the barn contains good guys). To demonstrate the truth of this, take a look at _Attack of the Clones_. In this movie, the stormtroopers are good guys, and they hit large quantities of Count Dooku's allies. Once they have been co-opted by Sidious and Vader, however, they immediately begin to suck, and by the time they get around to chasing Luke and Han down the corridors of the Deathstar, they regularly have difficulty hitting the walls.

Now, Boba Fett is a different case, which requires the application of an entirely separate branch of bad-guy-physics. This branch is roughly equivalent to fluid dynamics in that chaos theory is a factor. Bad guys who have proper names can _sometimes_ hit what they aim at, depending on complex laws governed by butterfly wings in China, which side of a paleobotanist's hand a drop of water will roll down, and most importantly, the desired plot outcome. Just as apparently random events can be mapped to form beautiful patterns known as fractals, the hit ratio of bad guys with proper names will, when viewed from far enough away, form a pattern (in this case, George Lucas' scripts, which may or may not be considered a beautiful thing, depending on your age at the time Episode IV was released and how you feel about Jar Jar Binks).

As an interesting side note, the Star Wars movies demonstrate several other principles of bad-guy-physics, including the Law of Conservation of Evil (which is why one Sith Lord always has to die before you can get another one), and temporal anomalies (cf. Han Shot First).

Hope that clears it up!

-- Timmy

Indestructible Kryptonite
Dear Timmy,

If Kryptonite is indestructable, why did Planet Kryton blow up?

Just curious.

Joey
Madisonville, Wisconsin, USA, Earth

Dear Joey,

Thanks for your question!

This is a common misconception. The planet Krypton was not in fact composed of kryptonite. Rather, all surviving chunks of Krypton were turned _into_ kryptonite by the nuclear chain reaction that destroyed the planet. If you think about it, this has to be true. Kryptonite is fatal to Kryptonians given sufficient exposure (well, green kryptonite is, anyway). If Krypton had been composed of kryptonite, all the Kryptonians would have died before they could even be born, and only if one of them had gotten out and spun the planet around backwards could they have ever even made it to the point where they could blow up. Which they couldn't do anyway, because their sun was red. So obviously Krypton wasn't composed of kryptonite.

Besides, kryptonite isn't magnetic like Uber Orbs, so obviously it isn't as cool, indestructible or not.

-- Timmy