TotallyHuman

Been tinkering with some urban fantasy ideas recently, and I was thinking about gadgets a modern vampire hunter might design and use.

Putting a wooden stake through a vampire's heart is usually quite effective at either paralyzing them or dusting them outright, depending on the author. Of course, a wooden stake is a lousy weapon in a fight, so usually it's used after the vamp is already close to defeated.

But what if you could stake a bloodsucker at range? Crossbows could work, but they're not the only possibility. What about a shotgun which fires wooden slugs?

I'm not a gunsmith or even a gun aficionado, so I'm not sure how feasible that is. What would be the challenges inherent in making wooden shotgun slugs? Would there be a better way to fire stakes into your supernatural enemies from range?

I seem to remember as a young child being told that it is safe to touch a Van de Graff generator (for the hair demonstration), but that if you let go before it is safe you will get a nasty shock. I know a bit more about electricity now, and I'm a little skeptical now. Is it possible to get a shock from letting go of something?

It seems to me that in the interwar period there were a lot of tanks designed with the idea that they would stay with groups of infantry, providing direct fire support while being a lot more durable than a field gun. My understanding is that this was generally abandoned in favour of faster tanks which operated somewhat independently of infantry. But to my very limited knowledge, the infantry tank seems to make sense. What were the theory's disadvantages? (Or is my understanding flawed?)

So, I like stories where everyone is competent, and as a GM I try to run my villains as playing to win. My goal is for the players to have a good time, but the enemies will use every resource at their disposal to achieve their aims: they will retreat if continuing to give battle is a bad idea, they will go scorched earth if it's in their interest, they will defeat the players in detail or simply attack with unfair, overwhelming numbers.

Sometimes this results in a beautiful, game-defining moment where the players work out what their powerful and intelligent adversary is doing, and then proceed to outwit them. More often, though, the players win the way players do: shenanigans and brute force until the day is won. This can also be fun, and obviously not every story arc needs to end with an I-know-you-know-I-know battle of wits.

The problem here is that when this happens my players usually don't ever figure out what the plan was -- and what from my side of the screen was a clever ruse or subtle stratagem, to the players looks more like an ass-pull. My players don't know that they set off a silent alarm and the security forces stalked them around the building before ambushing them from three directions, they just got a random encounter where they were surrounded by guards. They don't know that the shopkeeper they revealed their true identities to reported them to the BBEG for a bounty, they just know that the army knew they were coming even though they were trying to be stealthy.

So, GMs with similar philosophies: How do you make it feel satisfying / fair when the players are fighting an intelligent and coordinated adversary who knows more than they do?

Made a beholder for Hallowe'en this year. I used offcuts from other pumpkins for the eye-stalks.

Crops can blight, animals can get diseases. I don't know much about hydroponics but I know that bacteria are a concern. What food source is the most reliable, the least likely to produce less food than expected?

I'm not great at physics and have no knowledge of aeronautics, so this whole chain of reasoning might be wrong.

A plane stays in the air because air is moving over the wings, which generates lift. However, that air is moving because the engine is moving the plane forward. There is no other source of energy. Therefore, some of the engine's energy is going into keeping the plane in the air, and some is going into accelerating it forwards, or keeping it at the same speed (fighting air resistance).

Therefore, if the plane points straight up, the engine should be able to support it hovering in the air. If it didn't have enough power to fight gravity when pointing straight up, it wouldn't have enough power to fight gravity when moving horizontally, either.

(Okay, some older engines only worked in certain orientations, but I don't think that's a problem for jet aircraft, or any aircraft built after WWII.)

So why can only certain planes fly vertically?

Let's make a list of magic items that are flavourful and interesting! I'll start us off.

1. A fine tablecloth which, when placed on a table, conjures food, plates, and cutlery. The food is different every time, but always delicious and high-quality, conferring a minor rest/morale bonus. The table is always impeccably set. The food and everything else disappears if anyone at the table commits a breach of etiquette, no matter how minor. The tablecloth then has a cooldown period before it can be used again. (Depending on how clever your players are and how much you like watching them suffer, the tablecloth might have the relevant rule embroidered on it until the next time it's used.)
2. A pair of bracelets which, when worn, make all non-magical animals friendly. They don't allow for communication or taming -- "friendly" does not mean "subordinate", and the animals are still animal-level intelligent. The bracelets also make nearby animals friendly to each other: if you're petting a rabbit, a wolf will just nuzzle up next to it.
3. A laser gun that does no damage, but which causes its target to believe that whichever limb it hit was destroyed or severed.
4. A tamper-evident magical lock: fairly easy to pick, but the person attuned to it (or anyone who knows the activation phrase) can tell when it was last opened by touching it.
5. A clockwork bird that will fly in a path the user sets when activating it, but has no collision avoidance capability.
6. A fortune-telling implement (marked bones, crystal ball, etc) which doesn't provide any sort of divination ability, but makes other people believe the predictions the user makes with it.
7. An enchanted flare-gun that will draw a line in the sky between the user and the closest sapient creature that isn't within five meters.