KhorasForum

Personally i think part of the beauty of Khoras is that numbers arent in fact listed.  It gives a Game Master plenty of flexibility in creating a campaign.  As a game master you always want to have an ace or two up your sleeves.  Players dont always act according to your idea's, and sometimes you just need to alter things to progress a story to maintain the fun.

So called "rational fear" is what has stopped a lot of viable research.  Take stem cells for instance, what could be a viable panacea (cure-all), has been all but stopped in the US due to "rational fear" and "moral objection".

What one company can do for money, another can do as a food resource for the world.  This is just a company getting over that first hurdle, to pave the path for others to come.

Personally i think anybody serving a life sentence or more has already given up their life and as such we should be allowed to experiment on them with whatever.  If you cant do the time, dont do the crime, right?

Naturally i dont mean anything involving torture and whatnot.  But something like this?  Prisoners already get better health care than most americans anyways.  Most of their meals are better than what is served in school cafeterias too.  Hell, start with the ones who volunteer, i'm sure there have to be some lifers that would love to have some salmon anyways lol.

I'm not sure that there even would be any ill effect with these particular salmon.  Triploidism is a natural (albeit very rare) thing in nature.  When the conditions are right (water temperature and pressure) eggs fetilized will "forget" to kick out the extra chromosomes (the process determining gender), when that happens the fish is Triploid and is completely sterile, being unable to reproduce it focuses on feeding and growing (growing at an increased rate and to a larger size than normal).

The only form of tampering is treating these fish with a hormone that allows growth during winter (when the fish normally goes into survival mode and conserves food and all fat to get through the colder months), which gives them a few more months of growth each year.  Salmon normally mature in 4 to 6 years, which means they reach adult size in that time.  A triploid fish will just grow endlessly provided it has enough food and space, add in a hormone that stimulates growth further and you have a fish that can reach adult size in a year, two tops.

I dont want to sound pushy on this, it's not my intent at all, but i dont see any way that these fish could actually be harmful.  The hormone being used is from another fish, the ocean pout, which is also something we eat, though the ocean pout currently has a bad stigma stuck with it.  About 50 years ago somebody discovered that ocean pout tended to carry protozoan parasites.  Well, a little research would show that protozoan parasites are all around us.  In the ocean, in the lakes, in the rivers, hell even in drinking supplies.  Thoroughly cooking the fish kills off the parasites (note: since the protozoan parasites are found in all bodies of water, all fish are technically carrying them.).

In other words he's a post whore? lol

No need for an apology Tanis, i honestly expected to get somebody on this, which is why i was withholding my information.  I gave the key terms needed, Salmon and Triploid and then let the bait sit.

I did however discover a company that is attempting to treat Triploid salmon with a growth hormone (not unlike what they do with certain vegetables and even livestock), however this hormone isnt synthetic, it's from a different species of fish, this hormone triggers growth during winter months when otherwise the fishes natural hormones tell it not to grow.  They are also cross breeding these pacific salmon with atlantic salmon (the difference being atlantic waters are colder which i think helps with the growth hormone.)

This isnt the scientists hammering things out for profit.  This is due to the people funding them.  And there are going to be people volunteering to test the animals.  The truth of the matter is that most of the food we eat on an every day basis is genetically altered in some way.  Now the secret to these fish is they are termed Triploid.  

They've been doing this in trout for decades now.  Canada has lakes stocked with triploid trout that grow 20-30 pounds a fish when a normal trout of that species is under 10 for a monster.  Basically, the technology isnt new, its just being applied to a species of fish that appears in the meat department across the country and now people are up in arms about it.

http://www.northwesttrout.com/NewsItems/triploid.htm
http://www.eou.edu/~mmustoe/Fishing.html

Tanis i'm sorry but you failed my test.  All you had to do was Google the term Triploid and you would see that this is something that occurs naturally (albeit rarely) in nature.  Scientists have just figured out how to force it.  By fertilizing eggs at a certain temperature and pressurization the fish become triploid without any test tube tampering at all.  The reason they have to be listed as genetically altered is because they carry extra chromosomes.

The reason for my test is to prove a point, im sorry you had to be the one Tanis.  When people hear "genetically modified" they are instantly skeptical, then they jump on the bandwagon of citing long lists of things that could happen.  Rarely, does anybody research it before speaking against it.  This is a problem im running in to on another forum (a fishing forum).  Nobody there will Google the term Triploid and read the process for themselves.  The fish is still 100% natural, the only difference is fertilizing the eggs in a manner that makes nature "forget" to kick out the extra chromosome.

My rebuttle to your post is that when breaking new ground in Science there's only one way to do it....trial and error.  To gain the knowledge we need in this area, scientists have only one way to go about it.

In my area this has become a large debate and it's only now becoming a large debate because some scientists want to make pacific salmon that grow to maturity twice as fast and grow twice as large or larger.  These fish are triploid.  That means genetically altered, sterile and generally kept out of natural habitats.

People seem to look past the fact that we are already eating genetically modified animals and vegetables, but when a certain iconic animal gets selected it raises alarms and everybody gets up in arms about it. 

My vote is for this, i have many reasons, i will post on them later when we get a good discussion going.

Keep it civil please!

Spence

Nice, i will have to explore these after work today.  Thanks David!

Sorry to cast a little necromancy and raise an old thread...but i wanted to add my two cents.

The generic DnD Bard is, in my opinion, redundant.  However, i typically throw a little spin on any bard i do play.  First level, yeah i'll go bard, second level, i'll go Barbarian, third level Bard, fourth level barbarian, then after that its straight bard.  I call this my Skald, a warrior from a tribe able to spur his fellow tribemates into battle and whip them into a frenzy like no tomorrow.  The spells i take are always there to augment physical combat, and a little healing.  I play the character as a scholar (of sorts!) from the tribe he belongs to, but hes very much a warrior first and foremost.  Later on using a mithril breastplate and mithril buckler i end up in pretty good shape for combat. 

But, i never have, and never will play a bard straight through.  They just dont seem fitting to me.

Unfortunately google has not been my friend in finding one either.  It keeps sending me to places to purchase video games with level editing software...

Heya folks...it's been a few years since ive been here.  Got pre-occupied with life.  Anyways, i'm looking for some map generating software (preferably something free, im on a really tight budget) to use to create maps for my future DnD setting.  I came here hoping somebody would be able to direct me to something free and easy to use. 

Thanks in advance!

Spence

Originally from a very very small town in Michigan (population of 50, not a typo), moved to Beaverton Oregon November of 2005.

For DnD i can help with that!

http://wizards.com

Look around the site and try browsing their forums as well, lots of useful information to be had.

Also...

http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/35/sovelior_sage/home.html

The online SRD, has the information from the Players Handbook, Dungeon Master Guide and Monster Manual, everything that's not OGL (Online Gaming Liscence) is not there though, that's for legal reasons.  But the non-OGL stuff doesnt matter anyway, all the rules and whatnot you need are there.