Y'know, I always called arcane energy "Laser". Mostly because it was cooler, but also because it was appropriate. The only difference was that solid arcane energy was explosive, and I'm not entirely sure that counts considering I have no idea how solid laser would work.
Now, I have a feeling you weren't serious about half of those, but I'm good at taking things like that seriously...
So, seriously, I think most of those are just silly bloat. We had forty-four elements last time, and most of them were almost never used. Having "pipe cleaners" as an element is only worth two laughs: one when it's discovered what it is, the second when someone makes a dragon out of them. The only thing having half of the elements being silly jokes will cause is the players to just slog through it, trying to find something useful. And then they'll find steel, and they'll use it for 90% of their stuff.
As for gunpowder and whatnot, I dislike stuff like that. It's too useful, and too easy. Last game, I had plans for a gauss rifle style gun which could fire any harmful elements. It was complex and needed a bunch of different materials to make. But if I had gunpowder, I could've simply used gunpowder control and steel control and BAM I have guns. Whatever guns I want. Barely any thought, barely any creativity.
Most of the really strong elements we had, like dust, light, vacuum, and laser were all things that had some ability that made them better than normal stuff like steel or fire. But they were balanced by the fact it was hard to use them- they were double edged swords. That stuff is interesting, and rewards creativity. Just handing someone tear gas or gunpowder is no fun.
Now, for an actual suggestion: Adamantine. Pretty much DF adamantine- practically heat immune, ultra sharp, light as Styrofoam, ect. Disadvantage:Reeaally weak to magical substances. Or just ClF3. It quickly melts when you spray it with acid, ClF3 causes it to pretty much explode immediately, laser melts it easily, ect. It's way better than steel for normal stuff, like chopping through armor or taking a hit, but steel's way better than it if you are facing a crafty opponent.
EDIT:Dangit, forgot something I wanted to ask. I'm adding a lot of new words, like the aforementioned adamantine, but I also want there to be runes for the new stuff. I could just take out less interesting meanings (Like dirt) and replace them with adamantine or whatever, but then people would quickly recognize that there's a higher density of useful runes. Plus with stuff like pg.4 words and d runes, there will just plain be more useful words. Does anybody have a suggestion for some way to make more runes, that doesn't rely on me having any ability at all with paint/photoshop/gimp/whatever?
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Topic: Perpublicon: Round 1: Toaster Vs Tsuchi (Read 134665 times)