Data Disaster...

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

Aside to Mongo: Broke open the UPS batteries? Wowsers. What'd you use to clean up the battery acid? Or did they just pull up the carpet and pitch it?

I use the same thing I use when I'm trying to clean the acid off the battery terminals in my car.

BAKING SODA!

Wonderful stuff. It reacts with and neutralizes both Acids and Bases. Which is one of the reasons that many labs keep gobs of it around. It's also safe to use and there is no risk to using excess amounts of it, and since when heated it releases carbon dioxide, it makes for a dandy emergency fire stopper.

No substitute for a good ABC Dry-Chem extinguisher, but if the wok on the stove catches a grease fire I like to grab the Baking Soda first since I keep a box next to the stove for just such events. Grab...dump...cover with lid...go and get the real extinguisher just in case it didn't work.

If you have a liquid acid, then dump it on the puddle in dry form. This is what I had to do with my carpet (and yes I did have to replace that section of carpet). If it's a dry residue (such as on car battery terminals) dissolve it in water and pour over the terminals and then flush with clean water.

[ShadowBall]

Oh wow, did not know that regarding a surge protector and computers. Granted, I do sometimes use my laptop during thunderstorms, but perhaps I should be unplugging my laptop when shit gets stormy outside since I don't think there's much protection against surges going on in this house.

Many years ago (probably 10 or more), an electrical storm blew out every single phone line in the house. Everything else was fine, but all five or six landline phone jacks in the house simply ceased to work. And they were never fixed because my mother never wanted to spend money to fix them, and her worthless moron was too lazy to even look at them. To this day, none of those phone lines work and the only working line is the new one that was installed for the internet. This one's all the way down in the basement...needless to say, the phone is rarely answered because either no one hears it ringing or no one can get downstairs in time to answer it.

If I knew WTF to do to fix the fuckers, I'd do it myself. I'd love to have internet in my room via the landline outlet. Damn shitty wiring.

[PepperElf]

In more ways than one...What if the kid managed to actually toss it *straight* up and then failed his dodge check?... She probably would have blamed you guys for his injuries, if so.

Not to mention that Grandma rolled a fumble on her charisma check to get what she wanted, and another one on her intelligence check.

The D20s must hate her.

About the only thing she didn't entirely fail at was lobbing the CD as a weapon since it at least went the right direction... but even that was a failure since it broke her only copy of the photos.

[Kogarashi]

Not to mention that Grandma rolled a fumble on her charisma check to get what she wanted, and another one on her intelligence check.

The D20s must hate her.

About the only thing she didn't entirely fail at was lobbing the CD as a weapon since it at least went the right direction... but even that was a failure since it broke her only copy of the photos.

Ah, but she rolled a critical against the CD itself. How else could she deal enough damage to shatter it?

[sirwired]

Ah, but she rolled a critical against the CD itself. How else could she deal enough damage to shatter it?

Well, we already know that she took INT, CHA, and WIS as dump-stats, (and given that she missed Mongo during the initial strike, I'm thinking her DEX ain't that great either), so maybe she min-max'd to put all her points into STR, which increased her damage roll?

Either that, or she rolled a critical failure and the exploding DVD of precious data was the consequence. (I know D20 doesn't have critical failures like Shadowrun, but it's certainly a house rule in many places.)

[EricKei]

(and given that she missed Mongo during the initial strike, I'm thinking her DEX ain't that great either), ....

(I know D20 doesn't have critical failures like Shadowrun, but it's certainly a house rule in many places.)

Perhaps the miss is due to a lack of combat training. She should have taken Basic Combat: Optical Media when she had the chance

As for crit failures: It sure as hell is a rule at my games...on those rare occasions that I get to actually play or run a game >_< I enforce crit failures with the same verve, style, and pizzaz as I do crit successes, for both players and enemies. In other words, a natural 1 is gonna hurt whoever rolled it, or at least put a cramp in their style and slow them down a bit, if I'm feeling generous that night. Similarly, a natural 20 means you have your moment in the sun, pulling off The Man In Black-caliber maneuvers, should you wish. To be fair, I make 1's hurt more if the roller was doing something stupid (like a blind charge), and I make 20's cooler if they were in a position where they could *really* take advantage of the situation.

I like to think of myself as an equal-opportunity-evil GM

[Ironclad Alibi]

Since the has been some mention of D20 die rolls, and since elsewhere there was a discussion of an SC game, I offer the following assessment of SC traits. In normal role playing games, the character’s qualities are usually represented by a combination of the following statistics:

ACC accuracy
CHR charisma
CON constitution
DEX dexterity
END endurance
INT intelligence
KAR karma
LUC luck
PER personality
PTY piety
SPD speed
STR strength
WIS wisdom

While most of these can be applied to SCs, albeit with negative numbers, below are some SC specific statistics:

ALE alliteracy (won’t read signs)
BLD boldness (has the nerve to try this stuff)
DEF deafness (doesn’t listen)
DIS destructiveness (breaks things)
ILE illiteracy (can’t read signs)
ILL illegality (has outstanding warrants)
ING ignorance (doesn’t know obvious stuff)
LIE lie-ability (telling lies)
MES messiness (ability to make a mess)
MTH mouthiness (loudness, cursing)
NST nastiness (ability to make a nasty mess)
ODR odor (smells bad)
STU stupidity (does stupid things)

Feel free to add to the list.

[mattm04]

It also depends on how hard the facility was hit. I had to replace carpeting from where an APC branded UPS (not just a surge, but a full Battery Backup) cracked under the strain of the lightning surge and spilled battery acid.

Last year I had to replace 4 UPS the powered TelCo and network gear due to a direct lighting hit. Three just failed but was blowing enough smoke to set off the smoke dector in that closet. FD was on scene already and hit it with a dry chem.

[MadMike]

My computer was zapped by lightning once, and the surge protector wasn't affected. The surge came in through the phone line. The surge took out a telephone and the internal modem card, but nothing else on the computer. After that, I got a surge protector for the phone line too.

I fixed a computer for someone awhile back that had the same thing happen. She had the outlet plugged into a surge protector, but not the phone line, and it killed her dialup modem. Luckily for her, that was the only thing that it took out, and that I had several spares lying around.

Many years ago (probably 10 or more), an electrical storm blew out every single phone line in the house.

I posted a recent thread about a bad storm we had here just a few weeks ago, where it blew the wires out of the little phone box on the side of the house. I thought it was just an outage and didn't think about it, but my son asked around and found out we were the only ones affected. He opened the box, and said there were some small black marks, and it looked like all the wiring had been yanked out. He put everything back and everything was fun, except our cordless phone no longer worked. The rest of the phones were fine.

My stepdad told me that the same thing happened to him once, except that it actually blew the phone off the wall. I guess that's why they tell you not to use the phone during a thunderstorm.