Old World Monsters

[Charon]

Had it not been packed up in a barrel like it was you would have gotten just that, with the lots of fire and smoke and some pressure change. But this was basically a big freaking grenade. I don't know what your post would have been, but if it had involved cracking the barrel open with your giant sword then the explosion would have been much less catastrophic. As to your misinterpretation, I had thought I'd made the extent of the damage clear but I suppose I could have gone further.

The barrel was not full, although it was mostly full. If it was 80% full then the volume of black powder within this barrel would be (roughly):

Something cannot be "packed" if it does not fill the container. That is the issue. If you picked up that partially filled container (the barrel) no matter how packed it had been the contents would shift.

It doesn't need to be packed in like sardines in order to do what it did. Regardless of if magic was used or not. Even then, seeing as the barrel was still 80% full, you would not have seen significant enough shifting that many portions of the barrel would not still be very packed. So a roughly 80% full barrel is still pretty damn well packed and not even being thrown around is going to loosen it to the point where you wouldn't get an explosive effect.

Hell, even if we granted that the gunpowder was loose and that a smaller portion of gunpowder that was that loose would not have been able to cause the explosion, the fact that there was so damn much of it in a pretty damn confined area with nowhere for the fire and gas to go would guarantee the explosion.

Magic itself had little direct effect on the explosion of the barrel, nor were any of the characters in the vicinity potent enough magic users to be able to notice any magical effect going off, hence why I didn't mention it. And considering how subtle the magic was I doubt one of the actual wizards would have noticed it in the heat of the moment either.

If magic had so little to do with it then why did you bring it up to make the point that ideal conditions were created with said magic?

*gasp* An ideal condition? Why that couldn't POSSIBLY be effected by... say... a wizard!

You contradicted yourself.

Note the part where I said direct effect. So no, I didn't contradict myself. Creating ideal circumstances for the explosion to happen in is not a direct effect upon the explosion itself. A direct effect would be increasing the explosive capability of the gunpowder, or directing the force of the explosion in one way or another, or one of any other myriad of ways to do something that fucks with reality to give you more or less than could be reasonably expected.

[Charon]

Then why mention magic? If its not important why bother bringing it up, or why not say when Silence posted his equations yes the barrel is completely compacted and all excess air has been removed so the gunpowder explodes under ideal conditions. Irregardless, fine I accept that my post was bad, I accept that due to my lack of speed in posting I did not get a say in the matter, and I accept I’m now injured. But I’m merely voicing my own opinions and ya know what I don’t need snarky comments on impartiality. I’m here to play a game because frankly I’m freaking the fuck out right now and I really just want to relax. So I’m going to roll with this punch no more quibbling and I’ll see how things turn out cause I just want to play.

I didn't mention the magic because I wanted wiggle room for why you and Agrilos are still alive. I don't try to kill characters using cheap tricks, nor do I try to horribly maim them without giving them the chance to get out (all of this assuming that they've not done something mindbogglingly retarded). Thank you for accepting the decision I made and for what it's worth I apologize for any miscommunications.

[Rukia]

Fine, whatever, I give up. No matter how well my argument could have been presented, even if it had been with out flaws, it doesn't matter because I'm not the GM, you have magical Gm powers that make you right. So fine you're right, but I won't apologize, I won't Kowtow, and I won't bend over and kiss your ass. I wanted to play this game because it intrigued me and I thought it would be fun, but if I have to apologize and beg to not be killed after every post, then I'll just leave. I know that I am not perfect, I realize that I push the limits every now and then and when I fuck up and it is pointed out to me, I fix it, generally without question. But it's not fair to ask us to change our posts because it isn't what you wanted us to do.

[Cynical Cat]

There was a misunderstanding between player and GM. That happens. There's an edit function to handle it. Get over it.

You argued, he made his call. That's the GM's perrogative, even when he's wrong. Especially when he's wrong.

I have and will walked out of games where I felt the GM was being consistently unfair. This is, however, a single incident of an exploding barrel of gunpowder at close range and people are being able to survive it unmaimed. That's not bad at all.

[Marcao]

Okay, I have tried to keep up with this thread as best as I can and I have tried to see both sides. Ultimately, it falls down on this. Whenever I post in the OWM thread, I assume good intent from the GM. I don't have the perception that Charon is out to screw me or anything along those lines. This is not an adversarial game even if it has the potential to become so due to the nature of the characters. However, I honestly believe in the old school mentality that the GM is the story teller and usually what he says goes. This does not mean that I am some sort of drone, and I have kept the lines of communication between myself and the GM open several times already.

If I read something that does not make sense to me or seems off, I contact the GM through private means and we discuss the situation. There have been unusual situations occurring and we have not been doing as best as we could have in character but there are reasons for this. The reasons have been hinted at, and some of us have made some poor tactical decisions.

1. Rukia's desire to have her character's identity be secret is logical considering her nature, but that makes friendly fire a possibility when dealing with other monsters.

2. 2 PC's charged into the woods without magical support and apparently bit off more than they could chew.

We are not a cohesive, well organized group of players in game. We are a collection of individuals, most of us being non-human to begin with. There is no loyalty between us, and only the loosest sense of obligation. We are all using each other at this point or so it seems, and it clearly shows in the manner that we have chosen to fight our battle.

The whole barrel incident does not bother me in the least. If the GM says that it blows, then that is what it should do. I am not a math major, I am not about to educate myself in the ways of black powder of that era just so I can try and prove a point or make the argument that the explosion should not occur. This is a collaborative story. We need the GM and he needs us, its a symbiotic relationship.

We are all still alive, we have potentially two healers in the group so assuming we stay that way recovery is possible. Frankly, I joined the game to see how my character would interact with the world, other people and how his story would end up. In order for the story to have any meaning, the GM has to provide us with creative outlets so that we may test our characters. So far, Charon has done a suitable job at this. The combat has not gone our way just yet, but there have been reasons as to why and if anyone cares to find out more Charon has been willing to be informative (God knows he was helpful to me, and I was pretty irked after one of my previous posts.)

At the end of the day, it all falls down on this. Do you want to be part of the game or not? If you are interested, then giving the GM some slack is a good idea. Its a thankless job but a necessary one. So far, Charon has been more than willing to address my concerns. As long as that continues, I will continue playing in the game. The rate of posting should also be addressed. In a combat sequence, every player has the potential of being a bottleneck for the action. In free form, we can ignore a player whose owner is unable to post. In a battle sequence its harder, but I noticed that this combat sequence has been moving at the rate of tree sap sliding down a tree in a low gravity world.

The sooner we are done with this scenario, the sooner we can get to the meat and potatoes of the game. Interpersonal interactions and maybe, just maybe we can play a more active role in whatever dastardly story Charon has in store for us.

[The Silence and I]

It looks like this is settling down mostly and I am glad for that. But I would like to address a couple of points that stood out to me while I was perusing here:

Additionally Yes magic may be a factor but that was not something stated to us during the discussion of how the barrel exploded, and going off of the information silence posted it looks like the explosion would not be as horrible as stated. It would have lots of flash and lots of fire yes a pressure change but it would not be quite like a bomb as described, magic being involved well that throws the rest out the window and god knows what happens then. Magic and physics don't mix, never have never really will.

(emphasis mine)
Buh? The information I posted, leaving aside its accuracy for the moment, describes a bomb with a lethal range of 30 meters! You were about 10 meters away from it! I'm not sure how you read that but I'd have thought it was obviously a rather horrible thing. In fact, assuming my numbers work, there should be significant structural damage to the town itself. As I portrayed it this was no small event; indeed I would have had the pressure wave bodily pick you up and throw you a good 30 feet rather than knock you on your ass and I might have dropped pieces of nearby trees on you as well.

There is absolutely NO way unless under extremely ideal conditions that the barrel would explode enough to do irepreable harm. It would hurt a lot, but it would most likely not kill anyone. And would certainly not knock someone over a certain radius unconscious. To get the effect that you want it would have to be packed so dense that it would kill everyone in the clearing. You can find examples all over the net that support this.

First I'd like to point out there was roughly 200, maybe more, kilograms of black powder in that barrel. So no matter what happened there is enough material in there to hurt anybody. But I have details as well:

This excellent source discusses the amazing and revolutionary advances in gun and gunpowder design during the 1500's. Which is the same century that our world developed the wheellock gun. I forget for the moment what the date is in Old World Monsters, but I do recall that wheellocks exist (John has one, so do both enemy vampires) and Charon has pointed out that gun and gunpowder design is advanced relative to our history thanks to wizards. I'm rambling. The point is that by the time wheellocks are developed certain key gunpowder advances were also developed and we have the one, so it makes sense to have the other.

Those advances, as seen in the link, are the use of wood ash to leech out calcium and magnesium nitrates, leaving a more moisture-resistant mixture of mostly potassium nitrate, and the discovery and adoption of corning. Which I had assumed would be used (how lucky a guess was that?) when I typed up the post with the calculations.

These matter in the following ways:
A more pure mixture of potassium nitrate will be more stable and predictable in the presence of humidity. Considering the weather this matters. However even then the majority of the powder would be dry as there are 200 kg of the stuff. Surface area and all that jazz.

The corning is, well, packing. The stuff comes pre-packed! Basically, corning is a process where the wet material is pressed into a dense cake and allowed to dry. After this is done the cake is broken into chunks, the size of which depends on the intended use (cannon powder typically has larger chunks). The advantage of corning is a much faster burn speed, because this massively increases the surface area which is burning at any given instant. Burn speed correlates nicely with the explosive potential, as Rukia's post points out.

(Basically, picture a pile of BBQ bricks, you know, the charcoal people burn on their grills. Now gather as many more bricks and grind them into a pile of powdered charcoal next to the first pile. You now have two piles: one made of little cubes of charcoal and one pile of powder. Light them both. Which pile burns faster? The answer is of course the pile of bricks, not the pile of powder. The faster something burns the more explosive it is.)



There was every reason to have expected that barrel to have exploded. If it was damp all through then it may have fizzled, but it wasn't close to that--the cannons were successfully firing after all, and if the stuff at the top of the barrel is dry enough it is highly likely the stuff deeper in is just as dry or better.

[frigidmagi]

You know Rukia's right, Charon is being monstrously (heh heh heh) unfair.

The fair thing to do would be to kill all three of them. It's what I would have done.

[Shark Bait]

Buh? The information I posted, leaving aside its accuracy for the moment, describes a bomb with a lethal range of 30 meters! You were about 10 meters away from it! I'm not sure how you read that but I'd have thought it was obviously a rather horrible thing. In fact, assuming my numbers work, there should be significant structural damage to the town itself. As I portrayed it this was no small event; indeed I would have had the pressure wave bodily pick you up and throw you a good 30 feet rather than knock you on your ass and I might have dropped pieces of nearby trees on you as well.


(Basically, picture a pile of BBQ bricks, you know, the charcoal people burn on their grills. Now gather as many more bricks and grind them into a pile of powdered charcoal next to the first pile. You now have two piles: one made of little cubes of charcoal and one pile of powder. Light them both. Which pile burns faster? The answer is of course the pile of bricks, not the pile of powder. The faster something burns the more explosive it is.)



There was every reason to have expected that barrel to have exploded. If it was damp all through then it may have fizzled, but it wasn't close to that--the cannons were successfully firing after all, and if the stuff at the top of the barrel is dry enough it is highly likely the stuff deeper in is just as dry or better.

ok again we are saying the same thing looking at it on diffrent levels

1. yes your equations are right they are excellent and well researched i bow to you for your thoroughness, however in gunpowder explosions the problem is it needs to be packed tightly to explode all of the powder. If not then the powder continues to burn but is thrown away from the center of the explosion making a bigger fireball but a slower explosion reducing the pressure wave. This is one of the main reasons that gunpowder was abandoned as a blasting tool, not just because there were more efficient blasting agents but the compacting required added extra work which could also add more danger (see Finnius gague). My point was one of the description in game of my injuries lead me to believe i was capable of movement. and thinking that the powder was just that powder sloshing around in the keg that had 20% of its volume filled with air.

2. Side note, bricks don't burn faster, combustion is a chemical reaction, and powders will always react faster than bricks, powder has more surface area more surface area means faster burning which is why fires in flour mills are so dangerous they have a tendency to explode. BBQ bricks are used because they burn more slowly and evenly giving a consistent heat over time so you don't have to keep adding and removing coals/fuel. but this is a side not not important to game

[LadyTevar]

Guys? Can we just drop it an move on with the RP?

[The Silence and I]

Guys? Can we just drop it an move on with the RP?

I don't think it is hostile or anything at this point (right guys?), I'm curious in settling the explosion details as I don't know everything.
Besides, I already posted this round's RPing. Now I have to wait for the others to move. :)

1. yes your equations are right they are excellent and well researched i bow to you for your thoroughness, however in gunpowder explosions the problem is it needs to be packed tightly to explode all of the powder. If not then the powder continues to burn but is thrown away from the center of the explosion making a bigger fireball but a slower explosion reducing the pressure wave.

True enough in general. I am uncertain what the difference in effect would be between a properly packed 200 kg charge of loose black powder and 200 kg of corned black powder within a sealed barrel. Obviously the second case is still contained, just how effectively it approximates the sort of containment needed for a maximal explosion is beyond my knowledge. I assume it to be close to maximal, mostly because it is corned powder, which actually burns faster than packed loose powder (which is why it was adopted--once they made guns that could take the pressure).

My point was one of the description in game of my injuries lead me to believe i was capable of movement. and thinking that the powder was just that powder sloshing around in the keg that had 20% of its volume filled with air.

On this point I think a very simple misunderstanding involving a line of missed description is at blame:

Dirt and wood bounced off of the troll's armor as arrows would. Per remained conscious, but his world was a blur and he was in no condition to right himself.

(emphasis mine) This is not intended to be an insensitive "hur hur you should have seen this" sort of statement but it does look like you missed this line.

2. Side note, bricks don't burn faster, combustion is a chemical reaction, and powders will always react faster than bricks, powder has more surface area more surface area means faster burning which is why fires in flour mills are so dangerous they have a tendency to explode.

Correct under certain circumstances. Powders have >>> more surface area than solid chunks do, yes. However a packed mass of flour presents a surface area to the oxygen around it roughly equivalent to the surface area of a solid mass of the same dimensions as the packed flour.
(Air-borne flour is very explosive because it is fully aerated. Flour in a bag is nearly impossible to set aflame because it only presents the same surface area as an object of the same dimensions as the flour bag.)

However, black powder is a self-sustaining reaction, providing its own oxygen, so things work a little differently. That said it turns out that bricks of powder (corned powder) do in fact burn faster than loose powder--packed or otherwise. Here's why:

Black powder's burning reaction travels through a solid mass of the material at less than the speed of sound (a deflagration wave) by thermally heating the material adjacent to the reaction. This is characteristic of all low explosives. High explosives, such as TNT, burn differently. In these explosives the reaction propagates through the solid material at the speed of sound (for that material) as the shock wave compressively heats the material it passes through (a detonation wave). Basically, if you have a solid, uniform rod shaped mass of black powder and light one side of the rod the reaction will travel through the mass relatively slowly as the burning part heats and lights the part next to it, until all the mass is burned. A similar rod of TNT will burn far faster as the shock from the initial reaction at one end travels into the material at the speed of sound and compressively heats and lights the material it passes through. Much faster, hence the bigger boom.

Knowing that the black powder reaction is rather slow is helpful in understanding the benefit of corning. When black powder is burned solid chunks of (very hot) salts are formed which are ejected every which way as might be expected. Where they land they have the potential to light more powder and start the slow-moving burning process in a different location. Corning, by making chunks of powder, leaves gaps between these chunks which allow the passage of these hot salt sparks. So if you have a mass of corned black powder stuffed into, say, a cannon, and you light one end of it, the reaction will produce many sparks. Many of these sparks will travel between the powder chunks inwards towards the center of the charge, lighting more chunks as they go. This wave of sparks travels faster than the deflagration wave, and the result is you get more powder burning over a given interval than you could if it were a tightly packed loose powder.

(note: I say "tightly packed loose powder" to mean taking a loose powder and then tightly packing it so that it is no longer loose. This is opposed to "corned powder" which refers to a collection of large chunks of "powder" and cannot actually be tightly packed into anything without crumbling those chunks.)

The end result is that, yes, bricks of black powder do burn faster than a powder does (that's why we use it that way).

<><><><><>

BBQ bricks are used because they burn more slowly and evenly giving a consistent heat over time so you don't have to keep adding and removing coals/fuel. but this is a side not not important to game

If you spread out ground charcoal it should burn faster than those bricks. But if you dump it in a pile, and pack it so that it isn't aerated (I should have specified the packing before, mea culpa), it should burn more slowly than a similar mass of bricks.

<><><><><>

Any mistakes? I'm learning this as I go and I'm bound to make mistakes.

[Charon]

So... Who wants a medieval medicinal treatment or operation?

[LadyTevar]

Isn't that why Marcao took "Life"?
CLERIC!!!!!!

[Cynical Cat]

Like cops, there is never a Jew around when you need one.

[Marcao]

Isn't that why Marcao took "Life"?
CLERIC!!!!!!

Well, that is one of the reasons of course. Granted, there are some people that may not get to experience the one true God's love. Its a good thing we have Visira for times like that.

[Charon]

Looking back toward the town, it was about half to three quarters of a mile from where he stood.

Ok, I have been informed the blast was 120 feet from the town entrance.

You guys sure as hell aren't half a mile away, let alone further. How fast do you think you can run. But yeah, you're only ~100 feet away from the town.

[rhoenix]

Looking back toward the town, it was about half to three quarters of a mile from where he stood.

Ok, I have been informed the blast was 120 feet from the town entrance.

You guys sure as hell aren't half a mile away, let alone further. How fast do you think you can run. But yeah, you're only ~100 feet away from the town.

Whoops - I'll edit that now. Thanks for letting me know.

[rhoenix]

Nice - I knew I should've posted last night during the Typing class. My apologies to Marcao & Tev for messing with continuity a bit with my reply.

[rhoenix]

Shark Bait? Are you still in the running, or what happened?

[Rukia]

he has finals all this week. not to mention we are still unpacking. It's crazy...

[rhoenix]

he has finals all this week. not to mention we are still unpacking. It's crazy...

Ah, alright.

[LadyTevar]

he has finals all this week. not to mention we are still unpacking. It's crazy...

Ah, alright.

So we carry him back to town

[rhoenix]

So we carry him back to town

I think it would take all PC's present to lift, let alone carry Per.

[Comrade Tortoise]

sorry for the delay, finals and graduation....and moving

[Shark Bait]

MUHAHAHAHAHHAHA i return triumphant with the head of a certain chemistry professor mounted on my shield.... ok maybe not but i'm back and i passed. so i'm gonna post very soon.

[rhoenix]

MUHAHAHAHAHHAHA i return triumphant with the head of a certain chemistry professor mounted on my shield.... ok maybe not but i'm back and i passed. so i'm gonna post very soon.

Hurrah, the awakening of Per!