Mega-stats?

[philat99]

I tried my hand at an episode of The Midas Touch (Continuous Story) and was suddenly at a loss regarding stats for the characters. Ranging from Justin at 8'2" and 1240 pounds to Alex at 12' and 7300 pounds, I couldn't figure out where the weight numbers came from - thin air? previous writers' fantasy? I was going to do more detail on specific sizes of various muscle areas, but was at a loss as to how. The weights just seemed way too inflated, or possibly dense! There are a number of sites with ratios, but they seemed to end up way too obscene even for decent fantasy. So, I just went the generic way and tried to remain true to previous authors' numbers, only adding height and weight for Nikos.
Any suggestions for some uniformity? Or, is everything up for grabs in fantasy?
Mike

[arpeejay]

Actually, the search engine for the forums works quite well. A couple of years ago Brad posted the following link:

http://www.macrophile.com/macro-stat/

Looks pretty useful to me! And, yeah, I think the numbers came out of thin air! :-)

xoxo

Richard

[Uskathoth]

I haven't read the story but just by scaling back to 6' you can get an idea of the proportions described. If you shrunk them both back to 6' tall Justin would be about 500 pounds (superhumanly freaky muscled but I guess he could still probably move) and Alex would be about 900 which I would imagine would be more like an immobile sphere of muscle.

Of course if their skeletal proportions changed (i.e. they had extra wide bodies, kind of like giant dwarves) then anything goes. But that macro tool helps a lot with putting things in perspective.

[muscl4life]

That's a very common problem in the continuous work, many heads thinking each one on its own pace. I particularly take the figures of macro-stats as mere guide lines, because i always think that if my 6'tall 250 pounds bodybuilder will grow twice taller he can't just be 8 times heavier (which is the usually indicated magnification standard) I want him to look much much much more muscular than he previously was, therefore i just tweak the numbers at my own will, but following my flavor (which tends to be chaotic for many guys, but frankly I don't care for anyone but me when I am writing my stories).

I guess my advise is for you to work on your own comfortable paramaters, but in a continous story you might just try to "blend" in with the stats thing to give a sense of continuation.

Cheers

[Geek2Jock]

I've used two scales in judging height-to-weight ratios as well as several other vital statistics by simply extrapolating from known or common variables. One is a derivative of the BMI scale with idealistic symmetry proportions, the other is the growth chart of the Incredible Hulk's dimensions and strength.

Based on the BMI/Symmetry scale, your 8'2" Justin would be 1153 pounds (so not too far off) but 12' tall Alex could end up somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 tons! I think this scale loses some of its reality as it rationalizes the growth factor only a small percentage but bases each inch of height on the results of the prior inch's ratio... so for you math majors that's exponential!

On the other hand, using the Hulk-comparative scale Justin would be under 700 pounds while Alex would be a lightweight at only 1770 pounds. I don't know that those numbers sound all that impressive, but considering a 12-foot tall individual is twice the height and presumably twice the width and breadth as well, it is a factor of 8 or more from the average 6-foot stature and 200-pound symmetry assumptions this scale uses. This of course changes significantly as well if your 6-footer was already beefier than the 200-pound baseline.

I hope this helps!