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It's hard for me to believe I'm saying this but come this June, our campaign will be 40 years old, along with the 40th Anniversary of the game Champions. It's actually mind-boggling to me, that any campaign could be that long. The campaign is older than my friend's marriage as well as some people in the campaign. I'm planning on buying some plastic award medals that you can put your own emblem inside of and giving them out in June. By the way, this is the same continuous campaign - never stopped or retconned. It's gone through changes over the decades and has seen players & characters come

Quoted on the Book of Face by our very own Darren Watts: "I get it now. Ted and Heidi Cruz wanted their children to be safe, to have basic sanitary services like heat and running water, to leave behind a third-world apocalyptic nightmare for a safer place. Like so many parents before them, they decided to cross the Mexican border. @julieroginsky"

I applaud the ten Republican Representatives who voted to impeach Mr. Trump, as well as the seven Republican Senators who voted to convict. I know it was a difficult decision that will probably come back to bite them next election season. I thank these leaders for their courage. The rest of the Republicans in Congress can go straight to Hell as far as I'm concerned. I am embarrassed ever to have belonged to this Party.

As some of y'all out there know, one of my other hobbies is collecting fountain pens. I have a semi-valuable array of a bit under 900 pens so far, ranging from ultra-cheap everyday use kinda pens to expensive works of art that I'd never dare write with. Another hobby is collecting antique maps from the 1920s and '30s, partly to help with Pulp Hero writing. If you need to know exactly where the police station is on Gibraltar in 1934, where the short-lived nation of Tannu Tuva was, or where the railroads run in the Pulp Era Belgian Congo, I'm your man. So, after many year

I've heard a lot of people making a case that those in northern states accustomed to severe winter weather shouldn't criticize Texas for their handling of this emergency. So y'all sit back and let me do it from here in Arkansas, right next to Texas at the same latitude and with the same weather. While there are the expected outages caused by power lines being down and such, we're largely doing okay despite getting more than double our average annual snowfall in the last 3 days. What we don't have are millions of people without power due to a completely isolated power grid, utility

No. THIS is a grate sword!

Actually, I think a far better product than "Psionic Hero" would be an actual "Game Powered by Hero" Heroic Level psychic game. Maybe it's a "psychics among us" game - these powers exist, but are well-hidden and people work hard to keep it that way. Maybe it's "noble psionics protecting the mindblind from psionics who would exploit them", or maybe it's various devious groups, each after their own advantage, and their own advantage alone. Maybe it's modern world, or future-earth, or cold war earth, or scattered across a futuristic galaxy. But pick one. One theme. One

I have received my first dose of the vaccine.

Is that a hippopottoman?

I don't much care for "magic causes super-powers," either, because it seems to privilege one mode of power over others. If it were up to me, but I was bound to preserve past published statements, I'd present something like this: ------------ The Mandaarian shook her head and smiled. "No, I express myself badly. Your languages do not have the words. So often you use 'magic' to mean anything you do not understand. But Witchfire, you understand the spells you cast, yes? Or think you do, just as Defender thinks he understands how and why his armor works. You are not wrong, but your under

The AR-15s were ten minutes away with the Oath Keepers' QRF: (link to DOJ indictment) In the end, of course, the insurrectionists didn't need guns to overrun the Capitol, kill and injure dozens of cops, and successfully delay the peaceful transfer of government. There is no question that the riot was a premeditated attempt to overthrow the government. None. It is not possible to consider all the evidence--the planning by militias starting months in advance, the reconnaissance tours of the Capitol, the appointment of a Secretary of Defense who deliberately disarmed the

I forget whether it was Professor Parker or Michael Kimmel (author of Angry White Men) who provided the breakdown of GOP voters I heard on ATC, but he said they are about 50% Trumpists, 40% willing to put up with him but wedded to policies rather than personality cult, and 10% Never Trumpers. So I'd guess that Trumpists own the primaries for at least the next few years. Kimmel closely followed the Capitol insurgency and the statements by the rioters. He found them all too familiar in their sense of "aggrieved entitlement." Like Prof. Parker, he finds that ardent Trumpists are not s

I got my second COVID vaccination yesterday afternoon. I'm tired (exacerbated, no doubt, by my daughter waking up at 5:45 this morning for no readily apparent reason) and achy, and my left arm is pretty sore. But I don't have any of the really worrying side effects: no fever, sore throat, shortness of breath, or anything like that. So I'm good. I'm grateful today for everyone whose hard work and sacrifice made this vaccine possible. This virus stole a year from us. Now we have a way to fight back.

From a Facebook conversation involving our old friend Bunneh: Conservatives: Gina Carano was canceled because of her conservative beliefs! Me: She was canceled because she believes in trickle-down theory? Conservatives: Uh, no. Me: She was canceled because she likes school choice? Conservatives: No, not that. Me: Then which "conservative" views was she canceled for? Conservatives: Well, uh... Me: ? Conservatives: That..that other one, the one we all agree on but can't actually explicitly state because of the ones of us that are part of that and agree we need t

She's battered and bruised but didn't hit her head or hurt her joints that we can tell. The roads were a sheet of ice. She was going very slowly and just turning into the parking lot on her way to work. She turned the steering wheel but the car didn't turn at all. She tried straightening out her steering wheel then the car started to slightly turn. It missed most of the entrance and her front wheel ran up on a large decorative rock. Since there wasn't any detectable coefficient of friction under any of the other wheels, the car flipped as the other wheels just slipped

So I had an in-person Cincy VA medical appt today and they were doing 70 and over Covid vaccinations. Due to the massive amount of snow that got dumped on SW Ohio last night, they were several no-shows. As they now had extra vaccines leftover for the day, someone stopped me as I was going out and asked if I wanted vaccinated. Long story short, I got my first dose of Moderna vaccine today and my return appt. is March 10th. To quote the famous philosopher Ice Cube, "I guess it was a good day."

Bingo! This goes for all genre/theme/settings or what have you. The only real way to learn Hero is to play Hero. But having to design everything before you can play really eliminates the whole play thing before it even starts.

I think that it must be looked at in the context of other -1/4 limitations. Yes, "magic only" is very versatile. Remove the -1/4 limitation and it is fully versatile - it can do absolutely anything. If the VPP could only be used when in alternate ID, or when the character is wearing a very nondescript token, or would fail in an intense magnetic field, would it be less useful than being limited to magic only? The value of the limitation does not vary with the base utility of the underlying ability it limits. It varies with the extent to which it limits that underlying ability.

It seems pretty clear that the Evangelical Christians in attendance need a refresher on the topic of idolatry. The statue appears to have golden calves.

Champions New Millennium /jk

Perseverance has touched down on Mars and is communicating.

My father was a toxic, abusive asshole. Sucking down Limbaugh's hateful, bigoted rhetoric made him that much worse. So yeah, I'm gonna enjoy some Schadenfreude Pie here.

That would have been a very clever, imaginative and bold adaptation to a rapidly evolving situation. Hence completely beyond Donald Trump. Don't get me wrong, IMO he's selfish, ruthless and desperate enough to have tried it if he thought of it. Just not smart or brave enough.

Wait, what?

Q: Greg Abbot, Ted Cruz, and Rick Perry are stranded on a desert island. Who survives?

MTV turns 40 this year. Thanks for 14 years of music.

I once used the term “shelf porn” to describe a buddy’s new acquisition of some Star Wars figures he was putting on his bookshelf with pride. His wife hated that term with the fire of a thousand suns, and let me know it. She went on at length saying that men would spend their money on any stupid thing, even if they couldn’t ever touch it. She was even more unhappy when without a word, I walked her over to the six foot tall, glass and mirrored display case for her ceramic Pocket Dragons. I made a “Ta-Daaaa!” motion with a lot of Vanna White waving of hands. She is one of the sm

Straight up bad writing and poor characterization of characters isn't terribly helpful. Writing intelligent characters as stupid so they'll fit into the story you want to tell rather then altering the story to fit the characters. Deus ex machina to give the villain the upper hand doesn't really help matters either.

Way back when, I wrote up a super-team called the Amnesty Alliance. Not officially associated with Amnesty International. They specialized in rescuing political prisoners, people kidnapped by bandits, terrorists and other assorted unpleasant people, and the like. Controversial because on the one hand, everyone knew the people they fought was genuinely bad and lawless. OTOH no governments wanted private citizens taking quite such a direct role in such delicate diplomatic issues. Especially when dictators with oil or strategic minerals got punched in the face in the course of a rescue. Not that

Six ordinary-looking people were already waiting quietly in the meeting room when Agent Carter walked in. She closed the door firmly behind her, muffing the chatter from the rest of the Bletchley Park basement. Six pairs of eyes followed her expectantly. "Good afternoon, ladies and gentleman. Thank you for coming on such short notice," Carter began. "It's okay, Peggy," said one of the women, a blonde. Some of the others nodded. "There must be something big happening if you need the six of us, though." "Thanks Claire, and yes, it is big." She set her briefcase on t

The wind of projection from Graham onto the Democrats would blow my windows out. "They want to take over everything so they can promote their agenda." One, the Democrats' proposal is to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025, not all at once. Second, the Republicans routinely included partisan extra items in their bills, insisting on everything or nothing being passed. Sometimes that's the only way to get legislation through a recalcitrant opposition. You can't expect the GOP to ever support raising the minimum wage by more than the most token amount if in a bill by itself

Goals are the most important thing. Unfortunately, in some of the source material, "proactive" means becoming fascist dictators or going on a murder spree. That's no different from being a supervillain. In a more general case, proactive means seeking to make change. That can occur on different scales, and that means that power levels are less important. It doesn't inherently require becoming authorized to do things either. An example: if you are living in a crapsack environment, your characters can act towards changing that. If a city (or town) is being held

Let us not forget the most accursed tome of them all--Seduction Of The Innocent. The work of the conformist scholar and covert magician Frederic Wertham, contained betwixt its lines of text and "scholarly" arguings, are subliminal incantations and charms designed to bewitch the unwary and the weak minded into following along with his miserable, deplorable campaign to suppress creativity and freedom of thought, to stifle beyond reviving the notion that great power could--and should--be used to protect the weak and defenseless, and advance the greater good. All in the name of instilling and pr

Fortunately there are two new bundles at Bundle of Holding that for not much money can get you an amazing start with 6e! https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Hero6E https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Champions6E

Seriously hate to do this, but I'm not sure that the dog bit is anything really bad on Cruz' part. He went on vacation (given the timing, that was _bad_)...and he had people keeping an active (supposedly 24hr) eye on his home...and taking care of his dog. That's inline with what I normally do, except that the folks I have watch our dogs typically stay inside the house. Not defending the "vacation" or Cruz (perish the thought), but I think the dog is the wrong angle of attack.

Today is the eighteenth anniversary of me joining this forum. My forum membership is old enough to vote! 🥳🎉🎊💥🎊🎉

Sorry, but I am really effing tired of politicians being given the benefit of Hanlon's Razor. Trump may not be a gifted project planner but the evidence that the coup was premeditated is overwhelming. Just off the top of my head, Trump: Spent a year sending inciteful tweets with violent language about the "Trump Army", "dead Democrats", and exercising 2nd Amendment rights Openly supported armed Michigan protestors who stormed the Michigan state capitol and planned to execute Gov. Whitmer Constantly groomed his supporters that "The only way we’re going to lose this election

Thank you all for your responses. There are some interesting suggestions on this thread, and I will think about them. (Not being deliberately vague here; just avoiding a "laundry list" of responses for the moment.) I'm going to give a Patreon account serious consideration in Quarter Two 2021 after seeing how Champions International goes, both financially and artistically. Several of you had very good suggestions about how a Patreon account might work; I will remember those. Steve Long and I had a long discussion at GenCon some years back about High Rock Press doing a stand-alone D