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Hello everyone, I'm going to a 2020 Champions Presidential election featuring a contest between Franklin Stone and Invictus. I need allies that both would have- that would be potential or actual enemies for the players. Here's the game description below: Champions: Presidential Smackdown 2020 (Stone vs Invictus)!: The controversial business mogul Franklin Stone was elected President in 2016 in an upset, and is now running for re-election. He's up against the charismatic ex-superhero David Sutherland aka Invictus. Is this a classic case of good vs evil or is all hell about to break loose?The players are a member of The Punishers, a super-team in the great city of Freedom City (what name New York CIty adopted to celebrate the Allied victory in WW2, although many residents still call it by its old name out of nostalgia). Their rivals, the Freedom Legion (the city's premier super-team), are away on a mission out of the country for PRIMUS (this world's equivalent of SHIELD). Conveniently enough, the two Presidential candidates are going to have their final debate in the Freeport section of Freedom City (where the Punishers are based out of). The game starts out with The Punishers making their decision on how they want to approach this latest turn of events (they're a private team, unlike the city-sponsored Freedom Legion). The players are Very High-Powered at 650 points and 100 points of complications (roughly Justice League)..The game does contain allegories and jokes about contemporary American and global politics that skewer all sides and ideologies, so please be aware of this.

If I uploaded this correctly, here it is. NINFIX13.ZIP

The Snyder Cut isn't a complete work at this time. It's going to cost at least $30 million to finish it, not to mention time to shoot new scenes and create the special effects. HBO Max isn't expecting to show it until the middle of next year.

Someone offered me CBR, but I refused. My building and my health insurance don't allow me to use it. Pity -- it's supposed to be really good for muscle pain if you can live with the brightly-colored Bohemian monkeys constantly borrowing your computer so they can get back to work on War and Peace (I keep trying to tell them that's plagiarism, but I just can't get through to them).

I've set up a new site http://cassandra-harbingers-5th-edition-champions.fandom.com I haven't had much time to work on it, but if anyone wants any help with character design just contact me there.

1st, yes. 2nd, Superman is an easy character to make a movie of, but first you have to actually read a Superman comic. Normally I'd say ignore anything after the 80's, but to be safe ignore anything after the 70's. A weak writer slapping together a poor excuse for a story and then pasting a character and calling it Superman does not make a Superman story.

Comics didn't fail because of developing canon. They fails because the creators completely lost sight of what a comic was and spun out into idiot land. For me the Mega cross-over didn't kill my interest in comics, they simply failed to to re-kindle any interest years after P-poor story lines had already made me abandon regular reading. Every once in a while I swing by ye old comic emporium to see if anything appears. So far only disappointment.

"Solar Systems: Ours and Others", an astronomy-based course for nonscience students. It includes discussion on the origins of life on Earth and by extension elsewhere, and how you might look for it (both on Mars, Titan, Europa, etc., and on planets orbiting other stars).

Justice League Is still the DCEU film I’d watch again out of all of them.

I'm sorry. -- AZ isn't looking great. The numbers aren't telling the whole picture, that the navajo nation is getting crushed by this, and there are hospitals already over capacity. Going from 200 to 400 new cases in short order, and keep in mind that's 'new' cases. It can take upwards of four weeks to discharge someone, so it's not exactly surprising that hospitals are already over capacity.

There are eight fictional countries on Champions Earth, three of them "banana republics" in the Americas. I'll summarize information about those three below. That information is culled primarily from Champions Universe (both the current and previous editions, since there are a few differences in what they cover), with supplementary data drawn from Champions Universe: News Of The World, Champions Worldwide, UNTIL: Defenders Of Freedom, Millennium City, Book Of The Destroyer, and DEMON: Servants Of Darkness. The entries start with what's commonly known about those countries, including what government intelligence agencies in the free world believe or suspect about them; followed by the truth of those beliefs and any deeper secrets known only to a few. These nations were originally written up for the 4E Dark Champions supplement, Justice, Not Law, and that book (available from the website store in PDF) includes more details about them. Although that book was written for an earlier continuity, and for Dark Champions, much of the info about those countries still seems applicable. To a large extent the DC countries' timeline leaves off where the newer Champions material picks up. Chiquador is a small nation on the Atlantic coast of South America, wedged between French Guiana and Brazil. It was a member of the United Nations from 1960 until 1979, when the democratically-elected government of Presidente Pablo Somohardo was overthrown in a miltary coup by General Lorenco João Garrastazu e Silva. Garrastazu made himself President For Life, installed a "cabinet" of his cronies from the army, and declared that Chiquador was resigning from the UN. In power since that time, he has conducted a military buildup that worries the other nations in the region. Garrastazu maintains a relatively massive army, particularly on his borders, and periodically threatens shipping lanes in the area, or threatens to declare war on his neighbors. As yet he has made no moves to use his army and air force, but he must have something in mind for them, given the money and attention he spends on them. A lot of observers, including many in the United States, keep a nervous eye on events in Macapa (the nation's capital). By Chiquadoran law, all native superhumans must register with and work for the government, on pain of imprisonment or execution. The only publicly-revealed superhuman actually working for the Chiquadoran government is El Grifo Rojo (“the Red Griffin”), a flying brick whom some observers say is as powerful as Charm Girl of Japan. Garrastazu is now in his mid-seventies and generally believed to be ill and mentally unstable. The CIA thinks most governmental decisions are made by his Minister of Affairs, Alejandro Subano, who may have contacts within either VIPER or ARGENT. Needless to say, UNTIL, PRIMUS, and other agencies concerned about international peace carefully monitor the "Chiquador situation." President For Life Garrastazu e Silva poses an even greater threat to the rest of South America than anyone realizes. He’s been building up his military with the aim of eventually launching wars of conquest against his neighbors, but since he knows his army is too small to compete with the likes of Brazil's on traditional terms, he's recruited teams of unscrupulous scientists to develop a crash program to create superhuman soldiers obedient to his will. His researchers haven’t had much success yet, but their latest “test case” — a crazed, superhumanly strong man whom they released in the favelas (slums) of Rio de Janeiro to go on a rampage — showed signs of promise. If they can figure out how to make the superhuman soldiers more controllable, Garrastazu can destabilize, and perhaps conquer, much of South America. And it’s doubtful his ambition would stop there. Unfortunately, Garrastazu e Silva is becoming increasingly senile, and his plans for conquest have become more outlandish. Alejandro Subano is an agent of ARGENT. President Garrastazu brought him in originally to help develop the superhuman-soldier program, but now he's wormed his way into the cabinet and Garrastazu's confidence. Through Subano, ARGENT is now running a series of experimental programs in the jungles and secluded coastlines of Chiquador, and every day brings its plans closer to fruition. Costa Azúl: An archipelago consisting of three principal islands and several smaller ones located south of Jamaica and Haiti, Costa Azúl has a well-deserved reputation as a haven for drug smuggling, money laundering, and other criminal activities. Its former long-time leader, the notorious Colonel Enrique Pineda, tried to maintain a facade of normalcy to attract tourists, but was well-known as one of the most corrupt officials in the Western Hemisphere. In 2003 credible evidence obtained by the CIA and presented to the President and Congress indicated that Pineda and his government were responsible for sheltering and training a group of supervillains calling itself Los Aplastantores ("The Crushers"). These villains committed a terrorism-for-pay attack in Washington, D.C. in July 2003 that would have destroyed the Lincoln Memorial if not for the timely intervention of the Sentinels. (To date the Crushers have refused to say who paid them to make the attack.) On top of Pineda's well-documented role in international drug smuggling and money laundering, this was more than the Unted States was willing to tolerate. In November 2004, the United States invaded Costa Azúl and overthrew Col. Pineda, taking him to the mainland for trial and imprisonment. The US army occupied the country until 2006, withdrawing following "democratic" elections. Since then a series of councils and leaders has tried to steer the country down a better path, but it remains better known as a hotbed of criminal activity than a tourist destination. Guamanga: A tiny nation between Honduras and Lago de Isabél, Guamanga is afflicted with poverty and despair. A mere five percent of the population owns approximately ninety percent of the land, consigning the peasantry to a life of subsistence tenant farming. Many have turned to the drug trade, or the theft and sale of Mayan relics from archaeological sites, to survive. In 1994, ARGENT attempted to engineer a coup in Guamanga to oust the die-hard Communist president, Martín Orama-Tijernas, and replace him with a figurehead it could control. Fortunately, the Justice Squadron got wind of the plot and stopped it, doing significant harm to ARGENT’s interests in the region. Long-forgotten superweapons and other relics of the conflict occasionally appear, causing more trouble in this already troubled nation. In 2005 Menton used his powers to manipulate the Guamangans into electing him their president — the first step in a planned campaign of world conquest. Thanks to some help from what the authorities later discovered was ARGENT technology, he was both able to affect thousands of people at once with his power and do it without leaving psychic traces. The United States and the United Nations mobilized their forces, but did nothing more at first. Although everyone knew what Menton had done, there was no proof -- and without proof, the UN in particular, was not willing to overthrow a seemingly legally elected official. That would have set a dangerous precedent the UN desperately wanted to avoid... so it found another option. Working through back channels, UNTIL secretly hired two teams of mercenary villains and sent them after Menton. Their attack was not going well... but then Rakshasa, Dr. Destroyer's shape-shifting minion, disguised as one of Menton’s mind-controlled followers, shot Menton point-blank in the back of the head, rendering him unconscious. Menton was confined under "hot sleep" in Stronghold until he awakened in 2009 and freed himself, precipitating the second major breakout from the super-prison.

Wow. That’s a take I haven’t heard often. Nor do I agree with it. I find a Lone Superhero fairly implausible and not that interesting.

Man says he broke into San Diego Wells Fargo bank to heat up his Hot Pockets

I have given an assignment sending students to the JPL Small Body Database, where they can look at orbits, examine the orbital elements for asteroids and comets, and so on. It has a pretty good little interface for visualizing orbits in the Solar System, and the graphics are not Java-based. After a couple of warm-up exercises (mostly designed to get them used to manipulating the display, and recognizing the information presented by the page), I direct them to email the instructor asking for their "three personal objects" and then answer questions for each of those objects. This is at the very end of the assignment. (Digression: the "personal objects" always include one Near Earth Object, some of which get rather spookily close to Earth; one Trans-Neptunian Object; and one periodic comet. And yes, everyone gets a different trio, which insures that no one can get away with copying someone else's paper.) Entirely unintended when I created the assignment, and it is now a source of some amusement, it also serves as a procrastination detector. I assigned this two weeks ago, and it comes due before this weekend. So far only 21 of 29 students in the class have emailed to ask for their personal objects. I frankly wonder how many students -- used to leaving things untouched for as long as possible and then doing assignments the night before the due date -- have an "Oh S--t" moment when they get to the last page of a 7-page PDF and only then get to the direction, "Email the instructor and ask for your personal objects." In no way did I plan for this to happen when I created the assignment, but right now I think it's pretty funny, in my habitual Dr. Satan sort of way. EDIT (9:00 PM the following evening): four students have requested their personal objects in the last 90 minutes. But, we're up to 27 out of 29 having made that request at this time.

I literally haven't read comics in almost two decades. A lot of what they've been doing this millennium didn't connect with me, either in story or art. They were pricing me out of their market, too. So I guess I just got out of the habit. Champions filled my superhero needs.

... Land sharks.

New one up! https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1203.html

But, for ordinary weapons, and even to an extent with magical ones... I as GM wouldn't require you to pay points for HA in order to use the blunt end, flat of the blade, etc., for normal damage. To me that's part of SFX.

Well, let's assume you did get a free recovery. It wouldn't matter because there are no Phases or initiative.

Sadly, not much good to update: she's been moved to hospice.

Boy I've fallen behind here. RL Drama am fun. Sorry folks. I'll try to revive it.