tkdguy

Sharks versus Jets, Cretaceous Era version

Seen all around California. Unfortunately, I was teaching at the time, so I missed out yet again.
 
 
 

Brand new steel toed boots for less than $10!

Q: Want to try being White House Chief of Staff?
 
A: I said "staff", not "staph".

I'm not sure how much you're missing. CW superheroes are usually more impressive as guest stars in other shows than when featured in their own series.

Q: What do you mean, I can never come into the studios of Fox News again?
 
A: Given a choice, I'll take the cement overshoes, thanks.

I once took a class in programming. My final grade was C++.

Deleted scene from The Last Jedi:
 
Rey: Kylo Ren said you tried to kill him!
 
Luke (out loud): I sensed a darkness in him.
 
Luke (thinking to himself): How can I tell anyone my nephew is a Brony?

Deleted scene from The Last Jedi:
 
Rey: Kylo Ren said you tried to kill him!
 
Luke (out loud): I sensed a darkness in him.
 
Luke (thinking to himself): How can I tell anyone my nephew is a Brony?

Thanks be to my local library. This looks like a good one-stop shop for Juno news:
Latest News About the Juno Mission to Jupiter | NASA Solar System ...
  https://www.space.com/topics/nasa-juno-jupiter-mission-news Cached NASA's Jupiter-bound Juno probe will study the gas giant's atmosphere, magnetosphere and gravitational field. Juno will orbit Jupiter for about a year.

At this point I don't trust mass estimates for the trans-neptunian stuff (by that I mean: total mass in that population).  I think our knowledge is way too incomplete at this point.
 
The main asteroid belt we know a lot better, and it has one dwarf planet (Ceres).  The main belt total mass is about 4% of the Moon, and the Moon's mass is about 1/80 that of the Earth; the biggest four objects account for about half the mass.
 
Mars is about 1/10 of Earth's mass, so a few hundred trans-neptunian dwarf planets combined probably gets up to about a Mars mass.  I should probably go back and check that estimate with the handful of TNO masses we have.

There may be some help for you for Shadowrun. Our long-missing forum colleague, who went by "Aroooo," created a great website, "Star Hero Fandom," hosting a great deal of sci-fi related Hero 5E materials, including conversions of well-known settings from movies, tv and games. A conversion of the FASA Shadowrun was one of the most extensive. Although the original website has gone dark, much of that material survives in the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20060722031742/http://www.starherofandom.com:80/h_shadowrun/index.php
 
Another forumite, Kaze9999, created a Hero Designer export format file for the above conversion, which is hosted on this website: https://www.herogames.com/forums/files/file/43-shadowpunk/
 
I hope those are of some use to you. When I have more time I'll see what else I can dig up.
 

So I'm running a few games at GenCon in 2019.
 
I'm basing all my games off a sense of nostalgia. I'm converting a bunch of different games into Hero.
 
My first game is going to be a Gary Gygax AD&D module. I'm not sure yet, but one/two of the GDQ series (Against the Giants, the Drow, and Queen of the Demonweb Pits).
My second game is going to be a ShadowRun adventure.
My third game is going to be a DragonLance module (maybe DL1 or DL2).
My fourth game is going to be a City of Heroes Task Force (not sure which one yet, but I'm looking).
My fifth game is going to be on of the classic Hero System adventures, maybe even with the Champions (cuz who doesn't love Seeker?).
My sixth game is going to be a replay of an adventure from my home campaign.
 
I've got a lot of conversions to get done in the next few months. A lot of it is pretty straight forward. I don't need to convert an AD&D hill giant into Hero, I can just grab a Hill Giant out of the Bestiary and move on. I'm busy creating prefabs (and using the prefabs in the Library) for AD&D 1st Edition spells, and equipment. So the point of all this is I'm looking for any prefabs/characters/lists you might have that has already done some of the legwork for me. Even if they aren't perfect ports, having something I can edit into what I need is a bit easier than creating everything from scratch.
 
I appreciate all your assistance. FYI, this is a cross-post to the FH board. Not exactly polite of me, but I'm not exactly polite.  Right now I'm concentrating on the AD&D games (since there are 2 of them and are going to require the largest amount of work with spells etc). I'll then work on either ShadowRun or the CoH TF. The Hero stuff isn't going to need much of any work. I have all the characters and materials and what I don't already have is going to be pretty straight forward and quick.
 
-Rapier.
 

The contents found in Lincoln's pockets after he was assassinated.
 

I suppose this can go in the political thread, but it counts more as strange or quirky. 
 
https://www.polygon.com/2018/12/14/18141183/california-election-dungeons-and-dragons-dice-d20

I suppose this can go in the political thread, but it counts more as strange or quirky. 
 
https://www.polygon.com/2018/12/14/18141183/california-election-dungeons-and-dragons-dice-d20

I suppose this can go in the political thread, but it counts more as strange or quirky. 
 
https://www.polygon.com/2018/12/14/18141183/california-election-dungeons-and-dragons-dice-d20

My aim was true; the initial blast of chemicals hit the cluster of sentinels squarely.  Stunned and dying, they began to crawl in random directions.  Without relenting on the trigger, I smoothly swept streaming justice across the entrance to their lair, knocking back the guards before they even knew what hit them.  I don't remember bellowing in fear and challenge; who knows?
 
But now the fog of war took over.  I had no idea what lay in the darkness beyond the entrance.  Dozens of the enemy?  Hundreds?  A swarm that, unleashed, would blot out the sun?  Regardless, though I had claimed the element of surprise, they were surely greater in number and mobility, and I knew they would seek to counterattack at their first opportunity.  Recalling the wisdom of King Leonidas at Thermopylae, I realized that I had to maintain control of the narrow entrance, converting their defensive asset into a choke point that negated their numerical advantage. 
 
I maintained a suppressive fire, washing the spray back and forth across the gateway and trying to get the spray to reach as far back into their sanctuary as possible.  The tactic worked at first--though I did not have line of sight to the entire entrance, I was able to catch the enemy as they emerged, knocking them out of the sky and dooming them to a twitching and hopefully painful demise.  I kept spraying... and they kept coming, dying valiantly on their threshold .  It soon dawned on me that though I had brought a brand new can of wasp spray to this showdown, one with 33% MORE BONUS!! capacity, it was not to be enough.  Before long, the can sputtered once, twice... and I was abruptly unarmed.
 
Like the British at Isandlwana I had begun an engagement without sufficient ammunition and was about to pay the price.  Warily, I retreated a couple of steps, brandishing the useless can as though it might intimidate any of my illiterate attackers.  I glanced over my shoulder, realizing that a suicide plunge off the carport might be my only means of escape.  I turned back to the enemy lair, ready to face my fate.  No longer under fire, the wasps kept coming.
 
And they kept dying.  Luckily, I had soaked the entire entrance with enough wasp death that the latest attackers could not exit without coating themselves in it and disabling themselves.  So they continued to sally forth, and they continued to die in a puddle of neurotoxin on their threshold--banzai charges, doomed to fail before they began. 
 
Before long it was over.  Uncounted hordes of the enemy (well, close to a hundred) lay in contorted agony on the battlefield, and dozens more surely lay within their fortress.  There was no way of knowing if any had survived.  Surely some had, but it was clearly a decisive victory.  I left the bodies where they lay, as a warning to any who might follow.  And I went to the hardware store to buy more spray. 

Virgin Galactic's Starship 2 completed an 82km high suborbital flight.
 
https://lifeboat.com/blog/2018/12/bransons-virgin-reaches-edge-of-space?fbclid=IwAR3jA72_ysMo3GCki7-qFLSrrRxlZwzJ2IKAps2FKEjPhWdlcEiqEqOyK80

Days of Future Passed by the Moody Blues.
 
 
Co-worker: "The comic?"
Me: "No, not the comic."
(narration comes on)
Co-worker: "Is that Patrick Stewart?"
Me: "Not in 1967."

Mupput version of P ot A?

Tickles don't get rid of bad dreams, but hugs and kisses and sweet words do. Sleep tight, big boy.

Social diseases, social media.  More in common than you think.  You gonna let the crazy stick it in you?