Vondy

So, I've been thinking about it. I believe in:
Small and limited government.. Robust protections for individual liberty. Equal opportunity but not equal outcomes or officially sanctioned favoritism. Fiscal responsibility and balancing the budget. A muscular yet more carefully considered defense.  Free markets and commons with intelligent but circumspect regulation. Friendliness and good faith across the aisle.  If that makes me a philosophical conservative and political dinosaur, so be it. 

We must live in alternate Washingtons.

A good while ago I had an idea for a Harn article called "Haldana Row" that covered three houses and their inhabitants in the city of Tashal.
It grew into five houses as a shared project with another writer and is now complete and available as a free download on Lythia.com. 
 
HALDANA ROW
 
My sections are Gevel & Clodya's House, Aethel Atan's House, and Elendsa House. Gevel,
 
Clodya, and Aethel are my long-time "iconic" fantasy characters. I reworked these as "playable versions" that could be grounded in a place.
 
The other two dwellings, as well as the maps, are by Matt Roegner. The art is by Richard Luschek, who does all the official Columbia Games art for Harn.
 
Harn itself is generally presented more as low-fantasy medieval realism, but you'll note I depart from that a bit.
 
I like a bit of gothic horror, noir, pulp and swashbuckling action in my games.

A good while ago I had an idea for a Harn article called "Haldana Row" that covered three houses and their inhabitants in the city of Tashal.
It grew into five houses as a shared project with another writer and is now complete and available as a free download on Lythia.com. 
 
HALDANA ROW
 
My sections are Gevel & Clodya's House, Aethel Atan's House, and Elendsa House. Gevel,
 
Clodya, and Aethel are my long-time "iconic" fantasy characters. I reworked these as "playable versions" that could be grounded in a place.
 
The other two dwellings, as well as the maps, are by Matt Roegner. The art is by Richard Luschek, who does all the official Columbia Games art for Harn.
 
Harn itself is generally presented more as low-fantasy medieval realism, but you'll note I depart from that a bit.
 
I like a bit of gothic horror, noir, pulp and swashbuckling action in my games.

A good while ago I had an idea for a Harn article called "Haldana Row" that covered three houses and their inhabitants in the city of Tashal.
It grew into five houses as a shared project with another writer and is now complete and available as a free download on Lythia.com. 
 
HALDANA ROW
 
My sections are Gevel & Clodya's House, Aethel Atan's House, and Elendsa House. Gevel,
 
Clodya, and Aethel are my long-time "iconic" fantasy characters. I reworked these as "playable versions" that could be grounded in a place.
 
The other two dwellings, as well as the maps, are by Matt Roegner. The art is by Richard Luschek, who does all the official Columbia Games art for Harn.
 
Harn itself is generally presented more as low-fantasy medieval realism, but you'll note I depart from that a bit.
 
I like a bit of gothic horror, noir, pulp and swashbuckling action in my games.

I am hoping to have more for you: 
 
A new fanon location in Tashal in January-February.
An officially published write-up of Caer Esenor in 2019.  The line-editor and I are editing/polishing the draft right now.

First, this assumes you are slapping "requires skill roll" onto a power. Second, it assumes you are buying spells as powers to begin with. It may be customary or recommended or orthodox to build spells as powers, but you don't have to do so. Instead, you can just implement a skill based magic system. No faking required. You don't need anyone's permission to do so. But, if fear of interpretation and deviation without designer sanction makes this seem far to taboo to bear, I shall also quote the rules:
 
"The GM could set up the magic system so that characters don’t pay Character Points for spells; they get them “for free” after buying certain Skills and/or Perks."
 
George Takei voice: "Oh My!" That's in the Advanced Player's Guide on page 190, by the way. Many of us have been doing it this way long before Steve got around to codifying it. There are write-ups for skill based magic on the boards. You can also find one on at Killer Shrike's website. I always do skill based magic and its really easy to do.
 
Example: I jot down "Fireball: Blast 6d6, Explosion, End [6]" but the player buys: Fireball 14- (7 Points).
 
I've found this simpler, faster, and easier to manage insofar as the following guidelines are observed:
Spells must be researched, found, or learned from a master. Spells must be purchased individually. E.g., No "Fire Magic 14-" Spells are not characteristic based. You pay 3 points for an 11- roll and 2 points for each +1. Think really hard before allowing skill levels that affect more than one spell. Have a set of common modifiers for spell rolls. I've found up to +/-4 works well. I hear you cry: "But what about really powerful spells?" 
 
You can include prerequisites for learning the spell. These could be specific spells, a certain number of spells from the same school, or a relevant background skill at a specific level. Another tack is to jack up the limitations in your write up. Make it time-consuming, expensive, and/or exhausting to cast. Require helpers. Or make the getting the focus ("material component") a quest in of itself. Who said knowing a spell meant it was convenient to cast? Balance issues solved. 
 
Maybe I'm just an old dinosaur who came up in the era of rulings over rules, but one of the things I love about Hero is that their are multiple correct ways of accomplishing the same thing in the rules. Another thing I love about it is that for all of Steve's legalese, you aren't locked into his personal design philosophy. It may be the default, but its not the exclusive "One True Hero Way."
 
Its like magic for a skilled GM. ?
 

I recently re-read Red Harvest by Dashielle Hammett.

A good while ago I had an idea for a Harn article called "Haldana Row" that covered three houses and their inhabitants in the city of Tashal.
It grew into five houses as a shared project with another writer and is now complete and available as a free download on Lythia.com. 
 
HALDANA ROW
 
My sections are Gevel & Clodya's House, Aethel Atan's House, and Elendsa House. Gevel,
 
Clodya, and Aethel are my long-time "iconic" fantasy characters. I reworked these as "playable versions" that could be grounded in a place.
 
The other two dwellings, as well as the maps, are by Matt Roegner. The art is by Richard Luschek, who does all the official Columbia Games art for Harn.
 
Harn itself is generally presented more as low-fantasy medieval realism, but you'll note I depart from that a bit.
 
I like a bit of gothic horror, noir, pulp and swashbuckling action in my games.

Dice cream is awesome.

This is such a basic soft skill (socially) that my mind boggles at the notion while at the same time finding myself  teaching younger co-workers how to be professional in the office.
 
Gaming is just like having a work meeting and the same expectations apply: be on time, wear clean clothes, smell nice, put your phone on vibrate and leave it in your pocket, chat with the people who are in the room with you before and after the meeting. You make contacts and build teams and trust that way.
 
NO PHONES AT THE TABLE. FULL STOP.
 
Its discourteous and says "I'd rather be doing something else" than participate in your boring game. Call it out and don't budge. Its bad behavior stemming from dopamine addiction. If their kids or SO or work must be able to call them in event of emergency they can set a unique ring tone and leave it in their pocket forsaking all others. If they are there to play they owe every person at the table their undivided attention and active partcipation.

I appreciate you comments on craft and the actors experience. I would not dream of disputing it and find it illuminating.  However, I was making a left-handed reference to something more specific and, in my mind, more culturally insidious. Ergo, assertions such as "to play a lesbian Jewish superhero you must be a Jewish woman who identifies as a lesbian." I'm Jewish and, quite frankly, I don't care if an actor playing a Jew is actually Jewish insofar as they are respectful and put in the study and work to do their subjects justice. Donald Sutherland did fine in Uprising, for instance. He himself expressed concern over playing a Jew until his Jewish co-stars told him to get over it. They wanted him there for his talent and what his name would bring to the movie.
 
Some ethnic groups might be less convincing in terms of "how Jews look," but a lot of Caucasian, Latino, and Arab actors could pass for Jewish as easy as kiss-your-hand with a modicum of study and work. And, there are Kai-Feng and black Jews (the descendants of freed slaves from the American south) out there. They just aren't what people expect, but a good screen-writer could make it work and I wouldn't have a problem with it in most cases. To that same end, Sarah Shahi is straight and yet managed to play one of the most popular characters on the L Word. You don't have to be an avowed lesbian to play-pretend being one on camera. The current identitarian trend is, quite ironically, extremely exclusionary. Ideological didacticism produces inferior cultural product and makes qualification demands that have little bearing on the competence or quality of the artist.
 
Four examples of transidentitarian acting...
 

This is such a basic soft skill (socially) that my mind boggles at the notion while at the same time finding myself  teaching younger co-workers how to be professional in the office.
 
Gaming is just like having a work meeting and the same expectations apply: be on time, wear clean clothes, smell nice, put your phone on vibrate and leave it in your pocket, chat with the people who are in the room with you before and after the meeting. You make contacts and build teams and trust that way.
 
NO PHONES AT THE TABLE. FULL STOP.
 
Its discourteous and says "I'd rather be doing something else" than participate in your boring game. Call it out and don't budge. Its bad behavior stemming from dopamine addiction. If their kids or SO or work must be able to call them in event of emergency they can set a unique ring tone and leave it in their pocket forsaking all others. If they are there to play they owe every person at the table their undivided attention and active partcipation.

This is such a basic soft skill (socially) that my mind boggles at the notion while at the same time finding myself  teaching younger co-workers how to be professional in the office.
 
Gaming is just like having a work meeting and the same expectations apply: be on time, wear clean clothes, smell nice, put your phone on vibrate and leave it in your pocket, chat with the people who are in the room with you before and after the meeting. You make contacts and build teams and trust that way.
 
NO PHONES AT THE TABLE. FULL STOP.
 
Its discourteous and says "I'd rather be doing something else" than participate in your boring game. Call it out and don't budge. Its bad behavior stemming from dopamine addiction. If their kids or SO or work must be able to call them in event of emergency they can set a unique ring tone and leave it in their pocket forsaking all others. If they are there to play they owe every person at the table their undivided attention and active partcipation.

This is such a basic soft skill (socially) that my mind boggles at the notion while at the same time finding myself  teaching younger co-workers how to be professional in the office.
 
Gaming is just like having a work meeting and the same expectations apply: be on time, wear clean clothes, smell nice, put your phone on vibrate and leave it in your pocket, chat with the people who are in the room with you before and after the meeting. You make contacts and build teams and trust that way.
 
NO PHONES AT THE TABLE. FULL STOP.
 
Its discourteous and says "I'd rather be doing something else" than participate in your boring game. Call it out and don't budge. Its bad behavior stemming from dopamine addiction. If their kids or SO or work must be able to call them in event of emergency they can set a unique ring tone and leave it in their pocket forsaking all others. If they are there to play they owe every person at the table their undivided attention and active partcipation.

The democrats also oppose everything I'm for at present.' They're just coming at it from the opposite direction. Voting for the dems to spite the republicans won't "put the fire out" in terms of my political values. The house will still be a roaring inferno of debt and government infringements.  Please take the following as a tongue-in-cheek expression of a very serious sentiment:
 
I'm a good old libertarian.
That's just what I am.
And for your progressive politics
I do not give a damn.
 
The same goes for populist social conservative politics.  I don't see the dems as a lesser evil, just a different one. I voted libertarian and I'm proud to have done so. And, odds are, I'll be doing it again. Now, if the Dems would run a modern day JFK, I'd vote for them. Indeed, my parents were "Reagan Democrats" and I used to refer to myself as a "Kennedy Republican." But he could never win the DNC nomination today. He's too far right of center.

Honestly, I know this will sound passe, but B/X.
Grab the old Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (Red) and Expert Set (Blue).
For all the populist derision that surrounds it there is a reason people got started with it.
I was 7 and a half years old and I was able to figure it out and was hooked for life.
Yes, for a modern D&D player it can feel archaic and restrictive, but it works.
It is also has a certain "anything is possible" old school romance to it.
And, once the players have the feel of it you can switch them to something crunchier or more modern.
That's my 2AP and I'm sticking to it.
 

I'm not sure Alexander's strategy would be the best precedent to follow.

“I leave it to the experts.”
 
I had a colleague send me a number of articles on tax reforms a couple of years back. One came from the UK, which was well along a reform strategy.  In amongst the usual motherhood statements was a comment that the tax system had become so complex that only experts in the tax system could grasp it. 
 
That meant only two groups could really understand any proposed changes.  One were the government treasury experts.  The other was the public practitioners.  The latter tended to be dismissed as advocating for their wealthy clients if they disputed any proposals.  That left the senior bureaucrats in charge of the tax system.
 
In theory, they were overseen by Parliament, but in practice the MPs could not read the tax law, as it was or as it was proposed, any better than anyone else, so how could they oversee the tax system?  The reality was that they could not, so tax matters were not governed by democratically elected representatives, but by the senior civil servants.  Is that democracy?
 
That was, frankly, a pretty scary read.  I see it in Canada when our MPs and Senators clearly do not understand the detail of the legislation they are asked to vote on.  The US has it in reverse, I think, where Congress and the Senate write the broad strokes, but the IRS is left to fill in the detailed regulations.
 
I don’t know the answer, but maybe it starts with a refusal to pass any legislation that the government member cannot read and understand.  Not be told what the bureaucrats say it means, in a view from 30,0000 feet, but actually read and comprehend the detailed legislation.
 
But even if that is the answer, getting there from here will be a major challenge.

Spells: the Hero System Grimoire and Fantasy Hero Grimoire. I prefer the former, but both have plenty of spells.
Creatures: The Hero System Bestiary. I've found I have to edit the monsters to fit the design assumptions and power levels of the games I run, but its a straightforward process most of the time.

I think where we differ here is the implied premise that we can simply decide that an admittedly plausible prognostication of violence is sufficient to shut down protected speech. I'm not entirely comfortable with that. We don't do this when we know Antifa or the Black Block leaders are involved in planning the counter-protests. Rather, police meet with leaders, ban items that can be used as weapons, and very strictly enforce order. Should potentially violent right-wing protesters be treated differently than potentially violent left-wing counter-protesters?
 
 
No argument here. This follows the basic reasoning of the Washington State Supreme Court on carry that I mentioned above. You can carry a gun on your hip, but that gun will become a major factor in interpreting your intent and behavior. So, bringing them to a political protest and then being confrontational would likely cross the line into assault, menace, or a number of other crimes.
 
 
I obviously don't disagree that it is reasonable to interpret it that way and, quite frankly, it makes my vigilante bone itch. I'm very hard pressed, however, to to say a culturally disagreeable symbolic act in the public square as a part of a political rally would not be protected. On the other hand, I would suggest that a cross burning at a public rally allows authorities to interpret everything you do and say with a very critical eye (just as wearing a gun on your hip does) and prosecute you for any missteps accordingly. 
 
 
I think my concern is that this is a form of preemptive enforcement and calls to mind Minority Report. We don't have a trio of precogs who have foreseen a riot. Even if we did, until one erupts no crime has been committed. I'm not trying to sound cliche, but liberty entails some risk. Sometimes we do suck in our collective breath and hope for the best. 

I think where we differ here is the implied premise that we can simply decide that an admittedly plausible prognostication of violence is sufficient to shut down protected speech. I'm not entirely comfortable with that. We don't do this when we know Antifa or the Black Block leaders are involved in planning the counter-protests. Rather, police meet with leaders, ban items that can be used as weapons, and very strictly enforce order. Should potentially violent right-wing protesters be treated differently than potentially violent left-wing counter-protesters?
 
 
No argument here. This follows the basic reasoning of the Washington State Supreme Court on carry that I mentioned above. You can carry a gun on your hip, but that gun will become a major factor in interpreting your intent and behavior. So, bringing them to a political protest and then being confrontational would likely cross the line into assault, menace, or a number of other crimes.
 
 
I obviously don't disagree that it is reasonable to interpret it that way and, quite frankly, it makes my vigilante bone itch. I'm very hard pressed, however, to to say a culturally disagreeable symbolic act in the public square as a part of a political rally would not be protected. On the other hand, I would suggest that a cross burning at a public rally allows authorities to interpret everything you do and say with a very critical eye (just as wearing a gun on your hip does) and prosecute you for any missteps accordingly. 
 
 
I think my concern is that this is a form of preemptive enforcement and calls to mind Minority Report. We don't have a trio of precogs who have foreseen a riot. Even if we did, until one erupts no crime has been committed. I'm not trying to sound cliche, but liberty entails some risk. Sometimes we do suck in our collective breath and hope for the best. 

The Klan and Aryan Nations and other such groups have all won lawsuits over permits and their right to gather, march, and rally despite local opposition in places they wanted to be provocative reprobates. I still live by the premise "I find your views utterly reprehensible, but will defend your right to express them." The first amendment is too important to shut down simply because we find a person and their views hateful, repugnant, or unsettling. Insofar as its not tantamount to yelling fire in the public square, and doesn't cross the line into harassment or assault, I think they should be allowed to gather, even right in the heart of our republic, and do their hateful thing. Indeed, I would much rather they air their views loudly in public where who they are and what they think is laid bare. Under those circumstances they and their ideas can be called out, debated, and defeated in the marketplace of ideas. And, quite honestly, as vile as many such people and their views are, if our values and ideas are better we should be able to beat them squarely on our merits in the public square, right? If they are forced underground they become more dangerous, in my opinion. 
 
I'm just a middle aged white man, but in 1977 the Klan burned a cross in our front yard because my parents agreed to sell their home to a black family. I was five years old. I remember the men in hoods, the burning cross, and the very real armed East Texas stand off. I remember the sheriff coming, doing nothing, and driving away. I remember them threatening to lynch me and my dad. Its burned into my mind to this day and has played a very real role in forming who I am. My parents ultimately called the family, told them the situation, and let them decide whether they wanted the house or not. I also remember my parents and the people who came to support them, being willing to go down fighting on  principle if they did decide they wanted the house. In the end, the family chose to buy another house and the situation eventually diffused. The reason I bring this up is that those men lived on our street, went to the local churches, and even worked in the same plant as my father. Even today, four decades later, my parents are surprised at who some of those men turned out to be.  
 
I would much rather know who these people are and what they believe and confront them in Lafayette Park face to face than to only find out who they are in my front yard when they've already put their hoods on and grabbed their guns for a lynching. 

The National Mall is center stage of our democracy. It is maintained by our tax-dollars. I have no issues with reasonable fees for special events like weddings and concerts, but for political protests? The government does not get to charge The People for the right to make their opinions known on their own front doorstep; and especially not by executive fiat. If it were any other national park I might not feel the same way, but the location of the national mall and the number of defining historical mass protests that have occurred there make it qualitatively different. No. Just no.
 
https://reason.com/blog/2018/08/09/demonstrators-might-have-to-pay-a-fee-to
 

The National Mall is center stage of our democracy. It is maintained by our tax-dollars. I have no issues with reasonable fees for special events like weddings and concerts, but for political protests? The government does not get to charge The People for the right to make their opinions known on their own front doorstep; and especially not by executive fiat. If it were any other national park I might not feel the same way, but the location of the national mall and the number of defining historical mass protests that have occurred there make it qualitatively different. No. Just no.
 
https://reason.com/blog/2018/08/09/demonstrators-might-have-to-pay-a-fee-to