Nolgroth

Watched as a Complication has always implied active surveillance to me. In order to be worth points, there has to be somebody in particular who cares about and is taking note of your every action (or as many of them as possible). Templates should only contain those game elements which apply to everyone​ who takes them. I don't believe every soldier is worthy of being Watched that closely, so I don't think such a complication should be included in the template.

I have to agree. Subject to Orders covers most of the mundane musters and duty assignments expected of the airman/marine/sailor/soldier. Failing to show up would be considered AWOL/UA, Missing Movement, or Desertion. I would reserve Watched for things like intelligence operatives/analysts, signal intelligence and other fields that have Top Secret or higher clearance. Just my own take on it. 

As to charging I think that could be handled by battery stations that would swap out batteries. Out comes the old battery which goes on an analyzer/charger and in goes an analyzed charged battery. You pay and go.

 

This is all I would need to embrace the technology. Being bound to a spot while the ol' car charges is simply not acceptable to a wandering spirit like myself. If "Battery Stations" replaced "Gas Stations" and I could get the same distance/convenience ratio, the mechanism under the hood is largely irrelevant. 

You are being redundant. The only thing Trump represents is Trump. 

I am continually impressed by Chris Hemsworth as an actor.  His comedic timing is brilliant, it seems he could probably play any role.

Well he was certainly the better Captain Kirk of the new Star Trek.

Why have I never heard of this composer before?

 

Me neither, until you brought him up here. Thank you for that by the way. 

Honestly, I don't use these terms in casual conversation but

 

Donald Trump dishonors our nation an almost daily basis.

Sad but true.

Bush Snr lost and so did Carter. It may happen that he loses. And he deserves to.

The sooner the better. I hope a completely natural solution, tied to his advanced age but not life threatening, arises that calls for his resignation far before 2020. President Trump was not the champion many on the Right hoped he would be. He is a thug, a bully, and generally unsuited for the role that the Electoral College placed him into. I refuse to wish death upon him but I do want him out of the office of POTUS. Nature will take care of the other and not too far into the future. Not particularly of the religio-spiritual persuasion, but I believe that if there is a judgment on the other side, President Trump will not earn high marks for his behavior during his life. 

Humans are indeed ingenious, but they temper that with a good helping of laziness, shortsightedness, and sheer wtf stupidity.

Hey no need to get personal now! 

Same as every year. Gah. If I didn't actually like most of the characters, I would be inclined to shut it down now.

Proto-Slaad. Well, only one way to be sure. Take off and nuke the site from orbit. 

Which has what to do with Arrow?

All these comic book show threads gets confusing. Hard to remember which one you're posting in.

It wasn't a particularly epic battle, as far as epic battles go. In fact, it was spectacularly not epic. I queued up for a Red Alert versus the Borg. It used to be my go to activity for Star Trek Online and I always seemed to enjoy it. But before I go any further, let me go back a bit.

A few years in fact. I joined Star Trek Online about the first anniversary celebration (maybe the second). Q was giving away a big, beautiful ship called the Odyssey. That was my mainstay for many years until the Tier 5 ships were released. Reluctantly I gave up my dream boat to pilot something else. Don't get me wrong, the new ships were cool in their own ways and I had fun with them too, but I was saddened by the loss of the Odyssey Cruiser. For years I gnashed my teeth and then they released the Odyssey T5 ships onto the Zen Store. So I did the whole grind thing. Along the way, I learned a few things about building DPS boats and I switched over to smaller, escort ships. I saved up my Zen (acquired through selling Dilithium) through the short-lived T-5U phase and onto the T6 ships. Then, when I had enough, I bought whatever the name of the Tactical T6 variant of the Odyssey is and changed the skin back to the original. I was in heaven.

I played around for months and finally got around to maximizing the build for my lovely Firestorm. I followed the advice on STO Builds and spent a small fortune in Dilithium, Marks, and Energy Credits to make that ship the most competitive I could sans spending Zen to open every single lockbox I could find. I was doing well, all things considered. Then Cryptic (or whatever they go by now) "re-balanced" the space combat and completely nerfing everything (I mean EVERYTHING) that I had invested in to make my ship the best that I could. Discouraged, I left the game and moved on to others. I had a lot of fun in Star Trek Online and I always considered going back once the pain of the sting wore off. Tonight I took my first tentative steps back into Star Trek Online

I logged into my primary and flew around a bit. I engaged some ships in a Romulan sector and noted how long it took to kill them. It wasn't a great start, but at least I manhandled them sufficiently that I wasn't completely miffed. I wasn't exactly excited either. So I went to Earth Spacedock and perused my other ships. I used a highly optimized escort to do my first borg run and it was sort of fun. I felt like I contributed to the combat. Still, I felt apathetic about the game. So I logged into each of my alts, hoping against hope that interest would strike me. In the end, I stood staring at the screen as the realization that Star Trek Online was simply not interesting anymore. In a fit of near inspiration, I decided to go out doing what I had loved, in the ship I loved the most. So I hopped back in my Odyssey and set out for one last Borg Alert.

The first group of Cubes went down under a combined barrage from me and two other ships. I turned to get the next group and noticed that somebody else had killed another group (out of five). I had just started pounding on the next group when the other players knocked out remaining three groups. Obviously I was with a group that had high DPS scores. The cut scene for the Unimatrix vessel played and I turned to the big bad and went at it. By the time I arrived, I got two shots before the DPS monsters killed it. It was my last battle and it played out, for me, with all of the apathy that I was feeling. I felt a little cheated but at the same time, I knew that the Star Trek Online I had played for so long was no longer my game. It was appropriate that there was no big send off. No big drama. Like my previous love for it, the game just sort of fizzled out.

Not so much. It is mostly fan-based stuff. The forums have a whole bunch of fan created Campaigns that contain rules for the individual game. Their best ones are for D&D and Shadowrun. I made one for Hero but it is not all encompassing nor is it properly calculating Stun from Killing Attacks at the moment and it has been so long since I coded it that I can't make heads nor tails of where I went wrong. I would have to teach myself all over again at this stage. Zane Marlow made a more basic, easy to use (and thus less likely to be screwed up) version that should handle local gameplay stuff just fine. I have been debating re-writing mine to eliminate a lot of the automation stuff that I used. All that aside and just to reiterate, there is no official game support. All it is at the basic level is a mapping program that you can move virtual miniatures around on and roll dice. It isn't even a particularly attractive interface, being Java-based.

Not sure about Fantasy Grounds, but MapTool allows you to manipulate Fog of War on a map. Depending on how in depth you want, you can set up barriers that block sight and do fog of war and simulate lighting. 

As far as handouts and other graphics, MapTool can do it but I doubt it will be less cumbersome than Roll20. Mote, a fork of MapTool, might be a little more helpful as ease of use seemed to be an important aspect of their design model. I haven't played extensively with Mote so I don't have more than the vaguest idea of its capabilities.

I'll now step back and leave actual Fantasy Grounds people to respond.

Unlike Arrow and Flash, Supergirl's season premiere was pretty good. It was not without flaws, but I invested more into the character than either of the other two. The character development happened a little fast. I think that progress might have been shown but the final scene could have waited until the end of next episode. That's a minor complaint though.

I think they blew the season's fx budget though. It seemed really crisp and cinematic quality. I love the opening where she comes out of her daydream and is floating high in the sky with her cape whipping and swirling about her. Talk about iconography.

I won't have any problem continuing with Supergirl. I hope the other two shows can salvage something worth watching but I am guessing that I will retire them soon. Shame when Riverdale was better than a superhero show. I mean, Riverdale! It's a story centered around the teen angst, soap opera crap that I really hate to watch, yet it manages to have a really engaging story despite that. 

Just watched the season premiere this morning. What a waste of potential. I mean, the story could have been good if the creative staff took an episode or two more with it. It just felt rushed. Like the Arrow premiere, it didn't make me want to continue watching.

Okay watched the season premiere. Wow. Exactly nothing has changed despite the big cliffhanger last season. Oh sure, a few minor characters are gone. Speedy is in a coma. Oh and Diggle can't shoot. Everything else is exactly as it was last season. Should I spoiler that? Because this is all (mostly) revealed in the first quarter of the show.

I said I'd give it five show this season but I don't really know if I can stomach it.

My son's computer died and I haven't quite figured it out yet. It could be something as simple as a borked Windows install or it could be hardware related. Being unemployed, I have the time to figure it out. Being unemployed, I can't afford to fix a hardware issue.

At least in Agents of SHIELD, the KKK analog (the Watchdogs) was an independent terrorist organization. In The Gifted, the KKK analog is actually an official government agency with a name meant to misleadingly allude to an organization dedicated to benign guardianship (Social Services). The former is more authentic (in my view), while the latter is more subversive and manipulative (and tiresome, at least for me).

Thanks. I'll take your two comments thus far as ample reason to skip out on this. To be honest, every few years I get TV overload and have to skip out on a season or two. I am feeling that right now so I may just be grasping at whatever negative review I can find to not watch any TV at all. The only thing I am excited for is Stranger Things Season 2. Beyond that, maybe I'll catch up on Netflix next summer or something. 

A little off the wall but potentially good for inspiration is the Secrets of the Kargatane website. It has many PDF files full of information. Most of it was for the Ravenloft setting but some was for Masque of the Red Death, which is more historical Earth horror. All of it can serve as a springboard for your imagination. The best part is that all of it is free.

Link: http://www.kargatane.com/

Well said Pariah. Well said.

I have been overall avoiding news and politics recently. For almost a month, I've just shut it out. It can't last forever, I realize, but the last month has seen a dramatic uptick in my overall happiness. There are other reasons, to be sure, but not watching news is one of them. It got to the point where I felt that the world is spinning out of control. I still feel that, acutely, when I do tune in to some news source or another. When I am out in the real world, I don't feel that same sense of dread. I think there is a very strong correlation there.

I could go on about the media, but that is drifting too close to political topics, which have their own thread. Besides, I'd rather go out and get some fresh air before going to bed.

RE: Vegas Shooting

This is heartbreaking news. My thoughts go out to the injured victims and the families of the slain victims.

This wasn't just some impulsive murder spree. The perp took time, planned and orchestrated his attack with surgical precision. That's not crazy. That's evil. I was reading a CNN article that he was a pilot and had ammonium nitrate in his vehicle. Thankfully it did not cross his mind to use either of those two (or both of those) in his attack. The results may have been even worse.

Just a horrible and sad event. 

I am also updating the map with labels as I write in new stuff. I'll post an update when the final version gets closer to being completed.