megaplayboy

I suppose you could push the rules to the outer limits of complexity and modularity and have a 1000-1200 pages spread across 2-3 giant rulebooks. But if you do that, I expect the "next edition" to be a complete, clean break, back towards sheer simplicity, less than 100 pages. Cut it way the hell down. A ruleset you could learn in a weekend, as opposed to after a 2 year certificate program.

"We're being persecuted by ineffectual weaklings" is a cognitive dissonance mindset that explains why I couldn't be a far right conservative.

An informal money system might work as follows: If you don't have the wealth perk, and you don't have a poverty complication, then your character's income is going to be within the "average" range, possibly a bit higher if they have a decent PS roll and a steady employer. So they can afford "average" stuff available to the average consumer in, say, the United States--a minor purchase might be dinner and a movie for a family of 4; a major purchase would be a new car; a huge purchase would be making the down payment on a new home. A handgun for personal defense in secret ID might be a few hundred dollars and isn't something the average citizen can casually purchase(i.e., it might be a once a month kind of thing, given average discretionary income). With the 3 levels of the wealth perk, you can multiply what's affordably by 10, 100 or 1000+ respectively. But if you don't pay points for it, it's going to be more disposable and less available/reliable than gear you spend CP on, just for the sake of fairness and game balance. As a general rule, in the US, for example, unremarkable used firearms can run between 50 and 500 dollars, and higher quality or more exotic ones about 10x that, with the most exotic running into the thousands of dollars.

Reminds me that "battle fatigue/PTSD" is not really modeled in Hero System. I suppose if you wanted to do it, it would be something like 1 pip cumulative per firefight, +1 per point of BODY taken, +1 for suffering a disabling or impairing wound, +1 for seeing a comrade seriously injured, +3 for seeing one killed, combat stress is healed by rest, inactive time, R&R, or even therapy. That's if you really want "gritty realism" in a game. Of course, in practice it might be as much "fun" as introducing CTE into a supers campaign..."Let's see, Captain Punchout, you've been stunned and/or knocked out 35 times in the past 5 years...you're starting to have persistent headaches, memory loss, difficulty concentrating and wild mood swings..."

There was a romanticized version of the Roman Empire which persisted in Western Culture for a very long time, even somewhat to this day. Under Genghis, the Mongols conquered most of Asia and large portions of Europe. OTOH this could just be akin to Scandinavian metal bands glorifying the Viking hordes.

Better with subtitles on. These guys are awesome.

Well, someone told me about the whole oxygen cycle thing about 30 years ago, and that the Brazilian rain forest provides a hefty percentage of both our oxygen supply and our carbon dioxide "sink". If the oxygen content of the atmosphere drops below a certain percentage(13 or 14%, IIRC), our brains basically stop working. Similarly, if the carbon content of the atmosphere hits 1000 ppm, cognitive impairment sets in. As resilient as humans are, we still have environmental requirements and the climate crisis threatens to push those requirements out of reach, with fairly obvious catastrophic, possibly extinction level consequences for our species. But something something oil stocks will take a hit, so "doing nothing" it is.

One of the recipients of the MOH threw himself on two hand grenades(the first one was a dud).

I think the drift of generations towards becoming more conservative as they age does not necessarily connote they adopt the attitudes of their parents or grandparents. A more conservative Gen Zer might be "conservative for 2065" or somesuch, which might mean being reluctant to concede that AIs should have full legal rights.

There's also: home security systems, owning a dog, neighborhood watch, etc.

Sure, prior to 1968, that's primarily what they were about.

Based on the recent news on the scandals there, I'm not sure whether the NRA is really viable as an advocacy group without a major house-cleaning. At a minimum, Wayne Lapierre has to resign. I think the government should act on existing ATF research on the sources of crime guns and draft laws and regulations accordingly. I support fully funding the ATF as opposed to the Republican tactic of starving the agency of funding. Since the primary concern is about guns getting into the "wrong hands"(violently disturbed individuals, convicted criminals), I'm generally supportive of fine-tuning policy to get closer to that goal without unduly burdening the general public.

I mean, I like guns, but I like free speech too, and there are plenty of restrictions and conditions on that!

Half the time I think firearms enthusiasts start from the proposition that they like guns, and work backwards from this conclusion to reverse engineer justifications for ownership of whatever flavor of gun they like.