megaplayboy

There was a writeup of the Hulk in a gaming magazine somewhere, done, IIRC, by Steve Long.

23 hours ago, archer said:

 

While you might be correct, I defy you to give me the reading on a thermostat from 101,000 years ago at 2 pm.

Sadly, modern global temperature recordings only go back to 1850, though you can get temperature recordings from England and parts of Europe as far back as 1657.  

LA is currently the hottest it's been in....125,000 years.

AIM's Supreme Scientist is female nowadays, I believe.

Sometimes it's more fun to DIY and write up a whole backstory.  

This has now been corroborated by a second reporter's own independent sources.  

That this is obviously "beyond the pale" is manifest.

It also further illustrates what I've thought for years: No one has more contempt and disrespect for supporters of Donald J. Trump than Donald J. Trump.

I don't really envision the setting as being that grim and bleak.  The heroes are overwhelmingly likely to succeed eventually.  There may be some early indicia of success, like preventing a nearby star from blinking out.  And the simple miraculous appearance of superpowered beings is likely to instill a greater belief that a "miracle" will save humanity.  

In terms of resource allocation, I expect that for the first decade or two preceding the start of the campaign, the spending is in the "black box budget" territory, a few tens of billions a year.  When the crisis becomes more public, the funding will be increased to trillions per year.  

I think that a large portion of the public won't take it seriously until the end is fairly near(when the Andromeda Galaxy blinks out of existence, e.g.), and the government will be trying to pump up optimism and hopefulness to keep the economy and fabric of society from collapsing.  It may be part of the early storyline that the heroes have to show some signs of small success in order to stave off global depression(in the emotional sense).  

One of the sub-themes is that the various competing projects may create "factions" vying to be the ones to succeed.  

And, yes, there will likely be a nihilistic cultlike group wishing to bring upon oblivion and sabotage efforts to thwart it.  

5 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Given the premise of your world, what would the focus of stories/campaigns be? What would the supers have to contribute beyond what the researchers have found or can find?

 

Traditional conflicts between superhumans won't seem very important if the world has only five years left to live. Unless there are supervillains who embrace nihilistic anarchy, and the heroes have to put them down.

I think it would emerge that the underlying problem could only be addressed by superhumans.  I think the world at large would be aware of some kind of crisis but not fully cognizant that the end was near.  I expect that there would be some opportunistic villainy.  The culmination of the effort might be to seek to "reboot" the universe the way comic book companies reboot comic book universes.  

So, whilst navel-gazing about the nature of reality, I hit upon a really weird campaign premise.

Basically, around 2025 or so, quantum computers have developed sufficiently that they can predict future natural events(like weather forecasting 2 weeks in advance, astronomical phenomena, and so forth).  One day, a quantum computer projects that a distant galaxy, a billion or so light years away, will simply blink out of existence suddenly.  Scientists don't know what to make of this prediction, until it actually happens one day in 2030.  Some further disappearances of distant galaxies begin to cause a quiet panic in the scientific and expert community.  It appears that reality/existence is falling apart and, based on calculations, the Earth itself will cease to be within about 25 years.  

Multiple major countries begin to work on funding research projects to try to understand what is happening better and try to find ways to avert or reverse this cataclysm.  It involves experts from both predictable fields and from unexpected ones(comic book writers, for instance).  Eventually, counting national, private and collaborative projects, about a baker's dozen of huge megaprojects are underway around the world, and after 2 decades of steady work, one of the results is the appearance of superhumans and superhuman beings.  Somehow they are the key to reversing premature onset entropy or POE as the crisis is called.  But they only have five years...

Awful.  He should have his own thread.  RIP.  I can't believe he filmed BP while battling colon cancer.  Great actor.  A real loss. Should not be recast.  

Pretty sure the correlation between the ADL's designation of hate groups and the SPLC's runs around 0.95, but oddly only the SPLC is singled out.  Wonder why.  

29 minutes ago, Starlord said:

Not for me.  I'll still be waiting for the debate when he has to think on his feet, not read a well-written, well-rehearsed speech.  Though, I'll still be voting for him regardless.

Senile people can't be "well-rehearsed" and they can't hit all the nonverbal "marks" for a speech like that.  

I think he will handle Trump in short order at the debates.  In fact, he may do so well, and Trump so poorly, in the first debate, that there may not be a 2nd or 3rd debate.

Joe Biden put a few nails in the coffin of the "Joe is senile" argument last night.  

5 hours ago, Badger said:

I am staying clear of the conventions. They end up as basically pep rallies. 

 

And I hated those things in high school, and being forced to attend them.

Different this year, a bit.  Being virtual means they have to have a condensed,  cohesive message every night.  Crammed into two hours.  It's like a cross between a very slick infomercial and a sincere pledge drive by your local PBS station.   Better than it sounds.   No endless chatter by news anchors during down time.

Well, it feels like MIchelle Obama just handed people their marching orders.  Hell of a speech.  

Warrior Nun on Netflix.  Decent if a bit underwhelming effects wise.  

The unbearable oppression of mild inconvenience.

A recent poll indicates a pretty unified Dem electorate this time around.  Sanders primary voters support Biden 87-4, and Warren voters support Biden 96-0 over Trump.  In 2016, 12% of Sanders primary voters voted for Trump over Clinton.  

11 minutes ago, ScottishFox said:

Well, in the possibly good news bucket I was skimming data on covidtracking.com and noticed something.

 

The cases are going way up - which has been highly publicized.

 

The number of daily fatalities continues to drop.  This isn't getting any media attention that I've noticed and I watch way too much media.

 

Given the case load starts to really accelerate after June 10th we should have seen a pretty big bump up in fatalities by now.  We'll see how it goes, but maybe this is testing becoming more broadly available and not indicative of a massive surge in fatalities coming up.

 

 

In the second chart we do see a bump in hospitalizations and fatalities around July 1st, but this makes me hopeful the worst is over.

 

 

 

ICU hospitalizations reportedly lag positive test results by up to 3 weeks, so the uptick seems correlative here.  I'd expect to see an uptick in deaths no later than mid-July, this being the previous pattern.  If you are correct, any uptick might be subdued or reduced.  

The wealth taxes proposed generally don't kick in until you get to wealth levels that are pretty "tangible"(e.g., over 50 million dollars).  

Spoiled for tragic event but ironic name

Noteworthy that subgenres and sub-sub-genres mean that something completely covered by a 3 point skill in one genre might expand to 300 points of options and special abilities in a sub-sub-genre.  That is one way to keep everyone from buying Combat Driving to 20 or less.  Give them lots of options that make it clear they won't have comprehensive mastery of all things automotive and driving related any time soon.

I'm a firm advocate for applying The Chicago Way to situations like this.  If Russia pays the Taliban to kill our troops, we pay the Kurds and other rebels to collect Russian heads, attached or otherwise.  

2 hours ago, pinecone said:

"The Universe.exe has failed to load correctly. The file may be corrupted."

The tough part is boxing it up and waiting for UPS to pick up the bad universe and the interminable wait for the replacement universe.