megaplayboy

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.

They're well on track to becoming the biggest cinematic universe of all time.  Wong Fei Hong has 80 films, but at this pace they'll pass him within the next 20 years.  Then I expect a reboot once Tom Holland is around 50+ years old.  
 
It's an amazing cinematic achievement.  As a nerd from the "bad old days", whenever I see or hear someone complaining about the MCU all I hear is that "the caviar isn't fresh and the champagne is going flat, I expected more for my $20".  

"HAH! Easy."--Mechanon.  

The unbearable oppression of mild inconvenience.

Membership gives the character the "perks" of the position--police will speak to him, access to crime scenes, he can go into the FBI office or a forensic lab, log into the national crime database, etc.  Contacts means a more emphatic/substantive request for assistance--extra agents, getting lab results expedited, getting your boss to call the local cops/politicians to make them more cooperative, and so forth.  
 
It seems to me one could take either, or both.  A high level administrative position certainly would take both to represent the level of resources/power provided by having such a position within a powerful organization.  If subordinates are directly loyal to the character first, the organization second, then the character should buy followers(and possibly a base if that, too, belongs to them in practice).  

Looking at the original posting date of this thread, I think what I'd most like to see is the product being released by or before the 10th anniversary of this thread. 🙂

The unbearable oppression of mild inconvenience.

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.  

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.

Reformed mind flayer: "Humans are friends not food"

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.

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.

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.  

TOO SOON 

The impetus for this was actually the problematic portrayal of orcs and drow.  The latter especially.   A dark skinned race that's inherently evil?    
As I understand it, many non playable races such as demons may remain "evil".  So I'll never get to play my noble Balor-din.  Dang it.

Reformed mind flayer: "Humans are friends not food"

41% with 0 complaints, 41% with 1-3 complaints, 8% with 4 or 5, and 9% with 6 or more complaints.  
 
But even the ones with a double digit number of complaints get defended ferociously by both the unions and rank and file LEOs, and they'll even walk off the job if one of them is fired or criminally charged.  

Reformed mind flayer: "Humans are friends not food"

"HAH! Easy."--Mechanon.  

TOO SOON 

"HAH! Easy."--Mechanon.  

The reason why we know he had a criminal record is because he was convicted and served his time.  He was already punished for said offenses, and had shot a video talking about the difficulties of navigating the parole system while trying to be a responsible father and partner and how it felt like a trap at times. The minute they began to arrest him he realized that he could be sent back to prison and everything he had worked for undone.  
 
One of the bullets fired by the officer went into an occupied vehicle in the parking lot area.  
 
Let's let a jury decide whether or not the officer's conduct was justifiable or reckless and unnecessary.  
Shooting victims don't need to be angels or even have blameless conduct for us to be concerned about how the police conducted themselves in the encounter.  It's a red herring.  The timing of when the shots were fired will matter a great deal--were the shots fired at the same time the suspect fired the taser, or seconds later?  Once the taser was discharged and missed, the suspect was not in any sense a lethal threat to the officer.  The danger had passed.  And the suspect was running away with his back to the officer.  It's not clear from the publicly available video precisely when the shots were fired, but it appears to be seconds AFTER the taser is discharged.  
 
 

The thing is, police killings are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to problematic behavior by LEOs.  For every officer involved killing(and there's closer to 1500 from all causes than 1000, which blows away the rest of the developed world in per capita rate), there's an order of magnitude(or two) more instances of excessive force, and an even greater number of instances of harassment and/or over-enforcement of laws(we don't really need to cite every minor traffic violation, it's done to generate revenue for the jurisdiction).  And the cumulative effect of this misconduct and abuse of authority is that communities of color, particularly struggling communities, feel as though they are being held down by an occupying army of sorts.  It's hard to instill respect for rule of law when the law never seems to redound to your benefit.  

Xarriel, perhaps.  In Champions Beyond.