rravenwood

Good luck to you all - here's hoping the quarantine is as close to blissfully uneventful as possible!🤞

8 minutes ago, Logan.1179 said:

It intersects with 3st Avenue. 

Thirst Avenue?  Must be where all the bars are...

It looks like that article wasn't selected for inclusion in last year's Bundle of Holding compilation of Haymaker material.  Alas.

19 hours ago, Cancer said:

 

I need to show this to a Japanese reader and learn what it is supposed to say.  My daughter's (disused) Japanese isn't up to the task.

 

Then maybe post this one in the Physics Department, and post one that says "OK TO DUMB HERE" at certain places over in the Administration Building.

The Japanese basically says "please do not discard trash here".  The faulty English translation uses "dumb" instead of "dump".

Angelman = maybe Mike Witherby (in Champions 3rd edition, p. 96 - credited illustrators Loubet, Williams, Witherby, Zircher - doesn't look like the other three artists)

Blam = definitely Mark Williams

Bleeding = Dennis Loubet (tiny little "DRL" signature at bottom of original - image in your link is cropped)

Bloodthirsty = style looks like Pat Zircher

Detecting = ?

Enough = Pat Zircher (from article in Adventurers Club #5, where he did all the illos, some signed)

Fast = looks more like Zircher than Witherby

Forcefield = Loubet

NarCola = ?

Power Battle = ?

Uh-Oh = Zircher

How awful - condolences to you and yours, Dr. MID-Nite.

6 hours ago, Cancer said:

"if you eat a pop tart in a pasture"

Tom Lehrer?

Quote

"Cow Zone Calzone"

Devo?

Whaddya know - actually, 3rd edition DOES include the rule that Enhanced Senses don't cost any END, but they screwed up on the layout and the paragraph which says that appears AFTER the listings for Infrared Vision and Enhanced Vision (p.23), so it's easy to overlook.  This is one of many epic layout fails that happened in the old Hero Games books - they just make me laugh now

I can't say that I'd ever noticed that the 3rd edition rules don't explicitly mention that Enhanced Senses cost no END - this is probably because I started out with 2nd edition, where it DOES explicitly state that "Enhanced Senses do not cost END to use" (p.17).  Some evidence that that statement was left out of 3rd edition as an oversight rather than an intentional change would include that the example characters in the book do not show any END costs for their Enhanced Senses (see Starburst, Bluejay, Howler, Mechanon, Dragonfly, Shrinker, Viper Leader), and neither do the writeups in subsequently released books such as Enemies III.  Additionally, Adventurers Club #6 contained an overview of the rules changes and errata for 3rd edition ("Champions Plus" column), where it's stated in the preface that "The new edition is mainly a more user-friendly rewrite of the last edition - there are very few rules changes. But Champions co-author George MacDonald has written up those few"; the column says nothing about any change to Enhanced Senses, which I would have expected to have merited inclusion if it had been an intentional rules change.

Regarding Elemental Controls, 3rd edition is slightly more permissive that 2nd edition in that 2nd edition merely states that "Generally, Powers that don't normally cost END to use should not be put into Elemental Controls" while - as has already been pointed out - 3rd edition adds the explicit allowance that "the GM can make an exception to this rule."  (I won't go down the rabbit hole of talking about how back in the day GM exceptions and allowances were always assumed by us to be possible, etc., etc... uphill in the snow both ways, get off my lawn... )

6 hours ago, Logan.1179 said:

LOL - beyond the basic translation fail here, the almost self-fulfilling-prophecy aspect is pretty chuckle-inducing too 😄

22 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Back just before the turn of the century, I'd figured I'd waited long enough for Hero Games 2e much-advertised title "Privateer,"

Hiya Duke.  If you're referring to the "Privateer" advertised in the early issues of Adventurers Club (and elsewhere, if fuzzy memory serves), that was actually a boardgame which Hero Games ended up distributing for a while (I have no idea about how or why that happened...).  I don't think I played it myself, but I know I at least saw it being played at a convention back in the mid-80s.  According to boardgamegeek.com, it ended up being renamed at some point to "Pirateer": https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/386/pirateer.

Taking crates of empty glass bottles back to The Pop Shoppe

15 hours ago, Old Man said:

Door to door salesmen.

Unfortunately they're still around and knocking on doors.  Not in the old Fuller Brush Man sense, but the parade of (usually) young folks with clipboards trying to interest you in things like solar power installations, home security systems, "your neighbors are having a big pest treatment done and thought you might want to join in" etc. keeps going, and going, and going...

(And in these times of COVID, it seems like most of them aren't bothering to wear masks...)

I appreciated that sketch even more after I picked up a DVD collection of The Adventures of Robin Hood show and heard the opening theme for the first time...

22 hours ago, rravenwood said:

Got my J&J vaccination this morning.  No protesters, thankfully, just a way-too-long line, but I got through it.  No side effects so far, but it's still early yet...

I was really feeling nothing for hours afterward, and even joked to my wife that they probably just slipped me some saline solution, but about 13 hours after the vaccination a sleeper wave of body aches crashed down on me.  A couple ibuprofen and a night's sleep later, and I'm about 85% better.  Despite the inconvenience, I'm glad my immune system is doin' its thing!

Got my J&J vaccination this morning.  No protesters, thankfully, just a way-too-long line, but I got through it.  No side effects so far, but it's still early yet...

I think the first cassette that was my very own (given to me as a gift) was the first, eponymous, Asia album.  I don't remember what the first one purchased with my own money was.  Like others have also mentioned, my main use of cassettes ended up being making collage tapes - lots of 'em!

Is that the sequel to the woman with the empty apartment behind her bathroom mirror?

On 2/28/2021 at 7:49 PM, Duke Bushido said:

Thanks, rravenwood, but I can't take credit for that.  First, I don't remember who pointed it out specifically, but even arriving to the conclusion was the end result of input from several people.

 

Sorry, it was clear in my own mind, but I seemed to have failed my Communications roll... My "eye-opener" comment was an attempt to simultaneously refer to and express agreement with something you wrote in the "VPP -1/4 limitation; All powers must be predesigned" thread - namely:

Quote

Love it, Hugh!
<snip>
[...] take your trophy, because you have done something I haven't seen in a long time:  you have shown a whole new way to rules lawyer a power build I have never seen before.

On the bright side, at least I didn't inadvertently insult your ancestors back to the Nth generation or anything like that...

8 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

"What is Powergaming?"

 

If a Multipower requires Extra Time, or Concentration, or the like to change multipower slots (6e V1 p 405), that's a limitation on the Multipower reserve.

 

Blasting Betty has a 12d6 Blast which costs 60 points.

Dwayne Drain has a 6dd STUN Drain which costs 60 points.

Flexible Freida has a Multipower of 12d6 Blast and 6d6 STUN drain which costs 72 points.

Slow Steve has a Multipower of 12d6 Blast and 6d6 STUN drain, but it takes a full phase to change slots.  That costs 60/1.5 = 40 + 12 = 52 points.

 

Along comes Efficient Ernie and helps Betty re-draft to buy a Multipower of 12d6 Blast and 6d6 STUN drain, but it takes a full 25 years to change slots.  That costs 60/8 = 7.5 so 7 + 12 = 19 points.  Much better.  Then she buys a second identical Multipower for another 19 and spends 34 points on Skill Levels to use Combined attack and extra END and REC.  She can use both the Blast and the Drain as a combined attack, probably with better CV, and she paid the same points as Freida.

 

I will suggest that Steve and Ernie are "powergaming" in the negative context of that term.  I will also suggest that the limitation is properly applied to slot costs, not the pool cost.

I'll echo what Duke said in the other thread - the impact of Extra Time to change MP slots is a real eye-opener!  I would strongly suggest that GMs apply the same halving of Limitation value that applies when taken on Constant/Persistent Powers that only require the Extra Time to activate (6E1 375), since time to change slots is not the same impact as needing Extra Time every time a particular slot is used.  With Extra Time applied to the slots (at half value for only applying to reallocating the MP, -1/4), Slow Steve becomes 60 + 5 + 5 = 70 points.  Doesn't seem so bad.  Even better, Efficient Ernie's rebuild of Blasting Betty would no longer be efficient at all, with each MP being 62 points, or 124 points total - paying 4 more points than a character who just bought both powers outright.

I'm hoping for the best!  Hang in there.

3 hours ago, Pariah said:

Dog Baiter

Agitator

Asking questions, says he wants to know why

That would be for the DDOLRKR thread.

Peaches and mangos.  Just some... muskiness?... in the flavor that doesn't work for me.

I concur with the low opinions expressed on Brussels sprouts and okra, and would add broccoli and cauliflower to the list.

I pretty much never used to drink coffee either, but am now a one-cup-a-day guy, spurred on by (getting old and) needing a boost in the mornings at work.  Need plenty of cream and sugar, though...

Mayo in general has been something I've tried to avoid, but I do think that the Kewpie brand (from Japan) is actually pretty decent.  It uses more (or maybe solely, don't recall) egg yolks and is thus yellower and to me just has a more appealing flavor.

Definitely wishing and hoping for the best for you and your family, Duke!

For the longest-running shared universe that I had experience with (way back in the early '80s and up through the early '90s), it was a mix of real and fictional places.  The baseline was real locations, but fictional restaurants, hotels, small towns out in the middle of nowhere, etc., were devised (usually off-the-cuff) and dropped in with regularity.  At the start we were high-schoolers and a few slightly older folks, and this predated easy access to the internet, the existence of things like Google Maps, etc., so a) players were much less likely to have detailed knowledge about any particular area to begin with, and b) it was just a game, so why spend hours doing detailed research on the real geography of a place none of us had ever been to?  We all understood that this was fiction, and while the occasional joke was made if something seemed particularly incongruous, no one seriously tried to pick things apart.

At the very, very start of the first campaign (better described as a vaguely linked series of games that gradually coalesced into a coherent setting), the original GM who introduced us to Champions ended up basing things in a totally different part of the state, which none of us were particularly familiar with.  We could point to it on a map, and from there have an idea of its relation to the rest of the country and world, but in those early sessions most of the action was local anyway, and so while it was ostensibly a real place, in practice it was essentially the same as a "Metropolis" or "Campaign City".  The second GM to start up a campaign in that same game universe based his in our actual real-life area.  He could refer to and use local landmarks as set dressing, and could make use of shorthand references that were meaningful to us ("The gang is based in blah-blah-neighborhood" -> yup, that's a real-life dangerous place!).  Still, though, it didn't serve to constrain the fiction - it was just a rather loose backdrop to the larger-than-life superheroics that were the real focus.

Of course, eventually there were different worlds out in the galaxy, alternate dimensions, and all that comic-book cosmic goodness, which were obviously all invented for the games, but I think that's beyond the scope of the question here.  The day-to-day setting was an outline of the real world, but we colored outside the lines freely.