DShomshak

MUTANTS/MUTATES: Brick: 12 characters; 18% Energy Projector: 23 characters; 35% Martial Artist: 13 characters; 20% Mentalist: 18 characters; 28% Other: 7 characters; 11% Complex: 2 characters; 3% Male: 44 characters; 68% Female: 21 characters; 31% Other: 1 character; 2% TOTAL: 65 characters Masquerade is the one nonbinary character. Nothing here surprised me. It seems esthetically right to me (as well as consistent with Marvel mutant portrayals) that mutants should have focused powersets: the only two complex characters are the Rogue expy Eclipse and the mutate Thorn ("plant powers" can cover a lot). Maybe I expected more bricks, but I wouldn't call the proportion strangely low. Mutant mentalists have long been a thing in SF, so the relatively high proportion seems apt. It would probably be even higher if more members of PSI had made the cut to CV2. Dean Shomshak

Gimmicky. Avoid, unless you're building the setting around it -- like, these weapons or other artifacts are central elements of the setting, and it's known that yeah, people have had to do this before to obtain the Big McGuffin. Potentially interesting, especially if you connect this somehow to the "world is broken" premise you alluded to before. Whoever or whatever broke the world, however it happened, leaves the world open to these supernatural influences. Also privides an "endgame" in which the PCs can fix what was broken. Dean Shomshak

SUPERNATURAL BEINGS: Brick: 9 characters; 30% Energy Projector: 10 characters; 33% Martial Artist: 2 characters; 7% Mentalist: 6 characters; 20% Other: 6 characters; 20% Complex: 9 characters; 30% Male: 23 characters; 77% Female: 7 characters; 23% Other: — TOTAL: 30 characters The first thing I notice is the prevalence of complex characters. This is partly because supernatural creatures can have lots of different powers (and Powers), and partly because supernaturals are heavily represented among Master Villains who tend not to be one-trick ponies. But some of them could be pruned back to two power classes if you decide that some of their Powers shouldn’t count as major aspects. For instance, Takofanes is mostly a ranged combatant, with his undead horde Summoning as a major Other power, but he has a pretty big Mental Blast, Undead Command, and his Power of Command, which I think qualify him as a mentalist. But your mileage may vary. Arguments can also be made regarding Skarn and Tyrannon. OTOH I call Tezcatlipoca a Brick/Other (for his Drains and his battlefield control Darkness), but he I wouldn’t argue if you called him Complex for having a few mental powers and his Soul Strike (which could qualify as a Martial Artist Power). I've waffled over other characters, too. Deadman Walkin’ and Samhain are the only characters I classed as martial artists: DW for his knife use (but not quite being a brick), Sammy for his weird NND antlers. If someone wants to create a supernatural villain with an unusual feel, a non-brick unranged combatant might be a good place to start. Dean Shomshak

Another way to classify the CV characters is by their powers. This sometimes gets *more* subjective than origin types, because there are judgment calls about the boundaries of power types and whether a given power is really important to a character. But again, some trends might become visible. * MENTALISTS are the most objectively definable, because Mental Powers are a distinct and definite set. You have them or you don’t. But I also include a few Powers such as Images, if the utility for the character is to modify another character’s actions through deceit. * BRICKS, at least, are straightforward. Mostly. The question is how much Strength a character needs to be classified as a brick. I decided to make 40 STR the cutoff. Many characters have 30 STR just because it’s really useful to have at least 30 STR (especially in past editions with Figured Characteristics). But in a Superheroic game, a 6d6 punch is not a meaningful attack. So I insist on a minimum of 40. * ENERGY PROJECTORS are blurrier, though. Anyone who principally attacks at range with non-Mental Powers is probably an Energy Projector. But if a character emphasizes ranged Drains, Entangles, Transforms, Change Environment, and other attacks that are more, hm, “battlefield control” than causing direct harm, I might file them under “Other” instead of (or in addition to) Energy Projector. But I repeat, this is *very* subjective. * MARTIAL ARTISTS also get blurry around the edges. It’s for more than characters who use the Martial Arts mechanic: I also include many characters who emphasize nonranged attacks whose damage is not primarily due to Strength, such as a person with a shock-stick or a blade. But some unranged attacks are strange enough that I call these “Other” as well, such as characters with Damage Shield or stunning Phase Touches. I can’t pretend that these allocations are all that objective, either. * OTHER accounts for Powers that push the boundaries of the big four categories further than I like, or characters that emphasize Powers such as movement or Shape Shift that aren’t directly used to cause harm. For instance, Vixen’s chief power is her intangibility: She has Martial Arts, but her damage classes are too low for this to be a major part of the character. * COMPLEX characters fit in three or more categories. For instance, Tartarus is principally a brick but he also has Hellfire Blasts and some Mental Powers. Whenever possible, though, I try to pare characters down to their top two classes. A WORD ABOUT POWER POOLS: I generally ignore them in classifying characters, because in most cases they would automatically make characters Complex. I stick to the Powers listed on the character sheet as always usable. So, Dr. Destroyer gets classified as a Brick and Enerrgy Projector — not because he couldn’t produce Mental Powers or other stuff from his whacking great VPP, but he won’t always do so. Or Dr Yin Wu gets filed under Martial Artist (his principle attack mode) and Other (Summoning his army of monsters), even though the sample Powers for his VPP include ranged attacks that could make him an Energy Projector. The Power Class breakdown works out like this: Brick: 76 characters; 26% Energy Projector: 139 characters; 48% Martial Artist: 53 characters; 18% Mentalist: 45 characters; 15% Other: 39 characters; 13% (but many of these could arguably be filed as Energy Projectors or Martial Artists) Complex: 30 characters; 10% Nothing here seems noteworthy. The analysis gets more interesting, IMO, when you *intersect* the two classifying methods to find, say, the Power breakdown for Supernatural Beings or the Origin breakdown for bricks. Forthcoming. Dean Shomshak

Back from the weekend's gaming! One consequence of this project was that I had to actually *read* all the villains' origin stories. And yes, many of them were a bit repetitive. However, I won't blame Steve Long for that because I don't know how many characters he created specifically for those three books. Perhaps oddly, considering I tend to go into my villains' histories and personalities more than perhaps many readers care, I am completely okay with a basic "Person gets powers and becomes a criminal." It probably says something unpleasant about me, but I find it *entirely plausible* that many, perhaps a majority, of people would become criminals if they suddenly found they could do whatever they wanted and almost nobody could stop them. Hummingbird is my favorite, paradigmatic case for this: Her telepathic and mind control powers appeared when she was a teenager, and she did what most teenagers would do with such invasive powers. Or at least as teenagers are often portrayed. It's the *heroes* who I think need greater care in explaining why they risk their lives to fight the villains. But that is another topic, worthy of its own thread. I am more dissatisfied with the sheer repetition of origin stories. Yet another explosion in the lab or exposure to toxic waste... Sure, they're classics, but for me they slide from "trope" to "tiresome" when I see them all together. I am sure it doesn't feel that way to players in actual games since, as Chris Taylor observes, the players often don't care. But it's also why I atgtempted the "Shared Origins" project: origins that had a *reason* to happen over and over again. Anyway, I hope I soon have time to move on to the next stage of analysis. Honest, I do have something. I hope other people find it interesting. Dean Shomshak

Getting more into cultural context and commentary, the latest On the Media examines the politics of nostalgia. MAGA and various authoritarians mentioned, of course, as they use myths of "the good old days" and threats to those supposed ancient virtues to inflame the gullible. Funniest part, though, comes at the end in which a journalist describes his search down the annals of history to show that the lamentations of the present -- from the incipient collapse of democracy to political correctness killing comedy -- are just the latest chorus of very old refrains. (The oldest of course being "Kids these days," which even Socrates bewailed.) https://waaa.wnyc.org/otm/otm121622_cms1280290_pod.mp3/otm121622_cms1280290_pod.mp3_ywr3ahjkcgo_7318511a6160ff68056b0a7e85c808c8_49602498.mp3?awCollectionId=398&awEpisodeId=1280290&sc=siteplayer&aw_0_1st.playerid=siteplayer&hash_redirect=1&x-total-bytes=49602498&x-ais-classified=streaming&listeningSessionID=0CD_382_352__443e4caba02d74c1e2025ae0e3eecfa5c4bbe85b Dean Shomshak

The limits of cyborgs: I won't argue that the boundaries have to be exactly where I drew them. This is also, btw, relevant for the Robot/Construct category, and for the same reason: I decided to privilege the quality of "builtness" aspect over the "tech or magic" aspect. But I do see the argument the other way. In which case the two CU characters I classified as magical constructs -- Corundum and Oubliette -- become supernatural beings, while, yes, Cairngorm and Evil Eye are filed under Enchanted. The enchantments just happen to be concentrated in artificial and physically distinct bits that are at least theoretically separable. (And I might have classified Tak as a magical cyborg for the Dragon Crown, except I did try to keep power origin categories down to 2 -- not counting Mastermind or Alien -- by focusing on the most important powers. And the Dragon Crown, for all its presumed importance as one of the Crowns of Krim, doesn't do more than Aid mgic that is already ridiculously powerful. And the Scepter of the Undying King is just a special effect, since it can't be taken from Tak even in principle. So I just file Tak under Supernatural Being, Sorcerer and Mastermind. YMMV.) Oubliette, btw, was one of the more difficult choices for me. Corundum's entry clearly calls "her" a golem. But Oubliette, though called out as an artificial being, seems more like a spirit in many ways. Conversely, suppose Takofanes calls up a few damned souls, shreds them and melts the tatters into a new demon that will follow all the rules for demons from then on, including the potential to be Summoned? Built, in a sense, but in that case I think I'd file the character as a Supernatural Being. <shrug> Edge cases, man. Though one can sometimes generate interesting characters specifically by seeking edge cases. Incidentally, cyborgs -- whether one insists on pure tech or not -- are another case where the CV books seem oddly deficient. I remember Marvel having entire teams of bionic villains; and there were quite a few pre-5th ed Champions villains to draw upon, IIRC. Dean Shomshak PS: Thanks for the kind wishes, my eyes feel much better now, thanks to antibiotics.

Oops, bad timing. Eyes burning; think it's pinkeye; will try to get to Urgent Care to see if there's anything I can do that I'm not doing already. I'll be out at least a day, so tangent away until theDean Shomshak

I think CLOWN was a fundamentally bad idea. One prankster villain, okay, it's a classic type. A whole team? With enough points lavished on them to make them quite likely to win confrontations, at least in the old 250-character point days? No, I don't think so. My old Seattle Sentinels had a few prankster villains, but I used them sparingly. (They also picked on other villains, which allowed the players a little schadenfreude.) The Fellowship of Fear was a whole team designed as comic relief, but part of the joke was that they took themselves utterly seriously and did not realize how ridiculous and inept they were. UNICoRN, a fill-in campaign of low-power heroes, was often farcical with villains such as Commander Coleoptera (and his Arthrozoid Army) in the adventure, "They Cloned Quisling's Brain!" but everybody knew that going in. And the Keystone Konjurors campaigns were meant to be serious; the slapstick was the fault of the players making characters with Activation Rolls and big Side Effects. Anyway, when people are done with other discussions I'll move on to the next stage of the analysis. But don't feel pressured; I'm enjoying this, too. Dean Shomshak

When the SCOTUS overturned Roe v Wade six months ago, anti-abortion forces seemed to have won. No federal protection for abortion, trigger laws taking effect in many states, and Republican legislatures ready to pass additional bans. But now? Thie situation is far less clear. The fight will surely be long and fierce, but abortion rights advocates have found strategies and won some victories... sometimes using the very words conservatives placed into state constitutions. The Unexpected Ways the Left is Winning in the Abortion Fight - The New York Times (nytimes.com) Dean Shomshak

It sounds like there are two issues here. Birth control is one. The other is parental sovereignty over children. The goal in this suit may be to establish that minors cannot interact with government without their parents' permission as it is to erode rights to contraception, as such. Dean Shomshak

That would explain his omission, yes. I forgot which edition Champions Beyond was. As for robots: The man with the magic memory strikes again! I'm a bit ashamed of not remembering Life Model Decoys, because they were an important, ongoing element. Though I don't think I ever read any issues in which they appeared, OHOTMU tells me there was even a LMD incarnation of the Zodiac villain team, and of course they were brought back as central to a season of Agents of Shield on TV. And the Destroyer played a big role in what was IMO one of the best story arcs of Walt Simonson's superb run on Thor. At the other extreme... Ultimo? I never heard of Ultimo before this. Its appearances must have been before I started reading comics. Looking through my OHOTMUs, the only entry I found was in the Appendix to the 1983 edition, so I don't feel bad about missing that one. Once again, I am in awe of your encyclopedic knowledge! Dean Shomshak

Indeed, the CU as a whole has scads of alien characters: all the ones in Champions Beyond, all the Lemurians -- and I'd include the Empyreans as well. But they're largely shuffled off into their own subsettings, apparently not interacting much with the rest of the CU. (Though two Lemurians make it into CV3.) But you could argue that Skarn and Tyrannon aren't really "core characters" for the CU, either. I mean, they're literally in different planes of existence. Either they invade Earth, or PCs have to come to them. They also fill the same story role. So why put both of them in CV but not, say, Xarriel, who is also a mad tyrant with vast powers and nigh limitless resources who might invade Earth? I don't know, other than I wrote up a bunch of setting material for Skarn and Tyrannon and got it published in The Mystic World. So Steve had it all ready to cut and paste into CV1; didn't have anything comparable for Xarriel. Too bad. The CU can use a Darkseid expy as well as a Dormammu expy. PS: Yes, I counted. Another category: Created By Me: 30 characters. 10%. And I'm not counting characters I rewrote, such as Tyrannon or Edouard and Anais Vandaleur. Dean Shomshak

On reflection, the shortage of robots and androids does not surprise me as much as I first thought. Thinking back on the much more populous Marvel Universe, how many robot villains were there as of, say, 1995? (About the time I stopped paying attention.) Using OHOTMU as the standard for who's important, I can recall Ultron, Machinesmith, the Super-Adaptoid, the Mad Thinker's Awesome Android, Dragon-Man (an alchemical construct IIRC), Master Mold (representing the Sentinels), Nimrod, Quasimodo, and... um... It, the Living Colossus? Plus the Kree Sentry robot and the big HYDRA robot whose name escapes me at the moment. But AFAIK only Ultron and the Sentinels are that significant. And Doombots, but they're agents. So I son't think robots are under-represented in the CU. But OTOH -- which gets to one of the reasons for this exercise -- it also means that if a GM wants to expand their version of the CU in a direction that hasn't been done to death already, robots, androids and other constructs are one way to go. Dean Shomshak

1) Sure, I have other books, going all the way back to Enemies I, II and III. But I figured the CV trilogy best represented the core of the CU. Or at least what Steve Long thought the core of the CU should be. 2) Who am I to stop you? 3) Foxbat is an excellent case study. Yeah, he's physically competent, but not superhumanly so (apart from SPD 5). Knows martial arts, but not enough to compete on that alone (maximum 8d6 attack? Not hardly.) Some skills, but not amazing, either. So what category does he get? Weapon. A gun scaled for a Low Power Superbeing (50 active pts) and a few minor gimmick-gadgets. And that's it. He's had the Ping-Pong Gun since his first appearance, and there's no indication he'll ever change it much or develop other tech. 4) Batguy would fit into Training (he's supposed to be among the world's best HTH fighters and detectives -- though I remember a friend reading an assessment that he is not #1 in either), and he might count as an Inventor if he develops new gadgets fairly often. I will grant that being a billionaire lets him be an Inventor by proxy. If you want to say the resources of Wayne Enterprises make him a Mastermind I won't argue too hard, though that seems to be more a justification for him being able to have a Batmobile, Batplane, and Bat-I-Don't-Know-What All, rather than a source of institutional power or Followers. I was never an enormous Bat-fan, so I'll defer to anyone who says they know the character well. 4) By "gadget user," do you mean Weapon? Because a weapon can be taken away. If it requires major surgery to take away the source of a character's powers, thry're probably a cyborg. And thank you for being interested! Dean Shomshak

Yep, we've been here before. Today's episode of Fresh Air interviews the author of a book about American history 1917-1921 -- the country's participation in WW1 and shortly thereafter -- when the US went beyond flirting with Fascism to some pretty serious foreplay. The Federal government shutting down newspapers and magazines for unapproved political views. Thousands of people jailed for speaking against the US joining the war. A government-chartered vigilante society. A scheme for mass deportation of immigrants. Pogroms against Black people and organized labor. So much that the Trunmp administration tried, the Wilson administration actually did. But it's also been swept under the carpet. No need to trouble the Land of the Free with history of a successful campaign of state repression. Woodrow Wilson led the U.S. into WWI. He also waged war on democracy at home : NPR Everything old is new again. Dean Shomshak

I wondered which origin types are particularly popular for the Champions Universe, and what types of Powers go with them the most. Why? Because 1) It might point to character concepts that are cool but have been neglected; and 2) I’m a deranged nerd. So this has been my spare-time project for the last week. The whole CU is very large, but not all of it is equally propmoted. So I’m restricting the domain of analysis to the three volumes of Champions Villains. 292 characters total, not counting “agent” types such as Doctor Destroyer’s robots or Necrull’s Necrullticians. Individual characters only! Here are the categories I devised when I did this analysis for my own Champions settings: * SUPERNATURAL BEINGS are innately magical creatures: demons, dimensional conquerors, undead, etc. Examples: Bloodrage, Takofanes, Tyrannon. Also people with supernatural ancestry, such as Frag. * MUTANTS were born with super-powers in their genes. I also include MUTATES, whose origin stories specifically say that their powers are the result of genetic manipulation (such as anyone given powers by Teleios). Examples: Menton, Hurricane, King Cobra. * ROBOTS AND CONSTRUCTS are artificial beings. They have powers because somebody else built them that way. Robots are of course the result of tech; but golems and similar magically-created artificial beings fit in this category as well. Examples: Mechanon (duh), Syzygy. * ENCHANTED characters were given powers by magic: a curse, a spell cast upon them, a magic potion, or the like. Examples: The Basilisk, Black Fang, Harpy. * WEIRD SCIENCE covers all those lab accidents, exposures to industrial waste or atomic radiation, and empowerment processes that are scientific but aren’t specifically called out as exclusively based on gene-splicing. (Though some origin stories are not clear on this point.) Examples: Durak, Bulldozer, everyone in Project Sunburst, Sunspot. * CYBORGS started out as normal people but gained powers by having bits added to them. Usually techm but I extend the concept to magical additions (such as a magical gem permanently affixed to the character’s body) or other surgical modification. Examples: Interface, Fiacho, Cairngorm, Howler. * SORCERER characters cast spells. Examples: Doctor Yin Wu, Demonologist, Talisman. * INVENTOR characters build gdgets (including, but not limited to, powered armor) or otherwise do things using SCIENCE! It’s implied that they can build new tech, even if they don’t have VPPs — they aren’t limited to just one device or suite of gadgets. Examples: Doctor Destroyer, Teleios, Utility, Binder, Doctor Philippe Moreau. * TRAINING: If a character’s powers come down to extraordinary skills that aren’t super-tech or sorcery, they go here. Mostly martial artists, but there might be others such as a super-thief with incredible skills but uses mundane tech, Examples: Scorpia, Green Dragon, the Cahokian. * WEAPON: The character’s powers derive from a device that could be taken away, whether it’s tech, magic, or undefined. Moreover, the character lacks the skills to replace or alter the device easily. Examples: the Warlord (he didn’t build his own battlesuit), the Crowns of Krim, Lazer. * MASTERMINDS would be powerful just from the people and resources they command, even if they didn’t have any other source of power. Example: Franklin Stone and Doctor Philippe Moreau are “pure” Masterminds; Doctor Destroyer, King Cobra, and the Warlord have extensive organizations in addition to their personal powers; Baron Nihil and Tyrannon rule entire populations; and the Demonologist can Summon whatever demons he wants, while the Engineer creates robots at will. * ALIENS aren’t human, but aren’t specifically supernatural. Extraterrestrials such as Herculan and Firewing go here; but so does Leviathan (a Lemurian) and Ape-X (uplifted gorilla). This is often a “meta-origin,” worth noting even if not being human is not specifically the source of powers (as Herculan was artificially given powers that are not natural to his species, the Fassai). * OTHER is anything so rare and weird that it doesn’t justify creating a new category, or the source of the character’s powers simply is not known. Example: Timelapse, Glacier. * COMPLEX: Characters can fit within multiple categories, as the dimension lord Skarn is both a supernatural being and a sorcerer, or Cheshire Cat is both a highly trained martial artist and gained teleportation powers through weird science. But if a character fits in three or more categories, I just call it “Complex.” Example: Josiah Brimstone has one set of powers as a sorcerer, another set from the demon that’s fused to him, and a third set from magical devices. OTOH I make exceptions for Masterminds and Aliens, as these tend to be meta-origins — and I try to limit assigning categories based on what’s really important to a character. Just packing a gun or minor gadget, for instance, isn’t enough to place a character as using a Weapon. Placing characters in origin categories can be iffy. Like, I don’t assign every character with martial arts on the character sheet to the Training category: Often its just an add-on and the character would function as a superbeing without it. And as the discussion of Weird Scienct and Mutate characters suggests, the line between them can be blurry. But the goal is to spot patterns, not to precisely classify every character. Here’s the result: Supernatural Beings: 30 characters; 10% Mutants/Mutates: 65 characters; 22% Robots/Constructs: 8 characters; 3% Enchanted: 23 characters; 8% Weird Science: 54 characters; 18% Cyborgs: 9 characters; 3% Sorcerers: 33 characters; 11% Inventors: 26 characters; 9% Training: 31 characters; 11% Weapon: 44 characters; 15% Mastermind: 25 characters; 9% Alien: 17 characters; 6% Other/Unknown: 9 characters; 3% Complex: 3 characters; 1% Further analysis available if anyone's interested. Dean Shomshak

One argument I've read is that when the Framers wrote the "no religious test" clause and the First Amendment, they meant only not to discriminate among Christian denominations, and so it would be perfectly okay to legislate pro-Christianity and anti-anything else. To this end they cite alleged statements by various Founders, none of which I've bothered to check for veracity -- because they don't matter. As uber-conservative Justice Antonin Scalia argued, the only words that matter are what's actually written down in the Constitution itself, and it's only liberals who look beyond it and try to tease out haloes of implications and interpretations. We are not able to interrogate the dead about what they "really" meant, let alone what they would have meant if only they knew our current situation. And he had a point . IIRC, his ideological rival and personal friend Ruth Bader Ginsburg acknowledged, "We are all textualists now." Current conservatives, however, seem to have thrown out that approach. <snort, eyeroll> Dean Shomshak [PS: Now I imagine a coven of judicial necromancers summoning the ghosts of the Framers to ask what they really intended. And though I would not guess what they would finally suggest about transgender rights or gerrymandering, I am sure their debates would be cogent and interesting.]

Keep in mind that -- as I blieve I've said before 00 from a certIN POINT OF VIEW THERE REALLY WAS A GIGntic fraud in the 2020 Presidential election... and the Constitution was at the heart of it. The question is whether one believes that straight, white, Christian conservatives are "real Americans" to whom the rest of us should defer in culture and politics. 45 anointed himself the tribune of these "real Americans," and they embraced him with fervor. But the Constitution doesn't offer much support for "real Americans," or indeed support the idea of "real Americans" in any way. Straight vs LGBTQ? Not mentioned in any way. Christian? Religious privilege explicitly barred. White? No privilege since those darn woke progressives somehow slipped the 15th Amendment in 1870. Not much if any support for other conservative" cultural positions, either. And worst of all, it lets practically anyone vote! So do you accept there's no such thing as a Real American, or do you reject the Constitution? Trum p finally said out loud what I'm sure many conservatives felt but were not willing to say even to themselves. Dean Shomshak

Now UI must include the Forbidden Bidet in my Fantasy game. Dean Shomshak

I know there has been a contingent on the Far Left that believes the CIA and the oil companies conspire to cause every evil thing in the world, but I could not venture a guess how large a contingent it is. I prefer not to guess; I want data. I would agree that the exaggerated view of American influence is subtly narcissistic, in that it presents the rest of the world as helpless and clueless to resist America's malignant power. I presume the US tries to influence policy in other countries, whether allied, hostile, or neutral, through both regular diplomatic channels and covertly. I presume other governments do the same, from Israel lobbying Congress to Russian troll farms. And I don't see anything wrong with that, in the same way that I don't see anything wrong with the danger of infections or falling heavy objects: They are facts of existence, one should take reasonable precautions to avoid being harmed by them, but being upset by them is pointless. I could wish the US government were better at such meddling, as the well known cases tend to be train-wreck failures or have been ultimately disastrous for the countries involved and, in the longer term, for the US itself. "Better" both in terms of competence and choice of goals. Of course, the most successful intervention would never be known to the public. I would rarely if ever say I am "proud" of the US, but I do quite like that it is doing so much to help Ukraine against Russia, and so effectively. I am also pleased that it does not act alone in this. I approve the purpose; I approve the methods (to the extent that I know them); and I think it will benefit the US, its democratic allies, and -- in the long run -- humanity as a whole. Dean Shomshak

Addendum: One player says a 'Time Out' Chair of Shame is insufficient. He needs a full-on Dice Jail. This Etsy page shows a few examples (though I also like the chair with the tiny dunce cap, and the Gelatinous Cube dice box): https://www.etsy.com/market/dnd_dice_jail Dean Shomshak

I play with a few people who could really use this. Dean Shomshak

On my evening walk to stretch my legs, I heard a bunch of seals barking out on Cutts Island. My sister did a little research online and found the spit tgrailing off it is a favorite haul-out spot for harbor seals. Dean Shomshak

This is the first I ever heard of Joel, but now I wish I could have known him too. My deepest condolences. Dean Shomshak