DShomshak

The only case where I ported a character directly from other media into my Champions game was in my early "Seattle Sentinels" campaigns, in which the heroes' police xcontact was a captain named Dietrich. He was Lieutenant Dietrich from Barney Miller, promoted and moved to the other side of the country. At least, that's how I played him.
 
While I've read lots of comic books (mostly Bronze Age; the Iron Age '90s eventually bored me into quitting everything but Astro City), I have never ported characters directly from a comic book into my game, or copied a plot from anywhere. Types and tropes, yes, but I have tried to learn from rather than copy.
 
Like, my dimensional conqueror Skarn the Shaper happened because I knew my Dr. Strange-inspired "Keystone Konjurors" campaign needed a Big Bad filling the same role as the Dread Dormammu -- but I gave Skarn quite a different origin and personality. His home, the Congeries, is very much a "Dark Dimension" homage, though.
 
Also, I pulled various demons and other creatures from mythology and occult lore, but translating them into something gameable usually takes a fair bit of, shall we say, creative re-interpretation or extending of source material.
 
My vampires show a fair bit of resemblance to those in Vampire: the Masquerade, but that's fair because VtM draws a wide net through vampire pop culture. No background mythology about Caine (the Bible guy but spelled with a final E to be more pretentious), Antediluvians, the Great Jyhad, blah blah blah. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt and found it didn't fit.
 
Dean Shomshak

Duke, you raised your kids right.
 
Dean Shomshak

Trolling the fanbases ....
 

This is a chilling, terrifying echo to the American present from the American past.
 
 

This item just turned up in my internet front page newsfeed. A secret library walled away decades (centuries?) ago should be good for a Fantasy scenario or two. Plus it's in Tibet, for extra mystical glamor.
 
Unveiling the Unseen: 84,000 Unread Manuscripts Discovered at Monastery (msn.com)
 
Dean Shomshak

A recent article in The Economist pointed out that several developing South and East Asian countries are among the most rapidly 'aging,' demographically... without having first attained the degree of affluence enjoyed by, say, Japan. This will make supporting a large elder population even more difficult.
 
One solution might be to import labor. In a few decades, countries that are now freaking out about unplanned immigration from the Middle East and Africa may be actively courting such immigrants as a supplemental labor force, because those regions are the demographically 'youngest.' As a lover of irony, I find some piquance in this.
 
Dean Shomshak

Winners of the 2023 Natural Landscape Photography Awards
 
I don't understand the awards system but it hardly matters for this thread.

Never had it (yet), though my brother did. I had to bring him his meals at the far end of the house, both of use masked, and do his covid tests until we were sure he was over it.
 
I was pretty seriously worried after spending a few hours unmasked among hundreds of people to visit a Lovecraft=themed Hunted House attraction in Tacoma, then out to a Lovecraft-themed bar afterward for nachos. (Devil's Reef, also in downtown Tacoma. Tki bar, but the drinks all have names inspired by "The Shadow over Innsmouth." Proprietor recommends you not have the Third Oath of Dagon.) But it's ten days out and I've still shown no symptoms and my tests are negative.
 
I live with and help care for my very old, very frail mother. If she caught covid, it would certainly kill her. So I dislike taking chances.
 
Dean Shomshak

Vide Doc Democrqacy's admonition, here's All Things Considered's recent interview with an Oregon Representative who seems like a very earnest public servant. His special interest is public transportation and making cities more walkable and bikeable. Naturally, I'd never heard of him before this, because loudmouth lunatics hog all the media attention. And the media usually let them.
 
Though Mr. Blumenauer has also decided not to seek reelection.
 
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/09/1211949662/an-exit-interview-with-democratic-rep-earl-blumenauer-of-oregon
 
Dean Shomshak

My newsfeed says Democrat Andy Bashear won re-election as governor of Kentucky.
 
Dean Shomshak

Oh, I don't doubt the moral panic is completely sincere. The rules are changing quickly; people like them feel, correctly, that they no longer have the social privileges they once enjoyed. Of course they're lashing out at anything that offends their sensibilities.
 
It's Fundamentalism 101. When you're about to lose everything, you can't give an inch on anything. Double down, even.
 
I am told this is how American Christian fundamentalism came about. (Warning: I recount what I read; I am not myself an expert.) The late 19th century was another time of rapid changes that some Christians thought threatened the underpinnings of their faith and their notions of social hierarchy. So, they doubled down. One result was a redefinition of the Bible: no longer a complex text whose truths might be obscure and subject to re-interpretation, but *inerrant* in every word and *self-evident* in its truth.
 
This created problems because the Bible manifestly holds heaping helpings of poetry, metaphor, parable, dubious history, and outright contradiction. So fundamentalists qualified their claim: The absolute truth of the Bible becomes self-evident to anyone who reads it if they have the Holy Spirit in their heart. Anyone who points out problems like Genesis giving multiple versions of the Creation merely prove they lack the Holy Spirit. In fact, that they are deceived by the Devil.
 
Only this makes further problems, because people will still read this complex and difficult text and reach different conclusions. So who has the Holy Spirit and who is deceived by the Devil? Reason and historical and linguistic study having been ruled out, such contests become political. And this is how the Baptists, who began with the libertarian premise of each believer reading the Bible for himself, ended up with completely authoritarian dogma.
 
It also follows that reading the Bible also no longer becomes necessary. The text is no longer a text: It is a talisman for evoking the Holy Spirit. I suspect the people who mock Speaker Mike Johnson for his Biblical/political claims miss the point. He doesn't need to cite a verse to explain his stance about, say, tariffs or aid to Ukraine. He's guided by his idea of the Bible, which he knows is true because the Holy Spirit tells him so.
 
And I suspect the Moms for Liberty don't need to read the books they want banned, let alone read them critically, because those texts are also seen as talismans -- but for invoking the Devil. But that's just my own guess.
 
Dean Shomshak

Oh, I don't doubt the moral panic is completely sincere. The rules are changing quickly; people like them feel, correctly, that they no longer have the social privileges they once enjoyed. Of course they're lashing out at anything that offends their sensibilities.
 
It's Fundamentalism 101. When you're about to lose everything, you can't give an inch on anything. Double down, even.
 
I am told this is how American Christian fundamentalism came about. (Warning: I recount what I read; I am not myself an expert.) The late 19th century was another time of rapid changes that some Christians thought threatened the underpinnings of their faith and their notions of social hierarchy. So, they doubled down. One result was a redefinition of the Bible: no longer a complex text whose truths might be obscure and subject to re-interpretation, but *inerrant* in every word and *self-evident* in its truth.
 
This created problems because the Bible manifestly holds heaping helpings of poetry, metaphor, parable, dubious history, and outright contradiction. So fundamentalists qualified their claim: The absolute truth of the Bible becomes self-evident to anyone who reads it if they have the Holy Spirit in their heart. Anyone who points out problems like Genesis giving multiple versions of the Creation merely prove they lack the Holy Spirit. In fact, that they are deceived by the Devil.
 
Only this makes further problems, because people will still read this complex and difficult text and reach different conclusions. So who has the Holy Spirit and who is deceived by the Devil? Reason and historical and linguistic study having been ruled out, such contests become political. And this is how the Baptists, who began with the libertarian premise of each believer reading the Bible for himself, ended up with completely authoritarian dogma.
 
It also follows that reading the Bible also no longer becomes necessary. The text is no longer a text: It is a talisman for evoking the Holy Spirit. I suspect the people who mock Speaker Mike Johnson for his Biblical/political claims miss the point. He doesn't need to cite a verse to explain his stance about, say, tariffs or aid to Ukraine. He's guided by his idea of the Bible, which he knows is true because the Holy Spirit tells him so.
 
And I suspect the Moms for Liberty don't need to read the books they want banned, let alone read them critically, because those texts are also seen as talismans -- but for invoking the Devil. But that's just my own guess.
 
Dean Shomshak

My newsfeed says Democrat Andy Bashear won re-election as governor of Kentucky.
 
Dean Shomshak

My newsfeed says Democrat Andy Bashear won re-election as governor of Kentucky.
 
Dean Shomshak

The Economist has of course run editorials urging Israel, Middle Eastern leaders, and American government to be reasonable and seek a long-term, peaceful solution that will make the Middle East better for everyone. Unfortunately, none of those parties are prone to be reasonable.
 
I could go on to discuss Israel's foundation, history, and exaltation of 3,000-year-old mythology at the expense of real, present people, but many people cannot distinguish between criticism of Zionism (a political program) and anti-Semitism (hatred of a people and religion). So I'll stop now\, and merely say that modern Israel's history has been a graphic demonstration that two wrongs still don't make a right.
 
Dean Shomshak
 
 

The Economist has of course run editorials urging Israel, Middle Eastern leaders, and American government to be reasonable and seek a long-term, peaceful solution that will make the Middle East better for everyone. Unfortunately, none of those parties are prone to be reasonable.
 
I could go on to discuss Israel's foundation, history, and exaltation of 3,000-year-old mythology at the expense of real, present people, but many people cannot distinguish between criticism of Zionism (a political program) and anti-Semitism (hatred of a people and religion). So I'll stop now\, and merely say that modern Israel's history has been a graphic demonstration that two wrongs still don't make a right.
 
Dean Shomshak
 
 

The Economist has of course run editorials urging Israel, Middle Eastern leaders, and American government to be reasonable and seek a long-term, peaceful solution that will make the Middle East better for everyone. Unfortunately, none of those parties are prone to be reasonable.
 
I could go on to discuss Israel's foundation, history, and exaltation of 3,000-year-old mythology at the expense of real, present people, but many people cannot distinguish between criticism of Zionism (a political program) and anti-Semitism (hatred of a people and religion). So I'll stop now\, and merely say that modern Israel's history has been a graphic demonstration that two wrongs still don't make a right.
 
Dean Shomshak
 
 

No legal eagle here, but it occurs to me that lawsuits do not have to target actual persons, nor be brought on behalf of actual persons. Corporations have only a legal fiction of quasi-personhood, but they get sued all the time. And environmental laws have resulted in lawyers bringing suits on behalf of rivers, forests, and other natural phenomena on the grounds that human activities have damaged them. So even if undead (or nature spirits, or whatever) are not legal persons, they still might be subject to civil law and use it themselves. -Just to add another layer of complication.
 
In the litigation-prone US, at least, judges and legislators might not want to open the cans of worms implied by super-powers and nonhuman intelligences, but lawyers will probably force them to do so. If for no other reasons, lawyers with a hunger for publicity would probably try bringing test cases to see if some existing law or precedent could be contorted to fit the situation.
 
Dean Shomshak