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Lucius got a reaction from Pariah in On This Day in History
So it's Istanbul, not Constantinople?
Lucius Alexander
The palindromedary asks why did Constantinople get the works?
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Lucius reacted to Vurbal in Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)
I don't worry that he'll do nothing. I'm more worried he'll do something dangerously stupid.
But, yeah, this is the real problem IMO. Putin is a world class player at global brinksmanship. Trump can't even manage to negotiate with his own party - keep his own top secret documents behind closed doors for that matter. Putin is playing chess and Trump is still trying to wrap his head around tic tac toe.
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Lucius reacted to Killer Shrike in Building a Light spell is harder than I thought
I'm still attached to the Earth, via the bonds of gravity as well as a certain sentimental fondness for the planet where I still keep all my stuff. I just moved away from the Hero System after the last Here There Be Monsters campaign I ran (which is all 6th edition), and roleplaying in general. This is due mostly to changing life circumstances (kids, job, other hobbies, a sort of pervasive lack of available free time), as well as a shift in appreciation towards more narrative games. I also drifted away from posting on these forums as I was doing increasingly less Hero System related gaming but also because many of the people I enjoyed collaborating or trading posts with also drifted away, though some remain.
Also these forums have themselves experienced some vicissitudes over the years and there were times when I would have posted but the site was experiencing difficulties or I could no longer find some old post I wanted to reference and had no desire to rehash old ideas all over again without aid of just referring back to a thread that already covered the same ground. And of course, after the couple hundreth thread on how to model a vancian magic system or quibbling over how to do magic missile or light or whatever, my attention wanders. There is some kind of existential limit on how many times a person can cover the same intellectual ground and remain interested in it; some ideas in this domain have been so often re-tread over the years that I just no longer am inspired to spend energy or time on treading that same ground once more. Jadedness, ennui, operational fatigue, "been there, done that, figured it out, moved beyond it"; call it what you will...I just don't have anything new to say on the subject and don't care to keep repeating myself.
I still love the Hero System in general, and I spent more years playing it than any other game system if measured pound for pound, ounce per ounce of games run and time spent...over two decades of time of actively using the rules for a wide variety of genres and campaigns and occasional one offs.
As far as 6e vs 5e, the differences in the editions is not very large for the most part. In the large majority of cases taking a 5e effect and simply re-expressing it in 6e terms is simple, and in many cases results in a more or less identical write up. Occasionally there is a more effective 6e way to approach a problem, but the 5e way is still a viable one; after all the Hero System is the way of many ways to model the same idea. The situations where a 5e approach is no longer viable at all and an entirely new 6e way of approaching the problem is required are pretty seldom, but generally easy to navigate when encountered. Pretending that 5e material is irrelevant to the current mores of the system or of no value when looking for ideas that are re-usable or mine-able for a 6e game isn't really warranted, in my opinion.
As to the content contributed by others, I don't generally editorialize that material unless invited to. The material presented is intended to be used or not as people see fit; though no one has ever accused me of having insufficient ego, I don't take the position that my material or opinions on how things might be done is more important than that of other Hero System aficionados. Rather I post people's material when asked to as a service to the community. I wouldn't post contributions that I were offended by, or were disinterested in, or that were of low overall quality, or if it would just take me too much time to get it into a format friendly to the site (such as content in the form of word docs). Otherwise if someone has a body of work they want to share and they want to use my site as the platform from which to do it, and it doesn't take more time than I have to give to it, I post it for them.
If you or others disagree with a given contributor's material, you are welcome to take it up with them; if they take your feedback to heart and submitted altered versions of their material I would do my best to get their contributions updated and pushed out to the site in a timely fashion.
As to eepjr24 specifically, he did a lot of work for the betterment of the site by going through the thousands of hero game effects that were corrupted when my site got hacked by a malicious injection attack some years ago that forced me to purge all of the effect names and notes. This took weeks of labor on his part, and was an amazingly generous thing for him to spend his time on. I did mildly edit some of his material such as his Soldier package to provide an example of a different way to lay out abilities and to offer more configurable options to allow broader re-use, and the magic system write up of his Warlock system (embedded in the package) to tune it up a bit, but by and large I posted it exactly as he submitted it without editorial interference. In all our dealings, eepjr24 struck me as a very reasonable and well-meaning person eager to use the Hero System and still in the honeymoon phase of his enjoyment with the game. Perhaps if you sought him out with constructive criticism, a useful collaboration or positive feedback loop could be established between you, and it is not inconceivable that he might submit updates or new content more to your liking.
You are also welcome to provide me with your own versions of things that you feel are more correct or relevant and if we come to an accord I will add your stuff to the site as time allows.
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Lucius reacted to Tom in Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)
Hmmm, if you give the dragons more money they don't destroy your village, eat your livestock, and demand your maidens conveniently delivered in chains.
However, they expect a continual stream of wealth which will force you to exploit ever more of your village's resources -- which results in an increased demand for labor.
In the short term.
Eventually you begin to deplete your exploitable resources, which in no way changes the dragons expectations, forcing you to find ways of cutting your costs (labor being a favored target) to continue meeting the dragons demands.
The question becomes whether you run out of resources or your labor pool collapses.
On the plus side, by this time you're too scrawny to bother eating -- unless the dragons insist on maximizing their resource utilization before moving on to fresher territory.
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Lucius got a reaction from Hyper-Man in Animal Friendship too expensive?
It's not just in Hero that Animal Friendship can be expensive -
https://www.moneyunder30.com/the-true-cost-of-pet-ownership
The first year of having either a dog or cat can easily cost over a thousand bucks.
Lucius Alexander
But having a palindromedary is priceless
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Lucius reacted to IndianaJoe3 in Martial Hero
Chuck Norris jokes aren't actually funny. But if you don't laugh, you might piss off Chuck Norris.
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Lucius reacted to Joe Walsh in Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)
Sometimes I think that the picking and choosing of what makes it into the news and how prominently it does so, is more dangerous than the fabricated stuff. If I look at, say, reuters.com (which I consider a reasonably straight news site), and then look at, say, msnbc.com, foxnews.com, the Huffington Post, and Breitbart, I see that each is often projecting its own worldview in which stories they choose to put where. Something that's a screaming headline on one will be a minor item on another...or go ignore completely. So even if the stories behind them were told in a completely straight way, readers would get a completely different picture of the world just from reading one site or the other. And then of course the stories often are slanted one way or another, with one aspect or another of them emphasized over another. Or take local news. If yours is anything like mine, it's all about car crashes, fires, violent deaths...the dangers lurking in the sponge on your kitchen sink...black mold in your bathroom is going to kill you...and so on. Fear, fear, death, death! (Aside from celebrity news, sports, and weather, of course.)
I think we end up being affected by this daily emphasizing of certain aspects of the world much more so than the blatantly false stores. Not that the wild stories have no effect. In the short term, they can have a tremendous effect. But in the long term, I suspect it's the distorted views of the world shown by our media that have the greatest effect on us.
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Lucius got a reaction from Hyper-Man in Hyperman R.I.P.
Tell him we all hope to see him again soon.
Lucius Alexander
The palindromedary asks if that makes us hyperman's hoper-men
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Lucius reacted to Pariah in Jokes
A father buys a robot that slaps people when they lie.
He decides to test it out at dinner one night. The father asks his son what he did that afternoon.
The son says, "I did some schoolwork."
The robot slaps the son.
The son says, "Ok, Ok. I was at a friend's house watching movies."
Dad asks, "What movie did you watch?"
Son says, "Toy Story."
The robot slaps the son.
Son says, "Ok, Ok, we were watching a dirty movie."
Dad says, "What? At your age I didn't even know what dirty movies were."
The robot slaps the father.
Mom laughs and says, "Well, he certainly is your son."
The robot slaps the mother.
Anyway, robot for sale.
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Lucius reacted to Old Man in Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)
Of course, this administration sets incredibly dangerous political precedents daily, but it's nice if one doesn't stick.
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Lucius reacted to GhostDancer in Martial Hero
When Mongolian men wrestle in the Naadam games held annually since Genghis Khan founded the nation in 1206, they wear a particular vest with long sleeves but no shoulder covering and a completely open front exposing the whole of the chest, thereby allowing each wrestler to be certain that his opponent is male. At the end of each match, the winner stretches out his arms to display his chest again, and he slowly waves his arms in the air like a bird, turning for all to see. For the winner it is a victory dance, but it is also a tribute to the greatest female athlete in Mongolian history, a wrestling princess whom no man ever defeated. Ever since she reigned as the wrestling champion of the Mongols in the thirteenth century, however, male wrestlers have only wrestled men.
The princess, a great-great granddaughter of Genghis Khan, was born about 1260 and is known by several names: Khutulun, Aiyurug, or Aijaruc, all referring to moonlight. In opposition to her cousin, the emperor Khublai Khan, who enjoyed the luxury of the Chinese court, Khutulun rejected the temptations of sedentary civilization and sought to maintain the hardy Mongol way of life. She was a large and powerfully built woman, and she used her size and strength in the three Mongol sports of horsemanship, archery, and wrestling, as well as in the primary Mongol vocation of warfare.
Mongolian wrestlers were not paired by size or weight, and the rounds had neither spatial no temporal limits. The two opponents grabbed the other’s arms or waist until one forced the other to the ground. If any part of the body touched the ground, no matter how briefly, that contestant lost. Smaller or less skilled wrestlers might be thrown in a few seconds, but evenly matched wrestlers sometimes locked their arms around each other and pushed other back and forth like two bull elephants for as long as necessary until one competitor dropped.
Khutulun grew up with fourteen brothers and seemingly learned from an early age how to confront and beat them. As she grew older, she joined the public competitions and acquired great fame as the wrestler whom no man could throw. She became ever richer by winning horses from defeated opponents, and eventually her herd of ten thousand rivaled the herds of the emperor.
Among the Mongols, athletic victory carried a strongly sacred essence, and the champion was considered to be blessed by the spirits. Therefore, Khutulun’s athletic triumphs made her the ideal companion for her father in battle. Her presence, mounted next to him on the battlefield, extended her reputation for past athletic victories into an implied guarantee of dominance on the battlefield. Throughout their lives the two constantly defied the efforts of Khubilai Khan to rule over the tribes of the steppes of western Mongolia and Kazakhstan and over the mountainous regions of western China and Kyrgyzstan. They resisted every army sent against them and kept their homeland permanently free of rule by his Yuan Dynasty.
Khutulun followed an unorthodox method of confronting the enemy. She rode to the battlefield at her father’s side, but when she perceived the right moment, in the words of Marco Polo, she would “make a dash at the host of the enemy, and seize some man thereout, as deftly as a hawk pounces on a bird, and carry him to her father; and this she did many a time.” While such deeds of individual bravado held little strategic value, they certainly provoked discord and even panic in the enemy while enhancing her reputation as divinely inspired and blessed.
Khutulun was unusual, but not unique. Mongol women rode horses as skillfully as men, often carried a bow and wore a quiver, and they repeatedly appeared in early reports as fighting alongside men. The ability of women to fight successfully in steppe society when they failed to do so in most sedentary civilizations derived, however, from the unique confluence of the horse with the bow and arrow. In armies that relied on infantry and heavy weapons such as swords, lances, pikes, or clubs, men enjoyed major physical advantages over women.
Mounted on a horse and armed with a bow and arrows, a trained woman could hold her own against men in battle. Women fared better in combat based on firepower than in hand-to-hand combat. Although archery requires strength, muscular training and discipline prove to be more important than brute force. An archer, no matter how strong, can never substitute mere might for skill in shooting. By contrast, good swordsmanship requires training and practice, but a sufficiently strong person wielding a sword can inflict lethal damage without prior experience. Mongols, like their relatives the Huns and Turks, relied almost exclusively on the bow and arrow in warfare.
Because archery depended so much on training, the ability of women to use arrows effectively in war depended upon their developing their skills as young girls. In the pastoral tribes, both boys and girls needed to use the bow and arrow to protect their herds. The boys would take the larger animals, such as camels and cows, farther away to graze, while girls stayed closer to home with the sheep and goats. Since wolves would more likely attack a sheep or goat than a camel or cow, the girls had to be able to defend their animals.
With her success in battle and in sports, Khutulun refused to marry unless a man could first defeat her in wrestling. Many men came forward to try, but none succeeded. Her parents became anxious for her to marry. According to Marco Polo, a particularly desirable bachelor prince presented himself around 1280. Most opponents wagered ten horses, or at the most a hundred, to compete against her. This unnamed bachelor wagered a thousand horses, and Khutulun’s parents pleaded with her to take a fall and let him win.
An excited crowd gathered for the match. In the desire to please her parents Khutulun agreed to let the prince win. In the rush of competitive excitement as she stepped forward to face her rival, however, her filial resolve to please her parents melted. She grabbed her opponent by the arms, and found him to be more formidable than her usual challengers. He struggled against her, and they pushed this way and that, but she could not submit and allow herself to be thrown. The match continued for an agonizing long time with neither able to dominate. Finally, in a great surge of energy Khutlun threw him to the ground. She not only defeated but humiliated him, and he disappeared, leaving behind the additional thousand horses for her herd but having shattered her parents’ hopes of marrying her to a worthy suitor.
Khutulun’s colorful and unusual public life without a husband provoked much speculative gossip not only in her father’s kingdom, but also among chroniclers and envoys of the adjacent Muslim territories. Her political and military enemies who had not been able to defeat her on the battlefield alleged that she maintained an incestuous relationship with her father and thus would take no other man while he lived. Realizing the price her father paid for such malicious propaganda, Khutulun chose a man from among her father’s followers and married him without wrestling him. He was her husband, but he was the man of her choice. Even in submitting to marriage she remained undefeated as a wrestler.
Khutulun consistently outperformed her many brothers, on the wrestling field as well as the battlefield. While Qaidu Khan’s other children assisted him as best they could, he increasingly relied on Khutulun for advice as well as for political support. She was unmistakably his favorite child, and according to some accounts, he attempted to name her to be the next khan before his death in 1301.
Her brothers resisted. She may not have actually wanted to be monarch as much as to be the chief officer of the army. She placed her political support behind her brother Orus in return for a plan to make her commander over the military. The two maintained a loyal alliance for only a few years, and by 1306 Khutulun, about forty-five years old, was dead under unexplained circumstances that gave rise to stories of diabolic plots against her life.
Although mentioned in a variety of Muslim sources as well as in the accounts of Marco Polo, Khutulun almost disappeared into the fog of historic myth. Only by chance was the story of the wrestling princess resurrected in a twisted way in the eighteenth century. In 1710, while writing the first biography of Genghis Khan, the French scholar François Pétis de La Croix published a book of tales and fables combining various Asian literary themes. One of his longest and best stories derived from the history of Khutulun. In his adaptation, however, she bore the title Turandot, meaning “Turkish Daughter,” the nineteen-year-old daughter of Altoun Khan, the Mongol emperor of China. Instead of challenging her suitors in wrestling, Pétis de La Croix had her confront them with three riddles. In his more dramatic version, instead of wagering mere horses, the suitor had to forfeit his life if he failed to answer correctly.
Fifty years later, the popular Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi made her story into a drama of a “tigerish woman” of “unrelenting pride.” In a combined effort by two of the greatest literary talents of the era, Friedrich von Schiller translated the play into German as Turandot, Prinzessin von China, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe directed it on the stage in Weimar in 1802.
More than a century later, Italian composer Giacomo Puccini was still working on his opera Turandot at the time of his death 1924. Unlike his other operatic heroine, Madame Butterfly who lived and died for the love of a man, Turandot rejected any man whom she deemed inferior to her. His opera became the most famous of the artistic variations of her life’s story.
How a culture treats the past often tells us more about the people doing the remembering than about the ones being remembered. In Western culture the tale of Khutulun became a story of a prideful woman finally conquered by love. The Mongols kept her in their memory as a great woman athlete and warrior whose achievements are still remembered today in the open vest and the victory dance of the warrior. Every time a wrestler dresses for a match and every time he dances in victory, they honor the achievements of the greatest female wrestler in Mongolian history. Both the wrestling rituals in Mongolia and the diva on the opera stage preserve two aspects of the life of one of history’s greatest female athletes.
CONTRIBUTOR
Jack Weatherford
Jack Weatherford is a former professor of anthropology at Macalester College and the author of several books, including Native Roots: How the Indians Enriched America, The History of Money, and Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World.
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Lucius got a reaction from Netzilla in Animal Friendship too expensive?
I believe it does. The cost is based on the cost of buying all the categories and the +3 bonus, I believe. That's exactly why it's so expensive.
Again, no. I think it's clear that the Talent is meant to replace the Skill, or to put it another way, the Talent basically IS the Skill as it would be bought with an absurd investment of points.
I suggest ruling that Animal Handler is not bought by categories and you just need to buy the Skill once, and if you still want a special "Animals Love Me" Talent, try Striking Appearance defined as working vs beasts.
Lucius Alexander
Animal Handler: Palindromedaries
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Lucius got a reaction from drunkonduty in How Much Supernatural/Magic/Psychic Abilities in the Raider-verse?
Hoary old tomes - something else I associate with Lovecraft stories and Call of Cthulhu games.
So, you want a game where "All myths are true" EXCEPT the ones Lovecraft had a hand in?
csyphrett is repeating what zslane already said:
You're trying to define a difference between the universe Indiana Jones has his adventures in and the universe of Call of Cthulhu, and you're going to have trouble defining that difference because there isn't one. They could be the same universe. Professor Jones could easily be in correspondence with colleagues at Arkham University. The only important difference is in the tone of the story being told.
Not the "power level." Not the presence or absence some specific story telling element, whether mundane or extraordinary: either one can have hoary old tomes, crazy cultists, bullwhips, mysterious ruins with deathtraps, giant albino penguins, powerful artifacts, and terrifying monsters. The difference is in what kind of story it is.
Lucius Alexander
Neither is likely to have a palindromedary but the presence or absence of one is irrelevant to the question.
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Lucius got a reaction from pinecone in Guns in a Fantasy Settings: Tips and Tricks for a GM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juramentado
"A strong band was wrapped firmly around the waist, and cords wrapped tightly around the genitals, ankles, knees, upper thighs, wrists, elbows, and shoulders, restricting blood flow and preventing the mag-sabil from losing too much blood from injury before reaching their target"
Lucius Alexander
The palindromedary notes that like suicide bombing, this is a tactic for someone trying to get killed but to take as many as possible out with themselves.
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Lucius got a reaction from massey in Guns in a Fantasy Settings: Tips and Tricks for a GM
Lucius Alexander
The palindromedary says, whatever
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Lucius got a reaction from tkdguy in Quote of the Week From My Life.
A corollary - a person that has remarkably stupid rules is probably a person best avoided whatever else they have going for them.
Lucius Alexander
No palindromedaries aloud
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Lucius got a reaction from death tribble in Make Your Own Motivational Poster
Lucius Alexander
The palindromedary starts to ask if there's a way to make it full size, but never mind....
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Lucius reacted to Cancer in Things that should be in fortune cookies
"Is there a better oracle than a cheap, mass-produced, impersonal one?"
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Lucius got a reaction from BoloOfEarth in Things that should be in fortune cookies
Enriched Wheat Flour, Sugar, Eggs, Soybean Oil, Water, Dextrose, FD&C Yellow #’s 5&6, and Artificial Vanilla Flavor
Lucius Alexander
Things that should be in taglines: a palindromedary
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Lucius got a reaction from Pariah in Things that should be in fortune cookies
Wheel of Fortune Cookies?
W_ _ L D _ _ _ L _ _ E T_ _ _ _ A V_ W E L?
Lucius Alexander
The palindromedary wants to spin
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Lucius got a reaction from Pariah in Make Your Own Motivational Poster
I have loved W. S. Merwin's poem "Lemuel's Blessing" for decades, but tonight for some reason I was inspired to make a poster around part of it.....
I hope it comes in legible
Lucius Alexander
And the palindromedary doesn't eat it
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Lucius got a reaction from BarretWallace in Things that should be in fortune cookies
Enriched Wheat Flour, Sugar, Eggs, Soybean Oil, Water, Dextrose, FD&C Yellow #’s 5&6, and Artificial Vanilla Flavor
Lucius Alexander
Things that should be in taglines: a palindromedary
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Lucius got a reaction from Mister E in Stats for a crowbar
Operate a Crow Bar: (Total: 5 Active Cost, 5 Real Cost)
Animal Handler (Birds) 11- (Real Cost: 2)
<b>plus</b>
Fringe Benefit: License to serve alcohol (Real Cost: 1)
<b>plus</b>
Contact: A Scarecrow (to act as bouncer) 11- (Real Cost: 2)
Lucius Alexander
The palindromedary says my business plan is for the birds and I'll end up eating crow