Zeropoint

I'm not clear on why the coffin has to be written up as a power to offer a buried character a chance to escape. If the killer is making these coffins himself, you just give the coffin lid whatever DEF and BOD scores you think is appropriate for the challenge level. He doesn't need a power to build a wooden box. If he's using off-the-shelf coffins, you do a little research and set the DEF and BOD to simulate the coffins he's buying. He doesn't need a power to buy a wooden box. If you're this hung up on using powers to represent things, a buried character won't have any chance of escape from the grave anyway . . . unless they had the foresight to buy some Tunneling to let them dig up through the dirt.

I agree. You don't need to buy a power with character points to be able to use a shovel. A HERO character already has the INT to figure out how to dig a hole, the DEX to make the shovel go where they want, and the STR to lift the dirt. You wouldn't (I hope) buy the Summon power to represent the fact that your character can call a taxi/Uber/Lyft. This way lies madness and spoons with half-page writeups.

There are no mistakes in bronze casting, only happy accidents!

It never came up in the homebrew fantasy world/game I have, but areas could be "aspected" or "flavored" magically such that certain categories of spells would be easier or harder to cast. A magic user trying to Create Water in a desert, or in the middle of a drought-stricken area, would have a harder time of it. Also I had an area which was once a breadbasket agricultural region but is now a wasteland thanks to past use of strategic level magic; no one is just going to walk in there and fix the problem by spamming noob spells.

Ah, that fits the motion, and the relationship (or lack thereof) between the shape of the "orb" and the background, much better.

The fact that it was only visible via the camera, and not to the naked eye, suggests that it was an infrared light. It almost looks like someone was shining an IR laser around the store, but the motion doesn't look like what I'd expect from human hands. Motion detectors usually work with IR light, so it would explain that as well.

That reminds me, I should try to run/play a game of Cyberpunk 2020 next year.

That is indeed a cool gun. Thanks!

APPLICATION FOR ENTRANCE TO THE CITY 1) Full name Kilanie of the White Sands 2) Mother's maiden name It is not the custom of my people to change names when married. My mother's name was and is Karanda of the White Sands 3) Any titles you have and where they were granted "Death Witch", an unimpressive hamlet of ignorant peasants in the east "Cast Iron Bitch", mercenary camp of Veltran's Blades 4) Place of birth North-eastern grazing territory of the White Sands clan 5) What is your reason for visiting our fair city? Commerce, sleeping in a real bed, eating something besides pub food 6) Education I am skilled in all things that an Elven nomad of the eastern deserts must know, and also in the arts of magic, particularly that relating to harm and healing of the body, and of the undead 7) List your previous three jobs Investigate and control outbreak of skeletons near the village of Turnip Flats Artifact retrieval for mage's guild of Grant's Port Protection and medical care for mixed group of pilgrims and peddlers 8 ) List of references (preferably at least one within the city) Sheriff of Turnip Flats Mage's guild in Grant's Port Brother Flandrian, Earth Mother's temple, Hammondburg none in city 9) Preferred religion I worship the Lady of Sorrow, as is proper for one of my clan 10) Any outstanding tax debts no 11) Any outstanding bounties and the circumstances of why a bounty has been placed upon you A mishap with healing magic led to a rival family in the White Sands clan placing a bounty of 100 silver pieces for my capture. I advise you not to attempt to collect. 12) Declare all dangerous companions and all dangerous items in your possession My companion is a half-demon with great strength and an enchanted sword. He is quite dangerous. I possess a variety of knives and daggers and also a rod of ebon and bone which amplifies certain magics. The most dangerous thing I possess is my knowledge. 13) Declare whether you are possessed no 14) Do you eat carrots? I fail to see how this is relevant. I have no special love for carrots but I will eat them when they are presented. 15) Emergency contact information My travelling companion, Jonah Kane. He appears to be a tall male human with black hair. You will know him by his red eyes, the bone spurs on his knuckles, and the fact that he never removes his hat. 16) Are you literate? This is an insulting question. I am a mage and a scholar and I am literate in several languages. 17) Do you have a horse or other livestock which you are bringing into the city? one horse of inferior human stock but endearing disposition 18) Are they literate? it is a horse. no. Giving false information on this form is punishable by fines, imprisonment, and/or execution as deemed necessary by the local magistrate and such punishments may be inflicted in any order. I swear by my honor as a scholar that the information I have scribed here is correct to the best of my knowledge. (signed) Kilanie of the White Sands

If I could get broadband internet and pizza delivery, I'd like to live in a place like that.

"Maybe this one will do the trick."

Do keep in mind that we have ships, swords, axes and guns in the real world, and the people responsible for fighting aboard their own ships always choose guns.

But we had a black president, so that means racism is over, right?

When you run the numbers, that doesn't sound so far-fetched. We can calculate the minimum energy needed for the Death Star to blow up an Earth-sized planet, and when we do, we discover that: 1) That shot contained more energy than you'd get by converting the entire mass of the Death Star directly to energy, and 2) Even at 99.99% efficiency, firing that shot would have generated enough waste heat to melt the Death Star (I want to say "vaporize" but I don't remember exactly). No wonder the engineers couldn't eliminate the thermal exhaust ports! Star Wars tech, at least in some areas, is PFM. We can't even start to describe how it might work in theory.

Today is special because it's MCU Nick Fury's birthday. Happy Fury Day, everyone!

So those earthlings threaten to put people into a bubbling vat of universal solvent, and then they wonder why no one responds?

Dang, someone hates trees.

To quote myself from a different context, "There is no god but John Moses Browning, and Barret is his prophet."

That's about where I am. Despite being a firearm owner, I do acknowledge that we have way too much firearm-enabled violent crime here in the US, and that Something Must Be Done. However, I also have serious qualms about whether the kind of laws popular among my fellow liberals would actually help. Many such laws focus on cosmetic features, and are thus useless. We also see that in many cases, shooters were already prohibited by law from having the guns they used, making it obvious that laws aren't an effective barrier. And finally, as Pattern Ghost pointed out, there are many ways for people to commit mass violence, if that's their goal, which don't require access to firearms. I'm in favor of actual solutions, and I'd be willing to accept some restrictions on my firearms ownership if I felt confident that those restrictions would actually save lives. However, I don't think the root of the problem is access to guns--I think it's cultural. There's some pervasive aspect of US culture that makes people think that enacting violence is a go-to solution, and I feel that until we address that, passing laws against specific tools of violence won't accomplish anything good.

With enough brains on board, it sure would be. You could fire it blind into an area where you're pretty sure the enemy is, and let it find its own target. I don't see any obvious reason why you couldn't have it disarm the payload and fly back to you if it didn't find anyone to blow up. (Well, okay, having a grenade fly back to you would make people really nervous.) Twenty minutes of flight time would let it cover a lot of ground, too.

I'm inclined to agree. At this point in US politics, anyone who believes in science and evidence, and in trying to make things better for the common people, is some flavor of "liberal".

People do seem to be more or less ignoring the fact that Tony Stark built a mother-hecking Infinity Gauntlet. The capability may not be wide-spread yet, but Earth has the ability to run with the galactic big boys, in terms of tech at least, if not economically.

I don't quite understand why it's such a problem. It's just a rock. Sure, it's too big to move at the moment, but the techniques for breaking up stone are well-understood. They should be able to get it out of there in a weekend.

Leonardo Dar'lyeh, surely?

That's a great picture. It makes the plane look like it's fast while it's standing still. I'm no photographer or visual artist, but let's see if I can analyze this: I think it's the way the viewing angle and relatively short lens emphasize the nose, giving the plane a weight-forward appearance. Also, the chosen viewing angle gives the plane a fairly smooth silhouette, with strong diagonal lines running along the plane's belly and along the fuselage top and wing leading edge. The composition follows the "rule of thirds", with the bottom third of the image taken up by the ground, and the top third by the sky. The slanted edge of the ground echos the strong diagonals of the plane, adding to the sense of motion. The large clump of plants hides the rear landing gear, lessening the sense that the plane is connected to the ground. The human figure lies entirely within the silhouette of the airplane, leaving its lines intact. Props to the photographer, even if it is a jet.