Zeropoint

"I heard you liked blades, so we put blades on your blades so you can stab while you stab."
 
I wonder if anyone actually carried those things into real combat. The monk's spade looks pretty usable, though.

I've been trying to figure out "conservatism" for years, by observation of what people who claim to be conservatives say and do. (The definitions I've seen are too variable.) I've concluded that "conservatism" is a coalition of several ideologies, only tangentially related, but fall into two main groups.
 
First is the conservatism of caution. Go slow, baby steps, try not to make things worse. "Conservative" as "Not Radical." I mostly agree with this: People are not infinitely malleable. Sweeping policy changes can be costly errors. I view the establishment of same-sex marriage as a model for conservative progress: Nudge people along gradually, give them time at each step to see the world doesn't end, and here we are. Hard for the LGBTQ along the way who want to live their lives the way they want, and seeing that every argument against them doing so is flipping nuts, but it avoided a backlash.
 
A conservatism of form, but not content.
 
The second cluster -- pro-business, religious, racial, others -- seems to have a perhaps subtler common pattern: An underlying assumption that people are not equal and should not be treated equally. There's a hierarchy, an Us and Them: of races, of classes, of a True Faith vs. Infidel, of nation against nation, of Real Patriotism vs. squishy internationalism, etc.
 
You can argue with this. I don't claim to vast expertise here. But I think it accounts pretty well for the vahavior I see,
 
Dean Shomshak

Were you the group down in Timberline with the Lego building? I thought about poking in to say hello, but it looked like y'all had your hands full.

I really appreciate the consistent "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach that has been applied to the various incarnations of the Hero System. Other than that whole "Fuzion" thing, I feel like it's been "the same game, but better" with every new edition.
 
Lookin' at you, D&D.

Do you want zombies? Because this is how you get zombies.

It is somewhat understandable to immediately equate Nazis only with the atrocities that occurred from 1939-45, but that happened because they were allowed to get to that horrible endgame.  Not enough people spoke up in the 20s when they were formed, nor in the 30s when they came to power.  The Nazi party was probably dismissed as extremists.  They had a measure of popularity because of a strong economy, a narrative that sparked a beaten down populace with calls similar to 'Make Germany Great Again', and a leader that knew just what to say to the lowest common denominator. 

The difference, of course, is that Trump is openly a white supremacist based on his words and policies, whereas calling Obama a Nazi is obviously ridiculous.
 
People on the left aren't labeling white supremacists as Nazis.  White supremacists are proudly labeling themselves Nazis.  Wearing Nazi uniforms.  Flying Nazi flags.  Using Nazi symbols. Marching in public.  And Trump is proud to represent them, promote their views, and install them in his cabinet.

The only thing cooler than a Zeppelin is a CAVORITE ZEPPELIN!!!

How bizarre. I go out of my way to play the Soviets in Great Patriotic War settings, and use red pieces otherwise, because I whole-heartedly approve of history's greatest Nazi-smashers.

I'm not trying to say that Stalin was a good guy, by any means! When I think of the WW2 Soviets in this context, I'm usually thinking of the common men and women out at the sharp end, like Lyudmilla Pavlichenko or the Night Witches, or all the men from the battle for Stalingrad. They were defending their homeland from Nazis, and I doubt that politics played a big role in their minds.
 
It also helps that the Soviet Union has fallen, and is no longer a threat (not saying that Russia isn't a problem). That makes it easier for me to focus on the parts I like, like cool pilots bombing the crap out of fascist invaders.

How bizarre. I go out of my way to play the Soviets in Great Patriotic War settings, and use red pieces otherwise, because I whole-heartedly approve of history's greatest Nazi-smashers.

Probably a bunch of nerd stuff.
 
Which is cool, because I'm a nerd.

Probably a bunch of nerd stuff.
 
Which is cool, because I'm a nerd.

I absolutely agree that character creation is a big plus--in fact, one of the greatest strengths of the Hero System is that within point budget limits, you can pretty much create ANYTHING you can imagine, if you know how to work the system.
 
There's the rub, though: new players don't know how to work the system. New players will understand what the numbers MEAN a lot better after a session with a well-crafted pregen.

Get the suppressors to make a "pew!" sound and I'll start buying tracer ammo in bulk.

Were you the group down in Timberline with the Lego building? I thought about poking in to say hello, but it looked like y'all had your hands full.

I really appreciate the consistent "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach that has been applied to the various incarnations of the Hero System. Other than that whole "Fuzion" thing, I feel like it's been "the same game, but better" with every new edition.
 
Lookin' at you, D&D.

Looks like the skull of some sylvan spirit beast.

I absolutely agree that character creation is a big plus--in fact, one of the greatest strengths of the Hero System is that within point budget limits, you can pretty much create ANYTHING you can imagine, if you know how to work the system.
 
There's the rub, though: new players don't know how to work the system. New players will understand what the numbers MEAN a lot better after a session with a well-crafted pregen.

Looks like the skull of some sylvan spirit beast.

I just enforce the Normal Characteristic Maxima rules, making Speed above 4 cost double. No one who understands what they're doing will come to the table with a Speed of 2, and on a Standard Heroic point budget, paying 20 points to go from 4 to 5 is too expensive. Thus, you naturally get characters at 3 and 4 Speed. That works fine for me, because my take on the interpretations of the numbers is that Speed 3 is typical for people with combat experience/training, and Speed 4 represents those people who are either highly trained/experienced, or just naturally very fast. My interpretation of Speed values is something like this:
 
1: Below normal; this character is either non-human or has a medical problem
2: Normal but untrained human; someone who isn't used to combat and tends to hesitate or freeze up
3: Trained and competent but unexceptional soldier/warrior/police/etc.
4: Beyond basic competence; a special forces soldier, or someone else who stands out among competent professionals
5: Faster than "normal people" achieve but not superhuman; Jackie Chan in his prime
6: Almost unbelievably fast; the characters that Jackie Chan played on screen
7+: Literally superhuman; NO unmodified human being is this fast.

I just enforce the Normal Characteristic Maxima rules, making Speed above 4 cost double. No one who understands what they're doing will come to the table with a Speed of 2, and on a Standard Heroic point budget, paying 20 points to go from 4 to 5 is too expensive. Thus, you naturally get characters at 3 and 4 Speed. That works fine for me, because my take on the interpretations of the numbers is that Speed 3 is typical for people with combat experience/training, and Speed 4 represents those people who are either highly trained/experienced, or just naturally very fast. My interpretation of Speed values is something like this:
 
1: Below normal; this character is either non-human or has a medical problem
2: Normal but untrained human; someone who isn't used to combat and tends to hesitate or freeze up
3: Trained and competent but unexceptional soldier/warrior/police/etc.
4: Beyond basic competence; a special forces soldier, or someone else who stands out among competent professionals
5: Faster than "normal people" achieve but not superhuman; Jackie Chan in his prime
6: Almost unbelievably fast; the characters that Jackie Chan played on screen
7+: Literally superhuman; NO unmodified human being is this fast.

I just enforce the Normal Characteristic Maxima rules, making Speed above 4 cost double. No one who understands what they're doing will come to the table with a Speed of 2, and on a Standard Heroic point budget, paying 20 points to go from 4 to 5 is too expensive. Thus, you naturally get characters at 3 and 4 Speed. That works fine for me, because my take on the interpretations of the numbers is that Speed 3 is typical for people with combat experience/training, and Speed 4 represents those people who are either highly trained/experienced, or just naturally very fast. My interpretation of Speed values is something like this:
 
1: Below normal; this character is either non-human or has a medical problem
2: Normal but untrained human; someone who isn't used to combat and tends to hesitate or freeze up
3: Trained and competent but unexceptional soldier/warrior/police/etc.
4: Beyond basic competence; a special forces soldier, or someone else who stands out among competent professionals
5: Faster than "normal people" achieve but not superhuman; Jackie Chan in his prime
6: Almost unbelievably fast; the characters that Jackie Chan played on screen
7+: Literally superhuman; NO unmodified human being is this fast.

Same here! It's got that sort of "blasphemy-adjacent" quality that makes it satisfying.

I fully understand and appreciate why someone wouldn't want to be associated with someone like the shooter. However, I wonder if it's really a good idea to give in to the impulse to pretend that such people are other than human, or somehow qualitatively different from us. If we forget that "people like us" have the capacity to commit atrocities, we run the risk of failing to carefully consider the ethics of our own actions, ceasing to police ourselves because we know we're not "one of those people."
 
I strongly suspect that such thinking is a part of the mix that produces these atrocities.