Duke Bushido

Tjack: I am a sixty-two year old man who spent the weekends with his teenage daughter ripping up a bit of dirt on motorcycles while bellowing most of the score from the London version of Cats. I think we'd be okay.

Up until the early 80s, the newest thing I listened to was recorded in the 50s, or waa early to mid 60s country. Lots of classical and instrumental stuff. I grew up without electricity. That meant no tv; no radio. Music was something that happened in the truck, and came from 8-track tapes. Eventually, I grew up, moved out, and turned on a radio. That was when I began a years-long habit of collecting music on open reel, but I collected what I l iked, which was mostly what I grew up with- I had really only begun to collect it because it was getting hard to find (even classical, for a while), oh, and Showtunes. Love 'em. Some point in the early eighties I was in TG&Y and there was a guy fiddling with the car radio display and it was pumping out some absolutely intoxicating drug I had never before experienced. And that is how I discovered metal. And then at some point twenty years ago, I just got sick of listening to music- probably about the time those God-awful neighbor-hater mega systems,for cars got cheap enough that every jackass with gas money could install one, and 'music' became impossible to avoid. Didnt take much of that to make silence the most glorious and coveted thing for a hypnotically- relaxing experience. There you go, No chain yanking. (And Bob Dylan and the Beetles are quite possibly two most unpleasant things a person could force upon himself. Just sayin'. Just super sayin')

Once. At this point, get him alone before or after a session and say "we have done this X times already, and I nees you to be aware of how this is both changing the game on the meta side- not through player agency, but by having to constantly,change the world to work in your new guys- and I need you to be aware of the negative impact all of this- the stopping, the changing, the rewrites, and even your dumping on everyone else is impacting the game and everyone else's enjoyment of it. We Will make a change, _one_ more time. What I strongly suggest is that we don't do it tonight. Soend a couple of days really thinking about the character you want to play for the rest of the game; you are familar with the world and the story now, so really think about the character that you would like to see in this world. Come up with some thoughts on how he ties into the world and even the story so far, and get back to me. We Will change you out one last time with this character. I do _not_ want to, but having gone through this X times,now for this one campaign, if you cannot settle on a character dor the rest of the game, I can structure a side-thread that lets us run your new character independently of the group, or I can write you out. I _mean_ it when I say I dont want to so either of those things, but at this point, it may be better for you, me, everyone else, and the game at hand for youbtobsit this one out and wait foe a game that is more to your taste." And yes; that is something of my standardized speech for problem players. And yes, I have had players get back to me having decided to sit this one out and wait for the next one. It is disappointing, but generally, it is a net win for everyone, including him. And yes; I have permanently lost four or five players over the years as a result of this conversation, but I can honestly say that I haven't lost any that I missed having at the table.

I haven't, but that could be because this is the moment I first heard of it. I could take a listen and give it a shot, if you would like.

Ah... Okay folks, let's see if we can get a gasp of exasperation out of Hugh! (Sorry, Hugh, but in fairness, you saw this coming when he opened the door, didn't you? ). So this would work akin to killing attack at 15 pts, which adds to STR or RKA at 15 pts which adds no STR but does have range. Which suggests that there is a 10-PT base of "Killing Dice," to which we can add ranged or. Strength adds to damage, Leading us to a 20 point ranged killing attack to which we can add STR. And which, in keeping with the ioening theme of the discussion, screws up the DCs all over again. Semantically, loooking at the 4e 3pt hand attack, to get a DC for 3 pts. Considering "strength adds to damage' to be its own advantage- and knowing that 'ranged' already _is_ its own advantage, we have Killing dice doing 3DC for 10 pts. Weirdly, this almost fixes it (there is that odd little point there- 3/9 vs 3/10, but hey; its closer than what we had before we just assumed "STR: only for damage" or "blast: no range", when we were buying 3 DC for nine points or killing attack as we knew it: that is, ranged and HKA with its 3 DC for 15 points. Of course, this goes back even further, because at 10 points for a base Killing Die, we can also infer that there is a +1 advantage "Killing" that can be applied to a regular die of damage. Granted, that means in 4e terms that you can pay either 15 pts (per RAW) and ads STR, _or_ you can pay 10 pts to get a Killing Die that neither adds STR nor Range. But since 4e did not define _why_ Hand attack was 3 pts, but left it as a complete power, I could _instead_ put the +1 Killing on _that_ die, giving me a 6-PT die that ignores non-resistant DEF and has no range and doesnt take an STR bonus. And the very idea of most of what I said rankles a lot of folks, in spite od the fact that I could build the same thing from the as-is powers and appropriate limitations and get to the exacr same place. Regardless, "Killing" as an advantage, or a 10 it Killing Die as the root of both veraions of Killing are things that, to quote Word, "we so not speak of it." Now to be fair, I don't care (nothing like full disclosure), and the newer and more complex and hyper-specific the rules set, the less I care about the "official rulings" on anything. I am going to do my thing my way and no one here will ever know it, which males the consternation about this concept little more than a source of amusement for me (though having been through other conversations about it, I know that it kind of bugs a lot of people; I only called Hugh by name because he is, by long-established history, a very good sport about a little good-natured ribbing. And because this is nothing more than that, I am going to just leave ir alone now.

That ia my preferred way to handle it, specifically because no one complains when you allow it to be added to the normal STR damage, and because there ia littlw question that it should cost END.

I believe the only thing 5e did differently for Hand Attack was to "justify the extant price." If you weren't already doing it, then it upped the AP officially, in print, instead of leaving you to wonder if you should go ahead and,do it or not.

Gone to clear the Gweenies out of Valhalla, no doubt.

My empathise and condolensces, Amigo. It sucks.

It's a bad thing all around. Violence bad; picking on people's issues or shortcomings bad. Doing sething about bad; letting it ride bad. Bad. There is no good way out of a,situation like that no matter what the sideline observers say. The wife, to me, anyway, looked clearly hurt. Demonize me all you want, but I get it, Will. I would have done the same thing. (Well, not _quite- the same: I would have been in way more trouble because I would not have had the restraint to use an open hand, I don't think.) For my,money, Wil' biggest mistake was _after_ that, when he started thugging it up with 'git my name outcho mouth' and 'git my,wife name outcho mouth.' Dude, you slapped him. There is an old-fashioned (very old fashioned) sensibility that let's me take this as a justice of sorts for hurting your wife's emotional state. We're good. But you cant really sit there and continue to make demands (especially stupid ones) and expect to do anything but look worse. We Will never know what was going to happen in the moment, but I got the impression that Rock was making some sort of attempt at apology or peace while Will was getting thugged up- hie certainly had the posture of contrition, anyway. Thw best thong for Will to have spne after that was just sit there silently. He could look as austere or cold as he wanted, but to sit and shut up, regardless of what was said afterwards. What he did instead was give Rock no opportunity to adress his misstep, and left him,with no other option than to make light of it and let the show roll on. Making light of it just points out that Big Whole slapped him like a little,girl might do, then sat down and tried to be all threatening about the fact that he was willing to slap you again. I dont think it is possible to look more ridiculous than he looks now, just because he couldn't sit there and shut up. And because he slapped a guy, of course. Now at the beginning, I said that there was no good way out of this. That's because there wasn't, once the joke has been made (I really hope that at least one person who sees her reaction to the "joke" develops an intimate understanding of why I do NOT use sarcasm anymore. That would be a nice thing to see come,out of this. Alas, I don't think that is goinf to happen.) Rock hurt his wife. Will can either do what he did: publicly demonstrate an absolute intollerance of his doing so (yes: I am well-aware that there are more approved-of methods than slapping a guy), or just sit there and watch her get hurt. Dude, that is a _crap_ place to be in, and I can tell you that I _can"t_ be in the "watch my wife get hurt,and sit there" camp. Yes: slappong a guy wasn't the most correct tjing he could have done, but _Dude_, I _get_ it, and I can forgive it oretty easily, even if I was the guy getting slapped. "Oops. I screwed up pretty good." On the other side of the token we have the ..... Damn, I do _not_ want to talk politics, but it just happens that the other example involved a politician. By all accounts, the former "guy" onsukted the wife,of a lesser,guy, _to_ the lesser,guy, and the laser,guy just _took_ it. That was a couole od yeats back, and the jokes,and the memes at the expense of the lesser are _still_ coming! _No one_ thought that was appropriate. And personally? Had I been the lesser,guy? The former guy wwoukd _still_ be straining his Depends for errant teeth. I _get_ it, Will. I cant say it qas the best thing, but for my own sentiments, it was better than watching someone hurt her and doing nothing. But you went too far, too stupid.

I agree with TDK, So much so, in fact that I am almost loathe to point out the reptile / snake men in Conan. they sisnt come,up a lot, but even,in the movie, Jamws Eral,Jones played one.

Thanks, LB! I don't want to say that there is no such thing as a sympathetic reason to hate based on ethnicity, I still find it to be a very $;=÷y thing to do.

I don't know who all out here is still into paper copies, but just in case anyone is still into collecting this stuff, I ran across this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/115288800744?hash=item1ad7bf7de8:g:EdgAAOSwK15iKv1d No; I have zero stake in this. I havent snapped it up because I already have two copies (I won't pretend they are in better shape than this one: most of my paper stuff from the first four editions was thoroughly enjoyed, and looks like it. I don't collect to have pristine books: I "collect" only because I biught them when they came out, enjoyed them for decades, and still have them). I put it up here because it seemed like there was a chance that there might be another collector here. I have used this particular seller in the rwcent past (twice now), and have had the absolute Best eBay experience in years, so I felt comfortable posting the link. Most of his limited selection is older D and D stuff, but he happened,to have this one Champions item. If you are in to D and D (and I know the widest majority of gamers are), he might have some nostalgic items for you. I was sorely tempted to pick up Barrier Peaks.

Thanks,,Hugh. I was beginning to think I had slipped into some alternate universe where Star Wars was _always_ "Episode 4".

Funny you mention Justice Knight- Batman was given as the example that convinced me,to work up,our house rules for element-built reputation: he has a reputation as a relentless pursued, and for using unspeakabke violence against his enemies, but it never (at least not that any of us knew about in the 80s) really bit him in the butt; it always seemed to work in his favor. So we made Rep it's own thing That couls be good or bad, good _and_ bad on occasion, and it works out pretty well.

Forgive me,for,not quoting, Hugh, but I can only get here via phone, and I just discovered that quoting / editing is a massive pain on this phone. At any rate: I would like to see Reputation to be a separate thing: reputation. Like the disadvantage version, break it into elements such as how extreme the reputation is, how extreme the reaction is, how impeding or beneficial the reactions or reputaion is, etc: the negative elements would work as they do: negative points (disadvantage bonus, sort of) that ultimately reduce the reputation or even provide build,points. Etc. In short, a sliding scale that makes it one mechanic to allow customizing any reputation, good (costs points),or ill (rebates points). While what we have now works well,in a clear good guys / bad guys world, if someone wants to do a more shades-of-grey kind of thing, the current set up is a bit clunky.

I have never looked into his history. Moreover, I have only seen two photos of him. Both were black and white, and both were in magazines from "way back then" when Empire and Tekumel were being publicized for circulation. It could,be the shots themselves (they appeared to be from the same,gathering, and were likely liscensed from the same photographer). In those photos, he appears to be much darker-completed than the young lady and middle-aged man sittting with him. Granted, it is equally possible that he was standing with "indoor people" while he was,not indoor people. In the photos, he is heavy enough to make any assesment of his features suspect. That, combined with the text identifying him by his full islamic name, made it fairly easy to assume he had middle-eastern ancestry. Never having seen anything to contradict that, and my focus being more on the work than the person, it never mattered enough to make me curious. Yep. I am,watching this happen to my father, and have been for years. This was once tje most intelligent, gregarious person I ever knew- I dont mean that from a little kid or even a parent-child point of view. He was strikingly intelligent, patient, curious, and would accept nothing less that complete analysis of _any_ problem or situation that he had to address. And today he is one anti-semetic comment away from,being,a full-on Nazi. I know that this is a popular thing to do, but I have reasons. His entire life, the only televsion he ever watched (I have mentioned before that we had no television when I was growing up. We didnt have electricity until I was thirteen) was the news. He was excited about the "New" 24-hour news channels,back,when they were coming, and would scan back and forth for a couple ofbhours every evening. A few weeks after the launch od Fox News, the only time the channek ever changes is for old western, then right back to Fox. It has been a slow decline, and has taken a few years, but today? Today he sounds like any garbage-spewing Trump nut, and has adopted the,fox news tactic of walking away. That is, the guy who used to patiently every single,thing before making a,decision will now announce the president wakes up every morning, showers, gets a cup of coffee, and sits down and decides,how much to raise gas prices today before habing breakfast. If anyone even _attempts_ to question it, he will turn on his heel and walk,away, screaming and shouting about traitorous liberal,Nazis..... If you listen really carefully, you will hear him turn,on a television in whatever room he has retraeted to, and fox,news starts blaring there, too. Unfortunately, that is the only example of his behavior lithe last few years that I can post without risking a perma-ban for hate speech. So yes: while I accept that people do grow and change, I am painfully aware that they can grow to become,_worse_ as well. I am glad to hear someone,say that, given rhatvthe current trend seems to be "this person did an awful thing and must be purged from history," Like you, I don't care for Tekumel (I find it kind of juvenile, but that is probably just me) but I hold it as an example routinely, as it is a great proof that it is isbpossoble to write an intricate and highly detailed world with a rich, deep history and _not_ be Tolkien himself or a Tolkien knock-off.

It wasnt until six or seven years ago that I encountered someone else who proudly made this claim, but when I first saw that movie- my uncle Neil and I went to see it- there was no "a New Hope" subtitle. It straight wasn't there. That particular movie went around again- I want to say it was about 14 months later- I saw it again a year and a season later, and it wasnt being discounted as a second run, but billed on the marquis as "returning due to popular demand." I won't lie: I thought it was goofy as all get out the first time around (so did Neil). It looked like live action Japanese cartoons I saw when my father was stationed there briefly. I went back to see it for two reasons: the special effects were _amazing_. I mean, all I really had to compare it to was Star Trek and a handful of black and white drive-in movies. SFX-wise, there was just no comparison, and I was quite exited to see the effects and to hear the beautifully-matched and blended sound effects (even the wrong-feeling but well-done spaceship sounds). There was a young lady who wanted to see it. If it wasn't for the second one, I doubt I would have gone back. But go back I did, and for just a moment, I thought I was watching a diffeent movie: The "Episode IV: A New Hope" and the much longer crawler made me think "what? They made another one of these weird movies? No! They made three more! Who does that?!" And then we watched the exact same movie, and I never thought anout it again until I read an interview in... Was it Starlog? I think so, but I read every sci-to magazine I could,get my hands on, which meant none of them with regularity- where Lucas claimed he had always planned an over-arcing series of _four_ movies, and gave some crazy (bat-crap crazy!) justification for releasing the last (LAST) one first that, when distilled, translated to "the others arent as good (he got that right) so we couldnt get funding so we made this one to get fans and money to make the first three that tell the story of Luke Skywalker and how he became the chosen one or some,such nonsense. Eventually, we ended up with nine movies telling the story of C3P0 being abused by three generarions of Skywalkers. And about a year after the release of Empir Strikes Back, I learned to shut up about it because apparently I was in the only audience that had seen Star Wars without the Episode 4 title or that long "historical info dump" crawler (the one I saw literally just set up the opening scene the way Pan might do at the opening of a greek tragedy). It wasnt until I was sitting with niece and nephew (who I promised to take do the movies, and they picked freakin' Star Wars....) In a re-lit theater, waiting for the rest of the crowd to leave that I met someone else who had seen the first one with the same opening I had originally seen. As is my habit, I was trying to make fun of myself and my annoyance at the situation. "This is the third time I have seen this movie! I have been suckered! Horribly,suckered!" (This would happen again when my own kids wanted to see whatever incarnation featured "starkiller base": I would once again pay real money to watch the same damn "badguys put all their eggs in a barely-mobile superstition and good guys blow it up with an ecclectic selection of antique spaxeships and the HERO discovers their natural aptitude for the force- essentially the same damned move I have already bought six tickets to over the years. Crap! Anyway, upon making the comment, an older guy (roughly twenty years older than me at the time) who was sitting two rows ahead and playing thw same waiting game said "I know! I know! This is the second time,I have fallen for it!" Well, at least there werent any teddy bears this time- Laughter, and then "Ahh... My kids liked the teddy bears...." And we talked briefly about previous movies, and I learned that he, too, had seen the original movie without any claims to being part of a sequel, and concluded that your ability to be a successful conman was tied directly to how poorly-developed your chin was.... At any rate, there is just too much contradiction, too much that makes little sense (including most of Lucas' excuses) that there was _ever_ even a gleam of sequels and prequels until dumptrucks of cash started showing up.

Reputation from it's earliest use as a disadvantage did not preclude that reputation from being positive. There was nothing in it that requured the reputation itself to be negative. We had many superheroes (and still do) that had Reputation: does not kill. Or reputation: honorable. Or Reputation: protects innocents at all costs, and even reputation: pleasantly affable. They were disadvantageous because having that known may cause problems: When you are bluffing the bad guys, you dont want them to remember that you actually will not kill them, and arwnt very likely to harm them if you can avoid it. You dont wamt them to know they can blast a support beam,and leave you stuck holding up the entire subway station while they make a get away, ir that taking a hostage will absolutely get you to stop whatever you are doing. Beyond that, though, it is troublesome when citizen fans remember that are a great and feiendly guy, thet are morw likelt to walk,right up and introduce themselves, snap a few selfies, and generally,get in the way. Here is the problem with reputation: It doesnt really fit entirely into the category of disadvantage. Remember that there is the "how often does it become a problem /what is the typical reaction upon being recognized" toggles. You can take that at a zero value. What? The reaction is always favorable? What? It is never a problem? Yeah. You could always do that. You could just take it at no value at all if you wanted, just the rolls to either be recognized or have a thing known about you but for it to never actually,impact anything other than role play. I have no idea why it was expanded into a separate thing when the more logical thing (to me) would have been to make Reputation its very own thing, with the roll values, etc, and price or bonus deoending on the positive benefits of the rolls (people welcome me and offer assistence because they know I only do nobke things!) Or the rebated points foe a negative reputation (I cannot escape the hirrirs of my day as Kristoff, Bloody Butcher of Isleighton Bay!). It made enough sense to us that this is hiw we house ruled it the first time a player wanted a character"s reputation to "open doors" for him, and we have played it that way ever since. It makes a heck of a lot more sense than making a whole new thing such that there are two entirely different mechanics for the same exact meta thing.

I am going to say, in spite of the probes into the ramifications of this that I have suggested, that I would specify Deflection. Otherwise, when you loose the caotured arrow next week, it is foing to hit the guy you took it from.

"And I say that this new proposal doesn't go too far enough!"

I shared something a year or two back- about javing been raised racist, etc. I did it to demonstrate a point; that point was completely ignored in favor of a (at that time) newer forumite siezing the opporotunity to make some politically correct SJW points: you are all on the internet; you all know how that works. Thus far, I have seen no acknowledgement from that same person of any of the rest of what I said. (Though, to be fair, I may have missed it. To this day, this remains the only person I have ever put on "ignore" and left there. Still, that took a week; I didn't ignore them,until I noticed a pattern). At any rate, I pose the same,rhetorical question here and now that I posed then, here and in the real world when old mistakes are dredged to the hear-and-now.l: For all those who both believe that it is not possible to grow, to change, and to feel geniune remorse and even abject shame for what you were, even if only briefly, at some earlier point in life _and_ simultaneously believe in punishments of less than life imprisonment for an antisocial act- How do you reconcile those two things?

Rolling with the punch has been a viable option since 1e. When I get home, I will double-check, but I _know_ it is in 2e.

So let's look at the example of a ninja grabbing an arrow out of the air. He has no bow, but the arrow makes a reasonable shiv that he uses to stab one of the guards in front of him. Then he pulls it out and pockets it, and ten minutws later he sneaks up on another guard and ventilates his kidneys a couole of times before the arrow- I dont know; gets abandoned? Breaks? If it doesnt break, can the guy who finds the body then recover it again, and add the ranges attack charge / hand to hand attack killing bonus to his inventory, and so on and so forth? Again: I confess that this is a ludicrous corner case; I propose this thoight experiment _not_ because it is especially germaine to _this_ conversation, but because it it so beautifully parellels other, more vigorously disputed concepts (making and distribuitng magic items being the one that seems to be the most-hotly discussed).

Not at home right now to ch3ck, but yes to both.,with the cabeat that I believe there was a luck-based combat luck an edition or two prior to that, as opposed to an,DEF-based combat luck,as in 5e. I cannot doubl3,check right now; it may have originally,been a third-party creation.