Duke Bushido

What happens is that you have accurately emulated the source material. Yes: speedsters are gods in the source material, at least against non-speedsters. Is it fun for everyone involved? No; not by a long shot. It is accurate, though. I won't say I endorse it, never having actually tried it, but it goes a long way toward acknowledging the unspoken reason we tend to recommend to people that there not be a lot of variance in SPD amongst the various characters. SPD has always been outrageously expensive when compared to other characteristics. There is a reason for that. The problem is that it is just like the NCM problem: making it more expensive isn't the same as taking it off the table entirely. That's the GM's job.

Okay, guys, I'm back. No; that doesn't mean that I've started reading this thread: I still make a conscientious effort not to read things even from people I respect if there is even the _slightest_ chance that these things will end in an argument. I am here for the same reason that I always come here: Concern that what I am about to say may be taken politically. Generally, my concerns are social, but for the past twenty years, I have found fewer and fewer people are able to make the distinction, so why take the chance, right? This is where politics is allowed, within limits, and I think I can stay within those limits. As all previous posts in this thread, it's going to be a hit-and-run thing: I still don't read this thread; I just really, really want to get this off my chest. I used to reference "as my grandfather taught me" or "as my grandfather used to say." I don't do that as much in recent years: he's been gone for decades now, and I have my own kids, and I spend my time doing my best to teach them-- and a lot of what I teach them is what he taught me. I want to preface all of this with a caveat: Do _not_ mistake what I imply when I do share something he taught me. By all accounts-- my own included-- he was an absolute crapfest of a human being: vulgar, abusive, and hateful to his last paranoid breath. By the time I came along-- my father was the last of his kids to have kids-- well, he hadn't mellowed out, really. He got older and slower, but even into his nineties, he was a pretty big man. He just kind of burned out. The southernism is that he started "buying his ticket to Heaven." It's not entirely accurate in the case; he was an atheist his entire life, though despite what I hear from atheist friends and acquaintances, it didn't make him one whit less of a ass than any Christian I have ever encountered, either, and he didn't have the fallback of "this is what my religion demands of me" to fall back on. All that being said, he really did teach me quite a bit (particularly dodging: a good head weave really comes in handy when someone six-foot-six tries to sucker punch you. Good thing age slowed him down enough for me to learn that without too much ill effect. One of the most important things he taught me-- I didn't know it then; Hell, I wouldn't know it until... well, let's say "recent events" peeled back a lot of veneers on a lot of people in positions they have no business holding, okay? it was something he didn't talk about often; I suspect it's because he learned in in World War 2. He talked about a lot of things-- even Korea-- but he didn't talk much about World War 2. This is the image that got me thinking about it today, tough given my work schedule, I'm sure you've all seen it already: This image is from Canada (I am so sorry: I thought you guys could be safely inoculated from our special brand of entitlement. I guess "polite" doesn't always mean "nice," does it?). All these flags were hung up in protest of mask mandates an in support of a small group of man babies in something called the "Freedom Convoy." My grandfather and I had made the trip to Fairbanks (it was a regular thing to do in summer-- resupply and shop, etc, while you could drive out instead of having to rely on the bush pilots). We had stopped somewhere (I really don't remember: I wasn't very old, and I was more interested in looking around and seeing stuff than haggling for bags of flour, cans of lard, and coffee). I was staring at a motorcycle in the parking lot. The back seat had an extremely tall sissy bar on it, and it featured a plate on the back that was essentially the Maltese Cross. The fuel tank had a pair of swastikas on it and there were little chrome ziggurats screwed on to various parts of the bike. My grandfather had finished loading the truck and come to collect me. He stopped next to me and just stared at the bike for a long time. He went so long without yelling at me for something that I was actually getting a little uncomfortable. Finally, he stabbed one massive finger at the swastikas on the tank, arm straight and rigid as if he were attempting to cast out a demon. "You know what the means, Boy?" "No, Sir." He never looked at me. He just kept looking at the swastika. His finger never wavered. "Look at. Look at it for a long time. Burn it into your brain. Never forget that symbol." After an eternity, he let his arm drop back to his side. "What's it mean, Gramp?" "It means you're wrong!" he bellowed- not his usual bellow, but absolute venom vomited from somewhere deep inside him. He paused a minute, and I could see in my peripheral vision how stiff he was; even at his side, his fist was clenched and his arm was flexed tight. Whatever was playing out in his mind finally reached its conclusion and he continued speaking again. "It means a lot of things, Boy, to a lot of people, and to the worst of them, it's a Goddamned holy symbol. but don't you ever forget that what it means more than anything else is that you are as absolutely, completely wrong as it is possible to get. It represents and inhuman level of stupid, Boy-- a level that shouldn't be allowed to exist. I don't care what you ever learn from me, or your parents, or from any school teacher you ever have, what you had damned well better remember any time you pick up a cause-- if this symbol is on your side, you are so goddamned wrong that you need to walk away, change sides, and figure out what's what. If you can't change sides, then you need to spend every day begging whatever god there might be that he kills you, fast, before whatever the Hell is wrong inside you spreads. If you're lucky, it'll be quick and painless, but if you ever agree with anyone using that symbol, quick and painless ain't something you are ever going to deserve." Sure. It sounds stupid, and it tells a lot more about my grandfather and my "formative years" than I am typically comfortable sharing, but--- well, I don't know that it was ever possible to do him proud, to this very day, at the age of sixty-one (sixty-two in March! Damn, where did my life go? I was supposed to have achieved.... something.... by now), I remember that conversation every single time I see a swastika (even the Native American "good one"). Obviously, today, I know what it means. No amount of prying got any more detail out of my grandfather-- not that there was much; that was never really a safe thing to do, but today... Well, I know what it is; I know what it means; I know who rallies behind it. And I have to say that while he was right about most of things he taught me, I don't think it is possible to be more right about anything than he was about this. I weep for the damage that unbridled hate and stupidity is doing to the human race. Thank you for the chance to vent.

I can't find it in a convenient snapshot, but Steven King used to be a school teacher. He is known for telling his students "any time you hear of a book being banned, then you should _know_ that this is a book that you should be reading. It doesn't matter what reason they give to ban a book; ultimately, books are banned because they contain knowledge those in charge do not want you to have." Given the recent trend for banning anti-fascist works, I have never been more convinced that he was onto something.

I don't know if this is remotely the case, obviously, and I certainly don't know who your problem child is, but it is something I would like for you to consider: You've seen me write, at this point. Recreationally is one thing, and conversationally is another, and they are both hugely long-winded and, I like to pretend, a lot of fun. It doesn't help that I like to create, and I type fast. Because this is a thing that I know about myself, and because I absolutely do _not_ want to be the guy that dominates the conversation and wrecks everyone else's fun (I used to be, back in the late 70s and even into the mid-80s. Then I became a GM and began to see it in other players, and realized the subtle ways it robs others of their good time. As much as I loved my first two GMs, I really wish one of them had spoken to me about it). On the absolutely rare occasion that I do a play-by-post or play-by-email, I tend to do what your problem guy is doing: I announce up-front that I am stepping away from any sort of leadership or party decision-making, and will willingly follow the suggestions of the leaders, whoever they end up being. To white, PBEMGuy-- who we haven't seen in some time-- ran a HERO-converted Top Secret module some time back, and I was part of that. Looking back, even trying to stay reigned-in, I think Brian and I ended up doing most of the "talking" when there was no combat involved. Now in all fairness, it evened out toward the end as other players got more into the swing of things, but still-- I really prefer to not put my character into any sort of spotlight position just because I know my play style, and I know that it can be disruptive. I'm not saying that is the case here, but it _might_ be, and I think it bears considering. Now look just how damned many words it took me to say that!

Not yet. It never occurred to me, to be honest. However, if I can get an experienced adult group meeting again, I think I'd like to take a whirl at it. Though my immediate impression is the findings will be something like this: _However_, I would also like to point out that not only do I expect that this is accurate, but also that I believe it is _correct_. For _years_ now-- for literal decades-- someone pops onto these very boards and asks "but how do I simulate the speedster thing where they are moving so fast that everyone else is standing still and they are too fast to hit and can't be shot but they can easily sidestep everything and rearrange the people so that they are all looking where they weren't and now they have to reacquire targets and I really liked that scene in that Matrix movie and the Flash seems so cool because-- anyway, how do I do that?" And the answers include "put AOE on your STR; buy Duplication" and a myriad of other things-- to include tying into that popular pillar of the Trifecta of Cobble: Extra Dimensional Movement. The absolute simplest answer-- and I feel like I have said this before, but never having actually done it, I haven't pushed it very hard-- is "make the Speed Chart work the way that it claims it works." Does this create a huge disadvantage for lower-SPD characters? I can't say empirically, but Jack V appears to have some experience with it, and that lines up with my hypothesis enough to make me want to try it even more. So does it create a disadvantage for slower characters? Arguably, yes. Is that not exactly what you're asking to simulate when you want to simulate "a character who do fifty things before anyone else can even move or act or react?" Also, arguably yes. Is that a huge disadvantage for characters in the source material? Again, yes, and for all the exact reasons that using the SPD Chart the way that it claims to work creates those same disadvantages in the game. At the moment-- not having tested it myself-- I have to believe that not only is this the easiest way to represent the super-fast characters who can do all the things super-at once, it seems to essentially _be_ the reason the SPD Chart exists in the first place. Now is this something that everyone is going to enjoy? I can't say. Jack V's commentary suggests "no." My own expectations also suggest "no." So is it something that we _want_ to model? Well, given the requests for it, I am thinking yes. Given the standard repertoire of answers such as EDM, STR: AOE, Change Environment: Dirty room to clean, etc, I am going to go out on a limb and say that we tend to find it much more satisfying to model it badly, and perhaps more expensively.

Skip back to Justice Inc or DI for that; update to the current mechanics where there are changes. though I also get that something like that, published currently, would be ideal....

Sidekick. I know there is HSBRB for 6e (really wish we'd kept the name Sidekick, though), but the company itself has proven that you can publish a workabke rules set in far, far fewer pages than the current edition- or any editiin since 3e, really.

That has always been the weirdest thing to me: there are number of professions where heels are _expected_ for women, and I have to be honest with you: I have always felt that, owing to their overall impracticality, they are by nature extremely unprofessional. One man's opinion and all that.

I cant pull that one off. The wife is five-eleven and a nurse. I don't think she even _owns_ heels. The most brownie points I ever got was on our wedding day (she had heels for that). Right after the ceremony, on the way to the reception, I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out a small roll of fabric and rubber. On the advice of my sister M, I had purchased something called 'roll up flats." They are essentially fake shoes, consisting of nothing more than a thin sole and some stretchy fabric. At a glance, the look like Mary James. I have never seen anyone strip of a pair of fetish-laced heels faster before or since she laid eyes on those.

Sir Mixalot and I are very disappointed in all of you. The correct answer-- and there is only one correct answer-- is "if it doesn't, then take it back!" 0

Tribble got to it before I could. The Rapture is not a Biblical construct. It is a bit of hokum invented by---- eh. Too many years; I can't remember his name anymore. I _think_ he was Baptist, but I am not certain on that, either. At any rate, there is a type of Evangelical who makes their money audience on prophecy that they find and decode from the Scriptures. The two most commonly-accepted things that are absolutely _not_ supported by Scripture are the Rapture and the idea that the dead "go up to Heaven and become Angels." The only people I have ever met who accept the "truth" of the Rapture also just happen to know that when it happens, they will be among that wave. ugh.

Nope. If they are inclined to believe in the Rapture, they will nit accept that it happenex without them, therefore: fraud. Glad I could help.

As I read this I realize that the last time I turned the radio off was at some point in the mid-- the late?-- 90s. I haven't turned it back on since, and I can honestly say that I don't miss it a bit.

I'm on the other end of all that. I'd just like to see one of the older editions re-published with a note that says "okay; our bad. That was a bit much. Sorry about that." Clean up a couple of inconsistencies, and some stuff for mapping and tracking large-scale combats, in case that's your thing (it's not mine, but my players are about 50/50 on it, and I admit that it lets you simulate a lot of things like naval battles, etc). Now up-front, I'm going to say that I am so tired of this conversation (we're at a point where it rolls around every eight to ten weeks, it seems) that I'm not going to go into any defense or detail to the following statement: My biggest reason for my lack of interest in the "fixes" offered by the last two editions is that I have yet to find anything that proves to me there was something that was actually broken. "Points value" and "but he gets X or Y without A and I can't if I B" don't specify there is a problem with the system. Because one thing has an advantage over another doesn't mean that the game is broken or that it is not "perfectly universal." "Everything should cost the same when it effects the same" or whatever the arguments are that now all Characteristics cost the same-- it's all nonsense. There is absolutely no amount of STR that perfectly equates to a given amount of SPD; there is no amount of DEX that can substitute for 22" of teleport; no FLT is equivalent to X Mind Control--- Yes; there are numbers involved, and costs involved, and that's that. The fact that they can be made to cost the same or to cost different does not imply that any of them should, or that they are more or less "fair" or "equal" at given cost points. It's a fantasy pipe dream that these different things have a point of equivalence somewhere, and everyone was so taken with the math itself that the actual _need_ was never considered. Just like the cost of STR / cost of HTH attack debate. There. We have it "perfectly even" now, somehow, I guess. Until someone buys STR with two limitations on it. Uh-oh! He's getting his damage cheaper! Back to the revision board! It's--- no. I really have lost interest in even continuing the conversation. It's too late to stop the ever-expending rules in their quest for a fictitious perfection, but I would really like to just scrap the whole thing and back up to when it was still fast, light, and fun. Good night.

I recognize the old and accurate saw about having to explain a joke, but I do not know anywhere near enough about sportsball to have any idea what is going on here.... Hints?

Worth it.

If we can revisit the minis / tokens thing for just a moment, I would love to share this absolutely delightful thing I stumbled across this evening:

Betty ain't. I bet he gray.

Thanks, Starlord. I had a hunch, so I figured I'd play it safe.

There is, but given all the fallout and the bannings, etc, I would rather PM you about it.

Considering their relative scarcity on RPG boards and even in non-DnD RPGs in general- And _especially_ after "the incident" here back... Good God?! Has that been 20 years ago?! Anyway, LL and a tiny handful of others will know what I am referring to- I just assume everyone here is a guy regardless if name or profile picture. I do that a few other places as well, having discovered I am wrong less frequently that way than I was when i assumed everyone claiming to be a woman was in fact a woman. 😕 I may be making a mistake just posting this explanation. Can we still get banned for referencing the incident?

I absolutely hate that for you. Seriously, though: I figured there'd be at least one guy out there who couldn't do it. As I said, I won't speak for all guys, but you are the first guy I... uh... "know?"-- that can't do it. Most of us aren't even aware we're doing it until we're called out in the middle of it. And I won't attempt to speak for _any_ of them, but thus far, I have never met a woman who _can_ do it. Puzzling.