Duke Bushido

I studied debate for only a very short time: the only qualified teacher for that course of study left the school immediately after his wife suffered a stroke, and no suitable replacement was available, so well got to pick new electives. At any rate, I can't recall what it is, exactly-- I may not have even learned it before the course quit, but I know that there is a specific name for that exact fallacy.

Judging from the retaining straps on the visible holster and the matching straps wrapping the other thigh, I think it is fair to assume that she does; likely the second one is bolstered, as is the one visible in the photo. Ouch. That... That was physically painful, considering the need to murder grammar to make it work....

If it helps, you don't actually need a high PRE to be an idol. In fact, there is a large portion of the fandom that has a difficult time separating PRE from "scariness" or or "intimidating." That is not to say that it cant be used that way, of course. What might help to build that idol-level recognition is a Reputation (something positive) at a reasonably high level and perhaos something a bit custom like "easily recognized" or, if you are particularly interested in the downside of game, a custom Physical Limitation / complication: "draws a crowd." You will have to get with your GM and hammer out just how that works in the game and determine the value from there. In the youth group I have been runnning, I gave "draws a crowd" a vakue of 5 pts (I run 2e; yoir edition may be different) as it requires that 1) there be enough people around that roughly 1 in 20 would be interested enough to draw a crowd. 2) it requires that a few of people are able to see him 3) it requires that a few of the people that can see him actually recognize him 4) it takes a bit of time for people to spread the word and build excitement 5) most people dont have time to stop and gawk, at least not suring work hours in the US. Still, I try to make sure a handful of fans occurs at some point in every session. Remember that this is a disadvantage: they may be in the way; villains may put them in active danger, etc. Remember That you will have to build a personality appropriate to become an idol; very few people like a sanctimonious jerk or an arrogant mouthpiece. I would go on, but I am on a pbone and break is nearly over.

everything is on one page; there are no distractions-- no weird borders, no split pages. I just liked them.

I am _hugely_ in favor of forgiveness, and I understand that people cuange as they grow and as they learn. I think all of those things are good things. Case in point: I was raised by a racist (despite the fact that he was in his forties before he ever met someone who wasnt white. Go figure. I am no different from any other human being on the planet: I entered my adulthood with the "right" and "wrong" I was taught as a child. Was I racist? Yeah; probably. I never hated anybody, but I "knew" from my training that there was an "us" and a "them." But I met people and I grew and I changed. My first wife (rest her soul), as I have said before, was Irish. She wasn't white, though. She was adopted as an infant and was, in fact, Ethiopian, at least genetically. Like I said: as you experience the larger world, you grow- or at least, you _should_. I completely accept that there are certain things that are harder to forgive. However, the article admits the photo is decades old; the man in question says it was a stupid thing he did in his twenties (you know: the age bracket in which I just confessed to accidentally having drunken sex with a Polish body builder and loosing an entire motorcycle in another thread). The popular thing is now the same as it always has been: leap! Attack! Crucify! Has anyone looked at all into his life between then and now? Was it, as he states, a dumb idea to dress up in referrence to Blazing Saddles that has aged very poorly and become an even dumber thing in today's climate? I am more struck that he resigned, and as far as the article doesnt suggest otherwise, of his own volition and without argument. It seems very much as an understanding and accepting the consequences of his decades-old bad judgement. It suggests he has grown considerably, and I would guess- based only on what the "article" has to say (and tha's on quptes because with no other attaemots at fact finding or investigation, this is more gossip than news. My own opinion, sure, but it really comes off more as "hey everybody! Look what he did!" than it does any attempt to provide an underatanding of the situation. Maybe he grew; maybe he changed. We can find out by digging into him a little bit more, but until that happens, I am not foing to crucify him, because I _know_ a heart can change. Mine did. Though honestly, it's starting to go full-circle: without any attempt at humor I can honestly sat that the climate here in the US the last few years and suring the pandemic has me slowly starting to have a general dislike of white people.

Well as long as we're playing this... Met Reagan during his first term. Met Lindsey Thomas, too, and even though I was still relatively young and impressionable, thought he was a worm. That says a lot, I think. Raced dirtbikes against some young kid named Jeremy McGrath (and a lot of other people; let's make that clear). Many of us got our butts handed to us by a kid. Took a friend to "a place I won't get hit on by a bunch of guys." (When I was younger, I was a much bigger guy, and for some reason, many of my single lady friends would ask me to play escort when they just wanted to go out). Ended up at a gay bar where I got hit on and flirted with by a drag queen who would go on to be in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, a movie shot locally some years later. Went to a cast party and woke up in bed with a local news anchor who would go on to do a bit part in that same movie (playing herself) just a few months later. I don't _think_ anything happened, but we have pointedly never spoken about it, even to each other. I have a brother who had a classmate get a part in Swamp Thing 2 (also filmed locally). I punched an obnoxious neighbor because he had gotten drunk and was howling up and down the streets all night in the middle of the week. There was clapping. I also confess that I had wanted to do that for months anyway, as every single conversation he ever had started with "I'm first cousin's with Normal Fell!" (for those who don't know, Normal Fell played Mr. Roper on Three's Company) My first time through college, I was asked by a lesbian classmate to be her pretend boyfriend for a weekend trip to a wedding in Anniston, Alabama. Lots of family from Poland was coming in for the wedding. I had never been to a Polish wedding. We got separated during the reception. I woke up a few hours later in a motel room with several Poles, and a very burly old man bent over, staring at me, his face just inches from mine. He said nothing, but his stare was intense and his breath would intoxicate a horse. Finally he grinned, shoved a bottle between us and said, in a thick accent, "DRINK!" So I did. I woke up two days later pinned under a very nice-looking and very muscular young lady (and I know my type; I am pretty sure something _did_ happen, but to this day I don't remember what it might have been). When I left Anniston, I was missing two socks, one boot, my wallet, and 1982 Kawasaki 1000 LTD (my friend wanted to take the bike). I called my brothers for a bus ticket. I found the bike when I got home-- my friend had gotten tired of looking for me and had found my keys and wallet in our room (we took a cab to the wedding because of the dress) and she finally just rode back to Brunswick without me. I also found out that the nice-looking muscle girl was an olympic hopeful-- a backup for the girl who was to be competing the next year (she had been given a "pass" from training to attend the wedding, but I don't remember if it was a sister or a cousin). So I don't know how many degrees I am from anything or anyone, but I'm pretty certain I spent the middle of my life doing all the wrong things.

I don't know if it's what you're looking for, but I find that the layouts in The HERO System Book of Templates are the best-laid-out "Character Sheets" in a couple of decades. That whole book is great: possibly the best NPC book ever published under the HERO umbrella.

Dude! You live just a block down the street from me! How have you not noticed this?! I've been living here for like nine years now! No. Duke doesn't know TJack, at least not as anything other than TJack. Duke lives approximately nine-and-a-half-miles from The Middle of Nowhere, and so far as he knows, none of his friends or even his Players are on this site. In fact, the bulk of Duke's associates that _are_ on any sort of social media, it's motorcycle-related (Duke himself ran a motorcycle website for over twenty years, and is just burned out on motorcycle-related social media, soo.....) Duke and TJack also belong to another site, and Duke got a "someone has a birthday today" notification. Since Duke rather enjoys TJack's contributions, and by extension enjoys the virtual persona of TJack, he felt obliged to demonstrate that appreciation with an "it makes me happy that you are alive" post. Now as for the rest of you lot.....

"Need" is a strong word, and the answer is "it's going to vary from group to group." Some people just like them for their own sake; some people kind of need them to properly visualize what's going on. I tend to _prefer_ them, but I don't _need_ them per se. It's been my experience that a map of _any_ sort, even just a rough sketch, done reasonably to scale (not necessarily "compatible with miniatures" scale, but the various distances and objects on the map roughly to scale with each other) is helpful to pretty much everyone, simply because it gives a clear picture of what is where, what environmental items are where, who is positioned where, what actions are viable in any scenario, etc. Not only is it helpful for preventing and resolving disagreements about viable combat choices, it helps reinforce the scenario and the story: when the GM describes the wispy tendrils of the vines that curtain the pathway ahead, the Players can see the location of the tree from which they hang and if there is actually a path around them before deciding "I go around them" and the GM stating "there is no way around them" and the Players firing back with "you didn't say that; you said "hanging from a tree; you didn't mention that there is no way around the tree! Why is there no way around the tree?!" etc, etc, etc. Early on, in my Traveller days (let's just dig back to the seventies here....), our "maps" were "this die is you; that die is you; that die over there is you, Tommy. These black dice are the spaceport guards, and this jar of French Onion Dip is the comptroller's guardshack. The eraser on top of it is the communications array. This handful of chess pieces are crew members from other ships and civilians shopping in the port. That 8-track over there-- that's the Freetrader C.W. McCall. That other one is the courier ship Skynyrd. Over there, guarded by those two batteries, is the luxury liner Stratego....." They slowly evolved from there. Now as Nekkidcarpenter said, not using a map is perfectly fine. But again, even that is going to vary from group to group: some people need more help with immersion than do others. For what aspects of the game? the 5e GM screen has a nifty booklet that condenses a lot of things, and there are a lot of options for combat flowcharts. Character creation is a mixed bag-- Frankly, I find the older characters sheets helpful for the charts of maneuvers and their penalties / bonuses, and I like to have a Speed Chart available-- I have a few index cards with the Speed Chart and I give the players a couple of markers the can use to note their own SPD and what Segment we are on. What is it that you think a cheat sheet would help with? If you're not careful, you'll end up with a miniature rulebook you'll be thumbing through, even when you only need a small part of that information: you don't need a lot of Character Creation info in the heat of combat, for example. I know it's a schlep, and it doesn't seem to be terribly applicable at first, but pay attention to the Players and their reactions, etc. Drop anything that is clearly detracting from their fun or creating a real problem. Once they grasp the basics, you can work in other stuff and see who it goes then. A bit more specifically: don't split the party, at least not until you find out just what Players are cool sitting out for a few minutes. Make sure every scene has _something_, no matter how minor, for each Player Character to do, and try to incorporate one or two scenes into every session where a particular Character can strut his stuff-- spotlight moments, as it were. Pay attention to Player reaction during those spotlight moments-- do _not_ ask for feedback on the moments, because the Players will lie to you: "Oh, yeah; that was cool. I liked that" and they will do it because they like you, and they don't want to GM. Pay attention to their reactions in the moment, and just after. Just because they _did_ get to shine in the moment and the situation was tailor-built to their specific Character doesn't mean that it's something that the Player himself enjoyed. A specific example from a game a few months ago from the youth group: Kinetica has a medical doctorate, and has "medicine: General Practitioner" at 15-. I included an explosive prison break scene that featured several civilian casualties scattered over the area. This scene was specifically created for her: they were gravely wounded, but they were spread out and it would be impossible for a non-speedster to access all of them in time; there were sufficient supplies to be located on-site at the prison clinic, which had been conveniently opened via the removal of a wall during the escape. It also kept her-- a decided non-brick who would have been a liability during the combat in that scene, and likely hurt very badly-- doing something useful and not just sitting one out or being killed (I had to use very powerful villains to pull off the level of destruction required for the scene, I'm afraid). The Player _hated_ it! Not because it was perfect for her Character, but because she (the Player) had become so deeply invested in the game-- because she had suspended her disbelief to a point that she was totally immersed in the situation, she literally _agonized_ over every die roll, absolutely, and without hyperbole-- shedding literal tears that her dice might run cold and one of these people might die. No; I am not kidding. "The perfect scene" that I had planned was absolute torture for the Player. I don't want to scare you away, but it happens this way sometimes. Yet when asked about it after the game, "Oh, it was fine. I mean, it was something that only Kinetica could do, and it had to be done, right....?" I saw her reactions _during_ the scene, however, and it was very clear that it was _not_ fine. Even all these months later, when the Players do that "ooh! You remember that thing--?" jabbering, that scene-- the scene where she saved the lives of fourteen critically-injured prison guards and convicts-- _never_ comes up. It's a bad memory for the Player. I haven't done anything like that for her since. Let's be honest: the list of "tips for GMs" could go on and on and on for pages and pages and _never_ be complete. So I am going to stick with what I said, and add only one more item: Be prepared ahead of the game. Make sure you know what the villains are doing, always, and when and how they will do it. What they will do if they are victorious; what they will do if they lose. Be prepared for both eventualities in every scenario. Know who your NPCs are, why they are on scene, and what they know and do. Know your locations. Drop anything that is negatively impacting the Players. No: you don't have to make everything nice-nice and ice cream; the more familiar the Players become with your style, the more they will accept challenge and tolerate new and more difficult challenges; I promise. But from the get-go, if they aren't liking it, find a way to resolve it quickly or drop it completely ("Okay, this isn't working out like I thought; let's back up to the scene where....") and move on.

Honestly, I don't think anyone does. But regardless, it provides a bit of fun for all: we can still say "we appreciate your existence;" it's just on the day you have selected as your birthday. My personal favorite on such a thing: There was some remodeling going on in Savannah on the facades of a few buildings many, many years ago (like the 80s) and I was walking through it with a date. To be fair, lots of people were walking through it, but I wasn't dating them, so.... The young lady and I heard someone holler, and we looked up to see a guy grabbing at a line that was likely supposed to be attacked to another guy. We won't ever know exactly what happened, but what we saw was this: a scaffold walkboard was laying over sideways (don't know what happened) and a guy was falling. He was four stories up, and was flailing. He managed to whack his head on the scaffolding of the "floor" beneath him, but doing so kind of flipped him around so that he could grab onto the scaffolding he was falling past. It didn't really help, as when he grabbed it he was jerked violently and couldn't hold on (or even slow dow, but an effort was made). At that point we lost track of him behind the temporary fences erected around the work zone to protect traffic and passers-by. We heard commotion and shouting, and we were pretty sure we had just watched a guy get all kinds of messed up. The guy who (we think) first hollered was leaning over the scaffold, looking down at whatever was going on behind the fence. After a few minutes, he stands, shoves and arm out and very definately gives "the finger" to someone below him. Almost immediately the guy who fell-- clothing torn, dirt and much all over him, (weren't close enough to tell much else, but the way he moved suggested he was a bit sore) began to climb the scaffold. He stopped on the second floor to take a hammer from his belt and throw it at the first guy with all his might. He missed by a mile, but the intentions were clear. He resumed his hollering and yelling and climbed up even faster. "Jesus!" my date exclaimed. "That guy's tougher than a Huddle House steak!" And that, Sir, has ever-since been my go-to expression for those who can push well beyond the limits of human frailty.

Congratulations on having survived through so many itterations of Tekken! Man, you must be tough.....

If it takes a special detect to hear it, I wouldnt consider it as a Disadvantage at all. It qouls be like taking "can be seen behind walls by characters with X-Ray vision" as a Disadvantage. Still, its a neat idea. Now if all the "major players" can just hear it be default, or if anyone with this soundtrack can hear anyone else with it.... Well, even then, i'd be hard-pressed to call it a Disadvantage since its more of a "thats just how the world works" kind of thing. I would definately see the disadvabtage if ony major players had the soundtrack but everyone could hear it, but I can see the upsise too, particulalry for characters with a strong reputation (and it would prerty much wreck any chance of having a secret identity. :😆 . even then, though, I think a middle-of-the-road distinctive features would cover it. but don't worry: someone will be along shortly to explain why I am wrong.

I havent done it, but I have seen it done, and just as you describe: Stun is everything. My observations feom admittedly limited experience: One shot kills are gone. That is, you lose the idea of killing an opponent without knocking hom out first ir the idea of knocking him out without leaving him in mortal danger (damage becomes more Car Wars than D&D). The only workaround I ever saw implemented was Con STUN: One of the groups I have seen doing this (and in all these years, I have only seen three that I can recall) that had a knock-out workaround used a rule that when you were CON-stunned, you made a CON check; if you failed, you were "out" for a number of Phases equal to the amount by which you failed (not to exceed your REC in Turns, but I dont think its possible to roll that badly. I have no idea what sort of modifiers might have been in use, as I was a spectator at a convention game when I ran across this). I have notices that every group had modifies the Kilking Attack rules a bit, but I couldnt tell you if it was necessary or even related. The most interesting was replacinf rhe STUN modifier completely with "killing attacks roll on the hit location chart." The locations werent used otherwise; it was simply the damage modifier that was applied. Note also that I didnt say it was the best option; I said it was the most interesting.... Let us know what you come up with; I have an unusual appreciation foe house rules.

I have had it with the white supremacists, the covidiots, the Y'all Quaeda, the Proud Bois, and all the FREEDOMies..... It just hit me today: the Greatest Generation. My grandfathers-- perhaps some of yours. Came home from the war, set to building houses and raising families. The Greatest Generation raised the Whiniest Generation.... Yeah-- I posted it here because it was just a thought that hit me, and I don't want to pursue it any further.....

Yes. The answer to questions like this is _always_ "yes." Let's do us all a favor.

Funny. I've got a speedster / brick sort-of-villain we've been using since the early '80s named Freight Train. His schtick is move-throughs, obviously. It may have been mentioned in the thread already, but I recall a friend who GM'ed for a group that featured a speedster named "Boomer," as in sonic booms. Though with the current social trends, I can see why you might want to avoid that one now....

Well that one just got stolen. Not only is it _brilliant_ (in the rarely-used American way, not the over-used British way), but this is the _perfect_ rival for a speedster in the youth campaign....

Ah. Hadn't even thought about such a problem existing, to be honest. Thanks, Matt.

Honestly if you allow alchemy in your games, I dont see this being any worse. What is the fundamental difference between buying a potion of fire or a few uses of the fire spell? Potion of healing versus a wand of cure wounds? Same sort of thing, I think.

You are welcome, Sir. Now folks, that's just hotlinked, and I would snag a copy (actually, I _did_ snag a copy, but I would rwcommend doing the same, as the membership on the hosting sute is notoriously fickle and prone to take things down all the time- to the poibt that I will bookmark something on my break with the hopes of examing it further when I get home from work, only to get that big bad 404 message....

"Magic Fuel" (Magic Juice, Magic Sauce, etc) is my personal shorthand. While there are more different magic systems for HERO than there are Fantasy HERO GMs, they all have one thing in common: at some point, there is some END-equivalent that powers magic or allows users access to magic. (Seriously: I don't think I have ever seen a magic system that features nothing but 0-END spells). I can't bring myself to call it "mana" because in my own lexicon, mana was essentially bread that fell from Heaven to feed the Jews during their 40 years in the desert. I can't take "bread-powered magic" seriously; I just can't. If you enjoy a lighthearted look at fantasy, and can at least appreciate puns, you won't regret it.