DasBroot

Don't worry - they'll deflect it by having someone else do something scandalous so the news cycle abandons it before it gets fully absorbed by the public.

It's worked every other time.

The Day After Earth: Final Conflict

Triple-title-combo

Lost in Space--Danger! Will Robinson! This is the extremely muddled, overly-long attempt to reboot the "Lost in Space" series as a movie. There are moments that harken back to the original series, but they are essentially overshadowed by a poor time travel plot, and wooden characterizations. ("Recommended for me" on Netflix)

Lost in Space is one of those movies I liked in spite of itself.  It had a LOT of bad going for it but the tech was so slick looking and Gary Oldman did such justice to the Smith character (you know, because he's Gary Oldman) that I forgave a lot.  A LOT,

The new Voltron series on Netflix.

I had a smile on my face most of the time.  Faithful AND better written (remaining kid friendly but with dialogue that doesn't instantly make an adult cringe) than the source material - this is what a retelling should be about.  My wife shook her head every time she noticed me watching it (like "Bones" is any more realistic, sweetie) but really - the day I don't enjoy seeing a giant robot made of out lions blow up enemy battleships will be a dark day indeed.

Oh, most assuredly.  I haven't run a 'pure' fantasy game ever.  

My longest running / most frequently played fantasy setting is a home brew where the characters are immortals (in the Moorcock 'reborn over and over again in times of need' sense rather than the 'Highlander' sense - though one of the longest running world antagonists is one of these immortals who 'rejected' the call to return to death and has just stuck around, going mad over the aeons).

It's technological and magic levels are very, very Final Fantasy inspired (FF6 to be precise, released the year after I started running my homebrew)  - larger cities have basic technologies (steam age) augmented by magic, with a few weird things like magic-crystal powered laser weapons (always popular in FF).  When Ebberon was released everyone in my gaming group laughed at how similar some things were (that's magi-steam-punk for you, though... there are only so many themes to go around)  - though the Warforge are much cooler than the Clockworkers in my setting.

The reason for overall technological stagnation, though? No oil.  The world was created by a god as is and he didn't see fit to include oil.  The world is, in its own way, also immortal - natural non-renewable resources like iron, etc grow back over time - and even man / dwarf / orc made tunnels heal themselves given decades as well.

Big Hero 6 on Netflix.

Not bad at all.  Very cool look and power visuals for the villain (who almost pulled off sympathetic until his apathy towards the fallout of the fire and culmination of his master plan).  

One of my recurring dreams involves my three year old son walking along the edge of something precarious (sometimes a construction site like beam framework for a skyscraper, sometimes a cliff, sometimes just the curb of a heavily trafficked street, etc).  I am restrained and unable to get to him - usually by my wrists being chained to cinderblocks that I can't lift.  All I can do is yell, and he never responds or even reacts - just keeps walking happily further and further away from me.

He's never fallen in the dream but its a very unpleasant experience all around and by far the most frequent of my recurring dreams. 

It's always him... never my daughter (who is also a toddler).

She gets to sit at the top of a darkened staircase waving her hands up an down like she does when she giggles as I find myself suddenly unable to climb stairs (I'm using my hands and feet and trying to crawl up the stairs like she herself does, but can't move).

The inability to move in both of them is probably sleep paralysis manifesting in the dream.  The rest of it, though... 

I do.  In fact - if it's not a sandwich (sandwiches include hamburgers and hot dogs in my reality) or doesn't come on a stick I prefer to use a utensil (whenever possible - I'm not going to hyperventilate at a party if I can't find a fork for my potato chips).

I just prefer to not touch food - no matter how many times I've washed my hands (and I carry baby wipes in my backpack to wash my hands just in case I am offered food).

It's not hypochondria - I have no problems changing my kids diapers or grabbing hold of a sweaty or even lightly bloodied Olympic bar to deadlift. People are weird. 

I wonder what we can expect if the Democrats succeed in introducing legislature that overturns this travel ban?

Getting an EO overturned in the first two weeks of power when your party controls all levels of government would be something to see.

It won't happen, but it would be something to see.

Babylon 5 Is Alive

DOnt know why I thought of this:

 

A music video of Aerosmith's ​Dude Looks Like A Lady

 

 

starring Klinger from MASH

The internet hears, and obeys

So Trump issued a gag order of the National Parks Service and USDA to not use Twitter, contact the press, or communicate to the public. 

Badlands National Parks Service spent the rest of the day tweeting Climate Change Data - until it was shut down. And then the scientists tweeted on personal accounts.

 

 

Today it seems that both departments have said that they won't be withholding information from the public (as far as I've read)

Long story short so to speak.

 

This does raise an interesting question, though, and a potentially dangerous one (given the number of fake news stories):

Since a growing number of people are turning to social media to receive their news should social media accounts be provided the same protection under the first amendment  as the press? Or does being privately/publicly owned with its own terms of usage by said owners trump that (no pun intended.  Gah. Need to hit a thesaurus for the next four years.)?

I'm the one that missed the 'new' in his post.

I'd still have a mutiny but less of one - a few people at the table *do* pass their sheets to the 'professionals' after a first pass and have the pros optimise it - often giving them an extra 50 to 100 character points to play with.

Which is sort of related to my earlier anecdote - set the limits all you want and you'll still have a werewolf with a few heightened senses and some claws standing beside a Dragonball Z fighter able to destroy a building with a single gesture with a near invulnerable personal Barrier and mach flight and...

It's actually why Sum 0 works for us especially for short term games.  The professional builder's character is 'better', certainly, but at least he's not a virtual 800 point (or a thousand)  point character (they always choose magic or power armor as a concept. Lots of points to be gained with focus and such.) to someone else's 400.

A good GM keeps a handle on this, of course, but it can be tiring to all involved - both to say AND hear 'no, please don't do that' (especially if it's a good idea) so many GM, especially new ones, just... give up.  One guy in our group is the biggest comic book fan I know and he'd love to run a game... but every single time he does someone does something that he just can't conceptually deal with (and he's the kind of guy who has a hard time saying 'no') so he's learned to not even try.

My approach to this problem is to say "Describe your character to me in narrative, non-mechanical terms" and then build it for them. More work for me of course, but I actually like building Hero character, so it's all good.

I'd have a mutiny.  My gaming group is pile of programmers and mathematicians (and me, who has a 50% grade 10 math score under his belt from more than 20 years ago) - crunching the numbers and the mechanical complexity that Hero character building CAN bring is what they like best about the system.  

Since it's what they like I encourage it and even occasionally hold character building 'challenges' ("In this super hero game I'm using Sum 0 - all advantages and disadvantages on a power or power pool must sum to 0").  It's only when someone decides to mechanically 'solve' the game that things turn sour.

I was joking with my wife (a very religious black Baptist from a long, long line of such) about how the oath of office would go:

Me: "I'm waiting for him to burst into flames when he places his hand on the bible."

Her (as Trump): "Can I just hover over it? I'm a hoverer, ok? I like to hover."

Me: "Repeat after me: I, Donald J Trump, do solemnly swear...."

Her: "Hold on, hold on: Before we begin ... I have this legal document that states our definition of the term 'solemnly swear' in the context of this contract..."

 It is all very well to say that you "Didn't vote against planned parenthood", but I don't think that Trump and the Republicans ever made any secret that that was one of the programmes that they wanted to get rid of should they be elected. To quote "Super Chicken" "You knew the job was dangerous when you took it", so complaining about what is likely to happen  NOW is "closing the barn door after the horse has bolted".

Exactly.  This is why it's important to educate yourself on more than what the candidate is saying - he represents a PARTY. There are jokes online about people who are happy to get rid of Obamacare because they're protected by the ACA but there are also people who didn't truly realise that 'oh, wait... they're going to trash my coverage the first opportunity they get.'  

If you don't like what THEY want to do then no matter what you think of the candidate you should probably reconsider.  Not doing so is exactly what the parties count on.

Cool, but over-rated in the grand scheme of deadly predators.  Had the marines been fully briefed and allowed to go in hot it would have been a much shorter movie.

That's about what it would take, though - an ambush predator with near human intellect (so, smarter than the average xenomorph), opposable thumbs, and a quick life cycle.  Bulletproof would be a nice perk.

Or, you know, be a super virus.

I only really have two rules for running a Champions game:

Rule 1: Is the character you are designing fun for you to play?

Rule 2: Is the character you are designing fun for the rest of the table to see you play?

Rule 2a: Reminder that the GM is someone at the table.

Champions is currently on hiatus because a few players violated rule two on a regular basis.   We have less tolerance for that now in our 40s than we did in our teens but it was still disruptive enough.

The greatest offender took the spot with an 'anything goes' style game but only ran it two sessions because, indeed, anything does not go and we broke him immediately and deliberately (I played an intangible character with an affect physical world double penetrating 0 end killing attack and 32 identical duplicates). 

That's a big reason why people don't run Champions games, however, in my experience - it's very easy to derail: Either everyone builds all their characters together with an idea of how they're going to work together and with a definite 'goal' for the game or it all falls apart.

Not sure karmic payback is accurate. Preying on humans is not a very healthy long term strategy for species survival unless you're a mosquito (and we're beginning to turn the Eye of Sauron in their direction, too).

Pretty sure that he's pretty sure he's literally dead the instant he sets foot outside that embassy - no matter what the truth of the matter may be.

A man who has become notorious for releasing things that paint the government in a negative and untrustworthy way can hardly be expected to expect them to be trustworthy now.

Yeah, it looks like that follow through won't happen after all.

Assange lawyer: Manning commutation doesn't meet extradition offer's conditions

 

I'll admit to being surprised. I thought Assange was going just a little crazy being stuck in the embassy. I thought maybe he was almost looking for an excuse to leave it.  I am a sucker.

I halve the healing.

It's pricey, certainly, and definitely a prime contender for a multi-pool slot but anecdotally I run high AP (80 to 100) Superheroic games - Body damage is rare and low enough that a multi-pooled heal is up to the task even halved.  No character has ever had body damage carry over between sessions.

Outside of a multi-pool, however, it IS definitely what I would consider prohibitively expensive. 

Justice League: Gods and Monsters

I liked it.  It told a complete story and it took an embarrassingly long time for me to figure out the twist. 

Better (in a worse way) men than he have tried to kill liberty. It would be a cosmic irony if he did it by accident but let's be serious - Deadpool and Wolverine have nothing on liberty's regeneration factor.

Four words that have served me very well my entire adult life:

"This, too, shall pass."

The future isn't set in stone. Predictions aren't guarantees (just look at the polls leading to the election for evidence of that).  There's any number of ways this can all play out:  He's a 70 year old man - who says he lives his entire term?.  He could get impeached for trying to fulfil a few of his campaign promises.  He could simply walk away from most of them (which he's already doing.)

Be vigilant not fearful.

This is the second time that you've mentioned suicidal thoughts in this thread. I don't want to offend you, but if you are having suicidal thoughts -- if that is in any remote way on your current list of options for dealing with any situation -- please seek out help.

Definitely agreed. Good hasn't abandoned the world.  Evil hasn't triumphed.  The Republicans saw a chance to take all three levels and took it - nothing more, nothing less.

Mr Trump will make America look like a buffoon, certainly, but we'll be just fine.