Jhamin

First off I think it's cute you think "we" ever believed in American Exceptionalism or Whig History.  Everyone is 20 once and middle-aged eventually.  I remember the early 2000s as when my country lost it's collective mind after being attacked, invaded Iraq... because, openly setup a surveillance state, and told everyone to keep shopping lest the terrorists win.  Don't presume that no one caught the hypocrisy or that everyone expected Afghanistan to go well.  Lots of folks doubted we would do any better than any of the other Great Powers that were going to "fix" them.
Thing of it is, I had a lot of discussions with my elders about how this was in no way new.  Idealism breaks down once the world steadfastly refuses to be horrified by what horrifies you, the same crimes keep getting committed, and no one goes to jail.
 
We had a discussion on this forum a couple years ago that overlapped this: "Can Heroes be proactive?"  The discussion was about if it was possible for heros to just go out and root out the things that were bad instead of just waiting for crime to happen & reacting too it.   I remember that discussion vividly because for me it happened against the backdrop of the George Floyd Riots.  I remember replying to that thread while the Daunte Wright protests were happening.  The thing we kept coming back too was: What were the heroes going to do to "make it right"?  Beat up the protesters?  Beat up the "bad" cops?  (how could they tell which ones those were?, all of them?).  Does punishing crime just hold up corrupt systems?  Does tearing down those systems create anarchy?  Basically, Superheroics breaks down when presented with an even cursory examination of the actual complexity of the world.  Batman & Superman have the advantage of an author who makes sure their heroics work in the context of their worlds and they never beat the crap out of an innocent person.
 
A big part of the appeal of 4 color comics is that there are good guys and bad guys and you don't really need to worry about if General Zod has a point.  Our actual world never gives us that kind of clarity.
 
So, to return to your query: Is Istvatha V'han our lord and savior?  Maybe? The Book of the Empress talks big about how she likes to make everyone happy so they they don't force her to obliterate them, but lets assume she actually makes everyone happy.  How?  The books talks about improving technology but also keeping out of local moral and religious affairs.  So abortion, human rights, religious freedom, etc would explicitly be exactly the same under her regime.  I'm sure food and security would solve a lot of the problems of the world but how are they given?  Airdrop?  Welfare State?  The book doesn't say. 
 
Are we better off under the Empress?  I imagine the TVs are higher-res, the internet is faster, and no one is hungry... but then what?  Is that all there is?  Do we all get more meaningful jobs?  Or are a bunch of us still going to be manning the drive through for not enough money?  Is there a new way to be that makes us all better people or do the taxes just go somewhere else and our lives are basically the same?  Under the current system in much of the world there is at least a fiction that we can find ways to better our positions in life.  Under the Empress is our cage just gilded to a higher degree but the choices are no different?

First off I think it's cute you think "we" ever believed in American Exceptionalism or Whig History.  Everyone is 20 once and middle-aged eventually.  I remember the early 2000s as when my country lost it's collective mind after being attacked, invaded Iraq... because, openly setup a surveillance state, and told everyone to keep shopping lest the terrorists win.  Don't presume that no one caught the hypocrisy or that everyone expected Afghanistan to go well.  Lots of folks doubted we would do any better than any of the other Great Powers that were going to "fix" them.
Thing of it is, I had a lot of discussions with my elders about how this was in no way new.  Idealism breaks down once the world steadfastly refuses to be horrified by what horrifies you, the same crimes keep getting committed, and no one goes to jail.
 
We had a discussion on this forum a couple years ago that overlapped this: "Can Heroes be proactive?"  The discussion was about if it was possible for heros to just go out and root out the things that were bad instead of just waiting for crime to happen & reacting too it.   I remember that discussion vividly because for me it happened against the backdrop of the George Floyd Riots.  I remember replying to that thread while the Daunte Wright protests were happening.  The thing we kept coming back too was: What were the heroes going to do to "make it right"?  Beat up the protesters?  Beat up the "bad" cops?  (how could they tell which ones those were?, all of them?).  Does punishing crime just hold up corrupt systems?  Does tearing down those systems create anarchy?  Basically, Superheroics breaks down when presented with an even cursory examination of the actual complexity of the world.  Batman & Superman have the advantage of an author who makes sure their heroics work in the context of their worlds and they never beat the crap out of an innocent person.
 
A big part of the appeal of 4 color comics is that there are good guys and bad guys and you don't really need to worry about if General Zod has a point.  Our actual world never gives us that kind of clarity.
 
So, to return to your query: Is Istvatha V'han our lord and savior?  Maybe? The Book of the Empress talks big about how she likes to make everyone happy so they they don't force her to obliterate them, but lets assume she actually makes everyone happy.  How?  The books talks about improving technology but also keeping out of local moral and religious affairs.  So abortion, human rights, religious freedom, etc would explicitly be exactly the same under her regime.  I'm sure food and security would solve a lot of the problems of the world but how are they given?  Airdrop?  Welfare State?  The book doesn't say. 
 
Are we better off under the Empress?  I imagine the TVs are higher-res, the internet is faster, and no one is hungry... but then what?  Is that all there is?  Do we all get more meaningful jobs?  Or are a bunch of us still going to be manning the drive through for not enough money?  Is there a new way to be that makes us all better people or do the taxes just go somewhere else and our lives are basically the same?  Under the current system in much of the world there is at least a fiction that we can find ways to better our positions in life.  Under the Empress is our cage just gilded to a higher degree but the choices are no different?

First off I think it's cute you think "we" ever believed in American Exceptionalism or Whig History.  Everyone is 20 once and middle-aged eventually.  I remember the early 2000s as when my country lost it's collective mind after being attacked, invaded Iraq... because, openly setup a surveillance state, and told everyone to keep shopping lest the terrorists win.  Don't presume that no one caught the hypocrisy or that everyone expected Afghanistan to go well.  Lots of folks doubted we would do any better than any of the other Great Powers that were going to "fix" them.
Thing of it is, I had a lot of discussions with my elders about how this was in no way new.  Idealism breaks down once the world steadfastly refuses to be horrified by what horrifies you, the same crimes keep getting committed, and no one goes to jail.
 
We had a discussion on this forum a couple years ago that overlapped this: "Can Heroes be proactive?"  The discussion was about if it was possible for heros to just go out and root out the things that were bad instead of just waiting for crime to happen & reacting too it.   I remember that discussion vividly because for me it happened against the backdrop of the George Floyd Riots.  I remember replying to that thread while the Daunte Wright protests were happening.  The thing we kept coming back too was: What were the heroes going to do to "make it right"?  Beat up the protesters?  Beat up the "bad" cops?  (how could they tell which ones those were?, all of them?).  Does punishing crime just hold up corrupt systems?  Does tearing down those systems create anarchy?  Basically, Superheroics breaks down when presented with an even cursory examination of the actual complexity of the world.  Batman & Superman have the advantage of an author who makes sure their heroics work in the context of their worlds and they never beat the crap out of an innocent person.
 
A big part of the appeal of 4 color comics is that there are good guys and bad guys and you don't really need to worry about if General Zod has a point.  Our actual world never gives us that kind of clarity.
 
So, to return to your query: Is Istvatha V'han our lord and savior?  Maybe? The Book of the Empress talks big about how she likes to make everyone happy so they they don't force her to obliterate them, but lets assume she actually makes everyone happy.  How?  The books talks about improving technology but also keeping out of local moral and religious affairs.  So abortion, human rights, religious freedom, etc would explicitly be exactly the same under her regime.  I'm sure food and security would solve a lot of the problems of the world but how are they given?  Airdrop?  Welfare State?  The book doesn't say. 
 
Are we better off under the Empress?  I imagine the TVs are higher-res, the internet is faster, and no one is hungry... but then what?  Is that all there is?  Do we all get more meaningful jobs?  Or are a bunch of us still going to be manning the drive through for not enough money?  Is there a new way to be that makes us all better people or do the taxes just go somewhere else and our lives are basically the same?  Under the current system in much of the world there is at least a fiction that we can find ways to better our positions in life.  Under the Empress is our cage just gilded to a higher degree but the choices are no different?

The immediate and obvious implication of brining Wrath into the modern CU is that Slug as a representative and ruler of the Elder Worm would almost certainly drop everything else he was doing to go get the Worm Scepter away from Fear.  As Slug is a master of Elder Worm magic, in his hands it would *not* be uncontrolled and based on guess-work.
 
If you have sufficiently setup Slug in the game, everyone would understand this is a very bad thing.  To the point where PCs might have to work with Fear to keep that from happening.

The immediate and obvious implication of brining Wrath into the modern CU is that Slug as a representative and ruler of the Elder Worm would almost certainly drop everything else he was doing to go get the Worm Scepter away from Fear.  As Slug is a master of Elder Worm magic, in his hands it would *not* be uncontrolled and based on guess-work.
 
If you have sufficiently setup Slug in the game, everyone would understand this is a very bad thing.  To the point where PCs might have to work with Fear to keep that from happening.

But one thing you can do, with a power armor style build, is buy up the REC in the END reserve something crazy.  This looks like it's very similar to buying 0 END...but there's a huge difference.  You're not impacting the active points on the expensive powers...your 10d6 blast goes into a 50 point (control cost) VPP, not 62 points for 1/2 END or 75 for 0 END.  You can apply that to other things, like your Flight.  
 
I think it takes some consideration, but I think you can use the fact that you *don't* have to buy Reduced END in a manner very similar to a Power skill.  Buying one doesn't save you much, if you're just buying it for a single power.  But if it's applied to multiple powers...the savings get to be considerable.  The END Reserve REC is the "power skill";  the cost savings comes from not increasing the active point cost with an advantage, rather than applying a limitation. 
 
I'll grant that this might dictate buying an arguably abusively high REC.... 
 
Another point may be that...well, if it's going onto power armor, it's OIF anyway, so there's a substantial cost break.  Figure:  9 REC in an OIF END Reserve only costs 4 points.
 
From a character design standpoint:  when you buy REC, are you buying to deal with END costs per turn, or for purposes of recovering STUN?  If your REC for STUN purposes would be about the same as for END...well, the END Reserve is gonna ba a hard sell.......
 

The Ghostbusters cartoon from the 1980s mentioned at one point that Winston's past academic experience included biblical studies. That was probably extrapolated from the Bible quotation he made during the first movie. But that likely isn't a bad skill to have under the circumstances.
 
As for Peter Venkman's academic accomplishments, I'm pretty confident he B.S.-ed his way through those degrees like he did everything else.
 

I have some strong recommendations.  
 
Use the APG's.  Specifically, for: 
Social Combat Possession Extradimensional Space The Ghostbusters will likely never have a reason to engage in physical combat with other humans.  They will need to engage with them socially for finding information, getting funding, avoiding governmental audits (IRS, EPA, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission...), managing their reputations.  
 
I wouldn't try to "build the spoon" with proton packs and other equipment.  Ghostbusters are Heroic level PCs, with no special abilities of their own, so proton packs can have a basic writeup of what they do.  Drain, 1d6, all ghostly Powers, one at a time, recovers per month.  They're big and bulky and need to be recharged back at base after heavy usage (say, an hour).  The "jobber" ghosts (the one-and-done mook types, the spud, Slimer, etc.), all of their Powers are built with Unified Power, so they drop hard and fast when proton beams are applied.  If they need to recover from them, they can buy Regeneration, all ghostly Powers, one at a time, however much they need.  Any Desolidification they have automatically has proton beams as the SFX that it doesn't protect against.  The mid-range, Shubs and Zuuls, demonic dog critters, have enough Power Defense that they can ignore a proton beam, and Gozer and the Traveller are boss-level entities that need a lot of research to defeat, and likely crossing the streams.  
 
Speaking of, crossing the streams will never happen by accident; technobabble here, but basically, proton packs put out a stream of positively charged particles.  Take two magnets, try to push the positively charged (north) poles together, and what happens?  They repel one another.  Crossing the streams is something the Ghostbusters have to do on purpose, and they have to fight the packs to get them to do that.  And when they do?  Each pack provides 25 Active Points worth of a Variable Power Pool that the GM gets to use for whatever they want.  If there's an extradimensional cross-rip, they'll typically create some kind of explosion to close that.  If there's not one, then the GM gets a minimum of 50 Active Points worth of whatever.  
 

In a number of recent interviews with the remaining actors the weight of the packs was mentioned. All three actors said they were around 40 lbs. and very difficult to wear on a long term basis or when running.

checks threads
 
oops...
 
I'll have to remember to check my threads before posting.  ^_^;
 
Welp, as least I have more answers to work with.  : )
 
Also, my sweetheart thought of a good reason to visit the ruins of Detroit (for earlier games): volunteer work.  Wonder why I didn't think of that...?

My thought is that if Ravenswood it too far from Millenium City, just move it closer.  We won't tell.  I will also say that with kids as rich as those at Ravenswood I would expect a lot of "Sweet Sixteen" cars available to bum rides in.  In a highschool game I'd probably let a 16 or older PC buy a normal car with their wealth or a relatively cheap "4 wheeled friend" perk to reflect the beater they got running over the summer.
 
This question seem familiar.  Didn't you post this exact same thread a year or so ago?  Here was my answer then:
 
I've been running a Ravenswood game for several years now.  
 
The way I've been dealing with it is by:
- Getting the kids off campus (Dates, Movies, visiting parks, Music Shows)
- Having adventures come to them (hunteds who know where they live, ex-students with an axe to grind, shennanigans in the science labs & library)
- School Events (Rival Schools, Secret ID drama at the Spring Formal, Field Trips)
- Family (One PC's father is hunted by Viper, another is the son of a Supervillain, several NPCs are the children of Heros)
 
I've found that you have to get out of the "Mayor calls the PCs on the Red Batphone" type of adventures with teenagers.  I lean into the drama of highschool.  Not only do you want to get the right date for Prom, but she is being wooed by a "nontraditional" student from Von Drotte Academy (aka a mutant from Viper's school for budding supervillains).
We have a whole ongoing plot about the future version of one PC's first girlfriend who keeps attacking the PCs to prevent them from doing all the evil she says they do in the future.
 
Also: One PC paid points for a fake ID that lets them use Rideshare services to get around town.  It won't help them get to a superfight, but it lets them get to interesting locations.
 
Having another year under my belt with my Ravenswood game I will add the following:
Have a couple of the staff be up to something.  Let the PCs find out but make sure they never get hard evidence to prove anything and have the other teachers side with the adults.  Harry Potter kept this up for like 5 books. Adventures in the city should never just be a weekend thing.  Stuff going down on a school night is just the sort of thing that adds time pressure, angst, and drama to a teen heroes life.  "I have to stop the Candyman, but if my RA catches me out past curfew I won't be able to take Wendy to the spring formal!" I've gotten a lot of mileage out of all the other kids at school, normal and powered.  (I try to make a point of having the normal kids matter, it makes the whole "secret ID thing" an actual struggle.  I'm running my game "today" so there is one normal kid who has several times gotten into internet fights with teen supervillians that the PCs had to bail him out of.  The kids themselves are friends, bullies, loaners, etc.  Crack out all that teen drama for some great roleplaying One NPC called his uncle Zorran the Artificer to see if "uncle Z" could fix his mind-controlled girlfriend The kids' parents got that money somewhere & kids have had viper try to kidnap them as hostages against their parents or been drawn into dynastic family stuff There is one kinda OK kid with *really* rich parents that keeps throwing his money around to try to buy a cool and interesting reputation.  His parties keep getting crashed by the super kids from Viper's training school.

I once ended a session by having the PCs find a letter that contained vital information.  They had spent the whole session looking for it, felt good they had found it, and one Player transcribed the letter as they were certain it had more clues than were obvious.

The next session they formed a plan to act on their new information & I had a NPC interject to remind them of an important thing they were overlooking (I didn't want to waste a session with them going down a blind alley).  They insisted that *wasn't* info that they had.  I insisted it was in the letter they had just worked so hard to get.  The players all looked at me in silence & the one who had transcribed that letter held up her notebook page & proved that info *wasn't* among the info they had gotten from the letter last session.
 
Knowing I had screwed up & left out a vital point, I (rather lamely) had the NPC declare there was "a hidden fold" in the letter that contained the information.
 
The Players all laughed for about 10 min at my weak save & from that point on if I ever tacked something on to an ongoing info dump someone would mention that "there must have been a fold".
 
This has been a running joke now for 25 years.  I married one of them.  The woman with the notebook was our Maid of Honor.  In the years since I've gotten christmas cards that say "Merry Christmas! and a >obvious fold in the card< "Happy New Year".  I texted my wife 4 things to pick up at the store a couple weeks ago, then remembered something else 10 min later & got a text back "was there a fold?"
 
I try to take it with good humor......

My thought is that if Ravenswood it too far from Millenium City, just move it closer.  We won't tell.  I will also say that with kids as rich as those at Ravenswood I would expect a lot of "Sweet Sixteen" cars available to bum rides in.  In a highschool game I'd probably let a 16 or older PC buy a normal car with their wealth or a relatively cheap "4 wheeled friend" perk to reflect the beater they got running over the summer.
 
This question seem familiar.  Didn't you post this exact same thread a year or so ago?  Here was my answer then:
 
I've been running a Ravenswood game for several years now.  
 
The way I've been dealing with it is by:
- Getting the kids off campus (Dates, Movies, visiting parks, Music Shows)
- Having adventures come to them (hunteds who know where they live, ex-students with an axe to grind, shennanigans in the science labs & library)
- School Events (Rival Schools, Secret ID drama at the Spring Formal, Field Trips)
- Family (One PC's father is hunted by Viper, another is the son of a Supervillain, several NPCs are the children of Heros)
 
I've found that you have to get out of the "Mayor calls the PCs on the Red Batphone" type of adventures with teenagers.  I lean into the drama of highschool.  Not only do you want to get the right date for Prom, but she is being wooed by a "nontraditional" student from Von Drotte Academy (aka a mutant from Viper's school for budding supervillains).
We have a whole ongoing plot about the future version of one PC's first girlfriend who keeps attacking the PCs to prevent them from doing all the evil she says they do in the future.
 
Also: One PC paid points for a fake ID that lets them use Rideshare services to get around town.  It won't help them get to a superfight, but it lets them get to interesting locations.
 
Having another year under my belt with my Ravenswood game I will add the following:
Have a couple of the staff be up to something.  Let the PCs find out but make sure they never get hard evidence to prove anything and have the other teachers side with the adults.  Harry Potter kept this up for like 5 books. Adventures in the city should never just be a weekend thing.  Stuff going down on a school night is just the sort of thing that adds time pressure, angst, and drama to a teen heroes life.  "I have to stop the Candyman, but if my RA catches me out past curfew I won't be able to take Wendy to the spring formal!" I've gotten a lot of mileage out of all the other kids at school, normal and powered.  (I try to make a point of having the normal kids matter, it makes the whole "secret ID thing" an actual struggle.  I'm running my game "today" so there is one normal kid who has several times gotten into internet fights with teen supervillians that the PCs had to bail him out of.  The kids themselves are friends, bullies, loaners, etc.  Crack out all that teen drama for some great roleplaying One NPC called his uncle Zorran the Artificer to see if "uncle Z" could fix his mind-controlled girlfriend The kids' parents got that money somewhere & kids have had viper try to kidnap them as hostages against their parents or been drawn into dynastic family stuff There is one kinda OK kid with *really* rich parents that keeps throwing his money around to try to buy a cool and interesting reputation.  His parties keep getting crashed by the super kids from Viper's training school.

My thought is that if Ravenswood it too far from Millenium City, just move it closer.  We won't tell.  I will also say that with kids as rich as those at Ravenswood I would expect a lot of "Sweet Sixteen" cars available to bum rides in.  In a highschool game I'd probably let a 16 or older PC buy a normal car with their wealth or a relatively cheap "4 wheeled friend" perk to reflect the beater they got running over the summer.
 
This question seem familiar.  Didn't you post this exact same thread a year or so ago?  Here was my answer then:
 
I've been running a Ravenswood game for several years now.  
 
The way I've been dealing with it is by:
- Getting the kids off campus (Dates, Movies, visiting parks, Music Shows)
- Having adventures come to them (hunteds who know where they live, ex-students with an axe to grind, shennanigans in the science labs & library)
- School Events (Rival Schools, Secret ID drama at the Spring Formal, Field Trips)
- Family (One PC's father is hunted by Viper, another is the son of a Supervillain, several NPCs are the children of Heros)
 
I've found that you have to get out of the "Mayor calls the PCs on the Red Batphone" type of adventures with teenagers.  I lean into the drama of highschool.  Not only do you want to get the right date for Prom, but she is being wooed by a "nontraditional" student from Von Drotte Academy (aka a mutant from Viper's school for budding supervillains).
We have a whole ongoing plot about the future version of one PC's first girlfriend who keeps attacking the PCs to prevent them from doing all the evil she says they do in the future.
 
Also: One PC paid points for a fake ID that lets them use Rideshare services to get around town.  It won't help them get to a superfight, but it lets them get to interesting locations.
 
Having another year under my belt with my Ravenswood game I will add the following:
Have a couple of the staff be up to something.  Let the PCs find out but make sure they never get hard evidence to prove anything and have the other teachers side with the adults.  Harry Potter kept this up for like 5 books. Adventures in the city should never just be a weekend thing.  Stuff going down on a school night is just the sort of thing that adds time pressure, angst, and drama to a teen heroes life.  "I have to stop the Candyman, but if my RA catches me out past curfew I won't be able to take Wendy to the spring formal!" I've gotten a lot of mileage out of all the other kids at school, normal and powered.  (I try to make a point of having the normal kids matter, it makes the whole "secret ID thing" an actual struggle.  I'm running my game "today" so there is one normal kid who has several times gotten into internet fights with teen supervillians that the PCs had to bail him out of.  The kids themselves are friends, bullies, loaners, etc.  Crack out all that teen drama for some great roleplaying One NPC called his uncle Zorran the Artificer to see if "uncle Z" could fix his mind-controlled girlfriend The kids' parents got that money somewhere & kids have had viper try to kidnap them as hostages against their parents or been drawn into dynastic family stuff There is one kinda OK kid with *really* rich parents that keeps throwing his money around to try to buy a cool and interesting reputation.  His parties keep getting crashed by the super kids from Viper's training school.

Just saw "Everything Everywhere All At Once".
 
It was... amazing!
 
It was the most fun I've had in a movie in years.  It was funny, poignant, and filled with the most creative martial arts sequences I've seen in a while.
The film is a sci-fi martial arts fusion, and dives into the Multiverse.  Beyond that don't spoil yourself if you can avoid it before going to see it.
It stars Michelle Yeoh with a really great supporting cast.  I didn't know I needed Jamie Lee Curtis in a Michelle Yeoh action movie.. but I did.

I know I'm talking it up, but I was blown away.  Its been a long time since a movie has blown me away.
 
Everyone should go see it!

Just saw "Everything Everywhere All At Once".
 
It was... amazing!
 
It was the most fun I've had in a movie in years.  It was funny, poignant, and filled with the most creative martial arts sequences I've seen in a while.
The film is a sci-fi martial arts fusion, and dives into the Multiverse.  Beyond that don't spoil yourself if you can avoid it before going to see it.
It stars Michelle Yeoh with a really great supporting cast.  I didn't know I needed Jamie Lee Curtis in a Michelle Yeoh action movie.. but I did.

I know I'm talking it up, but I was blown away.  Its been a long time since a movie has blown me away.
 
Everyone should go see it!

Just saw "Everything Everywhere All At Once".
 
It was... amazing!
 
It was the most fun I've had in a movie in years.  It was funny, poignant, and filled with the most creative martial arts sequences I've seen in a while.
The film is a sci-fi martial arts fusion, and dives into the Multiverse.  Beyond that don't spoil yourself if you can avoid it before going to see it.
It stars Michelle Yeoh with a really great supporting cast.  I didn't know I needed Jamie Lee Curtis in a Michelle Yeoh action movie.. but I did.

I know I'm talking it up, but I was blown away.  Its been a long time since a movie has blown me away.
 
Everyone should go see it!

I always thought Doom would have taken the larger view.  He would have understood why the Terrorists acted the way they did, he would have understood why the Americans would be so surprised, and I think he could have foreseen the many, many changes in US culture and foreign policy that were coming.  He was always a big picture kind of guy.  To him it would have been like watching a fight start two tables down from you at a restaurant.
He probably did lament the loss of life, and the loss of life that was coming.. but he wouldn't have been surprised.

I always thought Doom would have taken the larger view.  He would have understood why the Terrorists acted the way they did, he would have understood why the Americans would be so surprised, and I think he could have foreseen the many, many changes in US culture and foreign policy that were coming.  He was always a big picture kind of guy.  To him it would have been like watching a fight start two tables down from you at a restaurant.
He probably did lament the loss of life, and the loss of life that was coming.. but he wouldn't have been surprised.

I always thought Doom would have taken the larger view.  He would have understood why the Terrorists acted the way they did, he would have understood why the Americans would be so surprised, and I think he could have foreseen the many, many changes in US culture and foreign policy that were coming.  He was always a big picture kind of guy.  To him it would have been like watching a fight start two tables down from you at a restaurant.
He probably did lament the loss of life, and the loss of life that was coming.. but he wouldn't have been surprised.

Short answer: IMO yes, it would be in bad taste. We've discussed different ways you might use the Red Doom characters, but what you keep repeating sounds like you want to specifically connect them to the war in Ukraine in some way. I've outlined why my opinion is, that would be a very questionable move.
 
Now, let me take your example, and look at it from the other side: let's say that shortly after the fall of the Twin Towers, you ran scenarios in which heroes kept that disaster from happening altogether. Nobody lost their lives, the old World Trade Center is still standing. How would that respect all the families and friends who lost loved ones on that day? But then you have the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, all the people who died in those conflicts, the way the world changed, the way America changed. Remember how everyone felt going through all that. None of that could have been predicted in the days and weeks immediately after 9/11.
 
The war in Ukraine is ongoing. The outcome can't yet be foreseen. But the suffering is real. My advice is, use Red Doom with caution if you wish, but leave current events alone.
 
(BTW Steve Long was once asked in a chat about 9/11 in the official Champions Universe. His response was that for editorial purposes he considered it to still have occurred, but due to intervention by superheroes the deaths were far fewer. Same with New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina.)

It isn't a question of good or bad taste, its a question of relevance.  IMHO Red Doom is a love-letter to a dead comic book trope and has aged out of anything resembling usefulness.  The Soviet Union hasn't been a thing for almost 30 years and most of the NPCs are references to events and institutions that are at least 40 years old.  Sure, sleezy eastern European military guys are timeless, but as Assault said.. most of the characters just don't make sense anymore
 
I mean... time travel or period games are great but a Red Doom game in 2022 makes as much sense as a CB radio based supervillain and expect him to be taken seriously or setting an Indiana Jones tomb robbing adventure in 2022.

As the tribble said.

Also, it would require a major rewrite to ditch the dated Cold War stuff. The biggest problem is that the Cold War ended thirty years ago, so characters that were young then aren't young now. If it wasn't for that, the sleazier characters could just have reinvented themselves as authoritarian Russian nationalists.

So I was re-reading 5E Champions.  In that book this tactic is called a "Sucker Attack".
 
I won't reproduce the text.  The technique is to get between two enemies and wait for one (or both) to attack.  The character must have a Held Action, then Dodges (Nightcrawler would of course bamf out).  Make the normal DEX vs. DEX roll to go first; if the dodger loses the first attacker's attack happens before the dodge (rather than the normal 'Abort to a defensive Action automatically goes off first', but this is an offensive use of Dodge and so seems reasonable).  If the dodger wins the contest, the attacker makes an Attack Roll using only OCV (no CSLs, maneuver bonuses, or suchlike) against the second attacker's DCV.
 
Aaron Allston had it figured out in 2002. 😁