unclevlad

Ewww. This is truly Kingsbury starring in a remake of The Nightmare Before Christmas. He played for Mike Leach for 3 years. I think he's probably gone once the season's over, particularly if the belief is Murray's recovery will run on the long side. There's also a plausible question about the GM there. Signing Murray to that deal was questionable from the standpoint of his injury history, altho I must concede there might be a bit of hindsight there.

Yah, I don't see this becoming a significant source of energy much before the end of the century. Cool, sure, but LONG way to go.

There are bigger goals established by the academies, for those people, than winning or losing. I kinda wonder if the AD is going to get a lecture from the Commandant, altho the guy's been there for over 20 years. Or maybe...he's 71. Perhaps he'll be...politely...requested to step down. Here's his official bio: https://navysports.com/staff-directory/chet-gladchuk/1 So there's a lot of "money talks" in there.

Sounds like the AD is prioritizing winning, as if Navy was a Power 5 school.

Not the way I read it. You don't need Combat Driving to drive a car; you do need it to perform difficult maneuvers like, say, a forward 180 J turn. Remember there's also Transport Familiarity. Professional Skill: Pilot goes into the commercial side of things...you can make money as a pilot. That usually involves several standard emergency maneuvers, flight plans, flight operations in and around major airports...I'm sure there are lots of details. It definitely does not cover combat-capable planes, tho, or combat maneuvering. That is the dividing line, IMO. I'd also say: Combat Piloting might be useful as a complementary skill *at times* for PS: Pilot...Sullenberger's bringing down the plane for a landing on the Hudson River might be an example. (Wikipedia says, yes, he was a fighter pilot.) OTOH, PS: Pilot cannot be a complementary skill for Combat Piloting. Similar: PS: Demolitions allows you to do commercial blasting, for example to prepare to excavate, or to demolish a building. It does not let you disable a bomb threatening to blow a church up. Rather than exploding the basic skills list, it might work better to adapt the Specialization approach, a la Shadowrun. A specialization would be an element of the skill where you're extra good. +1 to the skill when the spec applies, for 1 point. Can only be taken once...there's no point in taking 2...and would require at least 11- proficiency. For something like Security Systems, biometric sensors or keypad systems might be specializations. For Combat Piloting, the skill's already tied to your Transport Familiarities, but "Combat Planes" covers a pretty big swath. The specialization might be "fighter jets" or even specific models. I'll grant: many of the skills might not readily accommodate a specialization. A few are very broad...Bureaucracy is even called out in APG 1 IIRC...and Security Systems is another. On the other end would be Acrobatics and Contortionist. They're fairly specific. This might be the middle ground. There's already places where there's problematic overlap, most clearly in the Interaction skills. Conversation vs. Interrogation. Conversation lets you extract information without seeming to do so; Interrogation is when you and your target both know you're trying to get information. But that's a lot of overlap. Charm vs. Persuasion is another; isn't Charm mostly a very specific aspect of Persuasion? Persuasion vs. Oratory. If I'm building a team leader type? I take both. The more granular you get, the worse this situation becomes. Plus, a bunch of very narrow skills can get to be quite expensive. I'd rather leave this up to the GM and group to lay out as they need it, rather than formalize a static structure in the rules. The specialization notion would be worth considering...because it's not static, and keeps the rules impact narrow. Difficulty. Steps needed to disarm. Taking out a tripwire probably starts with a Concealment check to even know it's there. A retinal scanner? You're not disabling it directly. You can --try to spoof it --hack into the system to disable it --access the controls to open the door anyway All of these should be HARD, and may have requirements and drawbacks of their own. Or specialized gadgets. Getting into the vault where the nuclear launch codes are kept should require more than a single, simple skill roll.

WaPo reports Musk has terminated Twitter’s trust and safety council. He’s Murdoching, it seems…no voice but his. This will skew his user demographics even more to extremism and drive away more advertisers. Also saw where he’s making what looks like a desperate move. Buy $500k+ in ads, they will match, up to $1m, for ads for the rest of the year IIRC. I’m hearing a panic move so the 4Q revenues don’t appear to be cratered. Killing the TSC can’t encourage the big companies to come back. EDIT: follow-ons. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/13/twitter-lose-users-elon-musk-takeover-hate-speech#:~:text=More than 30 million users,takeover%2C according to a forecast. And one of the authors I follow on FB mentioned today that he's left Twitter and changed to a different platform. Someone made the point that your tweets aren't deleted...and said someone claiming your user name might be able to get to them. I have no clue if that's the case, but deleting your tweets when you delete your account feels only sensible anyway. https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/is-your-twitter-embarrassing-heres-how-to-delete-all-your-old-tweets/

You don't often hear broad criticism from broadcasters...but just now...Troy said "there's a lot of bad football, especially bad offensive football." Arizona's continual mistakes were some of it; I think issues with Matt Patricia, which I've heard a few times now, is another.

Oh dear. 3 plays in, Kyler Murray goes down with a non-contact injury. Drops back, doesn't see anything, starts scrambling around the right side. Makes 5 or so yards, tries a cut...and goes down. And doesn't get up. He's going off on the cart. Offhand, I don't know of any relatively *minor* injuries that ever seem to happen in a case like that. Kobe's blown Achilles, some type of torn ligament, and probably not a partial tear. Very unfortunate. EDIT: Lisa Salters reports Murray is sobbing; Cards are calling it a knee injury. Combine those, and it would seem rather safe to say his season's over. EDIT 2: initial diagnosis is reported to be ACL. An MRI will be forthcoming.

NOT!! good. From the Mississippi Clarion Ledger: It's the time factor that causes me the most concern, even more than characterizing it as massive.

Well, OK, but no one can reach the end of one of those... Oh, and Emeril HATED them. He said many a time on Emeril Live, back in the day, I hate one-sided tasting food....

What Brady's performance today *really* taught us is... The Saints should be relegated.

Pretty bizarre week. Under .500 teams beating putative playoff teams in notable upsets: Jags, Panthers. Can't count the Lions here, because they were actually *favored*. Under .500 teams giving nominal power teams a major run for their money: Broncos, Texans. I don't count the Steelers because Jackson was out for the Ravens. Always a good thing: Browns lose. EDIT: Denver is officially eliminated. GOOD. FIRE HACKETT NOW.

Concussion evaluation for Wilson? Just noted on the gamecast "last play, injury R. Wilson" and saw him head into the Blue Tent. EDIT: NM...just got the injury update. And saw the honkin' big knot on the side of the head.

Did the Vikes lose to the Lions? Yes. Yes they did. Does one believe 10-3...or a point differential of -1? And...so close. The Cowboys escape being the ignoninny of the year.... Titans also blew it. Home game vs. a sub-.500 team, chance to take a 4 game lead with 4 to go, all but lock up the division. Nope. Still a 2 game lead with only 4 to play, but this is an ominous loss.

I doubt this will last, but the Cowboy defense has been befuddled somewhat, there's been a tipped ball leading to a pick, and the Cowboy punt returner let a ball get away. 17-17 tie as we're about to go to half. Who'da thunk.... EDIT: spoke too soon. Texans make plays, move the ball to try a 50 yard FG...and make it. TEXANS LEAD 20-17 at halftime!!!

The networks hate many of us. I mean HATE. And they're colluding in it. I mean, how else can you explain this? CBS single game broadcast. The blue is KC-Denver. https://506sports.com/2022/14-FOX-E-V2.png This isn't pasting directly, but it's a link to the Fox early slot. Texas, NM, OK, and Arkansas, along with much of Kansas and parts of Missouri, get...Texans at Dallas. <sigh> The late Fox game, which is opposite the Chiefs-Broncos fiasco, is TB vs. SF. Not *as* bad but...not great. They hate us. This proves it.

So did anyone watch the Heisman Award...more specifically, more than the last 5 minutes of the telecast, when the actual award takes place? Me either. Caleb Williams of USC. Saw some of his play, off and on...pretty crazy stuff there. USC's defense was shaky, so Williams hadda do a bunch. That means he gets to cash in on NIL like Bryce Young did this year...ya gotta figure that Young pocketed a *bundle* for the Fansville ads. Williams is NOT draft-eligible for '23; he's only played 2 years, it has to be 3. But the NIL money will probably soothe the pain to a good degree........

Would you prefer I call it a Faux Fur Jinx? I'd be happy to....

Now convince the Trump SC Justices of that.

OK, we now have the Kiss of Death, Tribble version. Morocco 1, Portugal 0 EDIT: I wonder if this is gonna be the equivalent of the 1988 Olympics for USA Basketball...a shocking wake-up call, to all the European teams. Germany, Spain, Portugal, all out before the semis? There will be much weeping, gnashing of teeth, and reviewing How Could This Happen???

Well, let's see. I don't have 2E but I do have the PDF for 3E. Bring up the ToC; bring up HD.... Absorption, Aid, Automaton, Damage Negation, Change Environment, Clairsentience, Clinging, Dispel, Duplication, Healing (!), Images, Multiform, Deflection/Reflection, Summoning So, it's more than one or two. Skills...3E has 9, and martial arts (I didn't count, it's really structured as a power in 3E) is very narrowly structured. Granted, in 6E, many skills straddle between conflict resolution and background, and it would probably be better to reconsider and shorten the 6E list. Somewhat the same with Talents...they tend to be of the "get what you pay for, pay for what you get" of 5E and 6E and less of the "wing it" on non-encounter stuff, of 3E and earlier. Which is also a reason why the rules are much longer. So some of this is, what exactly defines the core? Some things could be deferred, like Automaton, but no Healing? In something closer to the Golden Age, well, maybe so...but more modern Supers is bloodier. And I think player attitudes are different...hosing over a character in such a way as to force him to be in the hospital for a week...but he still WON the fight...is more Old School Gaming. And of course, moving away from 4-color supers to fantasy, it becomes an absolute necessity. And that is likely touching on the single biggest reason why 6E1, in particular, is so freaking big. It's trying to be universal, principally drawing on supers, fantasy, and agent-level stuff. So we've got Dispel, Healing and Summoning from fantasy, and the full martial arts system, the breakout of 3E's Detective Work into multiple separate skills, and probably the inclusion of the background and professional skills, for agent-level or Ninja Hero.

I'm glad I'm out of D&D these days...and Magic, altho that was probably more of a phase than anything else. It's kinda funny: many of us burned out on Magic when a) keeping up just got to be ridiculously too expensive b) it got to be frustrating, trying to get the rarer cards (how much did I sink into Legends? TOOOOOO DAMN MUCH) c) it became too much of a power play...people who did dump a ton of money, probably also doing a lot of trading, weren't fun to play against. It's also not a very good group game, which is the area where tabletop RPGs excel.

But the reason why so much explanation was necessary was the incredible explosion of fringe, rarely-taken, and often problematic options. And recognize, if we accept the "core rules" can be expressed in 80 pages (IMO dubious, I'd say more like 200)...there's still close to 800 pages. The flaw is that the base book stopped being an introductory book, and became a comprehensive, massive pair of books. Champions Complete is probably a much better starting point than 6E1 and 6E2; it's under 250 pages, and most of the rules that'll get used frequently, it's 160 pages. (So maybe 200 is an overstatement.) Much of this may simply be better organization; in CC, the discussion about adjustment powers is a bit over 2 pages. In 6E1, it's 9, from which you can take out maybe 1/2 page for the illustrations, but you're still talking 4x as long. Some of this may be, as you note, more about oddball interactions and exceptions, but I suspect there's also a good deal of better phrasing, and less redundancy. And perhaps simple excess verbosity. From Aid: 6E1: Only Aid Others (-½): This form of Aid does not work on the character who has the Power. He can only use his Aid to improve other characters’ Characteristics or Powers. Only Aid Self (-1): This form of Aid only works on the character who has the Power. He cannot use his Aid to improve other characters’ Characteristics or Powers. CC: Only Aid Others (-½): Prevents the character from using his Aid on himself. Only Aid Self (-1): Prevents the character from using his Aid on anyone other than himself. The CC statements are shorter and clearer. I think this would help a fair bit. Plus, you don't need to bounce back and forth between 2 books for core rules...like the combat maneuvers.

Yah, I've got Dropbox, and keep a local folder on the 2 machines that use it. That also allows drag and drop. I also do that with my primary Google Drive account...yeah, I have multiple Google accounts for different email purposes. It's a little more flexible than Dropbox...and the free storage is bigger.

And if you had any doubt as to why? First, Shame On You!!! There is only one reason anything like this EVER gets done. Second, from the ESPN story: And they'd probably get 1 or 2 teams to qualify for bowls, altho probably the little baby bowls. (Couple bowls pay each school about what a Power 5 pays an NMSU for a regular season beatdown...but that's all.)