unclevlad

That's in lieu of firing Zimmer midseason. The Vikes are, IMO, backing the wrong horse...not that Zimmer or DeFilippo are geniuses, but Kirk Cousins simply has not shown he belongs in the kitchen. He can't stand the heat. The Vikes massively overpaid. Plus, the offensive line is bad. Don't care who the QB is, he's never going to be consistent with a bad line around him.

I have Prime. I stream a game every now and again when there's some other event I want on the TV screen instead. Unfortunately, it's still Buck and Aikman, so no relief there..... And it's still sloppy, ill-prepared TNF. Leave that to meaningless games like the Battle of the Bird Cage...Cards/Falcons.

So, the notion is a healer with a nasty streak too...4d6 HKA, conceived as literally unweaving flesh. The power to help is the power to harm. Ergo, I decided...No STR Bonus seems to fit that. OK, that's fine. Now, the character also has some martial arts, mostly with a defensive focus, but with a couple strikes and a couple bonus DCs. So...when using the HKA with a Defensive Strike, where I've got +4 DCs coming...do I get those, when I'm not using any STR? Because it feels like, yeah, the OCV and DCV adjustments make perfect sense...but the extra DCs don't.

Is it any surprise that Jon Gruden fired Reggie McKenzie? And why, why, WHY does one of the more important games of the year, have to be on freaking TNF.... UGH!!!

After that debacle... Given that the Vikes can't afford to touch Kirk Cousins...not with what they pay him...Mike Zimmer has no chance of surviving the axe once their season's over, IMO. The Vikes' offense was offensive, all right.

Don't have any at the moment; I probably use books more than TV, too. And there's something of a serendipity factor...you need the TV character concept and the campaign to dovetail. Had one great situation like this...a Vampire game where coldly calculating and incredibly efficient made sense. The character's style was based on Michael from La Femme Nikita...which also tells ya how long ago that was....:( I've also taken inspiration from a song. Vampire again. The song: Charlie Daniel's Still in Saigon. Good song, good story. PERFECT for a creepy Malkavian.

Bingo. That's our executive summary right there.

Edelman's only lsted as 5'10, and 200, so he's 6-8 inches shorter and anything from 60 to 130 pounds lighter than tight ends, linemen, and linebackers. And often 5 or more inches shorter than most other wideouts. The imagery happens in the NBA too, from time to time. Steph Curry looks like a midget compared to the rest of the Warriors lineup....but recognize he's 6'3".

Starloard, I hope you have good liability insurance for all the retinal burn you caused with that pic......

Actually, the best use for bananas is banana bread. WINNER!!! (cuz wine isn't grapes, it's wine)

Browns are not mathematically eliminated but they're behind too many others. I don't think 8-7-1 will quite cut it even if they can get there. I will give them this much credit: they're in a Last Gasp game at Denver next week. Now, granted, this week proves beyond any doubt that Anyone Can Die At Any Time. IF the Browns can win out, too, this means they beat Denver and Baltimore. It's not too much of a stretch to see that week 17 game being crucial, with the loser eliminated. Not necessarily the winner getting in, as there's also a week 17 Colts-Titans matchup.

The only encouraging aspect is...it's Australia. For them it's par for the course. The question is going to be how successful they are in enforcing it, and we'd better hope...not at all. Because we know damn well that once the backdoors are in place, and the technical arguments become moot...a similar law will get pushed here VERY hard.

The first domino. https://www.wired.com/story/australia-encryption-law-global-impact/

OK, so unless they come back, the Broncos leap frog off a trampoline to win Worst Loss by a MILE, considering the opponent. Game they had to win. The only mild consolation is, it's a non-conference loss, but...is 8-8 gonna make it? They'll have to beat the Chargers to reach 9-7, and that's assuming they beat the Raiders (should, but this one's leaving doubts) and the Browns, who are actually...competent this year. Man, that's frightening to say.

Unless Denver just lays an egg and loses against the Niners, the big loser for the day is the Ravens. It'll be an absolute worst-case scenario...the 7-5 team, Ravens, loses, while *all 4* 6-6 teams win, including 2 big surprises. And they're all going for the lone WC spot; the Chargers should have the 1st WC slot. Ravens have a slight edge in that they've only got 4 conference losses. Miami, same; the others all have more. Given the very good chance of a multi-way tie, conference record is likely to be in play.

Story of the early games...the power teams have their hands full! Chiefs, Pats, and Colts all down, mid 4th. Saints only up 4, but now with the ball back.

Wow...... Redskins didn't roll over, they never showed up. 40 points to the Giants halfway through the 3rd? 27 total plays for less than 60 yards in about 2 1/2 quarters??? I'll grant the injuries. I'll grant that having Lord Buttfumble as your QB is pretty much a nightmare scenario. Still......................at least try to look like a decent college team, not their JV team. EDIT: and I see Sanchez got yanked. Not seeing anything saying it was an injury, he was just being Mark Sanchez. Pick 6 early, HORRIBLY ineffective, but hey what can you expect under the circumstances? QB with a terrible track record, a mountain's worth of rust, and lack of familiarity with the details of the offense and the other players. Yeah, that trifecta always works REAL well.

I don't have Supers, but I agree completely with your analysis. In software, there's an old adage. Fast, good, cheap...you can have 2. Never 3. Here, it's flexibility, range, consistency/simplicity...you can maybe have 2, but never 3.

One big thing: GURPS is far more lethal. As in, all dice are killing dice in Hero terms. Plus, damage past your defenses...tends to get multiplied. It's reflecting that the knife is more lethal than the fist. Problem is...that aspect of damage doesn't increase the cost of an attack all that much, IIRC. So imagine the amount of rDef you'd buy when you'll routinely face AP killing...and the AP doesn't really count from a Hero "damage DCs" notion. And yeah, I think agents is the root of GURPS. Saying it tries to model reality is a bit much, but that is its core design ethos. Supers is utterly fantastic; it looks at that line and sandblasts it away. The most glaring: GURPS Basic Lift is based on your Str score, squared. Works out that if you want routine super-strength? OWWWW. Gonna cost. Last: it's much more complex than Hero. I do very much like the GURPS skill system, but it's also an integral part of the combat system. They're aiming for universal and semi-realistic...so there's a BOATLOAD of skills, and there's a ton of interactions.

True. Better is likely the wrong word. More often is probably the correct sense. Motivations will run the gamut. Hey, I love havoc as much as the next guy. The combat monster inside of me doesn't sit quietly in the corner; I'm a competitive SOB. (Overly so, I've been told.) But I also love pure role playing; I love Vampire because of its story tension potential. Toreador and old-school Lasombra! So the Champions aspects of Be Careful! and Be Part of the Solution, not Part of the Problem work fine. Hmm. Here's a side factor. Level based is somewhat hard to abuse by micromanaging. Point buy has min-max all over the place. If Johnny and Steve want to build simple and sane compared to mad powergamers Vlad and Ivan, the balance could be shot to hell. Sure, in D&D you can have the conflict between "let's loot the next dungeon!" and roleplayers, but I think that's usually manageable. In point buy, the GM IMO has to be much tighter and pay rather more attention to character sheets.

But if we consider the fantasy tropes, at least 2 are very easy to define...fighter of any stripe, and rogue/thief. Even the healer-type has most of his points pretty much defined in advance. Plus, isn't Fantasy Hero built on many fewer points? Obviously, the more points, the more involved the effort.

A few musings... I agree that the mega-overarching, split between 9 titles over 8 months and 20-odd issue, story lines turned me totally off, especially in conjunction with the massive decline in artistic effort. Cripes, the newer stuff looks like elementary-school doodles sometimes. I think another potential explanation is, the existence of a build path is inherent in fantasy RPGs; they were designed with that as a core assumption. So yeah, fine, 1st level is WIMPSVILLE, but we can approach the power levels of at least a good chunk of fantasy heroes. Trying to pull off the more popular comics heroes is really tough. Power levels are hard to translate. The versatility one tends to see is tricky to pull off, and generally expensive. Thus, the fantasy RPG leads to wish fulfillment better than the supers RPG. Something else that hasn't been mentioned. Complexity and support. Point buy is inherently more complex than level-based. Mechanically, a level-based character takes little time to build. (Well, possibly in later D&D 3.5 it got messy because of the explosive proliferation of PRCs that you wanted to plan for.) Never true in point-based. Plus, I find I need a more complete concept for point-based, because there are so many more options. Support...monsters. Items. Locations. Plot hooks. TONS of everything for D&D that you could use or adapt pretty easily. Not so much for supers. That said, I also strongly suspect that the freedom to act as you bloody well want to act, with no repercussions whatsoever quite often, and the more concrete rewards system...the sense of moving forward steadily and consistently...are central points.

We are sooooo weird. https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2809849-lyle-erik-menendez-photographed-on-former-knicks-pg-mark-jacksons-hoops-card?utm_source=cnn.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=editorial In a nutshell: a basketball trading card apparently has 2 famous murderers in the shot as they sit courtside...so the price for the card has gone up from squat to 15-20 bucks.... We are celebrity-sick....

There's a few basketball and volleyball courts where they did different colors, and yeah, some of them are fugly. Back to the NFL...looks like several teams will have their backs against the wall. Bucs have to win at home against the Saints; Redskins need to staunch the flow against the Giants who are playing better; Colts have to try to stop the Texans. Then on Monday...gods, we kinda have to watch too. Or perhaps not. My satellite receiver pipes the audio to my stereo amp, and from there to the speakers. It doesn't actually need the TV to be on. Cuz loser of Vikes-Seahawks will be in pretty bad shape for playoffs....

Those green jerseys rate up there with the couple of college fields done in *red* turf. Boise State's blue is not great but the red ones? AHHH!!! Eye pain. There are some worse ones out there. Baylor University's basketball teams do these High Output Neon Yellow and green combos that are almost literally painful to me. Not a fan of the Broncos' all orange...and I love wearing orange, but that shade is awful as the central color.