unclevlad

Actually, I was building it as a Characteristic, on the Powers tab, using Add Modifiers to Base Characteristic Just playing and checking this out...starting from 10 STR. Now as a power: +15 STR, AP, Penetrating, Modifiers affect Base Characteristics. Net END for STR is now 4, correctly. Add 1/2 END, the net END drops to 2...properly. So it's Affects Physical World that seems to be behaving oddly.

ESPN NFL Live is pointing out that the Bears are getting HOSED. Early game on Turkey Day...and it's an earlier start than the Sunday early games...after being flexed into the Sunday night game. Not pre-scheduled...flexed. As we're on a betting kick...Bears are a middling favorite. I'd take the Lions to cover on that alone; add in that Trubisky's banged up, and I'd definitely take the Lions to cover. Win? Not sure about that.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/20/politics/trump-statement-saudi-khashoggi/index.html Willful ignorance. Anything less than a smoking gun and 20 minutes of supporting video can be cast aside when it suits. That's amoral Trump.

No, but.... "Let ye who are without sin cast the first stone" seems to fit....

Yeah, whoever set the O/U at 63 was an IDIOT. Come on, each is averaging over 30, and each is in the bottom quarter in points allowed. Can we say Amplification? 2 great offenses versus 2 suspect defenses. I'd target something like 38-35 so an O/U of 73 wouldn't have shocked me, and might have been decently close in most games. Can't anticipate all the defensive scores.

So I'm playing around with a Desolid notion. 20 STR Desolid 0 END Now, pay for the kicker...as a power, buy Affects Phys World on the 20 STR. 40 points, shows as 4 END on the Powers section, and the STR cost is listed as 6 in the Characteristics tab. Painful but it is 40 active points. Now, tho...add 1/2 END to this. END cost on the Powers tab goes to blank; END cost on the Characteristics tab goes to 1. This is weird.

LOL Yeah, a fun little point raised tangentially during the game, then McFarland is hitting postgame. How useless a coach is Captain 500, Jeff Fisher? I remember pretty scathing comments about how he strangles his teams with his arch-conservative EVERYTHING. He had Goff and the Rams 2 years ago and they played to his capabilities. Now...wow....

OK, so Mahomes CAN look like a near-rookie....

No, Michael. Did you see the pics of the turf? It was TERRIBLE. They tried to change it about a week in advance, which would seem to be a desperation move. That said...sheesh, people, when are you gonna LEARN that in a game like this....DON'T SCORE TOO FAST!!!! Chiefs with 4 minutes, then Rams just under 2. Wow, I was thinking first to 50....but nooooooooooooooooo...... gonna be last team with the ball. And crazy, crazy, crazy. 2 insane offenses, 2 bad defenses...and 3 defensive touchdowns. AND 80+ points from the offenses, and Mahomes ANOTHER 6 TD game. INSANE! Former defensive players are just shaking their heads.......current defensive players are saying "gawd I'm got it's not me!!!"

Yeah, I think that's a good point. The so-called vets don't even count as retreads; they're far more used than that. And proven LACK of ability. The only counterpoint is, what other options are there? Take a kid still pretty fresh out of college? An option QB would rarely work w/o major retooling and that's impractical at this point. The ones who *have* shown promise are probably all 3rd QBs on 53-man rosters...maybe 1 or 2 on practice squads.

Yeah, and that's pretty much what they did. It did feel like a weird week. Steelers escaped; Panthers didn't. Chargers...man. That was the egg of the week. Bleah. Grotesque. Nauseating. Cowboys probably have to be the favorites now to take the NFC Least. How revolting. Saints and Rams pretty much have locks on their divisions, even if the Rams lose tonight. Bears have a nice cushion and they look like a playoff team...Vikes don't. So the East looks to be the only division up for grabs. AFC's probably even closer to set...Steelers are 2 1/2 up, Pats have no competition. San Diego could challenge KC, especially if the Chiefs lose tonight, but losing at home to a bad team is not the way to proceed. Is Indy, and Luck, back to being relevant? Still 2 back of Houston. Still, despite all the noise, we're all figuring Chiefs-Pats and Rams-Saints for the conference titles.

Hey, it's homage. Big D means Dallas, and well, no true blue Sooner can *abide* anything related to Dallas. So they're just giving the fans what they want. No D.

And the Buffs fired their coach. Yes indeed, my friends, it's that time of year. Fire up The Coaching Carousel!

The universe is a SICK place if it does. 33 years ago TO THE DAY, Taylor broke Thiesmann's leg. I hate saying this but it easily could too. Fox postgame, Glaser reported it was emergency surgery to prevent infection. Yes, well, that says the break ripped through the skin, and that is NEVER good. And breaks like that, I believe, are more likely to have complications. Best of luck to him.

CRIPES. Stupid Falcons. How do you give DALLAS 16 points in a quarter? How do you let them move the ball 50 yards in about 1:20? The rest was just positioning for the FG attempt... Dan Quinn's job is exceptionally tenuous right now, I suspect.

Ouch, speaking of crippled... Poor Alex Smith. Was off doing some other stuff when it happened, but going, Keenum's in? Why? Saw the hit. First time, full speed...didn't see it. Then the closeup when he was on the ground. And then a tighter shot as it happened. No, limbs are NOT meant to bend that way, at those points. EDIT: just saw report. Broken tibia AND fibula. No doctor but I gotta think that makes recovery rather longer.

If you're gonna use sharp-cornered dice, then the casino dice are a good choice, I agree. They are large, tho.

I agree with No Metal. I find they're also LOUD on most tabletops. I also prefer rounded corners to sharply squared corners. Last: if they're translucent, then I prefer them to be darker rather than lighter. Might be just me but I find overly transparent harder to read quickly. For games where I'm consistently rolling 10+ dice, I actually prefer smaller ones. Think I had a bunch of 8mm. Otherwise...yeah, Chessex has always been good. Hmm, here's a site to consider: https://www.dicegamedepot.com/dice-sizes/ One other thing: for killing attacks, 1 die that's clearly different from the others, to be the stun mult. (Unless your KAs are 1 die + a lot.)

Or a punter. Get paid less but longevity is pretty solid, and you're nowhere near as likely to be all but crippled at 45.

Very easy to google "nfl cba." It expires after the 2020 season. Things have been quiet this year, but have to fear that the players are going to push for a number of things...curbs on Goodell's power, the way the owners tried to quash the anthem protests (whether you like them or not), revenue sharing stuff. If what Bell is trying to do looks to become a trend, then the franchise tag system could come up for reconsideration. I'm also sure rules changes are going to be a shouting point, but honestly I don't see it being a real stumbling block. NFLPA should recognize the safety issue. What would be more amusing is to see if they can eliminate TNF, or quash the money grab of going to 18 games. I HATE that one. NFLPA doesn't have the same leverage as NBA or MLB PAs. NBA is a star-driven league where 1 player can make a notable difference. MLB has the longest track record of players asserting their power. But note that MLB, for example, has no *minimum* spending rules, which means you can have lots of teams making bargain-basement choices. Rays and A's both have sub-$70M payrolls...or about 1/3 of the Giants and Sox. One thing the NFLPA has done is fairly heavily flatten total salaries per team much more tightly than MLB or the NBA. That means there's broader distribution generally. In football, it's strongly positional, which also relates to the generally perceived value of particular positions: https://sportsaspire.com/average-nfl-salary-by-position Position Salary (in million) Quarterback 16 to 16.3 Defensive End 13 to 13.2 Defensive Tackle 9 to 9.7 Running Back 9 to 9.55 Wide receiver 12 to 12.4 Cornerback 11 to 12 Safety 8 to 8.4 Tight End 7 to 7.2 Linebacker 11 to 11.5 Offensive Lineman 11 to 11.7 Punter/Kicker 3 to 3.6 Note that QB is notably higher. And let's discount kickers, as they're fringe at best. Note that offensive line, linbacker, cornerback, and wide receiver are all quite similar. Safety and tight end are losing ground in spread offenses, which also suggests there's a glut at those positions simply due to low-ish demand in current offenses. (As opposed to wideout and CB in particular, where a team needs 4+ of each.) Defensive tackles are viewed as run-stoppers mostly, and the running game's being downplayed. That also works for the decline in running back salaries.

I get it, but I'm also fed up with sports greed. Perhaps you were right before...change it so the exclusive tag can only be used once, then you *have* to go to the non-exclusive. If the team really is low-balling the player, then let's find out. Is some other team willing to pony up both the FAT contract and the compensatory picks? And, consider the implications of more players getting more and more guaranteed money, in a salary-cap structure. Even if the cap itself is arcane. What you'll see is many more mid-level, experienced players getting dumped to save salary to allow for all those elite contracts. AND, the fear factor will explode...injuries will now mean large, long-term cap hits. (If Kirk Cousins gets hurt this year, the Vikes are going to be CRUSHED by that guarantee.) The gap between a team's top 10-15 players and the bottom 25 will widen; it has to. So, ok, what Bell's trying to do might be right for Bell; certainly seen that opinion stated. But it may be very bad for the game.

Plutonium is NASTY TOXIC.. It is picked up by body tissues, which means it's not gonna get excreted. And it's a nasty big alpha emitter. Alpha particles don't penetrate skin...but from the inside, they rip cells apart. The metallic form is flammable, AND expansive so it might break out of its containment. And it goes critical at a much lower mass. Sure, the latter two issues are addressable; facilities handled plutonium for quite some time. But it is still hellishly dangerous. A nuke will also produce a massive EMP and do radiation damage, but yes, the shock wave (and the superheated air) is what causes the great spread of damage. I think the value of a nuke in space is likely dependent on combat velocity, and maneuverability. The nuke's gonna have to get VERY close, in space terms...10 km at the outside, and probably less. If we're talking 5% of c, that's 15,000 km/sec, so the tracking and timing have to be VERY tight. And let's not forget that small-matter and radiation shielding are absolute requirements for this. But if we're getting to interstellar travel, we're into pie in the sky. Fundamentally, you need FTL to support any kind of space battle, IMO...because a battle largely implies a level of traffic consonant only with FTL. Non-FTL simply takes TOO DAMN LONG!! Last, my definition of a nuke is Too Many Active Points to Ever Consider. There's a writeup in the equipment guide...20d6 Drain BODY with godawful return rate, NND Does Body...comes out to over 1000 points. THEN that's linked to Drain CON 10d6 similarly specified...another 500. That's the radiation. The flash aspect is about 370. Thermal's 20d6 killing with somewhat different scaling...750. EMP is another 500. The blast wave is 20d6 killing physical...another 1100. Total active points: 5600. And THAT only because Megascale stuff is ridiculously too cheap, and because they're not defining indirect effects such as fallout, which are so greatly variable. Wanna steal the notions behind an F-35? The stealth tech for a next-gen fighter or bomber? Launch and flight control tech for Standard MIssile 6? Yeah, those I can see...but we don't need to go to nukes.

Ah, but we're talking exclusive tags, so: --first year is average of the 5 highest salaries at the position, AND it's fully guaranteed for the year. --second year is 20% raise over the first year. So if first year was 10M, second tag year is 12. Oh, and check the salaries of backs. Bell was gonna make 40% more than ANY back in the league. Plus he was offered 3 years for about $40M...which still would've been much higher than anyone else. He's now another one I would never want on my team. Not the kind of direct toxicity of a Terrell Owens, but my gut says still hard to trust. When's he gonna pull this BS again? He's clearly playing for himself first, second, and third. And we know his salary demands are gonna be sky high...but will he be able to deliver, in a new offense?

I get that, but it was part of the conditions of the contract he signed. Plus, it's not that simple that the Steelers could cut him should he get injured and thereby not pay him at all. This is one article that tries to cover it, while also expressing a proviso that the league obfuscates stuff like this as best it can: https://www.windycitygridiron.com/2017/8/29/16221826/chicago-bears-nfl-waiver-rules-weird-waived-injured-reserve-released-cut-pre-season-53-man-roster Another site asserted that a 5 year vet's contract for the season becomes fully guaranteed if that player's on the 53 man as of opening day. That was a 2014 article, tho, and it's possible things changed, as well as being inaccurate to some degree. But I see enough there to think Bell was trying to have his cake and eat it too...or that his agent's a greedy SOB who manipulates his players in the name of getting the best for them. You know the type...the one that'll push the kid to sign with him and leave school early because he's sure to be a 1st...mid 2nd round pick at WORST. Then he's finally picked up in the 5th round...his consensus draft evaluation. That also points out one thing we don't know. In any contract talks that took place, who was overplaying their hand? Steeler lowball, or Bell excess? There's the core dichotomy in football, and particularly with running backs, between the player's desire for security...and the owner's desire to mitigate risk. I suspect it's also heavily seasoned by restrictions on what can and cannot be written into the contracts, due to team shenanigans and rules circumvention in the past.

Maybe but completely unrestricted free agency is not, IMO, a good idea for football. And it's not like the franchise tag is *cheap* for a team, or that they can apply it willy-nilly.