unclevlad

Long was populist, but yeah, he was doing stuff in Louisiana that would've been problematic in a presidential run.  And, remember, he was going against a sitting president for the nomination.

It's also not clear Roosevelt would've lost in 1936.  And if we assume Landon won...Long would have had to run as a 3rd party candidate, and that means Fat Chance...what I'm reading about him is a mixed bag on intervention/engagement vs. isolation.

It is interesting to read the articles about the 1936 and 1940 elections.  Landon was apparently a terrible campaigner, and he got his butt whupped.  WORSE than Mondale vs. Reagan, or McGovern vs. Nixon, in terms of the electoral college.  In 1940, Wilkie apparently didn't have a message beyond "don't break 2 terms" and had the taint of Big Business and how it brought about the Depression.  

At either point, if a stronger, more isolationist Republican could have won......that probably changes everything.

34 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Perhaps the bigger one - the PR experts contributed greatly to winning the war.  Yamamoto hoped a serious loss in Pearl Harbour would break US morale so they would pull back to isolationist thinking.  Had "Remember Pearl Harbour" come to mean "remember what we lost - let the Japanese have what they want - it is half a world away and not worth the cost to the US of a war" instead of "They started this - we will finish it", he would have won that morale victory.  Instead, that gamble failed, as the attack was leveraged to strengthen, rather than weaken, US resolve to fight the war.  Those are the same PR guys who made Stalin into "Uncle Joe", and maintained the secret of FDR's medical history - virtually no one knew he was crippled  by polio.

 

So imagine that the PR went the other way, the US people did  not back the war, but opposed it, so politically, the US was forced into signing a truce (basically "you leave us alone and we will stay out of the war").  The Japanese get what they want, and the US reverts to isolationism, not growing into the world power it did historically.  So today, perhaps we have a much more military Japan which conquered much of Asia-Pacific, a much reduced US presence on the world stage, perhaps the Yen rather than the $US the major world currency, a very different Europe dominated by Germany, with no intervening Communist China or USSR.

 

But we also have almost 75 years of post-war history.  What if Japanese youth in the '60s respond to their warrior culture similarly to the US youth culture of the '60s?  Maybe the Beatles go to Japan instead of Ed Sullivan in 1964.  You could take an alternate history in pretty much any direction you want, but the question starts with "how did WW II end in this alternate history?"

That kind of capitulation is rare, I think.  The French didn't fold from lack of resolve in 1940, but from awful planning and overconfidence.  Britain never cracked despite the Blitz.  9/11.  My understanding is that Bush expected the Iranians to welcome the US as they overthrew Hussein...forget it.  Not gonna happen.

9/11 was.........I was literally in emotional shock for 3 or 4 days.  Seeing the 2nd tower collapse...LIVE...was indescribable, even more, I think, than seeing the video of the 2nd plane impacting because I believe I didn't see that live.  And seeing it live, KNOWING IT'S REAL!!!  Now, ok, video is POWERFUL.  We're learning that, albeit slowly.  Still...remember that in 1940, military service was still a point of considerable pride.  We haven't had Korea or Viet Nam, which were messes.  "Only" 2200 killed, but it darn sure looked and sounded worse.  But the ship losses......attacking the battleships was sound enough given that the carriers weren't there, but....the Arizona, the Oklahoma, the West Virginia, and the California were all sunk.  Note the significance of the names.  

If the goal for our exercise is to envision a world where Japan holds a great deal more sway, then the best trigger is that Hitler triggers another Lusitania incident, so the US goes east with fervor, but there's no such emotional investment to cross the Pacific.  Whether the US would still have done so, when Japan goes after the Philippines...that might be a matter of timing, but the Philippines could've waited.  (The attack there started the day after Pearl Harbor.)  But if the US is building up the Atlantic fleet.......it feels plausible that Japan could've taken over the Philippines  while the US was stuck in the bloody, bloody Italian effort.  Maybe.  

But all of this talks about successful initial actions.  Long-term occupation is much, much harder...ask the Soviets about Afghanistan.  The Germans had big problems with the French resistance.  Actually holding China and the Philippines would not be easy *at all* and was probably a major overrreach, as Hitler's move on Russia was.  Japan may have succeeded in holding them long-term by co-opting the locals, if that was possible;  the Germans did as well as they did in France because of that.  I don't think that was possible given the Japanese mindset, the race relations in play, or the geographic dispersion.

But, ok, say it was working for at least a while.  As Hugh noted, we get wildly hypothetical very quickly, but it's definitely true that we have to establish the preliminaries...not just how the war ends, but how we go from the tensions of summer 1941 (in the Pacific) to the fall of Germany.  Or if Hitler had half a brain, a Germany that controlled most of central Europe...much of France, the Low Countries, Austria, and the Balkans.  That world is probably not stable, tho.

The opposite of a tautology is doublespeak.

Anyone else read Marc Stiegler's Brain Trust books?  Politically not as much of a reach as one might fear.  

Trump sees the world through blinders, and thinks no one can do anything to retaliate.  What scares me more, tho, is that his approval ratings remain so high.  And THIS is why the whole alt-right aspect is scary.  Perhaps they don't have the public support...but they have the climate planted, watered, weeded, and maintained by Trump working in their favor to grow behind the scenes, like any other noxious and toxic weed.

21 hours ago, st barbara said:

Whether Japan would have invaded Australia is debatable (and has been debated). I also can't see them invading the coast of the U S A, they simply didn't have the manpower to take the country. What IS more possible is that they would have turned West with India as the glittering prize. Possibly the U S A could have been forced to negotiate with the Axis powers had Germany got the bomb first and Japan could have kept its Asian possessions while Germany controlled Europe and Africa, leading to a cold war between a Germanic Europe and a Japanese dominated Asia, with the Americas as a neutral (and Neutered) "third power" and trading partner for the two great powers.

I can see skipping Australia too, but...why would India be a big prize?  The islands were for oil.  Going after India...steel?  Maybe but you're stretching further and further away.  They've already got a TON of hostile territory to control in eastern China.  I can see them going after the Philippines, but getting to India would probably mean controlling Indochina and Thailand.  UGLY, as we found out, to fight in those jungles.  At least at first, I think they'd just go with political pressure and have them be a puppet state as a buffer.  Granted, these are the Imperial Japanese nutjobs, so they may not, but going after India would, I think, lead to long-term failure as they overextend.

One thing to remember about Japan ever trying to attack the US is sheer distance.  The greatest asset for the US has been geographic isolation;  it's why the Cuban Missile Crisis caused such a major panic.  It's 5100 miles from Tokyo to San Francisco, with very darn little in between.  Even if you can establish a toehold on the West Coast, you still have great difficulty supplying, whereas the US can construct, supply, and stage fairly easily.  The Sierras are a logistical problem for ground forces, but that also works against the Japanese.  Similarly, ok, concede the Germans have the bomb.  They still have to cover massive territory, and they have to retain forces to keep their occupied territories pacified.  In military mission language, there are 2 words that might sound similar, but are *totally* different:  Clear and Secure.  Clear means you go through and take out all hostile forces.  Secure means you neutralize them....and KEEP THEM that way.  At least for a time.  Clear is to move troops through;  it's often a prelude to Secure, which is a prelude to Occupy.

The US geographic isolation is much like the sheer immensity of Russia in terms of the difficulties implicit in conquering either.

Madame Patissier

Her power is to create, en masse, the pastry of your dreams...be it a simple glazed or fancy maple bacon donut, eclair, or even an elaborate napoleon or torte.  And the Mind Control that locks your attention on the savory, luscious delight, so you can do nothing but savor its taste, its texture...you always want just that one more bite, and it's always there.......  

All while she clears out the jewelry cases and cash register, lifts a wallet or two, and saunters off completely undisturbed.

The cops particularly dislike her because her donuts, of course, trigger their fundamental Psych Lim.

Hugh, Alternate Desolid from APG lets you pass through completely solid objects too.

Can't pass through solids still requires you to take Affects Physical World, or Selective Desolid.  And we're still talking all or nothing.  This power, I hope, largely provides a path from Selective Desolid, Can't Pass Through Solids, to close to a pure Selective Desolid.  

Yeah, I don't remember any such treaty, and checking wikipedia doesn't show anything.  US-Japan relations were very poor;  the US was sending material support to aid China, and in 1940 cut oil and steel to Japan...which was critical, because Japan lacks those.  And in summer 1941, the US, Great Britain, and the Netherlands (Dutch East Indies) froze ALL oil exports to Japan.  That is not an environment for friendly talks.

It's a tossup on the KB, yeah.  The notion is he's so light, he's easier to knock around, but yeah, it's tough to make solid contact.  That KB is in Alternate Desolid.  I could drop it to 1" per level or just get rid of it;  I'm not wedded to it.  

AHHH.  OK.  Found that...Notepad++ manages this kind of formatting reasonably well too.  I think I can work it out from here.

Thanks, Dan.  I shall make sure to save the jar before going crazy, but this should be amusing to play with.

The point of the power is a scaling alternative to Desolid.  APG's Alternate Desolid doesn't make that much sense, in that for 5 points you can, if slowly, pass through completely solid objects.  That's like you're phasing into a different dimension.  Here, the notion is you're becoming dispersed;  all parts of you are solid matter, but now with gaps/spaces.  

The size change is not actual.  There's no Shrinking going on, per se.  The "size change" is for determining how readily you can pass through things...so, for example, with 1 level you can't pass through a chain link fence.  You're still too solid.  

Looking for feedback.  Alternate Desolid from APG doesn't really work for me;  being Desolid is more about damage negation or reduction than straight PD or ED to me.  Reduction would probably work IF I went with the expanded Damage Reduction charts/power choices, but I first thought of this as using damage negation.

So...what I'm considering.  Quasi Solid is purchased in levels, like Shrinking or DI.  Each level gives:

1 DC physical and energy Damage Negation.  This does NOT apply to powers with Affects Desolid.  (Like the PD/ED from Alternate Desolid.)

x1/2 Mass

x1/2 Size, only for purposes of passing through non-solid objects.  I define a standard character box, for this purpose, as 2m by 1/2 meter by 1/2 meter.  So with 3 levels of quasi solid, you can pass through bars 3" apart.

+2" Knockback.  This affects distance only, not velocity or velocity-related damage.  (This is straight from Alternate Desolid.)

The power is Constant and costs END.

For the time being, I assigned a temporary price of 12 points per level;  the damage negation is 10 on its own, but normally doesn't cost END.  The small size helps infiltration often enough to be worth something...but perhaps not as much  as I'm thinking.  The move through solids of Alternate Desolid is generally stronger.  So I could certainly see making this 10 points per level.

Note that this is not Desolid, and you don't need to buy anything with Affects Desolid.  It has no Life Support issues.  So it's closer to Desolid with Selective Desolidification.  It probably only makes mechanical sense if buying around 3-6 levels;  more, and you're probably better off buying Desolid and Selected Desolidification, even if it feels like a dodge (and it does to me, I'm not a big fan of Selective Desolid).  Less, and heck, just buy the Damage Negation.  The size aspect won't help *that* much.

Thoughts?  Modifications?  Change how you pass through objects somehow?  I'm not saying this is perfect, but it at least does scale, and I don't like Alternate Desolid's allowance of passing through completely solid, if not terribly robust, items.  I want this closer to Not Through Solids...with something scaling to say your penetration ability improves as you buy more.

Alternate Desolidification is in APG I.  I like the approach, but I can't see how to incorporate it into HD.  Gone through the HD docs.  Custom Power doesn't seem to work.  There's no Character Pack for APG per se.  

So...is it in a different Char Pack I can grab...or am I just missing something on how to do it?  

EDIT:  I suppose I can just define the whole thing as "25 points Alternate Desolid" as a Custom Power, and list all the game effects in the Notes.  Right now this looks to be my best choice, if not exactly elegant, because there's gonna be Usable Simultaneously on this, along with (possibly) some limitations if I need them for costing.

On the subject of possibly Japan using chemical and biological weapons...

It's not reasonable they can "win" this way.  They can stop the advance, but they can't win.  The plagues aren't going to make it back to the US coast;  they'll be noted long before then, and isolated.  Even if it does, it's a major leap to say that this creates a Mad Max, post-Holocaustal situation.  Bioweapons are very tricky at best.

If Japan uses a bioweapon...well, when?  Against what?  Bioweapons and chemical weapons are both better used against ground forces.  OK, so...during the island hopping?  It gets reported, and almost certainly, the affected Marines are monitored closely and in isolation on the island.

Plus, if Japan does use a bioweapon, well forget ANY chance of peace.  Ever.  Even if the Manhattan Project hadn't really kicked off...it would be now.  And I really, really doubt it would be used with the restraint shown historically.  Good bye Tokyo FIRST, is my guess.  Hiroshima and Nagasaki were as much about forcing the Japanese to surrender to *save* lives...on both sides...from the radical, fundamentally insane component that was all Death Before Dishonor.  That was totally established during the island hopping.  Well, if they're willing to drop a bioweapon....????  That's No Quarter time.

EDIT:  if you don't have the Manhattan Project kick back in, then SEVERAL fire bomb raids would be another option.  I'm just saying that the US would feel justified in getting MUCH uglier in their actions.

3 minutes ago, RDU Neil said:

Here is specifically noted to have inspired the Greeks to victory against the Trojans. She gave the big speech, convincing Athena to side with her, that stirred their hearts and girded them for battle... so some kind of combat buff?

Is that suitable for a Minor Transform, or as Greywind notes, is this just Oratory and Persuasion?

Lots of abilities, but she was a goddess after all.

And never once used them nicely that I can recall, altho it's been decades since I read Greek or Roman mythology.  To be sure, the best you could say about any of the Greek gods is they were narcissistic.  Oh, you actually, ACCIDENTALLY, see your goddess naked.  Of course she turns you into a stag to be ripped apart by your own hunting dogs.

Probably People to Animals for the major Transform.  Pretty common retaliation in Greek myth, and IIRC, Hera did do this to some of Zeus' amorous targets.  For the minor...not sure.  That's a TON of minor transform...not sure what that's for.  Perhaps in response to hubris...but even that drew Major Transform responses.  Arachne claimed to be the greatest weaver...greater than the gods.  She got turned into a spider.  Cassandra perhaps.  She had the gift of prophecy, and said something a goddess took offense to...even tho it was the truth.  So Cassandra was cursed to never be believed.

Yeah, a lot depends on when things change.  People have talked about Pearl Harbor, but another turning point would've been Midway.  Say the Japanese took less damage in the Battle of the Coral Sea, which then led to a victory at Midway.  The US push is seriously blunted.  With that, the US pulls back and has to concentrate on building up the fleet...again...while concentrating on Europe first.  So, the relative timelines shift, enough so the Nazi atrocities in Europe are allowed to come to light *before* the island-hopping in the Pacific can advance.  The Russia-US aspect of the alliance gets shaky.

So...the US starts worrying more about the European situation.  Russia (say) is not as hammered, so a larger presence is necessary.  This, along with the urgent rebuilding, and the Holocaust aftermath, put the Pacific on a lesser footing.  Japan consolidates the eastern Pacific and coastal China, and doesn't become...an ally...but as the Communist Menace starts to loom, it's viewed as more expedient to let Japan and Russia battle it out.  Especially as this keeps the Chinese Communists more contained.

In this construction, the war with Japan never really ends.  Japan 'wins' by holding onto the old colonial holdings.  The islands (Marshalls, Gilberts, Wake, Midway) form the effective DMZ.  The Korean War, if it happens at all, has no US involvement.  The Cuban crisis, on the other hand, DOES recur because the Russians are feeling even more boxed in.  Here, tho, the US response is likely much more forceful, and Castro's tossed out.  Cuba becomes a protectorate.

Now, an interesting twist:  with Cuba and Puerto Rico controlled, and the ongoing decline of British influence, Jamaica and Bermuda agree to a Caribbean alliance, to which Haiti and the Dom Republic eventually join...it's a mini EU.  Cuba's economy never tanks.  South Florida develops much more slowly.

Moving forward...if the Russians remain belligerent...so they stomp in Hungary and Czechoslovakia as they did...then an uneasy truce, if not a full alliance, can firm up between the US and Japan, with the goal of keeping the Communists contained...especially if the Russian system of gulags is fanned to create an image of a Second Holocaust.

Would this be stable?  No.  The US never drops atomics here;  that creates different tensions.

Fundamentally, tho...I don't see Japan ever trying to occupy more than this:

http://www.emersonkent.com/map_archive/imperial_powers_pacific.htm

They never had territorial ambitions further west.

#1:  Is Firewing's power level appropriate?

#2:  even if it is, why duplicate?  Heck, how about going another way altogether?  Furnace...hot metal.  Colossus with a big heat-based damage shield!  (And, yes, I do intend to mean a big Only In Alternate ID basis.)  

#3:  Will the Malvans mind?  Only one opinion matters there...yours.    Any kind of reaction can be justified, unless the source material specifically has statements on this...and I rather doubt that.

3 hours ago, Daisuke said:

And I don't know if this is also a problem but I found out that it takes me more than couple days to even make a character or make a character sheet for an existing fictional character, Multipower & VVP has also been hard to understand. I'm afraid that once I start the game I'd slow the game down because I still lack understanding of the basic core rules.

Hero Designer helps quite a bit.  It'll do all the math, and tracks the various interconnections.

Fictional characters are actually *often* a pain because writers don't play by rules, they're just doing whatever they want to fit the story.  Rules, schmules.  Writers don't need stinkin' rules.  And they don't think of points.  A good way to start is with core tropes:

--the Brick:  massive Str, punches things.  Massive defenses, doesn't care what tries to hurt him.  Ben Grimm,  Colossus.  

--the martial artist or acrobat:  doesn't have the raw Str or defenses.  Relies on skills and/or dexterity. 

--artillery type:  ranged attacks.  Sometimes simple, like Human Torch;  sometimes complex like most comic book archer types, who use lots of special effects arrows.  

I'm biased towards flying energy projectors, always have been, always will be.  Of course it's wish fulfillment.   After that, martial artists with good movement and fairly good defenses.

A character notion I built for grins was based on the D&D 3rd Ed prestige class, the shadowdancer.  Mostly a martial artist, with "shadow dimension" powers...shadow step is a teleport.  Shadow staff is either a plain HA (no focus) or an AVAD attack vs. Power Def or Mental Def.  AoE Darkness.  Depending on point level...spatial awareness, but if not, night vision.  Spatial means you're immune to your own darkness.  I believe the defenses included more Damage Negation (essentially a damping field) than normal damage resistance...altho some of both, cuz damage negation is fairly expensive.  It's a nice, clean concept that works out well.

Multipower is a way to add flexibility.  It's usually "I can pick ONE OF the following"...like a gun versus a sword.  A variable pool is flexibility.  What kind of power do I want here...a Flash, an Entangle, a Blast?  10 grunts, I want to AoE Flash.  Speedster...never gonna hit him, AoE or explosion so I just have to hit the hex.  It's leaving yourself a pool of points that you can define in the moment rather than in advance...but it's *expensive*.  To be honest, you'll do fine to just say no, no VPPs to start with.

275 is very high end for Heroic, altho if there's going to be prevalent magic, even if it's not high-powered, that might be a reasonable number.  Street level Supers is 250.

And STUN as well.

4 hours ago, Simon said:

Also, you may want to read you END example a bit more carefully.  If you only want +2 END you still pay 1 point, not 2/5 of a point.  If you want +6 END, you pay 2 ponts.

12 minutes ago, Surrealone said:

But my example is about buying 502 pts of Multiform …in which case the minimum cost is more than satisified.  Also, as noted in my edit, above, Multiform's cost in RAW explicity states it's 1 CP per 5 pts (which mathematically entails Total Cost divided by 5 to compute the CP cost).

 

The RULE for Multiform is 1 CP per 5 points.  The rule IS NOT divide the cost by 5.  The statements ARE NOT equivalent BECAUSE of the rounding rule.  The statement in the rule says that the rounding DOES NOT APPLY because there is no division involved by the statement of the rule.

No, there's no HD problem.  You're asking to buy a "fractional die" if this was, say, Blast.  No.  1 CP gets you 5 character points...that doesn't reverse.  The rounding rules don't apply because there is no rounding to be done.  Multiplication and division happen with Advantages and Limitations, not with basic purchase cost.  You can't buy "3 build points" worth of Duplication.  

The rule is there.  6E1, p. 40.  Buying less than the full amount.