TheDarkness

I have long thought religion is bad and Lord Liaden is Evel Knievel. Or was it that Bad Religion is good and Lord Liaden is Emil Phillips?

That's one of the things that is really tricky that I want to have be at the center, and balancing the group's internal conflicts and finding a shared internal conflict that helps define who they want their characters to be instead of being just a plot point that means I don't have to have them meet in a bar is something I look forward to working out with them. Just looked all three up, and they sound very interesting, I'll have to check them out. Thanks!

In this case, there might be, for one player, some of the street level drug thing, though in a fictionalized form, but I do tend to agree that trauma is not fun and not a thing I want to run in the game, the street level drug thing has more to do a with a detective type character. Kind of feeling like I'm on a good track on NPC development, I've been listening to audio books at work and writing notes at lunch on ideas they give me for characters, which, given that a lot of them are autobiographies, has really helped me flesh out some more realistic NPCs with really cool stuff who still have issues that will help keep them from taking center stage from the players. As for the population/collateral issue, I got thinking about then when I was living in China, some ideas, but I'm really trying to keep a balance where, though the world interacts with the players, it's not this sort of overpowering world running the whole game because they got in a fight in the wrong place through no fault of their own, and yet, despite the fact that its obvious, the government and everyone now hate them, even though they had no choice, which seems like a popular but annoying plotline. Thanks!

Cancer and TJack, Actually, in this case, I'm more interested in what others are interested in, for a change of viewpoint from my own perspectives. As far as general info about the game, supers of all stripes start appearing(in small numbers) in the forties and fifties, the numbers start to become more impactful by the sixties, and the story is taking place roughly in our modern time. The city is a fictional city. Powers play out realistically to a great extent, but very few are such powerhouses that they are not terribly vulnerable without others covering their weaknesses(not because there are no powerhouses, but because there is always that area that one is vulnerable in). The center of the story will be a team, and a lot of it will be about the good parts of being a team, though plotting a story with players always requires the need to adjust for their actions in ways that let them shape the story. But again, for me, I just wanted to hear what people liked and didn't like in a game where more adult themes(and decidedly less power gaming) were a focus. Not necessarily always serious, but with a healthy dose of mystery elements, the idea of consequences without making it a punishment fest for not making clear that consequences could occur, and a general focus on the characters and the story/events without it being about the character's power development first and foremost.

Terrible thread title, sorry. And it's technically game related just because it's probably going to influence theme/plot ideas for a supers game. Anyway, if you're thinking more adult super hero stuff, to avoid saying "edgy" or "dark" because I think they may be self limiting in some cases, but just supers stories for adults, what do you like to see?

Your brother is the same as a coworker of mine. All the same arguments, the guys a really nice guy, but he just buys this hype, and it's hard to explain, you know, when your dad makes a lot and avoids all the taxes, and gets away with it, that's not self made when you inherit it. It's not even a good business model if you wouldn't have been rich if you didn't avoid all the costs of doing the business by chicanery. The only thing I've said to him, and I'll say this to anyone, is no, Rush Limbo is not joking, he's muckraking, and I'll give you a hundred dollars if you can provide me with a recording of a day of his show where he does not paint half the population of our country as either being communists, traitors, or fools. Never had to give out any money whatsoever, because there never has been such a Rush Limbaugh show. I know, I had to listen to years of that pap because of a former employer who also never received a hundred dollars from me.

It amazes me how many people who will argue vehemently that there is objective morality will then turn around and get super relativistic when their guy is caught obviously lying and manipulating the system.

Currently listening to an ebook about LBJ's presidency, I am about as far from an LBJ fan as you could get, but man, man the difference in competence level from him to our current leader is staggering, he was a master at getting things done. The only reason Trump has got anything done is because the GOP senate, in lockstep with the party, has done it for him. We can argue the value of those actions, just not sure how long the party thinks costly wars and tax cuts go together like fish and white wine.

Yeah, it's an interesting switch. I can understand it, as multiple seasons allow for longer stories, whereas movies made of books, for example, used to always be heavily abridged. I worry about how the TV thing will last. I like a lot of newer shows, but I worry that Game of Thrones might reveal something to look out for. I feel like, even had the books been done, the people in charge just wanted to get it over with. I hope that doesn't turn into a common thing. On the flip side, I suspect that these sorts of TV series are putting pressure to produce book series that are not as serialized book by book, and will likely create a lot of pressure to actually plot further ahead than many writers have in the past. To avoid problems like Game of Thrones, or, even earlier in the process, Heroes, which clearly they either had no plan after the first season, or couldn't stand up to pressure. Or Lost, which just felt like it was made up as it went along. Babylon 5, if made now, actually wouldn't have half the problems they faced then. Early outlier on the long form TV show. Sorry, got babbling...

I actually have that exact same sword. Bought it in 2007 at the shaolin temple, mass produced jobby. Merging in traffic is China is all the context I need on this one.

Blaming jews is not a field that hires particularly original thinkers. I would say blaming them for the mongol hordes is probably the zenith of their original thinking. I read a while back an article by someone who used to be an editor for some conspiracy theory mag, and quit after he realized that no matter the conspiracy, someone always ended up blaming the jewish people for it. I did a cursory search on a few I thought would be exceptions, but no. I'm not even sure how one believes a banker is both a reptilian and a jew, but apparently that is a thing. I suppose the catholic reptilians rule the world on Saturdays.

It's fair to keep in mind that, at the time of the Mongol invasions, there were people in Europe who blamed the jews. Sadly, this is not a joke.

Statistics are not the only measure of relevance. After the end of Reconstruction, and especially after WWI, attacks on black communities represented a number of casualties that was also statistically small compared to other ways people could die, but effectively disenfranchised the black middle class and especially upper class throughout much of the South and into the midwest. In fact, had a huge influence on the course of our history until the early seventies, and in many ways, still today. Those attacks were often prefaced by whistle dog politics from leaders backed by friendly press to those leaders selling the same fear, after which those leaders would take zero responsibility for the predictable results of their words. The key difference here is those leaders clearly planned for said violence to happen, the current one merely flails about.

The Arms for Newts scandal really destroyed his presidency.

It is posturing. The useful platform is 'we will use nukes if they are on the table by all players has shown to mean no one uses them. Only an idiot it worrying about using them first, because the real goal is not using them.

I was trying to take a cup is half full approach without saying what in hell was in the cup.

He had a press conference with conspiracy theorists.

A major part of the book is that that form of institutionalized and de jure discrimination was not ended until after such programs were already largely played out, and that we still are under the massive influence of that institutional racism's effect. Stopping things like discriminatory hiring practices and ending discriminatory housing practices are drastically different acts. The first can actually end the influence quite quickly, if it is implemented effectively. Ending disciminatory housing practices after they have been in place does nothing to change the resulting forced segregation of people. The fact that it was ruled unconstitutional before the bulk of the practice took place, and that the states and the federal governments bent over backwards to ignore the constitutional question until the practice was no longer needed to maintain the forced segregation of people is telling.

A book I just read prompted by the discussion of the earlier comparison of St. Louis and a drastically different city in this thread. It is actually a book about how the federal efforts to promote the home building sector and increase homeowndership from WWI through the New Deal until the beginning of the 1970s, explicitly required that public housing projects needed to be for whites only if they were going to receive the backing and interest rates offered in such programs, and how this and other policies by federal and state governments further ensured that African-American housing would become increasingly segregated by race, increasingly costly in comparison to equivalent housing for whites, and increasingly insecure as a result of this. https://www.epi.org/publication/the-color-of-law-a-forgotten-history-of-how-our-government-segregated-america/ This included a clause prohibiting resale to African=American. Considering that the majority of the middle class in America would owe much of their success, and the bulk of their equity, to these programs, and a whole race of people were denied this, is just criminal. Oh, and African-American vets got screwed, too. They were more likely to be dishonourably discharged from military branches, and it's statistically certain that a great many cases would have been racism, and given that they often were denied their benefits for buying a home even if not dishonourably discharged, as well as not being paid as much as their white counterparts. And this is through to the early seventies. It was a direct extension of Jim Crow at the federal level, involving the largest potential investment most Americans would individually make in their lives.

I know this has already been posted, but his mouth said there were airports in the revolutionary war, and his brain didn't catch it.

No problem!

To help simplify, the suit is not about a work of fiction, but a book making a concrete claim. This is a textbook libel case, as well as defamation. It isn't unusual in the least.

Thanks for posting that, sad as the event is, it is still good to hear about good people!

Two things on St. Louis to keep in mind. One, it is a massive transportation (and thus, transport) hub in the center of the country, and that means it's a hub for all things legal and illegal. Two, stats that speak of just St.Louis proper have the crime rate higher, but the actual urban area extends well past that, and so the numbers become closer to other cities when that area is included, though still high. Third, there is very serious infrastructure problems and structural inequality problems from how the city used the New Deal and later, desegregation, to force black St. Louis residents to North St. Louis and move investment away from there. This meant that my parents generation, if they were black St. Louis home owners, would not have a fraction of the home investment that they actually did, even less for the fact that they were almost guaranteed to be paying much worse rates on their loans. (To be clear, I am white and from Chicago, which has similar structural issues.) Plano had nowhere near the population of St. Louis during those eras, and so didn't develop along the same lines. In fact, Plano was not even approaching the same size as just St Louis(not St. Louis county) until after 2000. Infrastructure is going to be a huge factor in any comparison that will make it hard to compare those two cities for other factors.

A knowledge test to vote, if done in a constitutional manner, would bankrupt the US in no time, as very large numbers of people would fail any stringent test, anything less would be pointless, as, for example, a passing knowledge of economics is effectively as worthless as none when dealing with some global economic issues one is voting on, and as soon as those large swaths of people can no longer vote, they also can no longer be taxed, as they can elect no representatives, unless failure on this test is a crime, which is an even worse idea. No state(worldwide) with elections has ever really solved the problem of sufficient education of the voter base, and making the very people controlling the funds for education the ones who fund and serve as administration for the tests for who can vote is a really, really problematic ihing. If the people are not wise enough to vote well in large enough numbers that it is an issue, there is almost zero chance that local governments hold no responsibility for it in the US education system, and it also means that at the federal level the citizens interests weren't being looked after. So, literally, the government would be defining the qualities one needs to have to vote for the government, the administering of the tests, the retention of records, etc. Which is why that's a more effective system to undermine democracy than to bolster it. As has already been pointed out, the closest historical parallels we have to such tests were used against minorities and especially black Americans by people who often had to cheat to avoid the tests for fear of revealing their inadequate grasp of reality. That system made the American South an economically backward region that could not attract as much investment as the North through the entirety of the first half of the twentieth century, Worse was the lawless conduct of those who did get to decide who voted, and that lawlessness was the reason they made sure to hold that power, not a byproduct, but the goal.