TheDarkness

8 hours ago, Cancer said:

 

Man, you can tell the New England fanbase dominate media coverage.  They will never let that go.

 

Also, no mention of a rather more significant sports figure passing: Bart Starr passes, age 85.  He was only the QB in the Vince Lombardi era, and won five NFL championships, including the first two Super Bowls.

Bill Buckner was not always in New England, I knew him from when he played in Chicago, was always a big fan.

So far, everyone saved by the Lord of Light died when their goal was achieved. Which leaves Arya and Jon as the last two left to die who the lord of light apparently directly saved.

Which would be for the best. Jon was never a good leader, he is a good man, but he is awful at politics, which is kind of a prerequisite for the job, and he is more competent at getting competing groups to fight together than in actually planning those fights.

Tywin was a rotten individual, but he was right about a King needing more than goodness to rule.

Conversely, Danaerys may not be mad at all. She literally summed up what sway she had correctly, fear, and maximized that. I'm not betting on it, but, to break the wheel, there can't be thrones, in King's Landing or Winterfell or anywhere else. These people need to come from this time of suffering and establish a thriving democracy with a free press that exports all war and violence to Dhorne in the name of Freedom. To me, that is the lesson the whole show has been moving toward.

On 4/10/2019 at 3:38 PM, death tribble said:

Simple, work on 'War of Northern Aggression' as it is known in the South or State rights. People were defending their homes and their States. The war was not fought on the basis of emancipation for slaves or their rights, it was one of the results.

Actually, the newspapers of the South almost universally wrote about the danger of slave violence on innocent Southerners during the time of the war and especially in the lead up to it. There really is no safe harbor from racism in this one. It was literally everyone's legal responsibility to turn in runaway slaves. Every single citizens. And, the lead up to the war has, as a major cornerstone, the North's refusal to accept that legal responsibility and how that played out in the courts and the responses. And then, the Northern citizenry's support of John Brown. And then the election of Lincoln, which every Southern politician of that time knew to be an abolitionist, irrespective of politics he played in speeches.

The War of Northern Aggression is a post war, post reconstruction narrative more than it was a narrative pushed befores and during the actual war. Sure, Southern leaders painted it as the North's fault, but they also made clear it was about slavery at every level of leadership, and the papers at the time in the South descended into such rank racism that the post-reconstruction attempts at distancing the whole thing from slaver appear silly. Before and during, slavery and the bogeyman of violent freed black Americans ravaging the innocent was the dominant media portrayal leading up to the war and during in the South.

I'm not sure how much I would want to deal with that as a player to just play a game. My entertainment need does not weigh very heavily in that equation.

You guys argue like you're the Asian market that actually makes these movies profitable or something.

On 12/8/2018 at 8:30 PM, unclevlad said:

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.

Great post.

That said, I can't think of many people from when I started playing who didn't get much of their early rpg experience from D&D, and didn't get their early wargaming experience from Warhammer. Becoming the legacy brand has its advantages. Those two have most of the experienced gamers familiar with their game, and more money and exposure at any one time.

That said, their market ebbs and flows, because eventually, every consumer gets tired of adding bells and whistles to solve problems from the last bells and whistles and eventually tends to settle on a particular product/edition.

As a kid, I knew more people who read comics than read fantasy. And there are clearly tons of fans of super hero movies.

Basically, I think inertia has more to do with the why one is more popular than the other. The first I saw supers games marketed at even near the level of D&D was at a point when the market was flooded with games, and that wasn't Champions, so Champions, really the legacy supers game, couldn't gain the same advantages as a game like D&D, because it was already magically placed from its inception of being a niche in a niche, and not long after, had a fair number of competitors.

I do, however, think your power levels argument is a great one. I think there's a lot of elements to it in supers.

However, I think that supers games had more influence on the culture of game creation and tastes, from a focus more on scenarios rather than modules full of questions as to why none of the denizens of this castle heard the ninety two sword fights that lead us to this room, and supers always had the actual codification by choice of weaknesses for a players character.

Literally 80% of the advice I see to GMs online could have been gleamed from any of a number of super hero game modules and systems from the late eighties, and certainly were less common in the popular fantasy games of the time. Part of that is the medium. Supers has detectives and street fights, and a dungeon crawl only works when the people in the dungeon can't burn holes in all the walls and take a direct route, so the interplay and story really was more up front, because there was no choice.

"original public meaning, of course informed by history and tradition and precedent."

That last word is why originalism is silly. You can't have both common law and originalism, the very idea of precedent invalidates any claim to original meanings' power over jurist interpretation.

There is a difference between "The electoral system should be a system that balances the rights of smaller populations and larger ones" and "The electoral system we have is the only way to do this, or even effectively does so".

And "There is no more functional way" is false, the system is outdated, and needs adjusting. The idea that losing any of that power is a fair cause for uprisings is overblown.

7 hours ago, 薔薇語 said:

Being focused on school, church, sports, etc., does not make one a saint. Does not mean one has done nothing less than great. Nor are those focuses exclusionary of drinking. I have known top students who drank and did drugs in school. Doesn't mean that they were of poor character but that they were merely mortals. And we should never expect one of us to be more than mere mortals with all of our virtues and vices. He hasn't painted himself as a saint and strawmanning him as such isn't helpful or productive.  

 

That quote of mine has a typo. Should be 'exclude'. 

 

La Rose. 

You're skipping the part of the post you're responding to that points out he solely does his virtue signalling when he's trying to undermine claims of drinking and/or rape allegations.

You might want to consider that while you claim others have a bias, you might not be exempt.

Also, I was actually trying to clarify when I asked what what 'Nor is being supportive of women exclusive with flirting. ' have to do with rape accusations? This statement seems out of nowhere,

On 9/26/2018 at 9:35 PM, 薔薇語 said:

 

 

Again, he didn't characterize himself as a saint. Even people of good character are allowed to get drunk. I can almost guarantee that everyone here drinks far more than I, but I would never use that as an excuse to impune one's character. Nor is being supportive of women exclusive with flirting. 

 

It seems as though lots of folks are establishing caricatures of what the person has actually said. The pursuit of justice requires us to try our eternal best to set aside such exaggerations. 

 

La Rose. 

You forgot the other quote I put in the post you pulled that from. " I spent most of my time in high school focused on academics, sports, church, and service."

THAT one he specifically stresses while downplaying the drinking, but people on both sides who knew him during that time have painted him during that time as a heavy drinker, and no one gets labelled as a heavy drinker for a few beers. Either he is in denial, which pretty much only happens when one is still a heavy drinker, or he's lying. He repeatedly brings up stuff like the quote above in response to the drinking thing to minimize it, and it's not everyone else's fault that apparently, he can't even admit to drinking in excess in high school when he obviously did.

I'm sorry, but he does not come off as credible. Further, she seems entirely credible, and the whole idea that she is misremembering seems a bit of a stretch, trying to make the problem with eyewitness testimony apply to aspects that it simply doesn't apply to.

He's trying to dodge both any claim that he was a heavy drinker and that he was a rapist, and it's almost like he's fighting against the first harder than the second, which is really, really not helping his cause. People on both sides seem to have a clearer memory of what kind of drinker he was, and none of those match his claims in a public hearing before senate.

And what on earth does 'Nor is being supportive of women exclusive with flirting. ' have to do with rape accusations?

His words, "The allegation of misconduct is completely inconsistent with the rest of my life. The record of my life, from my days in grade school through the present day, shows that I have always promoted the equality and dignity of women."

Also, his words during part of that time he says he was doing the above, was the yearbook quote about hitting women.

There's more compelling cases to take to the innocence project.

7 hours ago, DShomshak said:

That was Lawnmower Boy who pointed out this was a hiring committee, not a trial. I just repeated his insight.

 

A few further thoughts:

 

First, Kavanaugh made himself easy to attack by presenting himself (or letting Trump and others present him) as such a perfect plaster saint. Plaster saints invite hammers to smash them. If he'd begun by saying that he'd had a wild youth but he'd repented of it and tried to be a better man, he'd be... Well, maybe not untouchable, but he'd be harder to attack. For instance, while insisting that he doesn't remember any such attack on Ford, if it did happen he apologizes and wants to help her and urges all women to report such attacks right away. Just from the most cynical, tactical standpoint, that would limit the damage. Lots of people love a repentant sinner, and it would avoid the question of his current honesty.

 

Second, I wonder if the blocking of Merrick Garland has something to do with current Republican intransigence on Kavanaugh. They escalated from trench warfare to scorched earth, total warfare; that no rules would constrain their attempt to win a total victory. They may feel they can't afford to back down, ever, to any degree. If they showed any weakness, they would invite worse attack and lose the support of their base. Pinker's Better Angels of our Nature has a good discussion of this prickly need to never back down in cultures that lack the restraining -- but also the protecting -- hand of law.

 

Dean Shomshak

And he did paint himself this way, specifically stating that his life at that time was church, studies, and family as the central narrative. He has totally done this, saying , "I spent most of my time in high school focused on academics, sports, church, and service." and repainting his drinking then as an occasional thing, when even his friends from then paint an entirely different picture. A few beers. He's caught in a clear lie there, the fact that he's fighting to continue that lie does not make a reasonable listener want to go to the line believing him on other issues.

And, again, his chief supporters were supporters of Roy Moore, people who have entirely different reasons for supporting him than their belief in him.

The fact that the GOP is so quick to jump this same shark again so soon after Moore is a another blunder on their part.

6 hours ago, 薔薇語 said:

 

I do not know if she is completely right or wrong. I worry there may be some confusion regarding the actions or people involved. 

 

Why do I say this? Because there are cases where this exact kind of thing has happened. I recall learning of a story of a man who was arrested for rape on the strength of the victims testimony IDing him as the attacker. It wasn't until many years later that the man was released from prison because the DNA evidence exonerated him and pointed to a different person. Even then the woman couldn't get over the belief that he was indeed the rapist. Did she do that maliciously? No, I sincerely doubt that. But these kinds of concerns are why we have to be careful with claims and look for as much supporting evidence as possible. Currently Prof Ford has not provided much in the way of investigatable facts so it is still 'he said, she said'.

 

La Rose. 

 

 

Cavanaugh literally said he was a virgin as a defense and attempted to portray himself at that time as not being a heavy drinker. Everyone on all sides of the issue from that period seems to say that's not true at all, and that heavy drinking was a major thing for him and his circle back then. I think his own conduct in defending himself is suspect, because it clearly involves obfuscation and an attempt to cover up the drinking.

I'm not sure why one would only look in the accusor's accounts for inconsistencies, that's not how investigations work. A lot of people get caught in crimes because of their response to the accusations. I'll again cite Roy Moore, with his whole 'I had the parent's permission'.

Are you saying Brett Cavanaugh has been honest about his and his friends' behavior back then? If you do, how do reconcile that his friends paint an entirely different picture?

6 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

I agree with you, was just being a bit pedantic in the interest of keeping the facts straight about the claims. Sorry if I suggested otherwise.

No problem!

10 minutes ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

Has anyone in this thread made that claim?

 

Also, the allegations against Kavanaugh, as I understand them are attempted rape (holding the victim down, trying to undress her) in the first case, and exposing himself in the second case.

One the last page, yes, there is exactly that claim.

I'm missing what bearing your second sentence has on things, I was suggesting that it's easy to confirm that claiming rape is not easy, I don't think attempted rape is any different, and statistics seem to back me on that. There's a non-insignificant number of people who are horrible to claims of rape and predatory actions towards women. The fact is, these women are successful and have little to gain from this. The idea that they are such pro democrat voters that they, women old enough to have seen what kind of garbage rape victims often have to put up with, decided to do this for the party, it is so patently ridiculous. These aren't twenty year olds out for attention who have no idea how bad this will get.

And, it doesn't do him much good that his main supporters were playing the same routine for Roy Moore not so long ago, not because anyone actually believed he wasn't a creeper, but for the votes. Or that his friend refuses to testify. Or that he just called himself a virgin back then, but everyone else, even the people on his side, are painting a different picture of him during those days than the one he is.

There's just a point where some of the 'he saids' don't make him look very good. Literally one page ago someone said, barring a lineup of claims, he'd be put through, and already there's a lineup. Not a week ago, people were saying it was only one claim, everyone else describes him as not being that way, and now we have stories that describe a potentially consistent behavior. Further, the descriptions we have of the women making the claims are not exactly giving much support for the idea that they are somehow doing this for other reasons.

Kindly, the people who keep claiming how easy it is to claim you were raped, think about what you're saying, because it's verifiably false. I can't think of another claim so heavily weighted against the claimant.

On 5/13/2018 at 1:09 AM, Badger said:

Perhaps, but given Iran shenanigans over the last 40 years, the only people I will feel sorry for on that one were the actual ones who got screwed over in the 1950s. 

To clarify, the dicking over continued until 1979, and, in fact, part of the reason that Khomeini ended up in power was also tied to how we tended to support far right nutjobs in the region, and at best turned a blind eye to, and at worst, encouraged their brutal suppression of anyone left of far, far right.

By the time the revolution occurred, the left in Iran was crushed to such an extent that it was child's play for the religious extremists to co-opt the revolution that they were only a part of, and then deal the final blow to the left.

There are some good state department papers on this process across the middle east, they were mostly written in relation to the rise of politicized Islam, before the rise of militant branches.

I would say the biggest issue is the horrible state of availability of valid info on relationships and intimacy. Finding good info and partners willing to also make use of it is often an uphill battle.

2 hours ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

A huge part of the problems is that too many white people are utterly paranoid about other races and bring the police into the equation when they are clearly not needed (including many situations where no crime at all has occurred). It even happens at Yale, an Ivy League university where students should know better.

There is a contingent of students and staff at ivy league colleges ESPECIALLY who live in communities so removed from most minorities that they have the least experience of any of us coexisting as equals.

https://www.fastcompany.com/40556164/a-new-kind-of-city-tour-shows-the-history-of-racist-housing-policy

I would say that all white towns, regardless of income level, are a huge source of this inability, whether they are all white by choice or by historical and systematic racism as seen in the link above.

On the bright side, Stormy Daniel's lawyer has apparently found a way to convert Trump tweets directly into gravitas.

12 hours ago, Old Man said:

I originally read that as "Celts".

Worse conspiracy theories have caught on.

Yeah, functionally it's very similar to Ultra Boy from Legion of Super Heroes, only adding the effect of changing fingers to change powers.

Unfortunately, the only writeups I could find right off hand are likely fifth edition:

https://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/10236-legion-of-super-heroes-write-ups-for-champions/

I think once you decide how to deal with how each armour type deals with each type of weapon(bludgeoning, slashing, thrusting), it's simple. Aside from doing it in game time.

Sword was pretty much always taught after staff/spear for a reason, since they follow similar mechanical principles. Also because, in reality, knowing sword meant knowing sword against sword, sword against spear, sword against sword and shield, etc.

The key difference is range. Once inside, a spear is now a bludgeoning weapon(yes, there are a few moves for bringing the point to bear inside, but the available moves if you're holding a long weapon and your opponent is inside are made up of far far more bludgeoning  than stabbing, and pretty much no slashing). At long range, staff is a more powerful bludgeoning weapon than it is in close range, because the leverage is far greater if you hold it at the base than at the center. This holds true for spear as well.

As for plate, there is a reason that thrusts became more prevalent after the age of armour ended. Heavy swings allowed for more pressure to be put on the armored opponent while allowing momentum to be more continuous, while thrusts were less likely to penetrate. Thrusts were ideally saved for when position allowed them against points where mobility requirements meant that the plate could not cover that point.

Arrows and bolts are really just piercing, range is also their biggest thing.

The key difference between most rpg approaches to weapons and a realistic one is that, in reality, assuming competence in your weapon, the most important knowledge at play for you is knowledge of how one fights with what your opponent has. If that knowledge is zero, you are likely to die. For a realistic game(in which players also wanted this realism) I've used a house rule that stated that the skill roll at play in attacks would be no higher than the skill level one has in their opponent's weapons, so if one had a high skill in sword but low in staff, and the opponent had a staff, then the lower of the two applied. The players were supposed to be seasoned soldiers, so it encouraged the purchase of a broad range of weapon types(each specific weapon did not have to be covered, long weapons, straight swords, curved sword, flexible weapons, broad categories were bought). This often worked dramatically for the players, as the enemies also fell under the same limitations, which meant that lackies were in trouble.

Anyway, good luck with what you're working on.

6 hours ago, BoloOfEarth said:

As to a potentially abusive build, I've found that a nice-sized PRE drain, followed by a good Presence Attack, can be pretty darn effective.

 

Rebel Yell (all sonic powers) has a Multipower with the following slot: 

• Infrasonic Dread:  Drain PRE & EGO 4d6, Expanded (+½), AoE 16m Cone (+½), AVAD (Hearing Flash DEF; +0), Half END (+¼); No Range (-½)

Outside the Multipower, he also has:

• I’m The Man:  +30 PRE, Only for Presence Attacks (-1)

I figured it would be great for crowd "control", particularly to cause mass panic and stampeding for the exits for the heroes to deal with.  I didn't anticipate how effective it would be against the heroes themselves, most of whom only had a few points of Hearing Flash Defense and relatively low EGO and PRE (say 13 and 15 respectively).  The team mentalist's high EGO, plus the brick's high Hearing Flash Defense, left them relatively unaffected.  The few others who were in the AoE Cone?  Sucked to be them for a Phase or two.

This actually is something I prefer for some games, which is there being enough of a spread of power bases that one player or npc can't possibly be highly capable against all of them.

Not so much to have some inroad to screwing the players, but as a given from the start, the knowledge that for the areas you cannot deal with, you have a teammate who can, and if your team doesn't, then your team finds allies that can or finds clever ways to avoid the problem. Also, to foster team unity, to add some suspense and make it so that that characters who have their own niche are seen by their teammates as a protection for the group at the same level of the brick at the forefront, or the energy blaster who enables them to deal with range.

Additionally, rational world building helps this. I'm not sure there would ever be a world where mind control is not heavily resented. The hero with it may be powerful against some, but they are going to need to be subtle in their use of it, and they are definitely going to need friends. The villain with it is likely to have a lot of enemies if they don't have some sort of guidelines themselves. Socially, it is the nuclear option. It's very possible to set up a preexisting custom regarding what is fair game, because mentallists might need to sleep sometimes, and some bricks might look forward to waking them up by tossing them into space. This also sets up a real threat value for the truly evil mind control person who the team learns from the news is not playing by the rules.

I've played with the idea in the past(in another system, but this is not so system specific) of gaining new spells either from finding those spells/being taught them by someone who knows them, and/or of researching through a skill spells one wishes to make.

They would still need to buy the spell when the time came.

This would be a campaign thing, not a rule per se. That way, there is a process for increasing in power for spell users. In that approach, I also worked in the idea that there was no general 'spell making' skill, but that it had to be bought in specific fields, be it 'dark magic creation', 'charms creation', 'protective spell creation', etc, so that spell casters, to become powerful in a broad range of things, would really have to either spend points on a wider range of skills as well, or alternatively roleplay amicable contacts with other spell users who would teach them their spells, or have influence/resources to obtain(through hook or crook) magic they themselves did not have the ability to create.

1 minute ago, Cassandra said:

Defensive Strike works well to simulate a Feint.  It allows the Hero to trick the villain to attacking when he can Feint and immediately strike back.

Actually, it never actually occurred to me, but that is a counter-strike, and actually a closer approximation than the official move 'counter-strike'!

A feint seeks to draw a defense.