TheDarkness

Hope this helps. As far as the snopes end of the convo. http://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/snopescom/

Interesting article on the topic: http://patimes.org/obama-limits-government-executive-order/

Have the rules for executive orders actually changed? I mean, considering that they were used years previously to inter Japanese-Americans, I'm wondering if it's more a matter of how broadly a particular president uses them, and that the rules for them have not really changed. Bush, for example, created Homeland Security by way of executive order.

I really wish there were a way to allow for more parties at the national level that actually worked.

The power of executive orders has been in place for ages. For example, since the Johnson administration, the presidents with the least executive orders are Ford, HW Bush, and Obama. Further, there ARE checks and balances. Court decisions can alter them, and new legislation can affect them. New executive orders can also alter them, which happens often. The next president changing them, and the supreme court making a decision against them especially, led to their decreased, not increased, use over time. Further, the president cannot simply make anything they want an executive order.

The question is, are they willing to face their party fielding alternative candidates running against them? Because that is likely what they will face if they oppose many of the key issues where they differ from Trump.

What concerns me most is how able moderate Republicans in congress will be to counter him for fear of damage to their reelections prospects. The tea party took out a number of moderates, it could happen again.

Alternate reality HItler, who is actually the custodian down there, terribly pleasant man who is kind to all, but he's constantly putting objects right after the players disturb them. "You young people have not learned the value of order." The worst part is, no one at all realizes he's down there, or knows when he got there, including kind custodian Hitler. He could occasionally dish out wisdom to the characters to everyone's chagrin. "Entropy Lass, inspiring others isn't everything, perhaps you should consider what you inspire them to do, eh?" "Please, alternate reality Hitler..." "No need for formality, my friends call me Adolph." "No...Adolph, um, you're really nice, just, um..." "Ah, this old man has created an awkward situation. I must apologize. Still, if you should ever need a willing ear to hear your troubles, I will be down here cleaning. You know, you are such a talented girl. I once longed to be a painter. did you know that?" "Uh, um, I think I heard that..." "But alas, I never had the courage to try to enter the academy to study it further. I sometimes wonder, if I'd only had the courage, what could have been?" "Alternate reality Hitler..." "Please, Adolph!" "I have to, um, I've got to go." "Alternate reality Hitler, we need to talk about, about your uniform." "Ah, it is in such disarray today, I truly apologize for my lack of discipline." "Um, no, it's not that. It's just, we've all talked, and we really want you to change it." "But it is the proper uniform for a custodian on my earth. Do you see these, they are Buddhist symbols, they remind the custodian that the disarray of the world mirrors the disarray of his or her own mind, and if my mind is in disarray, and I allow my responsibilities to also be in disarray, then I am choosing to allow you to potentially suffer the same." "I think it's the boots." "Oh, I'll polish them immediately." "Um, okay. Uh, thanks." "No thanks are necessary. Even the smallest of things can cause the suffering of others, ah, how my old heart cannot bear to lead the young to suffering."

I'm just saying, if they are smart, and have the drive to finish projects that they start, they are quickly going to learn that not everyone is that way, and be hesitant to join in on a project that is counting on too many people being like they are, with no promise of pay. If, however, they see a largely finished product produced by people with such drive, they may find this a more attractive option than hoping the project they may see as interesting ever gets to a point where it's finished.

Yes, sadly so. Bannon has gone on record as saying he "greatly admires" Spencer, the self-proclaimed white nationalist who founded the alt-right movement.

My cellphone has a flashlight, a boxing round timer, and a Chinese English dictionary that can take pictures of text and provide the definitions of all words present(maybe). Oh yeah, the camera. I am not building those...

Aaaaaand, Trump has named Stephen Bannon as his “chief strategist and senior counselor”, which he is saying will have an equivalent role to his chief of staff. Stephen Bannon, who provides the media outlet for the alt-right, a movement founded by a white nationalist for the advancement of white nationalistm, a movement whose main figures are almost to a man white nationalists. Stephen Bannon, a man who also hobnobs with white nationalists. I think that that holds a lot more weight towards white nationalists than the fact that, when asked, he told people not to be violent towards minorities. Of course, if one looks, one can find plenty of white nationalists saying acts like backing down on immigration and asking for the violence to stop are Trump theater for the moderates. So, I would say that more than "gosh guys, stop it" is in order. At some point, he has to dump the white nationalists. If he does not, then there is no coming together with him and his supporters. Major Republican figures have been saying the same thing.

Built ties to a movement founded by white nationalists for propounding white nationalism(undoubtedly for political expedience) vs. made a statement saying to stop it after the fact(also, likely for political expedience). You realize his first major exposure to media was for discriminatory rent practices towards blacks during the seventies, the heyday of redlining, right? I don't actually think he believes in anything save what strokes his ego and makes him money, but, as I've said before, he played with fire with the white nationalists he allied. A few weak words is hardly sufficient to undo that. And again, he didn't come out with this statement after it became clear this was happening(and, towards Muslims, the violence had actually already ramped up during his campaign). He only did so after a reporter confronted him with it.

Tolkein's work did not limit the narrow confines of what made things evil to metaphysical musings. The process of twisting things to evil is actually only visible in one case: the ring's influence. How it twisted was by the choice of those around it. Each that succumbed to desire for power or for its beauty were twisted by it. Those who accepted it as a burden still were harmed, but not twisted. We even see Gollum making the choice, for a period, to try to be good. As for orcs, we only know that they were twisted. Given that every other dark magic we see in the stories working by way of turning people away from good, it is safer to surmise that the orcs were twisted away from good as well, in the process that also twisted them. Moorcock is a canonical example of the genre lacking clear blackhats. Even when we have them, they don't end up doing as much damage as the Hero himself. And if we're providing clear blackhats for young people to have simple morality in their story, Howard is right out the window. Sure, the villains are clear: they are the people Conan kills. Further, modern gamers who play fantasy have a much larger canonical list than those we had, so the authors we associate with it would not be a complete list for them, nor would their tropes stand.

And who suffers most under the oompa loompas? The children.

So, whose standard of evidence? You seem to be deciding that, but your standard, in one metric already, is not shared by most on either side of the political aisle, and is at odds with the actual facts and any definition of reasonable standards. Perhaps if you don't like a topic, you could simply just not like the topic. This does not equate to an argument of such validity that the topic is decided, because it isn't. It's easy to characterize something as 'over-emotional and accusational' to discount it. But you yourself responded to a statement that was, in essence, "alt-right, a movement founded by white nationalists for white nationalism, and whose arguments stem from white nationalism, is white nationalist, and Bannon, who provides their strongest media source, is either an opportunist, or shares views with white nationalists, and Trump, by making use of this, created a problem" into an over-emotional accusation that I was unfairly calling people racists, when, in fact, the above are actually statements of fact. You further used anecdotal evidence, you know some people who are alt-right and don't think they were racists, as your sole trump. I clarified that I did not doubt that was true. Which does not change who founded alt-right, who it's main voices are, and that the very, very few of those voices who do not claim to be white nationalists are, in almost every case, putting forward the exact views of the white nationalists, minus outright stating they are white nationalists. Any thorough search of alt-right sources, be it theirs or their critics, will confirm EVERY statement I just made. If we can't call people who call themselves white nationalists, white nationalists, based solely on some anecdotal evidence of someone else having the bad judgment of associating themselves with a white nationalist movement, who can we call white nationalists? I'm only reiterating this to point out that you are not in a place to be arbiter on discussions of race if you cannot allow even self-avowed white nationalists to be referred to as racists. A discourse on race that cannot address actual racists is not a sensible thing.

Hero itself, no, you are correct, those things need to be there. A game Powered by Hero can have that complexity hidden and powers listed as text, not build notation, provided that the comparative values that could come into play are hardwired in. The previous build for dispel, which I need to go back and find, actually did this quite well. It wouldn't be easy, but it sounds like fun...

I'm not trying to convince you here in this post, just stating my view, to make myself clear. We each probably run the kinds of games that we enjoy, and probably each don't run things that entirely differently from each other, if we actually examine what we do(versus what we debate about in our thread derailing shenanigans). Not having evil races doesn't prevent us from having black hats. The question is, when they go into the dungeon, what rationale does the DM give? If it is, for example, a band of goblins has taken this mine and reigned terror around it, they have black hats, no problem. But, having a preponderance of evil races does, imo, limit role play. When you know all of race X are evil, your interactions with them are limited to threatening them, tricking them, and little else. It precludes me from giving the PCs information before they go to our goblin infested mine that makes them think that something else drove the goblins out of their normal caves, rumors of something more interesting than goblins in a mine. Just because races aren't evil doesn't mean that the morality of it must be depicted in a complex manner. Comic books are predominantly aimed towards younger people, and the villains are constantly becoming heroes. Now, some comics have some 'evil' races, usually also stupid beings, but I tend to find those also uninteresting and of questionable value. I avoid making a value in my games of PCs gaining feelings of power through having their characters kill creatures that are, as is, depicted as sub-human. Especially younger players. Now, I can understand if you feel I am totally overthinking this, and it would not be the first time that was suggested of me!

I actually am the same, though for adults, I will use more grey areas. Villain centered games, I've only really seen them work for one-offs, and even then, not that great. Once, ran a game where the characters began as basically some low level villains, but it was literally for one scene that acted as a bit of story, but after that one scene, I handed them their actual characters. The scene gave them some info their characters did not have, it was a bit of torture for them. For young people, I would be doubly cautious about having races as naturally evil. That's just me.

I tend to think murky is more a function of how in-depth one tells the moral end of a story. Kept simple, most stories with heroes and villains that are written for children don't actually have evil races. The Harry Potter books appear to have one, the dementors, but they are not particularly central or fleshed out. The trend has been away from that. Half-orc and orc characters, for instance. Conceptually, the concept of evil races has some ugly characteristics. Tolkein got mostly around it by making them twisted by Morgoth, not apparently creatures born by their nature evil. I understand no one else holds this view. I just had to say it.

I think next I well return to the basic builds while I think about the skills pool.

If you know that people statistically don't show up as much at certain times, and you schedule elections for those times because you know a bloc of YOUR people will show up for one, it is manipulative. Probably voter suppression is the wrong word. Actually, totally wrong. I get your point!

Hitler.

It actually is similar. The main point is, controlling the schedule for some elections, in which school unions, for example, are most impacted, means that the union members and teachers will definitely vote, because it's an issue they are mobilized for, but few other blocs will be so energized for. Granted, that's for more local politics. At the national level, that doesn't apply. So, apples and oranges in that sense, if that was what you were meaning. Interesting article.

A few thoughts around how to define the skill tree aspect of a new type of pool. First, I'll repeat some of the basis I'm working from. So, based first on Christopher Taylor's guidelines: Then, my extrapolations: And Finally: So, thoughts, using martial arts as a starting point, but trying to keep in mind applicability for other uses. Skills or maneuvers that naturally require another skill or maneuver to have them must be purchased after the necessary skill or maneuver. So, for example, to counter-throw requires knowledge of the throw one is dealing with. So one must have throws already to buy counterthrow. I am still considering whether one should have to buy counterthrow for each type of throw. I suspect I will go this route, since there will likely only be four different builds that cover every kind of throw possible. Same with counterstrike, feint, and draw. The difficulty I'm facing now is how to determine the maximum value that a first tier power could be. I am thinking that all other tiers would be based off of a percentage of the range of the first tier. The reason being, we don't want this to just be elemental control again, with free points being too available. So, let's say I determine a spell for first tier, some simple but useful fire spell, but what I want to get to is a crazy AOE fire extravaganza that I can contract and enlarge at will. To use this pool to do so, I have to look at the first build that determines the first tier, and, either when I make my character or as I spend experience, buy spells for all the tiers between the first and the one I want. What this suggests to me is the need for some means to determine what guideline to use in determining what the 'minimum effect' is, otherwise people will be like, no, the effect I want is a one mile sphere of fire. So, the minimum could be the base power, plus the minimum level of advantage of the chief advantage if the advantage is required for the effect. Conversely, maybe instead, if the narrow range is maintained, we can avoid that mess. So, if we have a pool for elemental fire magic, we determine the powers that we'll have in it. If we have a active point cap for tier one of X, players will naturally have to find ways to fill that if they want to get to X+[a boatload of points]. I don't know, I'll have to ruminate on this.