womble

Why do schools focus on teaching literature, rather than communication skills? Mathematical concepts rather than basic financial literacy? Is it prudent to graduate students who know Pythagorean Theory and the works of Shakespeare cold, but cannot figure out how damaging ongoing credit card debt is, and struggle to convey their thoughts in written form? Perhaps there is room for both in our education systems, but if we must focus on one rather than the other, due to limited time, why do we assume people will obtain life skills by osmosis, and focus on more theoretical areas?

If someone knows the Complete Works 'cold', they'll probably be able to communicate their thoughts relatively cogently. Lit classes don't just require memorisation.

My maths education involved learning about compound interest, as well as Pythagoras. We did Pythagoras first, because that's pretty effin' simple. It only involves powers of 2 and addition. If someone couldn't handle that, they couldn't handle compound interest equations.

There is definitely room for both in the system.

The problem with maths is that kids are taught, or learn very fast, that "maths is hard". So you end up with people asking whether measurements are offered in cm or mm when simple common sense tells you that a waist high thing is not 90mm high... Functional innumeracy is unfortunately prevalent; combine that with the Societal demands for material posessions Right the heck now!!!!! and you've got a personal credit crisis. Schools shouldn't have to teach saving-to-buy...

The problem as I see it with language teaching is that it's gotten too relaxed, and actual use of language has been deprioritised over appreciation of it and freedom of means of expression. You really need to know the rules before you start breaking them.

Why would 4 children be on a military base in the middle of the night? Dubious.

Aunty says the Syrians are claiming the civs were off base. They are also asserting that the Syrians are claiming that not all the TLAMs made it to the target area. It is conceivable that there were civilian casualties from cruise missiles that fell out of the sky short of the boundary fence for whatever reason. Syria does have a pretty good air defense network, IIRC, courtesy of Mr Putin, and Tomahawks can be shot down.

I think there's so much bound up in tissues other than blood that you'd want to use some kind of magical means to extract the iron. Myoglobin, for example, won't account for a trivial proportion of the iron in a body; less than the iron in haemoglobin, probably, but of a similar magnitude... And it's really hard even to get all the blood out by mundane methods.

Not pleasant, but probably true none the less.

 

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/rural-america-understanding-isnt-problem#.WMF6xbtnoKk.facebook

 

Warning!

 

If you're a Trump supporter, it's inflammitory. Read at your own risk.

That enunciates the problem I think. It's what it looks like to an outsider, and if someone who comes from the background can corroborate, it seems to add emphasis.

Wasn't the urban/rural divide a factor in the Brexit vote?

Yes it was. Urban, diverse communities tended to vote for remaining within Europe, while whiter rural districts voted to leave. Some of that will have been because the rural districts see accession-state citizens taking the menial, largely unskilled agricultural labour jobs, and pushing out the native youngsters. There are more jobs, and better, needing more skills and better English, in the cities, so the impact of willing labour in towns isn't so noticeable, except in the quality of plastering and reliability of plumbers.

[The above may include some tongue-in-cheek stereotyping - Ed]

Sure, if you want health insurance badly enough, you'll get a second or third job so you can afford it.

There's probably some principle of moving goalposts here, though: "Working 27 hours a day so you can pay for healthcare is unhealthy, so we're going to push your premiums up so you need to eat cheap process-recovered food padded out with carcinogens to keep your food bills down enough to be able to afford the cost of health insurance. But eating that crap is even more unhealthy, so we're going to increase your premium so you have to scrimp on the heating/aircon, which increases your chance of sickness, so we're going to up your contribution again..."

 

- Enforcement of human rights.  This one is tricky, but the only reason globalization is perceived as a problem is that it's cheaper for companies to move work from the U.S. to slave laborers in offshore sweatshops.  Oddly enough, this problem is somewhat self-correcting--Chinese labor, for example, is becoming more expensive since we've given them so much work and their economy is (or was) booming.  Still, it shouldn't be difficult to enforce decent working conditions, if not wages, on labor used to produce goods for import.  We already have to monitor such goods closely to keep the lead out of toys and the plastic out of baby formula.

 

 

I'm sorry I don't have any answers, but I wanted to add another globalisation-sanctioning inequality that would need to be addressed to bring a "level playing field": environmental legislation. While China (et al) can continue to burn cheap coal in inefficient power stations, their goods will remain cheaper even if their labour costs equalise. Unfortunately, it looks like the general Governmental Will is to equalise this field by eroding the environmental protections already in place in the "first world".

Michael, you might have set that off yourself if you were noodling about teh Intarwebz researching/boggling at the activities of those folk.

That's why I was originally leaning towards flintlock rifles with percussion caps (and... I think I'm using those terms correctly. I'm not a historical gun buff).

In the interest of verisimilitude, in case you get a gun buff in your group...

The percussion cap serves the same purpose and largely superceded the flintlock. Both are methods of initiating deflagration in a propellant charge. The propellant charge was black powder for the operational era of the flintlock, and early "percussion lock" guns also used black powder. Later percussion cap guns may have used more advanced propellants, but by the time those came about, the percussion cap had been incorporated into the composite brass cartridge.

You can have a musket (smooth bore, one shot long barrelled, fired with both hands from the shoulder) with either 'lock'. Early percussion locks pretty much just swapped out the flintlock's frizzen pan for a cap nipple, and the flint-holding hammer for a simple striking one, but the convenience of the percussion cap led to practicable six-guns and breech loaders and other advances in loading methods.

The idea of bullets being unsuitable for doing magic damage was one of the ways Shadowrun kept muscle-powered weapons relevant: your high Force elemental will take a lot more bursts of autofire to kill than it will Weapon-Focus-Katana hits. It worked to some extent.

Restricting the availability of firearms depends on whether the components of firearms (metal strong enough, mostly; the rest of the bits needed to create operational "real" black powder weapons are pretty widespread, apart from sulphur maybe) are rare. If decent steel swords are relatively common, the materials for barrels aren't far off, and take less finesse to cobble together into a working "hand-gonne".

It's not just dampness. The fine priming powder that goes in the pan is very easily dislodged by movement and would generally not be applied until just before the intended firing of the weapon. It's also a complicated process that, in the heat of battle, is likely to be improperly executed. Hence the emphasis on the first volley of muskets (which will have been loaded carefully before the battle begins, leaving only the priming to be done in the face of the enemy); after the first volley, an increasing proportion of shots will lack essential elements (like a ball, or half the propellant charge, or proper tamping of the powder). Possibly not so important for the few-on-few tactical engagements common to RPGs, but certainly a "reloading" skill that needs to be rolled for an effective shot wouldn't be misplaced for muzzle-loading black powder weapons, and penalties to the activation roll for jostled/mishandled weapons.

As long as the machines need someone to program them, there's at least that option.

 

When we start having machines programming machines...well, let's just hope they'll still follow Asimov's three laws.

Hopefully someone will come up with something a bit better than those. Given that every book involving them is in some way about how they are inherently flawed.

Personally I find the "technology won't make humans redundant in large numbers" assertion to be complacent. Sure, buggy-whip makers went under with the advent of the automobile, and had a (very, very niche) revival with the advent of socially-permissible BDSM, but the technology of automation is already having a large effect on the kind and quality of job available and those effects are only going to be magnified as technology becomes more capable. The other "worker" that became very much less employable at the advent of the car was the horse. What's coming has the potential to do the same to people-as-workers.

Unless he somehow wins re-election and then tries to amend the Constitution to serve more than ten years.

But his followers are adamant that amendments cannot themselves be amended (even if that's demonstrably false). How would they cope with the cognitive dissonance necessarily imposed by such altered states of thought?!

Does the God have any actual control over their river? Should they have powers to reflect that? If the God were the actual river, the ability to control its flow might be considered analagous to the power of humanoid characters to move about.

George Lakoff provides some useful ideas for addressing that problem: http://www.salon.com/2017/01/15/dont-think-of-a-rampaging-elephant-linguist-george-lakoff-explains-how-the-democrats-helped-elect-trump/

 

... Robert Altemeyer...

Didn't you post this exact same thing a couple of pages up-thread?

Shadowrun mixes fantasy into sci-fi, too.

Background: WW2 supers (Allies), planning an infiltration of a castle where the Nazi supers are. The castle happens to be adjacent to a training camp for Wehrmacht mountain troops and is accessible only by cable car, and the Ubmenschen are all members of the SS.

Jimmy (preternaturally coordinated assassin from London's seamier side): "So the fellers at the cable car station in the valley are SS, not Gewurstjagers*, right?"

 * [For those with no German] "Gebirgsjager" are the mountain troops. "Gewurstjager" probably means "sausage hunters"...

How do you go about doing that? 

"I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.

Only I will remain."  

Frank Herbert. Dune.

Which makes it okay, right?

 

It's just incredible how people keep setting the bar lower for this guy.  Well, of course he lies, but it's okay, everyone lies, right?  Of course he steals, and defrauds, and rapes, but it's okay, because they all do that, right?

 

 

 

You know, even if you're right, I really think the current president elect takes it to a new, frighteningly unacceptable extreme.

I didn't say it was right. But, and I think (from an outsider's perspective, this seems like it should be important) one of the big things that Trump voters picked up on as a Good Thing that must've outweighed all the impossibly egregiously Bad Things about him, was the promise to return manufacturing jobs to the US which had previously been "offshored" (or, in the case of manufacturing capacity built and staffed in Mexico to supply the US market, "cross-bordered", perhaps). Such possibilities did not seem real to the liberal-leaning (and maybe the right-leaning, I don't know) economics establishment at the time, and there was ridicule heaped upon the claim. It will be interesting to see whether these 700 jobs by a major manufacturer are the thin end of the "US manufacturing renaissance", or largely a publicity stunt for Ford to garner home-country approbation, and not followed up by other heavy industries and in larger number. And if these changes do, in fact, materialise, I'll be interested to see the reaction of those who said, as I did, that it wasn't possible. Whether it is possible remains to be seen. But diverting the issue into his appalling character (the guy disgusts me too) doesn't do the liberal argument against the monster any favours if it ignores any actual successes of his regime.

So the question remains to be answered when we have further data: is his rhetoric providing an environment for US business to thrive based on domestic production like "everyone" said couldn't be done? 

I think he's lying about his role in this decision. http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trump-keeps-claiming-credit-jobs-he-had-nothing-do

MSN is being disingenuous, from what I saw. I make no claim to infallibility, but I thought the talking head which I can paraphrase as saying "We decided to invest more in the US plant instead of building the new plant in Mexico, largely due to the anticipated favourable business environment under Trump when he finally gets his ass in the Big Chair," was a Ford guy. MSN may not be lying when they say "Ford weren't going to close the Kentucky plant", and I'm sure Trump does, indeed, claim credit where it is anything but due but that's not the question at issue (and it's common practice in all walks of life).

So Ford are rethinking their decisions on where to manufacture cars, at least partially because of the anticipated favourable business environment in the US under The Trump.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38497898

Is he going to be able to perform the miracle of returning industrial capacity to the States? 700 jobs doesn't seem like many. Is $1million invested per job a reasonable return or is Ford gettin' all poh-liddical?

Another possibility, if the lack of granularity is that troubling, is to go the "DC Heroes" route. Characteristics are a base of 2, cost 5 times as much, and every point has the impact 5 points have now. d20 could have done the same thing by halving all stats....

... and making the Stat Modifier "Stat minus 5" But then the restriction on max castable spell level (Stat >= [10+Spell Level]) wouldn't have worked. And chopping the Hero system down so would erode the StrMax mechanic as a way of differentiating between weapons, in settings where StrMin is widely used; what you gain on the "no (apparently) useless levels of Stat" swings, you lose on the "fine grain permitting subtle distinction" roundabouts.

The second is more disturbing, in that we will soon have a President who believes that the line between right and wrong is based on what benefits himself. If it gets him something he wants,  it's good. If it stands in his way, it's evil. It is as though he sees the universe as an extension of himself, intended to give him pleasure. Donald Trump has never experience real adversity in his life. Even when he commits deeds that would be felonies for anybody else, the most he has to do is dole out some money from his magic bag and everything's fixed. Consequences are for little people whose daddies didn't leave them the key to the vault. And this is already proving very destructive even before he touches the Bible (for probably the only time in his life).

What you just did was list a bunch of criteria for diagnosing Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I think it did ring alarm bells, but a lot of people thought "Oh, the alarm's gone off, so we don't need to call the firefighters," and proceeded to neglect to vote.

Unfortunately, Trump would likely not be the first President who believe the line should be based on  benefits for himself. 

 This is probably true. Doubly so if you define "benefits for himself" as "increases my chance of reelection", whether their base motivation for reelection was the pure joy of being In Charge or the fervent and honest wish to be able to continue to do the best for the country as they see it.

This literally describes EVERY politician,

Like most absolutes, this holds little water. Many politicians, possibly even a large majority just want to be In Charge, but there are certainly some who are trying to make the world a better place (however much you disagree with their definition of "better"). That they have to play the political game doesn't alter their motivation, though it does tarnish their image.

I'm going to interleave my comments in italics cos I don't want to have to quote TheDarkness umpty times and edit out the bits before and after what I'm addressing.

What defines a good combatant? Session after session, tons of rolls, lots of subtle choices in which maneuver to make, over and over, game after game.

 

Depends on the combatant. It might just be "lots of CSL and SPD and STR". Subtle choices might make a difference, but if they're *subtle*, throwing enough CSLetc at them will make the choice one of flavour rather than of a magnitude to decide between success or failure. And the vast majority of the combatant' character's activity in combat is completely subsumed into the dice rolls for attacks etc. The number of *subtle* choices which *matter* available per fight or session is probably of the same order of magnitude as the number of choices a detective might have to make while sleuthing. *None* of a combat's actions in Hero are decided by what Dan grade the player is, or what their SCA rank is.

 

What defines a good detective? Often, a five rolls over many sessions that reveal a lot.

 

Along with "Having good contacts or the Perks to let you access the resources you need to support you" and "Going to the right places". If it's 5 rolls over many sessions, your ref is stiffing you badly. Detective work should (at times) involve stealth and psychology as well as KS: and PS: 

 

If the player is capable of role playing it, it can be just fine. If not, there is something inherently horrible about giving away huge hints for one roll.

 

For normal skills, even a '3' on an 18- should only give away what could be given away by the situation. If it's an interrogation roll, the mook you're sweating can't tell you what he doesn't know. But he can tell you something that fits with something else your character has already discovered. Whether the player has the alertness to join fact A and fact B together could be left to the synapses of the player, or a "Master Detective" skill (which might almost be classed as a Power) could mediate how much help the GM can allow the table to give, or how much they are prepared to weight the hint-club. 

 

I really think, to have the non-social player play the socialite, for example, the GM really needs to make a go at being more systematic about it all. Imagine if you treated other skills in as detailed a fashion as you treat combat, that's not quite necessary, but I really think there's a value in goiing part way there.

 

Aye. Some sort of structure to the interaction is important. You can't just roll "Etiquette: Noble", get a good roll and be told the entire conspiracy structure of the Palace. There should be at least half a dozen skills deployed over time, and still the player should probably have to draw a mind map. Skill rolls can be used to inform the player that (for example),"Asking the Crown Prince whether he's bedding Duke Bugnor's son, in a loud voice in front of witnesses is a bad idea" if they're completely bull-at-a-gate. And yes, if they're playing something they know they don't have the skills to manage to best advantage themselves, they probably should trust the ref when they offer such advice and allow the retcon.

 

Okay, you're a detective. You have these knowledge skills, great. I refuse to give you story for mere rolls if you don't meet me half way is my view, perhaps I'm too severe, but it seems to me that the character is bordering on a macguffin detector more than a character, they could mount them on a volkswagen and drive around the city every week, looking for the plot hook.

 

Is anyone suggesting that a detective should be able to just throw a few knowledge skill successes and get given the answer? I didn't think they were. But maybe some refs handle non-combat like that.

 

This doesn't mean that they need to be able to act out the skill they don't have. But they could establish that, when investigating, they always check the map of the area they are in, dust for prints, have a host of things upon which to HINGE SOME ROLLS, and that more than one or two rolls and noting of excuses to make those rolls should be required to lead anywhere useful.

 

Thing is, when they start playing, they might not have any idea how to go about what they're doing. Skill rolls can substitute for the player knowing and let others assist with their knowledge of the activity or period. Ideally, after a couple of go-arounds, the player should be able to add the colour, but on the other side of the coin, if they're playing an "Absent minded professor", all the SOP from cop shows the player can muster will go out the window when they fail their "Police Procedure" roll that they have no skill in. 

 

I know a lot of us have talked about this before. It's become almost painful to me after all these years to say, "You walk into the room, where blah blah blah, Tom, make a perception roll". It's just not fun. If Sam can learn to choose when to dodge versus strike, Tom can choose the best times to use his detective roll to minimize how often it is just a passive thing that the GM does. And he should not learn everything from one clue, anymore than all the fights should be summed up by one move.

 

I'd say it's SOP for everyone to get a Perception roll if there's something to spot. Tom would have to do something to get his Detective roll. To begin with though the ref might want to remind Tom that he needs to "dust for prints" or whatever the skill is meant to represent beyond alertness that anyone else could have, and most game players will eventually pick up that there's a trigger for their roll. Some players, with some fields, or where the game is irregular, say, just never will, and will continue to need the ref's prompting. Or there'll be a TPK because the info was incomplete and they'll gen up a not-[whatever-they-never-got-to-grips-with]. Take the example of a DnD game I play in, which runs, *at best* twice a year. It started in 2nd Ed and is now in 3.5. We had a party death, a long way from home, and there was a mad rush to get the body back to the temple in time for a Raise Dead (I think it was) to be castable. Because the Clerics don't play any other DnD games, they clean forgot about the spell that they could all do which could have preserved the body. If the ref had remembered, a "Knowledge: Religion" or a "Knowledge: Arcane" roll from pretty much anyone with those skills would have been, I submit, a good way to remind the players of the existence of something the characters would have known.

 

The master strategist needs info to make his or her power work. He needs secret info. He needs maps of what he's to deal with. These are his bread and butter, regardless of how we define the game effect of the actual combat. Getting him his bread and butter is likely to involve sessions of their own, because the bad guys do not want their base surveilled, they do not want information leaked that the master strategist needs to enact the perfect plan. On the fly, the problem is, he's only as good as the teamwork of whoever is enacting his plans, and his ability will be limited. But sometimes, for a particular character type, I might focus less on the build than the feel. And a master strategist plans, and uses sources of info, and plots, and, whenever possible, knows his opponents better than a French chef knows butter long before he strikes. For cinematic game purposes, the feel of this is more important than the actual soundness of the strategy, and it all gives opportunities for the strategy to require more than roll once or twice, and then forget the skill.

 

We're looking at a Col John "Hannibal" Smith, here, right? The way the cinema might (did) do it would be to have the actual plan in execution shown, with the reasons for why who's doing what, when and where, being voiced over. Depends where your group wants the focus to be. If it's about the recon as much as the actual caper, then all those things can come into play, but if your table is all about the speed chart, it might even be helpful to just have Face roll his PS: Face skill once, everyone roll a Stealth skill and their specialist skill once, to give some assists to the Strategy roll which results in some bonuses to some of the moves the players ad-lib during the caper itself.

 

I can certainly see a "Master Tactician" skill/Power/Perk/[whatever] going way past that, into the realms of not really needing to know beforehand anything like that level of information. Where the ability would apply would perhaps be well-moderated by the skills that support it. If they only have KS/PS in "Infantry Tactics" and "Ancient Infantry Tactics", you might expect their Master Tactician ability to be struggling to help in aerospace and naval warfare. But a "proper" Master Tactician should probably have KS and/or PS in most fields of combat that their setting supports.

I am willing to help players learn some basics with playing a Detective, Tactician, Faceperson etc. You shouldn't need a background in a PC's skill to be able to use it. IMHO A player should be able to play any character concept they come up with. No matter how bad they are at the thing they are playing IRL. I don't need to know how to use a gun or sword for my PC to be able to use those in game. A player shouldn't need a background in non combat skills to use them. Just the willingness to work with me, ask questions and do their best to roleplay stuff out. It doesn't even have to be GOOD roleplaying. We are there to have fun, not play Warhammer 40k or be Improvisional Actor(esse)s. 

Considering some stereotypical gamer-geek weaknesses, the Face archetype would be exceeding rare and ineffective, were this not true.