womble

To be fair, Rand al'Thor would be difficult to stat in Hero. At the very least, expensive. Balefire costs more points than entire characters in some of my campaigns. Mat's fox head amulet is similarly expensive.

 

Perrin would be relatively easy in either system. The Aiel would be too.

 

Any channeler would be very difficult to build in a class-based system. The gholam would be difficult in either system and expensive in Hero.

 

On the balance, I'd probably use Fate for Wheel of Time.

As a starting character, Rand isn't that expensive. Any Power abilities are "Uncontrolled" as well as potentially requiring activation rolls. Once you get into the flow of things though, Rand must be getting XP at a flooding rate, as must all the major characters, especially the other Power users.

Aiel. Won't use a sword. Only use spears. How many magic spears are there in most fantasy material? Gimped. Players frustrated. Won't ride. Have astonishing stamina and fight near as well stark naked as they do in any armour (most don't wear armour: they're about the running). Sure you can make them Fighters or Rangers, but both those classes have abilities that they must ignore and require them to take Feats which are non-combat-useful which means they're not the terrifying adversaries they ought to be. What they need is an "Aiel" class...

What class is Perrin's wolfspeaking/wolf-dreaming? Or rather: what class was Perrin's wolfspeaking before someone read Wheel of Time and created a class that approximates it? 

See, I don't think it's too difficult to do most of these characters in a class based system.  Obviously, some characters aren't appropriate for some games, but that's the case with Hero too.  Some of these characters are real easy when you remember that you don't have to start at level 1.

 

Grizzled veteran?  Ask the GM if, instead of starting as a level 1 Fighter, you can be a level 4 Warrior (one of the NPC classes, D10 hit dice, +1 BAB, but no special fighter feats).  Take the "middle aged" penalty, -1 to Str, Dex, and Con, and +1 to Int, Wis, and Cha.  There, now you're a grizzled vet.  You start out more powerful than other people, but you'll advance more slowly and have a slightly lower top end.

A Grizzled vet ought to have all the feats. Using those tricks and specialisms is how he compensates for the reflexes and youthful stamina of his opponents and keeps the playing field level. And a BAB 3 higher than your 1st level party comrades will skew combat. Sure, if the ref is playing a game where everyone starts at higher level, you have more options, but taking those options will often mean you're not holding up your end of the party's needs.

Lightly armored warriors that aren't monks?  High dex and take some of the defensive fighting feats.  I don't remember what they're called (I only dabble in Pathfinder), but I think Combat Expertise, Spring Attack, Dodge, things like that.  Add in a level or three of rogue as well so you can backstab.  Now choose to fight in a way that keeps with that build.  Don't stand toe to toe with a big guy and just trade blows.

So take that at first level. The concept is "fighter" with the twist "lightly armoured". Take any of the light fighter classes or rogue, and your AC is in the toilet compared to a fighter once you earn your first decent monetary reward. Unless you make DEX your highest stat rather than STR, and then your damage sucks. Sure, by the time you reach about 8th level, you're only trailing by one or two BAB, and you have lots of mobility options. But how useful are those if you're the only fighter in the party and letting the enemy big guys close on your squishier friends gets them killed? So effectively, as a character that just wants to be a Fighter (but be lightly armoured), rather than one who has ambitions to have other skills available to them (as you will probably have if you go Rogue for a couple of levels) simply gimps themselves for the concept.

A guy with standard military training who is not a fighter?  Take a few fighter-related feats.  Use the feat you start with, and the feat for being human (if that's what you are) to take a weapon feat and light armor training or something.  Or just take a single level of the Fighter class.  You don't have to specialize in it.  You don't have to wear heavy armor or act as a fighter.  But you've got a single D10 hit die to prop you up and some decent fighting proficiencies.

And how does that work at first level? It takes, what, 13 weeks to go through a modern Basic? Or maybe they did some OCF at school, but now they're a lawyer.

This worry about how you'll be less effective when you max out at 20th level is kind of ridiculous.  99% of characters never get to 20th level, so you're hamstringing your character for fear of not hitting some arbitrary point that you're likely never going to reach anyway.

"Balance" going up levels really bites (if you care about it) from the get-go. Try the "Fighter with minor magic" in DnD: you might as well just be a Fighter with one fewer levels. WRT "playing your concept", playing "hybrids" or "variants" bites from level 1. Its bite strength actually decreases as you go up levels, because there are options to use to try and shoehorn the rules into letting you play what you want. Effectively, DnD recognises the whole problem by having the proliferation of classes and prestige classes so that once you've "paid your dues" (assuming your ref doesn't let you all start at high enough level to be able to finess the rules so you have the "power suite" you want to play from the start of the game) you can actually have taken enough odd levels and prestige classes to play your concept. The many and various classes are proof that it's an issue that just keeps raising its head, and they're only ever going to be a stopgap solution.

And as a solution "lots of choice of classes" only helps if you know about the exact class that fits your character concept, and have the materials to refer to in order to use the class (else the GM is just making things up on the fly, which has its own problems).

Pathfinder/DnD might, by now, have lots and lots of classes which kinda-sorta let you play the class you want, eventually. You can finagle a light-armoured fighter if you cross-class enough between Rogue, Swashbuckler and Fighter, but at level 1 you're specifically one of those, and have a bunch of mandatory skill picks that may be irrelevant to being a beginning example of the type of fighter your character concept demands, while lacking essential components which will gimp the bejazus out of you compared to someone who embraces all the abilities of their class because they're a "standard" Fighter, while you will, at best, only ever achieve parity in combat with someone who's stayed strictly within a single fighting-specific class.

Of course, your GM can always try and write a new class with its progression for your specific class, but there's a good chance it's going to exceed one of the "straight, official" classes because most refs like to be accommodating to their players. And it's still going to suffer from "Why can't I do everything badly to begin with and then progress as I want and as the character's personality and needs develop?"

Characters from classic old Robert Jordan (that come to mind because I'm re-reading it at the moment) that struggle to fit a class/Level system: Rand Al'Thor; Mat Cauthon; Perrin Aybara; All the Aiel.

WRT Strength: in a Heroic level game, most (and even some in higher powered games) muscle-powered weapons will have a "Strength Minimum". Having STR greater than the STRMin for the weapon you're using in multiples of 5 gets you extra damage, but the STRMins are an arbitrary number, so if you're using a weapon with STRMin 6, having STR 11 is a "breakpoint".

Many systems have Characteristic breakpoints like this; the recent incarnations of DnD just had breakpoints every other number, rather than "at the round-up point of 5 more". And for all of these, having a characteristic in between the break points makes the next higher break point closer for character development.

What I wonder is this -- what does Vladimir Putin seek to gain from intervening in the election on behalf of Trump? Putin is many things, few of them pleasant, but he has always placed his own interests before anything else. He views Russia as an extension of himself, and the Russian people seem to have little interest in disabusing him of that notion.

 

So what does he want from Trump? A freer hand in Eastern Europe? Restoration of full trade with the West? Increased markets for Russian petroleum?

 

I can't bring myself to believe that Putin truly has America's best interests at heart.

What does he want? The things you said, and to persuade the Russians that he's "Making Russia Great Again", so they continue to ignore the theft of their national assets by Putin and his cronies for their personal enrichment.

There really isn't any need to try and put any benevolent motives into Putin's actions. Malice and greed (extreme self-interest) will pretty much provide accurate general classes of reasons for anything that gangster does.

Well, if nothing else at least you can always count on the Russians to respond predictably to all this.  Same response as any other claim by a foreign power: "Prove it, or shut up about it.

 

I wonder if any other president (let alone president-elect) has ever been so openly skeptical or even nearly hostile towards a core part of his countries national security infrastructure?

 

It must be nice to know better than a few billion dollars worth of operatives, informants, and data analysts.  

Of course he knows better: his good friend Vladimir assures him it's not true. And it not being so is better for him, which means that, given the world is arranged entirely to suit him and his fancies, it definitely isn't true.

Be careful with things like magic requiring an END reserve and similar, or you are just making mages pay more points to suck more.

 

An example:

Grainwind can

throw fire: 2d6 RKA

 

turn invisible (invisibility vs sight group)

 

and fly (12m flight)

 

He has to buy a bunch of END reserve, etc etc

 

Jack can:

'Shoot things with a bow: 2d6 RKA (OAF, etc)

 

is really sneaky: stealth 16-

 

and can 'Jump good'

+8m leaping (12m total)

12m gliding

 

-----------------

 

Grainwind's abilities are a bit more useful than Jack's, but we presume that they also cost more points.  If, in addition, you make Grainwind have to pay a bunch of extra points so that he ends up being worse off than Jack, no one will want to play Grainwind.

 

-----------------

 

If you want to limit magic make sure it ends up cheaper than 'unlimited' magic.

Magic doesn't have to  be the most efficient way of doing things, but it can be attractive (even if it's inefficient) if it allows you to do things that can't be done without magic. In your example, maybe the RKA is a waste of points tou buy with magic, but a human can't Glide without some sort of assistance, and +8m Leaping is, IMO, more than even a Hero should be able to buy "straight". Magic can also be more flexible and attract more modifiers to make the same AP cheaper, even if you do have to buy a separate END pool to be able to use it. And you could also make the END pool a "custom stat" that everyone starts with some of, even if they can't use magic. It's free so if they get a story reason to buy some magic later, even the unGifted won't start off sucking wind, and starting magical specialists don't have to buy it up from zero any more than your athletics specialist has to buy "regular" END up from nought.

The perceived ownership of the setting is problematic for me, and, I believe, tends to result in such instances as I previously mentioned where GM's say "Nah, you can't do that." I realize that's probably the standard, for the GM to create the world, but my games always begin with a conversation between all people around the table, coming to some kind of understanding about how the world is supposed to function. You make lots of other great points in your post.

 

Regarding the example you gave, I have a question. Suppose the GM had not necessarily anticipated the solution struck by the Science-super. How would you perceive the GM's hesitancy to allow such a plan to be executed? Of course, this is a line of questioning heading towards "Whats to stop me from making up those kinds of "solutions" all the time?" where, it may not be as obvious for each problem presented by the GM. 

Someone's got to lay the seeds and set up the mystery. To my mind, around most tables, that's the GM. Certainly, if I'm the GM, I know far more about what's really going on in the wider world, and why, and how, than my players do, and someone rolling a 3 on their 18- Alchemy skill isn't going to get them a Philosopher's Stone just because the player comes up with a poetic-sounding combination of elements. They might get two clues from the experimental series rather than one about how the Stone might actually be made, and maybe I'll've delegated responsibility for providing the colour and flavour of those processes, but a roll, or a high skill alone isn't going to give a solution to a world-changing mystery.

I don't know for sure that our GM had anticipated the Science-super's solution. But the conceit behind the super-science "explanamacation" of how the plasma bombs "work" made our conclusion logical for anyone who knows that ceramics are refractory and steel is strong, combined with the high temperatures and pressures of hydrogen plasma. Maybe our team's idea is horribly flawed, in that the Nazi-super's plasma powers don't actually need the exact physical properties of the casings (though if they didn't, why spend all the effort and treasure to make the things exactly so?). Maybe our plan is flawed in that the super is proof against his own plasma (but hopefully not against the shrapnel and flame of conflagrating hydrogen). If he'd just said "you can't sneak into the hangar and change the ceramic into plain steel", that would have been a showstopper. Because it was obvious that we could, having scouted the place using our two super-stealthy characters. Now, we left the session having only conceived the plan, so he's got a while to come up with "eventualities" that make the execution of the plan trickier than we anticipate.

Part of the point of having a GM is so that we can come up with solutions like this, once the mystery has been laid out and we've done the "legwork". Sometimes the solution is just to hammer a few Nazi craniums, which is what another character is good at. Which is a reason for the supers to be in a team with a mix of talents: they can act on a wide range of potential solutions. But  just saying "My Occult roll means his magic curse bombs are negated by holy water" isn't the way forward. It negates the need for the legwork that others can and have to do, for one.

Yes, it's more of about player vs character knowledge. But not knowledge that would be meta-game knowledge, I'm talking esoteric information that your character is familiar with but no one else is, including people in real life.

 

I'm aware that it doesn't pose a hindrance to the flow of a role playing game to lack some tidbit of knowledge, like how the Lorenz Transforms are supposed to be calculated in Special Relativity. You can ignore this paradox by simply rolling the dice to determine success and stating "My character knows how to do this." But I feel there are more creative ways of tackling that issue, it's more gamey that way and less role playey in my opinion. I wanted people to comment on how they view that, not necessarily how they overcome it. 

 

Furthermore, I also strongly object to the idea that the GM is supposed to fill in all those gaps, as was suggested by a previous comment. I feel like that gives all the creative license to the GM, when the players are just as creative, not to mention the increased burden of having to improv on the spot. I feel like the players become actors who don't know their lines or their roles. 

 

I feel like if you're going to write a character who is familiar with esoteric information of some kind, you should have something to say on the subject. And that goes beyond esoteric information, as well. It's your schtick, after all. That's a little bit like building a combat-heavy character but not bothering to describe any of your combat maneuvers... you just roll the dice and say "I hit". Thoughts on that?

My view is that everyone involved should try and give the answer as much verisimilitude as possible. If it's a question anyone round the table has any expertise in, I'd expect the GM to allow them to chuck in their twopenn'orth once the Savant had made a successful and appropriate roll, and then the player of the knowledgeable character provides some sort of solution.

The GM isn't "required" to fill in all the gaps, but if no one else can, it's down to them to flesh out their world. Maybe that's by providing the Savant with more information, either about the problem, the resources available to solve it, or the metaphysics of the world, or maybe it's by giving actual names to solution components. If a GM was to insist on always "doing the designing" of the solution, once the Savant has proved they know what to do, via the abstract mechanic of the skill roll, it would, indeed, be constraining player agency unacceptably.

For a player to be able to make their character's esoteric knowledge credible in the game setting, the player has to have a good grasp of the game setting, or the GM constantly has to rein them in (or push them to the bleeding edge, where their character's brain would take them) to the paramaters of the metaphysic. Providing that grasp is, mostly, down to the GM. I find it rare to be in a group where players will do very much "prep" in this direction, and in a homebrew setting, the GM would have to provide the material for "study", which might mean committing thought to paper to a greater degree than desired or possible, so it all has to come across the table.

That's so interesting you mention this, Crusher Bob, because that is, in a manner of speaking, my modus operandi constantly, when I play and GM. It's one of the reasons I asked this question because I wanted to know how open other gaming groups were to the idea that players can take creative control of their environment just as much as the GM can. I feel like highly intelligent characters in one instance of player control coming up more frequently. For example:

 

GM: There's a massive problem that's going to kill a lot of people.

 

Player: Well, if my calculations are correct, we should be able to get this and that, attach it to the other thing, and it should save the world. (Without rolling, necessarily).

 

...as opposed to a character who might have had to shake down someone else for the information, a character who was more capable of just evacuating everyone really quickly, or or a character more capable of punching the problem into submission.  It's like... the idea that highly intelligent characters "know" stuff that gives them the authority to come up with pseudo-plausible solutions to problems. I would be crestfallen, to say the least, if I got "Nah, you can't do that" from the GM. It's happened.

I think that the idea that players can take creative control of their environment to the same degree as the GM to be contrary to the crunchy ethos of the Hero system. Numbers provide boundaries. Hexes provide boundaries.

For starters, the player almost always has to roll. Regardless of how good they are at problem solving. Sometimes that roll might be an auto-success, because they're extremely able and the task is trivial, so the dice don't need to be picked up, but the GM has the final say over what will, and won't, work, because they are the only ones who (should) have a complete picture of what is actually going on. A genius character might be able to figure out nearly everything, but if some key data isn't available, or the opposition is just as clever, there has to be a way of evaluating the imponderables, and that's exactly what dice mediate in tabletop RPGs.

An example from a game recently: the Bad Guys are making county-flattening plasma bombs. We've figured out how, and where, and the GM has set up a "Where Eagles Dare" situation for us to go all action movie and kill the super who's fuelling the bombs. One of the characters is a scientist, and part of her superpower is the ability to change the properties of materials she touches, but the player knows pretty much nothing about materials science, though the character does. The table, though, has some knowledgeable heads. We will gloss over the super-science, but the GM let us contribute to a plan which now means we don't need to assault into a mountain-top fortress full of SS mooks and possibly lots of Nazi supers, and which involves some stealth into a poorly-guarded hangar and have the scientist work her mojo on the bomb casings so that when they are used, they'll go off in the Germans' faces, killing the enemy super. In this case, it was just a matter of connecting the dots the GM had provided, using real world knowledge that the table as a whole had, and which was so basic that really the player of the clever-bonce character should have known.

Protect-O-Weave™ (being a flexible cloth) doesn't seem like it would really apply to hard solids, like automobile frames and electronics cases.

 

Carbon fibre comes in flexible sheets, then gets held in shape by resins and such. Most of the strength is still in the fibre, and while it might not yield, it will be floppy once the matrix has spalled off in an initial impact, but that's generally okay for that sort of protective function.

Hmm. There's an element of "Not our problem" and "Not even recognising that they need do anything to help fix it" in that pic that isn't necessarily reflected in the general "How do you like being fooled, chumps?" derision that's generally heaped by the anti-Trump upon the Trumpettes.

It is sad that all that is left is Schadenfreude. Though that's not quite right. Is there a German word for laughing at people for bringing troubles upon themselves while you share their fate?

Nearly everybody I know who voted for Trump (or I am pretty sure did) in large part because they did see Clinton as the greater evil. 

Indeed. Which worries the bejazus out of me. Nothing I've seen of Clinton suggests she's worse evil than Trump. He's a bigger liar than her, a bigger philanderer than her husband. He's less consistent in his beliefs and even more hypocritical. And he's a racist narcissist who's doing it for the attention. What makes these people think that Hilary is worse than Trump? Mostly big lies, told often and loudly. And unsupported by evidence. Don't get me wrong. I don't think Hilary is anywhere near perfect President material. That'd be Barack Obama, for my money. But Trump? Worse? I thought Brexit was bad, over here, but he has taken "lying your way into office" to another level completely.

THe problem though is that there are thousands of reason people might have voted the way they did.

 

And for every one of those thousands of reasons, they decided that racism didn't matter enough to stop them voting for the man, implicitly sanctioning with their only civic input, his racist mindset, along with the same attititudes in others.

However, simply not voting for Clinton is no reason to start chucking bigotry bombs at the opposition.  Which far too many of the known players from the liberal side immediately started doing.

I'd content that they're not chucking the 'R-word' around because people didn't vote for Clinton. They're aiming it at people who voted for Trump in spite of him being a knee-jerk racist and inveterate misogynist. They made the choice that his nebulous promises to achieve the unattainable were more important than respect and concern for their fellow Americans and the wider global community. They told Trump, "It's okay to be an ignorant, bigoted narcissist, if you improve our economic position," at the very least. They gave their civic sanction to racist policy-making.

From what I observed this election cycle, the Dems fought a campaign of what they saw as fear and hatred with their own brand of fear and hatred.  Lost, and too many (again especially the public faces of the party made perfectly clear) reacted to that loss with increased fear and hatred.  That simply isn't likely to get them many wins long-term.  But, it is their choice (and for the party members to accept or not where those public faces are going to lead them)

I think that's true, but with the media operating as they do, what option is there? Rational, calm dissection of the opposition's position won't gain any column inches. Or at least not enough to counter the histrionics of Trumpism and its ilk. Doesn't look good for the future, whatever your political colour, if elections solely become decided by who can spread the most fear. Based on some of the comments up-thread, perhaps all the DNC need to do is focus the FUD on their own supporters, to get them worried enough about the Dem victory to actually bother to get off their arses and go vote. Should be easier next time for them, though: "Look at the clown that got in last time; that proves there's no such thing as a foregone conclusion. Get out and vote."

I think any democratic system would be greatly improved by making voting mandatory, as they do in Australia. Provided that there is an explicit requirement also for a "None of the above" box, that no one is disenfranchised by the arrangements needed and that the penalty for not voting doesn't criminalise anyone.

Trump's "PR problem" around the racism thing is, as Soar points out, likely not going away. What he did can't just be apologised for, or, as us gamers might call it "retconned" in the minds of those who witnessed him courting those barbarians. It can, however, as Orwell pointed out, be retconned in History, if he makes the big speech. In 100 years, how much of the detail of the filthy campaign will be remembered if he makes a big speech that professors can quote. He will actually have to do something concrete to change the minds of those who he so thoroughly alienated during his campaign. Maybe he'll do that, along with all his other about-faces, and the theories about him standing as a Republican with Democratic intent will be proven correct.

Or maybe he's just flapping in the wind, out of his depth and is about to destroy any power for good the US might ever have had whether within or without its borders.

Anybody else noticed the Trump volte-face on the Alt-Right? It was reported on the Beeb (as far as I can remember; the article appears to have vanished in favour of one about his business ties, which refers to him doing the disowning, but doesn't quote him on it) as him disowning and repudiating their views. In that article, though, he defends Brietbart as "just a publication".

Seems like a good move, politically, along with his u-turn on prosecuting Hilary. Too little, too late, though? Guilty of stoking hatred to get what he wanted, whatever the consequences?

Edit: The Beeb were mostly rehashing this interview with the NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/us/politics/donald-trump-visit.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&hp&_r=1

I just finished The Crippled God, 10th of 10 in the epic fantasy series The Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson. I started this series for the first time several years ago, and got to about book 7, which was the most recently available one, then swore off finishing the series until the last book was out, in case Erikson "did a Jordan" and popped his clogs before finishing his oeuvre. I finally got round to starting again a while back, some time after we actually acquired book 10 because I hadn't realised that it was done.

Really glad I did. Some of the best sword-and-sorcery fiction I've read. Sufficiently engaging that there was the occasional time that I had to take a break because it was all so intense. Laughter and tears; joy and despair. I have no idea how many characters get dealt with in such fascinating detail. Heroes and villains, and villains who are heroes... I'm a sucker for military fiction, and there's that in spadefuls, along with mystery and intrigue and world-shattering plots.

The background was, I'm given to understand, created as the setting for Ericson's GURPS game...

Ain't that a bit close to the knuckle with all the currrent worries about the fate of expat Brits in Europe post-Brexit?

Your move, Britain.

Please don't. Red rags to a bull is as nothing compared to a dare or challenge to Stupid. 

Would a VPP Gadget Pool be a valid approach? Everything created has to be a Focus, real and "Usable by Others", amongst other restrictions.

The TL of the "forge" will determine some of the other restrictions: if energy-to-matter conversion is possible, you won't need raw materials, but if it's not, consider the very wide range of feedstocks needed by even a society of our TL for complicated things like electronics.

The only glimmer of hope for anything I'd consider good to come out of the Trump Presidency might be finally doing something about China's invidious trading position and expansionism.

Trump has said he's going to do something about the balance of trade with China. Maybe he'll succeed in building a global consensus to put pressure on them to stop their state subsidy of all their industry (achieved via the artificial maintenance of the Yuan at below-market-rate values). Maybe he'll succeed in getting the world to stand up against the systematic and government sanctioned flouting of international IP rules. Maybe he'll stand up to them in the South China Sea. While he's at it, perhaps he'll put pressure on them to give their citizens the freedoms most of the rest of the world have come to view as desirable societal goods.

But he probably won't. Making it work would hurt. Even if the long term gains of having China be an actual equal partner in global free trade (rather than a beneficiary of unequal trading)

Doubt it, in two days we will either have the worst POTUS in history or half the people in America will believe the election was rigged and stolen from them.

The ones who actually believe the election system is rigged must, surely, for the love of all that is good, be a vanishingly small minority. Surely? Please? Just because a few stadiums-full of brainwashed eejits Yee and Haw everything the incompetent carpetbagger spouts doesn't mean that many of the millions of people who are voting for him for understandable, though IMO misguided, reasons actually fall for every line of bull he spouts? Does it? Please, O Leftpondians, tell me it ain't so! Please?

Signed

Worried of Rightpondia.

My question would be "why Traveller"? I'm assuming you're using Hero for the game system, since you're asking here. For me, though, setting aside the system, the implications of Traveller's J-Drive, both in how they affect the day to day lives of the characters and the consequences of wider stellapolitics are central to the setting, so if it's the setting you're keen on, you just "have" to choose J-drive over wormholes, unless the same constraints apply to wormholes as do to J-Drive, at which point it's just terminology... So, if your answer to "Why Traveller?

Other elements of transhumanism fit more readily into the milieu than a different way of getting about the "terrain".

I wouldn't be against, but I have serious doubts anything realistically damaging would be done.  I have become dubious about sanctions.  Although Russia might be a bit more prone than the usual nation we have done to in the past ( mostly Mid East dictatorships who apparently didn't give a #### about the miseries of their people, in Russia you do have to answer to the people a little bit.)

Sanction use is complicated. "We" don't want to put the economic strong-arm on the poor downtrodden Russkies who are only reacting badly to the changing world because the pretty much 100% Putin-controlled Russian media is feeding them propaganda and fantasy. The Kleptocrats who Putin might need to consider (fewer in number and more loyal nowadays than they once were, thanks to the good old successors of the KGB) can keep soaking the public purse for a good while yet. Your average Russian is no naif with tricolours in their eyes, but they're barely one generation out of 100% totalitarianism, (which didn't arise out of any long tradition of parliamentary democracy) and stereotypical fatalism will make any backlash against the gangsters who stole the benefits of Russia's vast natural resources slow to arise. Without that backlash, though, I'd say you barely have to consider the actual opinions of the Russian People, since they are, effectively, the opinions of the propaganda organs which serve the incumbent kleptocracy.

Does anyone know if Penguins have been statted up in the Hero System? Could someone toss me a page ref if there are? Thanks in advance.

There's a lot of difference between the largest and smallest penguins... which kind are you looking for?