womble

I'd agree completely. END cost should be proportionate to the damage the thing's doing (its AP), and paid for every shot the rules call for. I'm not sure what the rationale for using your STR multiple times in the same Phase only counting as using it once for END purposes is, but if it's a thing in the rules... Still and all, though, a stronger bow might do more damage, but if you're looking for "realistic", it should have a higher STRMin and also start to become impossible for someone who is well below that STRMin to use at all.

If the bow is stronger, its STR Min is higher to go along with any extra damage. Bows are fixed input systems: you pull yea hard for such a distance and that force x distance energy is imparted (less inefficiencies) to the projectile when you loose. To get more out of a bow, you either have to pull harder (and it's a spring, its resistance isn't variable) or pull further (which risks damaging the thing). Compound bows can have adjustable springs, but if it's set to "He-Man" draw weight "Shrimp kid" just isn't going to be able to pull it to full draw. My bow is a 30lb draw weight at 28". I can run a fair few arrows through that before I tire. I doubt I could even draw a 120lb longbow the full "cloth yard" to my ear once. The "strong" bow simply isn't usable by someone who doesn't get close to its STRMin.

Bah. That's just a whole meal sandwich. I was eating those back in the eighties... Roast dinner sammidges are reaaallly good.

Wild Wild West was a series? Who knew?! Guess it must have been poplier for Smith/Kline to go for the film franchise. Not sure it ever made it across the Pond to us, death tribble...

Or to flatten the faces of those who assume that there's a door where there's a welcome mat...

The "collateral damage" of well poisoning might not be a consideration, morally, or legally, for the characters. The fact that an army came through, got "the trots" and moved on (or just plain died because it was a desert and every water source they came to was fouled) would provide a cover for the fouling of the supplies. Large armies were prime sufferers of disease before sanitation and germ theory got gripped; it would be no surprise to nomads or habitual travellers that oases were unusable after an army departed. If the pathogen afflicting the army is biological, unless the commanders excise the afflicted, it's highly likely that any siege they set at "the next city" will fail because of disease amongst the besiegers. Such relief was pretty common. Possibly more so than an actual army of fighting sophonts marching to the relief.

Or maybe those starving dogs chewed on the Wikileaks for a while and found it tasteless and lacking in nourishment. Like the law enforcement wallahs have. Or maybe those Wikileaks revelations are just "old news" (one for/from the "Oxymorons" thread ) and they're just in the usual feeding frenzy about the most recent scandal. I get the impression that Clinton's "malfeasances" are "no worse than your run-of-the-mill politician". If you vote for pretty much any politician ever, you're going to be voting for one that has flaws and foibles and has done questionable or possibly incautious things, and things you don't agree with. Trump is simply a whole new level of crazy that most politicians would never have the imagination to approach and if they had some sort of fever dream to come up with the concept, they'd have the "nous" to take some febrifuge, some antacids and a nap, and come back to sanity.

It's still a bit wierd that shooting an assault rifle could be more tiring than firing a pistol, and both equally as fatiguing as engaging in armed melee combat.

What I read about the alleged sex tape suggests it isn't even a very good one. Grainy footage of mixed-gender bed sharing in a South American Big Brother-alike "reality" show. Definitely disgusting. Yeah. Won't do the woman in question's career any harm, I think. The mind boggles, though, at the double standards of a man who admits he fancies his daughter and once owned the rights to Miss Universe.

I don't think anyone's pro-macassar these days. Hair oil stopped being fashionable some time in the fifties... Most girls are pro-mascara, perhaps...

"I see you're using Bonnetti's Defense." "I thought it appropriate, given the terrain."

I'm fully aware of what it is, which is why I asserted that it is not transparent aluminium. The biggest reason not to use the Trekkie fantasy name is because it's misleading. Calling it a "transparent metal" implies that the compound posesses important metallic physical properties like ductility and electrical conductivity, which it does not. You cannot make "transparent aluminium" foil, or use it for cabling.

That is no more "Transparent Aluminium" than common-or-garden window glass is "Transparent Calcium". It's a compound of aluminium. That's all.

You are not a population. Your assertion that "everyone can do it" while possibly true is largely irrelevant. They don't, so we're stuck where we are.

I find that first part optimistic. Populations don't work that way. Fear gets people to clamour to those with power (who need to keep the votes) to "Fix or do sumfink", and that's one of the very few levers we proles (including the scientists) have on the political classes. Having the pollies bask in their past successes is not a good way to get them to do something new. Fortunately, the compelling science behind anthropogenic warming and the monstrous consequences of inaction are helping the self-interested start to do the right thing. Hopefully it'll not be entirely too little, too late (it's already somewhat both of those), and we'll be able to mitigate the changes to levels which we can adapt to. As to the society aging leading to smarter people: why do they get youngsters to fight wars? Because young people are braver and less aware of their own mortality. Brave enough to get things done. How many revolutions have been started by septuagenarians? And the entertainment industry isn't any more hatemongering than it ever was. It's dumbing down so that the post-industrial wasteland will be populated by pliant proletariat, fat on bread and content with circuses.

Without the fear (actually certainty) that if we didn't do something about it, it'd get worse, we wouldn't have done anything about it. And it would have got worse rather than better. Same applies to the current climate catastrophe staring us in the face.

If we can't get out of the Solar System, we'll be functionally restricted to the sort of Interplanetary society developed by Niven and Pournelle's Moties, becoming ruthlessly efficient at the use of non-replenishable resources (there's a finite, large, but finite tonnage of any given metal within the Solar System) and subject to some pretty draconian restrictions on population. Whether we'll specialise quite as hard, is a question; a lot of fictional transhuman settings involve significant bioware and cyberware augmentation to fulfill specific niches more effectively. Assuming we manage to hold it together long enough to get a functioning infrastructure outside the Terran gravity well, and that's by no means a given. Even agrarian societies had specialists: the smith, the charcoal burner, the Lord of the Manor; most pre-industrial societies had a sharp demarcation between the roles of the genders. The apparent greater diversity in any individual's skills is, I think, an illusion. A modern human's "Everyman Skill" list would have as many entries as a feudal serf's, easily.

There, fixed that for ya.

Can't go adventuring without a Cleric (mostly for healing), a Mage (if it's a magic-heavy world; in magic-rare worlds this is less hard-and-fast) and a Rogue (expect things to need sneakiness/technique). But the ref can mitigate the need for all these.

I think the Trump-spin is that he meant for people to vote for him so HRC doesn't get to be Pres in the first place. Which would work, if Trump won't appoint gun-control Justices. So the fig-leaf, to mix a metaphor, at least carries some water. It's just gonna leak out the various holes...

All the backpedalling is disingenuous. If he wanted to encourage people of a certain viewpoint (in this case, the viewpoint that gun ownership rights would be curtailed to a greater and unwarranted degree under a Clinton Presidency) to vote for him to preserve those rights, he could have just come out and said "...the Second Amendment people, maybe there is: vote for me," rather than the coy insinuation, eminently deniable, of "I don't know..." It is plain to see that he knew what he was saying, knew he shouldn't and knew the furore it would raise. The denials and post-hoc rationalisation are simply risible attempts by his staff to cover an ass he really loves to flash about; and who's to deny that it's a successful political approach so far? It also avoided him actually making any promises himself to not appoint any anti-gun Supreme Court Justices. Trump has fully grokked (right or wrong) the concept that there is no such thing as bad publicity. So to get lots of publicity without even having to make a policy commitment, it's meat with gravy to him.

But is the palindromedary plotting with itself (?themselves? ?herself? ?himself? ?hirself?)?

Dangerous thinking, that. With the state of the USA today, if Trump won the Big Chair, he could point at all sorts of economic successes at least, 5 years down the line, just from the inertia built up to get the economy performing at its current state. Personally, I'm starting to wonder whether that's Trump's plan: get in, do nothing, ...?, Profit! I still think that the "disgust" reflex is strong enough on average to overcome the general monkey-brain manipulation tricks Ol' rug-head is pulling. At least I hope so.

As a long time (over 30 years now; _gulp_ ) LARPer, I'd personally struggle to be involved in a superhero-level action-focused LARP, for similar reasons to my scepticism about LARPs where projectile weapons are commonplace and supposed to represent current RL SotA (or even approaching that) in that field. I've tried Vampire LARPs, and the various mechanics to represent the super powers of such creatures really get in the way of the actual RP, even as they can do in high-powered "Heroic Fantasy" LARPs. Supers games have such a wide variety of powers and effects that it would be very difficult to convincingly represent on a 1:1 scale. It's easier to do in a LRP (lacking the "A" for "Action") where game mechanics can be expected to be much more table-toppy and abstracted, since "hard skills" aren't as much of an issue.

No it doesn't. It separates them from the "furnishes, transmits or otherwise..." parts. The intent section applies to all of the subsequent clauses.