Hermit

Who can blame Slime for any mistakes? We solids are rather disgusting by nature however sweet tempered some are. Study can require proximity.
Gross.

Makeup
 
Yvonne Fairchild has worked at many tasks in her 80 or so years. Barmaid, dancer-for-hire, waitress, numbers runner, thief, streetwalker when she was down and out...which was more often then she'd like to remember. Her latest one has been as a cosmetics specialist and beautician in a mid-scale beauty salon. She's still working because she has never managed to put together any sort of savings, and Social Security ran out years ago. 
But of late she's been using her makeup skills a lot on herself...because without them she doesn't look like an eighty year old anymore. In fact, she looks like she did when she was 30...well, actually, better, since Yvonne was never much of a looker. And the beautician job isn't being done for the meagre pay, but to find victims.
When she finds someone willing to chat, who has some money, who is single or otherwise living alone, that's when she strikes. She uses her ability to teleport through mirrors to go straight from her rooms to the victim's place, her knowledge of makeup to make herself unrecognizable, her newfound strength and vitality to capture the woman (or man - men don't come as often to the salon, but she isn't picky). She makes them tell her where all the money is, all the valuables, and then she paints their face - with acidic, poisonous makeup of her own devising. They come out of it beautiful to look at, but underneath, their faces are melting...
None of her victims have survived so far, and the Police have instituted a task force to find the "Makeup Killer". But who would suspect a little old lady?
 
On the team side, she acts as a scout and infiltrator. She's actually quite capable of combat, but she dislikes it. The others know she's someone in the building, but not that it is little granny Yvonne from the fourth floor.
 

Another man whose life was going nowhere was Paul Grady. He had an ordinary office job and it was mundane until he was made redundant. Stuck in the apartment trying to work out what jobs to apply for and how he would have to pay rent, the chemicals and mutagens got to work while the subliminal messages turned him to the course of evil. He dreamed of another existence and when he woke he looked into the mirror and saw a stranger, a corpulent moustached fellow with a bulbous nose and large horn rimmed glasses. Startled he shook and resumed his own appearance. Puzzled he looked into the mirror again and slowly pictured himself as the stranger again. Lo and behold he changed gradually. And he had power, power over the lesser beings, power over their minds for he had developed mental powers. He found these powers only came with the new form and over a few days he experimented as he could now hear peoples thoughts, make them believe they saw things they did not, temporarily paralyse their minds and cause them pain. Then working on the basis 'Go Big or Go Home' he walked into his former employment and went after the bosses causing them to transfer money to him and some of their possessions before making them unsure of what they had done and to whom. As he returned to the apartment he let the others know he was aware of them and was prepared to be their leader. For like other mentalists before him he has an entire chip shop on his shoulder. He is Magnum Opus
 
an odd effect of the transformation is that Paul can be read by a telepath in his own ID and it will show nothing of his criminal career. However as Magnum Opus IF someone got through his ego and mental defences all would be revealed including the others. But how powerful would you have to be to do that ?

Sympathies, it always hurts

We had to say goodbye to our cat tonight.  We're all pretty wrecked.
 
2008 - October 22, 2023.  ❤️

"Ah, good, you're still open."
 
"Yes we are, what can I get you?"
 
"Everything in the register."
 
"Oh my god, it's a hipster hold-up!"
 
"Hand it over. I have a gun."
 
"Well I have a death wish, so that's not going to work. Look, pal, we work at this cupcake window from two to four, six nights a week, and that is after eight hours of slinging hash at the diner next door for lousy minimum wage which a bunch of politicians out in ... help me out ... "
 
"Washington."
 
"What she said. ... don't want to raise. Then we walk back to our illegal one bedroom apartment, get three hours of NyQuil-induced sleep before we have to get back up and share a bowl of Spanish-language Cheerios."
 
"It's the same, but the C wears a sombrero."
 
"So no, I am not about to give you our hard-earned money and if you're going to shoot me, better aim good because if you miss, I will climb over this counter, tear off your head, and it'll be our new tip jar."
 
"I just robbed Pizza Pizza. Here's a twenty. Have a good night."
 
"I have a way with people.

Three? Three? THREE? I have to think one, two, three times for this? Hermit, old buddy, old pal, you owe me forever. 
 
So, Pogo, obvs. Next up, Pinprick, not because I like the annoying little dude (archers, sheesh), but because clearly he's your favourite and I expect to see you fly free when you're channeling his voice. Finally, Slime, because their perspective is going to be the weirdest and hardest to communicate and I am an evil person.
 
If it helps, I was trying to put myself in the mind of an amoeboid functioning in a solid world, and I suddenly found myself imagining a Hanna Barbara world. For an amoeboid, real humans and their built environment blends into their visual comic art to an uncanny extent. "As usual, especially since he started secreting his upper octant down-oriented vertex dermal collagen structure, seeing Caleb burst into the room left me wondering why no gawky, oversized Great Dane came skittering in after him." 
 
Anyway, that's what I think, so it must be true. 

Faceless
 
Frances Lecter was a minor YouTube celebrity with a channel all about horror movie reviews. The chemical have brought the horror film character he has started writing a screenplay about called "Faceless" to life. When he transforms into Faceless, he is a super humanly strong and durable being without a face nor need to breathe and a violent streak which makes Jason Voorhees look like a quire boy.
 
Even when not transformed, Frances has become more antisocial, rairly posting his reviews on YouTube anymore, and quick to anger and resort to violence. Faceless' trademark is to rip off the faces of the people he has killed.

BTW, I ran my players against the Miscreants, to great success.  The Miscreants were convinced to pull a job in a city a ways out from San Francisco, to draw the heroes out of town so members of several supervillain teams could attack the newly-opened Alcatraz super-prison to break their teammates out. The heroes "found out" the Miscreants were hanging around nearby (one of the other supervillains called in a tip to PRIMUS) and the hero team got a briefing from Pinprick - who proceeded to irritate the heroes by calling their team "lame" for not having an archer.
 
The Miscreants were great, in that they irritated the #*!& out of my players.  The heroes figured out that Red Robin Hood didn't really fit with the other Miscreants, and they convinced her to work with them to help put down the would-be prison break, in exchange for the heroes putting in a good word with the authorities on her behalf.
 
One of the players ran Red Robin Hood, and by the end of the fight they were of the opinion that archers really do rock.  It was an awesome game.  Thank you for lending me the Miscreants, Hermit.

Hmmm...  I'd say Pinprick is one of my favorite characters in the FishGuyVerse, so I'd nominate him.  Even if he's picking out a gift, it should be entertaining.  (Hey, maybe he'd have his son along!)
 
I think we can count on Lawnmower Boy to nominate Pogo, so I'm going to go with Aspirant in the hopes of getting a two-fer.  (They're just so cute together!)
 
And I think I'd like to see something on Brazen.  We haven't really seen much on her since she got her rockin' bod, and I think her viewpoint would be unique on most things mortal.
 
 

Okay. Barring RL intrusions, I hope to partake of November's National Novel Writing Month.
And, I thought, as I've neglected Caleb and crew; maybe it would be time to dust them off again with an anthology of short stories. The current idea is each short story comes not from Fish Guy's perspective, but one of the other super heroes around him. It will be about the time as the days around the wedding.
 
But I'm not sure which ones I should focus on. Between the old Sammies and the newbloods, I can't possibly get them all. I'm expecting about five to six stories, roughly, to hit that 50,000 mark.
 
So if you are reading this and have enjoyed Eel's tales so far, and don't mind; please let me know who your top three preferences for which characters points of view you'd like to see in a short story. It will give me time to plan and plot (I use the term laughably) ahead before November. I can't promise they'll be the ideal short story you were hoping for. You may want to see Pinprick in an exciting battle for his life only to find out the story is about him getting the perfect gift for "Fish Guy" and the soon to be "Mrs. Fish Guy" .  Perhaps you enjoy highly accurate scientific jargon  so push for Lady Obsidian, a super genius far surpassing any coyote, only to find I make a short story about the ultimate team leader challenge- Bureaucratic paperwork. This may not end well for anyone.
 
But I'd like to give it a try, so please, three picks of PoVs you might be most interested in.
 
Many thanks
 
 

I don't want this to sound as snippy as it does, and I have run through several choices of phrasing, but the fact is that anything can be taken wrong; as such is true, I felt this preamble to be in order.
 
Again:  not trying to be a jerk here:
 
What are the in-game mechanical effects of a headache? Or a toothache?  Or poison ivy?  Or a wound that is showing early signs of infection?  Or hemorrhoids?
 
When we know that, we can then design their remedies.  For my own games, these things do _not_ have mechanical effects unless they are specifically listed on a character sheet as Disadplications, in which case the mechanic as regards that particular chracter is listed on the sheet.  I have never been submitted a character with hemorrhoids or allergies or "prone to sunburn," so I have never had to worry about it.
 
Outside the character sheet, these are, in my games, _narrative_ problems, and they are dealt with in a narrative fashion:
 
 
You were out way to late on patrol; you've got a spliting headache, and you can hear that alarm clock in your optic nerve.
 
Looks like it is going to be another two-cup morning.  I put the cofee pot on, pop a couple of aspirin and start getring ready for work.
 
You've had your shower amd a quick breakfast, and soon you are finishing off your second coffee and rinsing your plate- not quite enough time to wash up if you're going to catch your ride share to work.  At least that headache has eased off.
 
Yeah, I dont want to be late!  I am sort of hoping that sarcophagus we're studying might shed some light  on the case my alter-ego has gotten tangled up in....
 
 
That sort of thing.
 
 

It may be a coincidence, but it did seem like the recent fan-disappointing trends started production about the time Stan Lee was in his final decline. We've all tended to give a lot of credit to Marvel's success to Kevin Feige, but I wonder now if Stan's creative input was more critical than we realized.

Keith Giffen, Co-Creator Of Rocket Raccoon & Lobo, Has Died, Aged 70

After the synopses given of the evolution of Greyhawk (and my thanks to both of you again), I am going to suggest that the first step might be deciding _which_ Greyhawk you will be playing in.
 
For what it's worth, I was never a fan of grimdark as a _theme_, but it has value as a _threat_ (stop the impending grimdark), but frankly, I don't think any of us, under any but the most Monte Haul of DM, ever had a snowball's chance of keeping a party alive long enough to really become even an annoyance to Iuz the Evil or similar such published characters for any game in any genre.  And the other problem was playing a game for three or four years with only a single end goal....  It never happened.  We just lost interest and tended to find side quests to stay entertained.  It's like retirement: ten years into the job, and you start counting down, because you have had enough of that already.  That is apropos of nothing except to suggest that if the goal is to "stop Iuz the Evil,'  I would encourage you to consider starting them out at sufficiently higher than 'starting level" characters: while videogame developers might not have figured it out, grinding for levels specifically to get levels to complete the single goal laid out at the beginning?  Not a lot of fun.
 
And just as commentary: I rather _liked_ the crumbling ancient Empire as individual cultures and city states came into their own.  It was a rather oprimistic background that suited my own visions at the time.   Besides, I live in 2023.  I have had more than enough dystopia; thank you.
 
 

I like 6th edition's handling of Complications being less numerous and, by extension, a little more important.  Complications/Disadvantages are a breath of fresh air compared to the traditional alignment systems and other systems that attempt to sum up an entire character's motivations in 2 words.  Not to mention the number of arguments started by people on the nature of Good and Evil as they apply to fantasy games, I wouldn't say I like these philosophical debates these systems of morality cause in some games.
 
What works in my Hero games is to write the character's background so that the Complications taken are reflected in the past motivations and actions.  It makes for a believable character to say, "Karl enlisted and picked up the sword to defend his family and friends from the enemies of the crown after living in fear for his life on the kingdom's border." than "Karl's Lawful Good."  One answer is boring and generic the other has something to work with motivation-wise.  A story arc revolving around keeping the characters' home safe or DNPCs out of harm's way is hopefully more engaging to this player and the other players.  Get people to bake the motivations into the character Complications and background story and you have a more cohesive picture and place to start playing from and planning games.
 
It's a gigantic positive feature that is sometimes misunderstood as a chore.
 

That number is equal to the number of people who get a ping pong ball upside the head.
 
 
I'll be going as Mini-Me!
 

The main railroad line through Paradise City is pretty much the dividing point between the good and bad parts of town and is often simply called "The Line". There have been many reported sightings of the Man in Black striding along those tracks.

Most of Russia's Black Sea fleet which was based in Crimea, have been compelled to withdraw back to Russia, under threat of missile and drone attacks. A country with no navy to speak of has defeated an entire fleet.

And after days of incredible agony...
the Public Service Announcement DIED!
 

All Things Considered had tributes for Sen. Feinstein, including this:
 
https://www-cf.npr.org/2023/09/29/1202745293/former-rep-jane-harman-on-sen-dianne-feinsteins-trailblazing-legacy
 
Best moment, I think, is the clip of her during the debates leading up to the assault weapons ban of 1994. A senator from Idaho apparently thought the li'l woman from California couldn't really understand guns the way a big strong man from Idaho could, and...
 
...She proceeds to rip him a new one without raising her voice. A moment when the Senate truly was a great debating body.
 
Dean Shomshak

"I can't swallow that!"
"Well then, Good News! It's a suppository!" -Futurama

That's the real tragedy. She had a long and amazing life. She attained heights that women of her generation were often kept from. An American success story! Instead, she'll be recalled as much as a person who refused to let go of power even when it hurt the causes she championed. It's a blemish on her personal history that's going to stand out.
 
I'm not one for ageism, the older I get the more I'm like "hey, 60 doesn't seem THAT old" ... but I do think there comes a time to pass the torch when the years begin to erode your ability to serve as a leader or voice for your people. I am not sure a flat 'no one this old or older should be allowed to run for office' is the fix, but watching politicians  space out, get confused with where they are here and now on camera, and then being told 'oh, they're fine' while their aides do damage control and everyone knows they are NOT fine is a problem. At times it seemed to border on elder abuse.