Frederick Douglas University is fully accredited. It is also offering adult continuing education classes in law, boat handling and navigation, water safety, history, and marine engineering.   It’s Mascot, is a Blue Crab with a Navy White hat. 

On 12/23/2023 at 2:11 AM, death tribble said:

It's on today in Britain. Along with It's a Wonderful Life and Scrooged

It’s a Wonderful Life gets really dark. 

On 12/25/2023 at 8:29 AM, Duke Bushido said:

So yesterday was awesome and exhausting.

 

What with it being both Christmas Eve and Sunday, every player I have was off and, unfortunately, wanted to play.  I say unfortunately because those players are across three different groups.  The regularly-irregular Champions group wanted to do something-- so we did!  I had _nothing_ ready, so I recycled the Christmas Treant I used with the youth group last year.  A few on the fly mods to remove some of the humor and add some more overtly sinister, and done.  (yeah; this group is fifty/ fifty: half want to be noble heroes; the other half wants to be Batman)

 

The youth group wanted to do something so they could invite a couple of friends.  As before, I had _nothing_.  Honestly, no one has _ever_ wanted to play within three weeks of Christmas on either side!  It never _occurred_ to me to prep something, even just mentally.  I did have something rattling around in my head for a couple of months in case they ever did want to play again (they are _all_ in high school now, so I expect this fun thing they do with the old guy from church will fall by the wayside any second), so I launched into it for a couple of hours-- 

 

they are hot on the trail of the Good Guy.  After being totally unable to locate the Gotham-esque neighborhood known as "the Sty," they are growing more and more perplexed.  Finally, one of them suggests that all neighborhoods are hooked to utilities.  Perhaps they can split up and follow power lines and storm sewers to get where they need to go?  Two of them even call the garbage collection companies to see who runs to the Sty and when.  After a run-in with the homeless army in the sewers, they find themselves in the Sty, and explore for a couple of hours, looking for leads, and wondering where the police are.  We find a good spot to wrap up, and do so.

 

I had to.  Christmas Eve is also my amazingly-still-alive father's birthday.  (It gets better: my mother's birthday is New Year's Eve.)  I go see my folks (both of whom are the longest-lived people in their respective families.  I should be so lucky) where I thoroughly enjoy my mother and I honor my father.  (I hope you people can forgive me; if you cannot, I hope you can at least understand.  The more I improve myself-- no; obviously not financially.  The more I improve myself _as a human being_, the less I enjoy my father's company.  He has gone from a vibrant, intelligent man to the terrified, paranoid coward that a certain "news" channel creates in order to ensure votes for a unified party of paranoid cowards, and I find it.....   it's unpleasant.  Leave it there.)

 

After two bitter hours there, I start to head toward Brunswick, where my Traveller-on-Champions-wheels group wants to play, and then we get to the "quote of the week."

 

 

At this point, I have been running games for about twelve hours, and for three different groups, and almost all of this is off-the-cuff material that I am having to note just as hard as the players are so that I can work it into the stories properly when I have time (and before the next sessions).  I am frazzled.  I can _feel_ the overload sparks in my brain.  

 

NPC:  ...and that's when we found the ore.  Not dust and flakes like on the worlds in the green zone, but a pure vein of it.  Word got out-- I can't believe it was one of our guys; I just can't.  We've got our entire lives riding on this, all of us.  It had to be someone on the science team, researching it.  There's an Imperial science ship in the next orbit starward, trying to mask itself amongst the background radiation of the star.  It's here to study this stuff.  It may prove to be the next best material for creating Jump Grids.

 

PC1: Wait-- this is an unknown ore?

 

PC2: Are we safe this close to it?!

 

NPC: We are perfectly safe.  It's as inert as lead prior to refinement.

 

PC1: So this ore; what is it?

 

NPC: Joseph Rafiiki.

 

PC3:  Oh, Man!  I can't _wait_ to hear what _that_ stands for!

We had surprise games like that back on the day, before everyone moved away after school.  Good times. 

May have been a Confederate Coastal Installation, and the HBCU acquired the land 20 years later to use the drained areas and existing buildings as a start. Currently has a very eclectic mix of architecture, but all in red brick, and white trim.  One of the few Universities with its own port. Curriculum centers on Marine Biology, Environmental Law, Architecture, Marine Law and commerce.  Ceased being a pure black university after a vote in 1970. Surrounding town expanded in the 1920s. And again after the war. During the war, the port facilities were taken over by The Coast Guard, for submarine chasing. University is governed by a council of 6 deans.  

(My mother’s parents lived along side the Charles River Estuary, where I was taught how to sail and handle small boats, and be driven to museums all over Virginia, so I am familiar if not fond of the area.) 

All in all, I think that D&D wil survive but this will delay ONE D&D probably about a year or so, as the personnel will be shuffled around. D&D has been an artistically pretty publication. THe VTT They were working on will be mostly the reason for the delay, But there would be a lot of opportunities for rules rewrites.  D&D's Market share my shrinke a bit, especially in comparison to Paizo's work, but D&D will still be dominant in the hobby, especialy if the rules revisions are lightly handled.

On the other hand, Yellow Flash has an alternate heory:

A relevant Reddit posting:

https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/18ibj22/hasbros_struggle_with_monetization_and_the/

Ihavern't had pleasurable experiences with "Independent" TTRPGs, so I have been mostly ignoring it, and sticking with the old stuff that's in my bookshelf already. I never have been a fan of FIction Forward mechanics, or the thin slice limitations of a lot of these games, with their setting and mechanical specificity that make it suitable to only a narrow scope of play. No PBtA or BitD for me, thank you.

At what degree?  A Nuclear Exchange wopuld cause a lot of problems, maybe up to extinction. But a Civil War would depopulate the large cities, but leave the countryside mostly intact. Governments would be severely weakened, much as Duke's scenario does. but travel would be hampered, Distrubution would be expensive or non existant. Local governments would be either the province of strong men, or strong ideologies, or hopefuly strong institutions/oprinciples.  A lot of Mend and Make Do. 

On 2/13/2003 at 4:41 PM, Fitz said:

I've never been terribly fond of the Speed Chart and the mechanical effect it has on combat. Its only advantage, to my mind, is that it guarantees that a combatant with SPD 4 acts exactly twice as often as one with SPD 2. The big problem with it is that it encourages the sort of metagaming mindset which allows players to pre-plan their combats, to the grave detriment of the feeling of fast-moving chaotic excitement which combat should have.

 

I've tried a couple of ways to get around this, to make combat less rigidly structured without doing away with the SPD system altogether.

 

The first variation: Random Segment Determination , in which a d12 is rolled and those characters with SPD appropriate to act on that segment, or those holding an action, can act. This system was what I'd describe as a miserable failure -- it slowed everything down rtaher than speeding it up, and keeping track of passing time was a real pain in the bum.

 

Second Variation: Random Phase Determination , in which a die is rolled each Phase of combat. Everyone with a SPD equal to or greater than the number shown, or those holding an action, get to act. When the die shows a 1, everyone acts, the Turn ends and they get their post-12 recoveries. This system was a qualified success, since it did speed things up and it was easy to tell who could and could not act in any given phase. Where it fell down was in the ratio of actions between combatants; because combats seldom go on for any great length of time (that is, the number of individual Phases is small), it's easy for low-SPD or even moderate-SPD characters to be left out entirely simply because of a run of high Phase-Determination Rolls. Over time, of course, the ratio of actions will inevitable stabilize, but who remembers how many times they got to clobber something in a session three weeks ago?

 

Third Variation: Randomised SPD Bonus/Penalty : This is the system we're currently trialling. At the beginning of combat, everyone throws 1d6. A result of 1 means that character has -1 SPD (for that combat only), a 6 grants +1 SPD, and any other result indicates no change. Otherwise, the Speed Chart is used as per the published rules. This system has the virtue of simplicity, the down-side being that players have to keep track of which Phases they act on for 3 different SPDs -- their normal SPD, and one either side. We haven't play=tested this system for long enough to show whether it's practical or not, but I have an uneasy feeling lurking down deep that it won't really serve the purpose terribly well.

 

Does anyone have any ideas any other kind of combat initiative system which fulfills the following criteria?

 

1) It must be very, very simple.

2) It must grant screen time appropriate to the character's SPD

3) It must be variable enough to provide a degree of uncertainty about exactly who gets to act exactly when

4) It must not change the system to the extent of removing or distorting the SPD mechanism completely

5) It must be simple. I mean it.

Funny but I disagree with all the points you made at the top of the quote. The fixed initiative is such a relief compared to die roll randomness. Most combat is sort of planned or at least has objectives. Champions was a Wargame of superheroes. The chaotic randomness is a product of melee or martial arts fights, when ranged combat is more planned out, or at least rules based. A lot of this chaos and randomness seems like a desire for more of a fiction forward flavor.  My preference is not to mess with Champions RAW. 

Arabian Knights playlist. 

waits, and checks his watch.

Saw it this afternoon as well. Spectacular film. IT really captured the sorry shape Japan was in right after the war, and the tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union were in. Also this movie did more with a microscopic budget, than DIsney has been able to do all year with 300Million dollar budgets per film.  But this film shows the importance of compelling characters, and a good script. The VFX were top notch. Godzilla was a scary creature, made worse by the Bikini Atoll tests.

Maybe this belongs here:?

Alex Toth may be the biggest detectable influence on my art style. Back in the day I would be lying on the carpet infront of the TV watching these with a small sketch bad, and a handful of pens and pencils. He was drawing right up to his end, and did designs for shows up until the 90's, though he slowed way down after the death of his wife, who started as the H-B Receptionist.

For those who are not old farts, this may explain what the hell we are talking about:  

Agreed. 

5 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

That’s interesting however for a system that prides itself on building the game you want should that be a default assumption?

“Should”, or “Should not” it’s generally too late,now since Espionage had the same assumption. Strength is the key stat for heroes. 

 I have a lot of Herculoid Episodes on bootleg DVDs I picked up in the depths of the Dealers room at San Diego Comic-con. Always preferred the Adventure to the humor, because the humor never could get me to laugh.  
 

SO does the little donkey Zazoom, from THe Arabian Knights count?  THe Arabian Knights were two fighters, two casters, a Rogue and a Donkey. 

And Yeah I am ancient as well. Watched most of these in first run.