Toxxus

Presumably a large chunk of formerly dusted teachers and administration staff will have returned with the new students.  Should be a wash. 

Things like this are probably not helping stabilize the mood of the increasingly unrepresented voting public.
 
Princeton University study: Public opinion has “near-zero” impact on U.S. law.
Gilens & Page found that the number of Americans for or against any idea has no impact on the likelihood that Congress will make it law.
“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

Based on the quantum bubble theory they are going with in the MCU, every possible universe exists, so in the "main MCU" Thanos did all the bad stuff and got his head chopped off by Thor. When they went back in time they created a new timeline, where Thanos discovers them and comes to the future... and that one, he and the armies are dusted, so that alternative timeline loses their Thanos and he isn't there to continue conquering and getting the stones (so they really made THAT timeline better, most likely).
 
The real confusion comes with Cap's old man appearance. As the previously posted article goes into, there are certain assumptions you have to make, depending on your theory, and none of them seem good... except that I do feel that Cap was around, living quietly, making a life with Peggy while all the crazy stuff of the first 21 movies happened... My personal theory is, if you ask him, he'd say that the hardest fight he ever managed was NOT fighting, NOT interfering, because he knew how it all worked out. Cap's growth from almost blindly self-sacrificing to a level of enlightened self-interest, juxtaposed to Tony's arc moving from selfish hedonism to ultimate self-sacrifice.

The beauty is in the writing. There are infinite ways to explain/justify/argue about what Cap did and the implications... but by not telling us, having Cap keep it to himself... it simply allows the viewers to apply their own POV. I mean, this is crazy comics world... so many possible over-convoluted explanations... pick the one you want... we'll never know and that is just fine.

There are different kinds of smart, and different kinds of stupid. Donald Trump has demonstrated intellectual inadequacy in many areas. It makes no practical difference whether that's primarily due to actual mental deficiency or illness, arrogance, laziness, or any combination thereof.
 
But there is one thing Donald Trump has always been good at: selling. Trump has a salesman's instinct for what people want to hear, for where they're vulnerable, and a willingness to exploit that to his own advantage.
 
Yet we also can't dismiss the distinctive contemporary social and political circumstances that allowed him to flourish. Trump arose at a time when a significant portion of the American public was feeling increasingly disenfranchised, and looking for someone to champion them; when the established political parties had taken the electorate for granted, and assumed they'd vote for whoever the parties put in front of them; when the public was disillusioned of governance by political elites apparently oblivious to the people they're supposed to serve, and hopeful that an outsider would do things better.
 
Trump's knack for selling, particularly himself, has played well in that climate. That's why I believe any opponent to him has to emphasize a message, because emphasizing the messenger is where Trump's proven strongest.

I fear you might be right. A lot of the media seems to go chasing after Trump twitters like dogs after dropped fast food- no matter how trivial, or obvious a lie, or whatever. This propels Trump where he wants to be, in the limelight, and meanwhile other news seems overshadowed. IMO
 
I think whatever one thinks of Trump's intellect, he has proven Jon Stewart was right to call the 4th Estate "lazy and sensationalist" and Trump exploits that. 

You could put a mirror to this and with very few alterations say the same of the Democrats.
 
The issue is that you can't squash 330+ million people into two parties.  There's no way for that to make any sense at all.  Even if you took a binary toggle to only the major issues of the day you'd need dozens or hundreds of parties.  And the major issues are frequently more complex and nuanced than D or R.
 
These days a lot of the "conservatives", even ones who voted for Trump, are actually Democrats who got scared out of their own party by it's race to the left.  My wife certainly falls into that category.
 
A lot of the iconic Democrats of history would be considered staunch conservatives by modern standards.

From a well travelled player character in My Turakian Age Game:
 
List: I've been Everywhere, Man
 
I've been here, or Heard of it:  (Total: 36 Active Cost, 10 Real Cost) Detect Geography and Surroundings 13- (Mental Group), Discriminatory, Increased Arc Of Perception (360 Degrees), Penetrative (30 Active Points); Extra Time (1 Turn (Post-Segment 12), -1 1/4), No Conscious Control (Only Effects cannot be controlled; -1), Requires A Roll (14- roll; Jammed; -1/4) (Real Cost: 8 )    b>plus</b> Access (Hidden (-3 to Skill Rolls)) (6 Active Points); Requires A Roll (11- roll; Jammed, Must be made each Phase/use; -1 1/2) (Real Cost: 2)
Always knows his way around
 
Fit in anywhere:  (Total: 31 Active Cost, 9 Real Cost) Shape Shift  (Sight and Hearing Groups, limited group of shapes), Variable Special Effects (Limited Group of SFX; +1/4), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2) (31 Active Points); No Conscious Control (Only Effects cannot be controlled; Only to look like he "belongs" there; -1), Affects Body Only (-1/2), Requires A Roll (Skill roll, -1 per 20 Active Points modifier: Acting or Disguise; Can choose which of two rolls to make from use to use, Jammed; -1/2), Limited Power Won't work if there is just no plausible way he could belong there! (-1/2) (Real Cost: 9)
Blends in
 
At home anywhere:  (Total: 15 Active Cost, 3 Real Cost) Cramming  (5 Active Points); Limited Power Only for Languages, or Cultural or City or Area Knowledge (-1), Requires A Roll (Skill roll, -1 per 5 Active Points modifier; Conversation; -1), Limited Power Learns by immersion, not from books or instructors (-1/2) (Real Cost: 1) <b>plus</b> Cramming  (5 Active Points); Limited Power Only for Languages, or Cultural or City or Area Knowledge (-1), Requires A Roll (Skill roll, -1 per 5 Active Points modifier; Conversation; -1), Limited Power Learns by immersion, not from books or instructors (-1/2) (Real Cost: 1) <b>plus</b> Cramming  (5 Active Points); Limited Power Only for Languages, or Cultural or City or Area Knowledge (-1), Requires A Roll (Skill roll, -1 per 5 Active Points modifier; Conversation; -1), Limited Power Learns by immersion, not from books or instructors (-1/2) (Real Cost: 1)
Cramming, the "Floating Skill."
 
Gift of Tongues:  (Total: 25 Active Cost, 10 Real Cost) Universal Translator 18- (25 Active Points); Increased Endurance Cost (x3 END; -1), Costs Endurance (Only Costs END to Activate; -1/4), Extra Time (Full Phase, Only to Activate, -1/4) (Real Cost: 10)
 
 
Lucius Alexander
 
The palindromedary says there's more where that came from
 
 

Mark my words, the Dem candidate will be whomever Trump wants it to be...all he has to do is pick a feud with someone and media coverage of that feud will drown out anything anyone else has to say.

Perception roll at minus 4 to spot them on an opponent.
 
For the person buying back their normal vision with the IIF contact they should take the Real Contact limitation.  Wash regularly or make CON rolls to avoid an eye infection.  Dislodged or broken on an 8 or less whenever you're critically hit (or hit in area 3 if using hit locations).
 
Can get 1 level of striking appearance with some of the cosmetic options (cat-eyes, hypnotica, etc.).

Sadly, that party doesn't exist.
 
I recall being somewhat shocked that instead of reducing the number of active wars we actually increased it under Obama's first term.  I hadn't wanted a Democratic president ever up until then and I was sure he would get us out of the endless morass of overseas wars.
 
Nope. 

You could put a mirror to this and with very few alterations say the same of the Democrats.
 
The issue is that you can't squash 330+ million people into two parties.  There's no way for that to make any sense at all.  Even if you took a binary toggle to only the major issues of the day you'd need dozens or hundreds of parties.  And the major issues are frequently more complex and nuanced than D or R.
 
These days a lot of the "conservatives", even ones who voted for Trump, are actually Democrats who got scared out of their own party by it's race to the left.  My wife certainly falls into that category.
 
A lot of the iconic Democrats of history would be considered staunch conservatives by modern standards.

That's my point. I acknowledge that Democrats are every bit as war-mongery as Republicans. I even suspect Trump has shown more restraint in this regard than Clinton would have.

But if we could have a plurality of parties? I think that party might come to exist.

A constant state of war is a consequence of the political power wielded by the military-industrial complex. There has to be a justification for the spending of a large percentage of our GDP on tanks, planes, and bombs, instead of general infrastructure.
 
https://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942244/ikes-warning-of-military-expansion-50-years-later
 
 

I can’t tell if you’re joking or not, but I’m asking about the Perk: Contact (as in a person to contact). 
 
Im wondering if there’s anybody who’s actually used the Resource Pool approach on this problem? Any advice?

Perception roll at minus 4 to spot them on an opponent.
 
For the person buying back their normal vision with the IIF contact they should take the Real Contact limitation.  Wash regularly or make CON rolls to avoid an eye infection.  Dislodged or broken on an 8 or less whenever you're critically hit (or hit in area 3 if using hit locations).
 
Can get 1 level of striking appearance with some of the cosmetic options (cat-eyes, hypnotica, etc.).

Judge dismisses Bush-era warrantless wiretapping lawsuit citing national security concerns
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/440777-judge-dismisses-bush-era-warrantless-wiretapping-lawsuit-citing
 
 
This is a particularly gutless decision by the judge.
 
It's going to endanger national security for the judge himself to look at the case closely enough to figure out whether the government is deliberately and systematically violating the 4th amendment???
 
Screw national security. We're supposed to be governed by the Constitution, not by national security concerns.
 
And if the judge considers himself to be too big of a national security risk to look at the case, he should have recused himself so another judge who is more trustworthy could have looked at it.
 
 
 
 

So 1 PIP is both cheaper and 100% reliable vs. the more expensive and only 50% reliable 1/2d6 ??
 
That makes no sense at all.  I would houserule that instantly.

Hero Designer can tell the difference.
 
You have to change the STR MIN value from: 4-8 to 4
 
Then  it will correctly add damage classes based on your strength over the STR MIN.
 
I ran into this awhile ago myself.  Basically changing the STR MIN from a range to a specific value does the trick.

Words of power is pretty common magical theme.  I would personally rule that using incantations in a darkness vs. sound effect would result in the incantations being nullified.
 
Without sound - there are no words and they have no power.
 
This might possibly be altered by special effects.  The bard on my Wednesday night group had a darkness vs sound that was defined as deafening applause coming from his magical instrument.  In that case - since the sound is being drowned out - not prevented - I could see letting the spells work.

Just to clarify, Choke is a standard maneuver, no need to pay for it (see 6e2, 84). Although there is an equivalent Martial component as well.
 
- E

Why do you say "not taken" as this is what started to happen when we built Supers in 6th Ed.  You could have a 10 DEX Brick, because you put his fighting ability in other stats, and he was just average with agility skills. It still meant that 7/8 Combat Value was probalby the "baseline", but you didn't have to have high DEX to achieve it.  I read everything else you wrote as agreeing with the decoupling of figured stats (the one thing I really love about 6th)... and I really like that it did have the actual in play/in character creation effect of dropping some stats down to a more "reasonable" level.  

If we didn't have such a history of "what a super looks like" from all the other editions, and we started fresh with building characters, I think you would see "11 DEX" on the Thing, but his OCV was probably a base 8, and levels over time. 
 
Also, though I never made a big deal about it... one "justification" I made in the supers games over decades, was "If 23 is the base superhero Dex, even if there was no good reason other than they were a PC... then that just means that stats from 15-20 are more common in the normal population"  Essentially, if the supers were 'bumped up' by default, I 'bumped up' the whole universe a bit. Agents had a base 5 OCV (15 Dex) whatever... then they could get levels. Anybody actually fit and trained who mattered, even if a "normal NPC" could have an 18 DEX, etc. Big strong bikers in bars would regularly have 15-20 STR. And this generally fit the source material... in that "named characters" or even just "the villain of the piece" always were better than the bystanders. 

And keeping this consistent in the campaign meant that the players undestood "what was normal" in the world... because I totally agree with what you said above... the cornerstone of a good supers universe is that the supers have a benchmark "normal" in which to compare themselves.  Just how "super" are they? Since 23 had been set at a default historically, it just became clear that "normal" or more like "normal that mattered dramatically in the stories" was often above average.

Maybe I'm also lucky, but after early high-school days back in the early '80s, I never played with people that really got into the DEX wars. If people played to character, they just didn't point dump into efficient stats... and I never played long with people who prioritized that kind of gaming. That helps, too.

I think that this is something true across the Western world.  All of our politics were defined by the nineteenth century struggle between labour and capital and our current parties were forged in that fire.  The political context has changed for most people.  I do not think that the things we are truly concerned about today are so easily defined in terms of left and right, labour and capital.  The political power framework has not caught up with that in many places (especially the US and UK where there has been two big beasts dominating the political landscape).
 
In Scotland the defining political question became union or independence and suddenly the political landscape changed drastically and what had been a very minor party (Scottish National Party) not only increased its share of the vote, it actually became the government of Scotland and of the 59 MPs Scotland sends to Parliament 56 of them were SNP.  Labour, which had nothing unique to offer in this new political spectrum lost 40 MPs in seats that were considered safe.  The swing from Labour to SNP in some of these seats was close to 40%.
 
I think that the three big parties in the UK during the 20th century (Liberals, Labour and Conservatives) are all going to have re-invent themselves to address the new political realities or they will cease to exist.  We can already see the strains, Labour and Conservative parties are polling the lowest share of the national vote than ever before and we have new parties and groupings beginning to emerge under the strains of Brexit that voters might swing to in large numbers simply because they no longer strongly identify as Labour or Conservative.
 
You may not be a political pariah for much longer.... 
 
🙂
 
Doc

This thought came to me during this thread: 
We were discussing incantations and how to stop them. I was trying to think outside the box of non-standard ways and I came up with Trigger. If I have say a rogue type who throws daggers and wants to be able to defend himself against spell casters, would a RKA (thrown dagger) with a trigger "seeing someone start incantations" go off before the spell was cast, even if the spell power was instant? I could not find anything referencing how long things like Gestures and Incantations take to execute besides:
 
(6e1, 382) "(If a character has two or more Instant powers that require Incantations, or Constant powers that only require Incantations to activate, he can activate them all in the same Phase.)"
 
That implies less than a half phase but it pretty vague.  If the caster is damaged, that would trigger:
 
"If he takes damage or is adversely affected by any power that requires an Attack Roll or MCV Attack Roll while he’s Incanting, the power doesn’t turn on or immediately turns off."
 
As always, thank you for your time and effort for the community.
 
- E

Duke there are two types of people in this world. One who likes the original trilogy and the other who are wrong. ?

I don't see any reason to apply a called shot penalty, since declaring "both arms" doesn't mandate a called shot to the arms. 
That said, there's a valid point that grabbing the head doesn't necessarily entail obstructing speech.  If the grabber doesn't know that the grabbed has powers with Incantations, I could easily see them grabbing in such a way that it doesn't prevent incanting.  A "shut up, wiznerd" grab could be very different from a "get those eye-beams away from me" grab.