ScottishFox

I was able to get the old D&D side-scroller for Xbox One yesterday (repackaged as Chronicles of Mystara) for a whopping $2.99. Most fun the kiddo and I have had on an Xbox in quite some time.

Apparently the Coronavirus is going to very painfully remind people that smoking is bad for them.

The doctors at covidtrial dot io have apparently come up with a solid treatment using already available medications. Granted the sample size is small, but the results look amazing.

The mortality rate for the lower brackets according to that article Simon posted is very low (3 in 10,000 down to 2 in 100,000). Grabbing the bottom 3 brackets were talking roughly 6 per 1,000 requiring hospitalization (bad) to 3 per 10,000 needing critical care. It's the older brackets that get hammered. People are legitimately concerned about their parents and grandparents.

I work for one of the big 3 Movie Theater chains in the US and we just closed all of our US based theaters as of today. Reduced hours for everyone at corporate and we all know that the theater workers are going to get soaked (0 hours).

My UberEats delivery yesterday was like that. I heard the doorbell. Ran the whopping 25 feet to the door and my food was sitting on the ground and the driver was already pulling away. Customers = Patient Zero.

Our last trip to CostCo (3rd trip with the TP aisle completely missing) consisted of watching dozens of people with paper towels and bottled water leave the store. Looks like my daughter's next arts & crafts project will be cutting paper towel rolls into pseudo toilet paper rolls.

I've been running a HERO game on Saturdays for a couple of years now and ran a full campaign at the local gaming store Wednesday nights for a good while. Admittedly, it's easiest to crush it as a DM for 5e and then show them a game system you like better. At that point, though, you're selling your value as a DM and not the system.

New York City and Los Angeles have already mandated the closure of movie theaters. The side that's not getting balanced in this Social Distancing effort is economic ruin for countless businesses. Not sure where the sweet spot is, but how many people can we financially destroy before the cure is worse than the ailment?

Hit the Costco with the kiddo today and picked up staples (milk, eggs, frozen food, etc.). The bottled water and toilet paper section of Costco was a ginormous concrete bald spot. There was nothing in an area generally piled up so high it is like a regular grocery aisle. Luckily we picked up all that crap a few weeks ago, but people are being stupid. You can't eat toilet paper folks! Buy some canned goods, ffs.

I say Elder Scrolls to you, sir! Multiple races of humans with unique stat adjustments and their own magical abilities. Bretons vs. Imperials vs. Nords, etc.

Frontier's service quality is a pathway to many abilities that some consider... unnatural.

Back in December I cut cable TV and retained only internet. Yesterday I got a call from Frontier that they were about to cut my internet. Apparently they set up a new account for me for the same internet service I already had, but left the one with no active services on it open too. So the account I didn't know about - which had no email address tied to it - but was set to email invoices (go green!) was behind in payments... It was a struggle to not go off on the customer service rep. How the f*ck would I know I'm late when my account has been on autopay for years and nobody told me there was a new account and I'm not being physically mailed invoices??!! It's all sorted, but not the kind of crap I needed to deal with the same week I got my wife out of the hospital for the 3rd time in a month. I miss Verizon so much.

One of my favorite Fantasy HERO characters used a flail. Other weapons had various advantages, but when the armored goon with a large shield came out the Flail made them substantially easier to hit (+3 DCV effectively reduced to +1 DCV). Also, from a cinematic standpoint, they are cool looking weapons.

I got so distracted by spam I forgot what I wanted to post... They need to stop closing sh*t. All businesses can't just grind to a halt because people are afraid of getting sick. You ARE going to get sick. This stuff is super contagious and you can by asymptomatic for 5+ days before you realize you've been spreading it everywhere. The number of people we think are sick now is probably not even 10% of the real number. Like in Italy I saw they were leaving grocery stores and pharmacies open. Is the illness going to magically not spread in those locations? This invisible plague mist that can hang in the air 10+ minutes after someone coughs? So frustrating watching the largely useless actions being taken by so many companies at tremendous financial cost to themselves and their employees. The illness isn't even hitting working age adults that hard and children seem to relatively unaffected. One guy I saw talking about it mentioned that shutting down schools and day cares will sideline up to 40% of our nursing staff. That is NOT going to help. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/

Not like they like it in Hawaii. We used to eat spam musubi (imagine a bit of sushi, replace the fish with spam) and a bajillion other variants of replacing real food with spam and we LOVED it. People would walk around in SPAM t-shirts. Spam in Hawaii is like the Dallas Cowboys in Dallas. It's a big deal. In a Fantasy HERO setting SPAM would have become a minor deity due to the widespread and long term worship.

Having pieces of the story that cannot be known by anyone adds some mystique to the setting. Otherwise players have a tendency to boil it down to: All Narfs are from Flarg and swear profusely.

Sure hope that involves the supply chain too or the stores and pharmacies will be barren within a week.

Fair enough, but we don't have chefs or even a cafeteria staff. You have me imagining chefs walking around with a fishbowl full of pinesol strapped to their bellies which they dunk their hands in between sloshing pans and dicing food. Food prep for us is Microwave your home lunch before eating it.

My daughter's school board just sent out an email advising travelling families self-quarantine if they have gone to any of the big number countries. Meanwhile we've had a confirmed case in the county that does not appear to be travel related. Which means that person has been sharing it with everyone for a week or two. Which means it's already here. Either we self-quarantine everyone or we all pull out our metaphysical dice and make a CON roll. More useless advice in the company cafeteria: Food Prep: Wash your hands before, ***during*** and after food preparation. How does one wash their hands DURING preparing the food?? Do I prepare all food with Dawn and running water??

Deadly Blow does a better job for this type of thing. Is there any particular reason you don't like Deadly Blow? Or is there a reason you want the rogue to have to take an extra segment and a 5 point DCV penalty to do enough damage to matter in combat?

From what I've read the children barely show symptoms from COVID-19. They become infectious, but they often don't get seriously sick themselves. This disease seems designed to implement the rules of Logan's Run.

I suspect many, many people have recently gotten over the flu and not realized they already had and survived the Corona virus. I keep hearing opinions ranging from There's nothing to worry about through It's 20x worse than the flu! Buckle up, heroes. :S

From what I see at the 3 tables a week I'm either playing or DM'ing at (1 HERO, 2 D&D currently) is that 75-80% of the players fall in the "I'll show up to play" bucket where they'll buy products for leisure reading or to make their characters, but they have no interest in running a game and negative interest in building their own content. I used to build custom content all the time, but with family obligations and work I don't have that kind of time any more.

Ultimately I think this will go the way of the last few waves of super viruses and end up having mortality rate well below 1% due to a very large percentage of people who get it not seeking medical treatment. I would expect there are large swaths of people in all of impacted countries who haven't gone in for testing or who can't get testing because the testing supplies are limited / exhausted. Still, this could be a bad one for the elderly and those with immune system issues. Just got my wife out of the hospital for pneumonia. It was not COVID-19 though so we may be back.