ScottishFox

On and off since the 1980s. With the resurgence of 5th edition D&D I was able to get back to GM'ing and then hijacked a table for HERO. My friend had played HERO with us for a few months and has a ton of DM experience in D&D. It was mostly the number crunching that was messing him up.

Har'Ak is a dwarf, but since there are no non-deity dwarves he hasn't been recognized as such.

I've been running a game for awhile now and needed a break. Convinced one of my long-time D&D DM friends to take the reigns for a few weeks. He was sweating bullets, but by the end of the session he was getting the hang of it. Resistance is futile. They will be (Fantasy HERO) assimilated.

If you're going to do a kidnapping scenario it has to be done right. For a friend's birthday I created a Halloween themed Fantasy Hero adventure. The heroes were the Midnight Market and the scenario is that they were all going to steal Old Lady Nym's giant emerald for their last big score. Characters were pregenerated as this was a one-shot. Right off the bat they blew my timeline as they spent a good 90 minutes planning the heist, watching which bars the guards went to after work, etc. They get inside eventually and begin to experience all of the weirdness and haunted-house-ness of the adventure. They begin to have nightmarish vision flashes of being chained, being submerged in caustic liquids, etc. A creepy child keeps climbing out of paintings, walls, a child's teddy bear, etc telling them he's there to save them, but his touch causes them to burst into flames. Eventually, at the end, in order to get the gem one player has to operate a mechanism that kills off the rest of the party. He gleefully does so. Then old lady Nym appears and kills him. Here's the fun part: They were already dead. The whole party of thieves had been caught and killed on their first try. Old Lady Nym is a lich and has been feeding on their souls with a side order of suffering as she runs them through the night that lead to their deaths over and over. The creepy painting boy is an angelic being who can barely pierce the wards of the lich's sanctum to try to free them. His appearance is distorted and his touch free's their soul at the cost of annihilating their undead forms. Only 1 person made it out and her burning to death scared everyone else off the creepy rescuer.

Had the DNC not screwed Bernie over in primaries I think he could have won. I think most reasonably charismatic candidates could have beaten Trump. Hillary's disdain for mere mortals was not helpful.

If your religious beliefs can't survive exposure to another belief system then you're probably better off without them. I have, as a Christian, read among other things: The Tao de Ching, The Koran, multiple books on Atheism, books on witchcraft, hypnotism, etc. It's a mixed bag as I suspect it is among atheists. Some are genuine truth seekers and others just want a community to belong to without really understanding why they believe what they say they believe. Voting trends based on religious beliefs on the other hand - strong correlated.

Probably safer for the actress and her stunt doubles as well. The skirt leaves legs open to injury when diving through walls, furniture, bouncing on the asphalt, etc.

Well, shit.

I wanted to further develop the thought on all good has an evil counterpart. Flavor-wise I was aiming more for Good causes/invites/makes possible evil. Prosperity leads to gluttony, sharing leads to sloth/moochers, peaceful society leads to perceived weakness and encourages aggressors, etc. Some great writing by the group. Glad I was able to participate.

Sweet! I heard the view is really spectacular up there! ~Makes the Ooh and Aah face as the scene changes rapidly: Sky, steps, sky, steps, sky, steps, people with nets, sky, steps, net, fade to black.~

How does the voting for this work?

Like most of philosophical leanings the more pure they get the more dangerous they get. You can't boil down the complexities of existence and the human mind to a couple of bullet points. Merciless competition is just as problematic as a world where the social safety net is so good you don't have to compete at all. I had friends in high school who had this as their career plan: Get pregnant and pretend I don't know who the father is. I've known people who spent their entire working age years on welfare and their kids grew up and got on welfare. The reasoning was simply that they couldn't make that much money with a job. So why bother? Granted I lived in an area with very good social benefits at the time so they were correct to some degree. There was no entry level job that would pay even close to what they made not working at all.

His concern was that it's too cliche and he wanted a chance for the heroes to use their skills. So a kidnapping investigation to start off with and perhaps a battle at the bank to wrap it up. Alternately, a painful fork in the road forcing the heroes to deal with a moral dilemma. While the vault is being opened with the kidnapped bank manager there remains a smaller group still holding the bank manager's husband hostage! Do you save the money or the person? I think the OPs concern is that they want a richer experience than just smash villains at bank.

And the missing person is the bank manager! The only one who can open the ultra-high security vault at midnight. Can the heroes reach the bank in time to stop the villains from getting away? It's good to have a little motivation for the heroes beyond their lust for battle.

I do 5 points weekly at my game plus or minus a point for extraordinary success or failure.

Among other unique things extra-galactic visitors can see when they visit is the only known moon in the universe where Holy Communion was held (Buzz Aldrin). Can't get that just anywhere!

Or vaporizes them in horrific fashion making people unwilling to approach the barrier. In time the villains outside the Dome can switch small areas of it to safe-mode to pass inside for whatever nefarious reasons they have. Later still the populace having seen several people and things annihilated on contact avoid the Dome and fail to realize that there are several safe areas to pass in and out of the Dome. Then a double-agent gets spotted using a safe spot. Then the witness has to be squashed. Then conspiracy theories and paranoia within the Dome that some (possibly many) are working with Skull.

That looked pretty tame all things considered. Didn't we have one in California that was 2 points higher recently? Arsonist setting fire to an animation studio is some heinous shit. 30+ dead and 30+ more with burn wounds. If that were a mass shooting in the USA the arsonist would reach the #3 spot among recent entries with only Las Vegas and Pulse being worse. They better find that creep. G'damn that is upsetting.

Even this is fairly open-ended. Do you mean Greyhawk? Forgotten Realms? Dark Sun? Ravenloft? etc. Hell, they even have 5th Edition books for the Lord of the Rings setting now. But the HERO system is completely gone from nearly all gaming stores now. We need something to keep the brand alive.

InvestoPedia has a good article on whether nor not Social Security is a Socialist program. Here's a snippet. The Bottom Line It's interesting to remember that the U.S. got the idea for a social-security system from 19th century Germany. That very capitalist monarchy launched an old-age social insurance program in 1889 at the behest of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, partly to stave off radical socialist ideas being floated at the time. The original social security was actually an anti-socialist maneuver by a conservative government. Nevertheless, because the American government plays such a dominant role in the U.S. Social Security system – deciding how much and when employees and employers pay into the system, how much individuals receive in benefits when they get them, and preventing almost everyone from opting out – it seems fair to call the Social Security program a form of socialism.

I'm curious why the dead horse isn't participating in the conversation. Like these seem like good ideas. Maybe a response along the lines of why they've chosen not to go this route would be helpful to the remaining fan base.

Apparently they're bad at Google-foo since that can be searched and answered almost immediately. I'm a Trek fan, but couldn't recall the answer myself.

And for the final bit - Sentient Life: The current peoples of the world were not the first that Har'Ak sought to instruct in the ways of Hearth and Hospitality. There was a far older race that he blessed with His gifts. A primitive breed of one-eyed cave dwellers were the first to know His presence. In time they mastered the hearth, the garden and the home. But, they were a miserably selfish lot and hoarded rather than shared. They left their own to suffer while they grew fat in excess. Har'Ak was infuriated by this and laid a mighty curse upon their race. They would forever dwell within the mountains in their homes of stone. And they would forever be only able to consume as much as they shared. Half was the price of their greed. Still the selfish one-eyed brutes couldn't stomach the idea of giving away food, warmth and shelter. So they became master craftsmen and began bitterly to trade with the newer peoples of the world. They traded bronze for lumber; cut stone for crops and their unmatched brews for food. Many of them would eventually call upon the name of Concinnant as they took to cursing Har'Ak for their troubles. It is said that their kind can survive outside the mountain only as long as they do not sleep. When a Cyclops grows weary and sleeps outside the mountain he turns to stone and cracks. The legends of trolls arose from such deaths.

I was thinking more broadly than that. Even humans working cooperatively in a mutually beneficial manner would qualify. After all the God of Hearth and Hospitality wants everyone to benefit from each others efforts. Har'Ak cares not whether the symbiosis is between a human and their garden, a bee and the flower or farmer sheltering a weary traveler from the rain in return for news about the outside world. ScottishFox, Har’Ak God of the Hearth and Hospitality! Geography: Gardens, vineyards and open fields Sentient Life: Gift to Civilization: Ripe Meat off the Bone and Strong Drink Fauna: Travelers' Mercy/Delight/Lament Interference: Greed, Sloth, Excess, Carelessness and Hostility. Each gift of Har'Ak has a dark twin. Mythic Monster or Guardian: The Dour Man Secondary Domain: The Benevolent Flame Secondary Domain: The Homeward Glimmer Secondary Domain: Symbiosis Interference: Wherever there is generosity arises grift. Wherever there is plenty arises sloth. Wherever there is respite arises indulgence. Wherever there is safety arises destruction. Wherever there is peace arises violence.

There are more than 20 Pathfinder adventure paths (6 books each!) and D&D 5th Edition has cranked out a hardcover or two each season. Quality adventures sell just fine.