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ScottishFox

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Everything posted by ScottishFox

  1. Yes, converting their 5e characters as we go. My previous Pathfinder campaign gave me some ideas which I refined during the Pillars of Eternity test run campaign. D&D spells are converted to rough equivalents using a points per level basis. (Cantrips start at 30pts, 1st level 45 pts, 2nd level 52 pts, 3rd level 60 pts, etc.). D&D Armor converts exactly as is to rPD/rED. Plate armor is +8 Armor class in D&D and 8 rPD/rED in Fantasy HERO. The players continue to level up their characters using 5e templates/applications. And I convert the abilities over to HERO equivalents between sessions. So far the only part that has required some GM work is converting spells. But I had worked out Active Points per D&D spell level in a previous campaign.
  2. That's why I said, "without the other guy there". I completely agree with you.
  3. Grabbed three new converts by eliminating some of the world building overhead by keeping ALL of the 5e character creation and class rules and simply using HERO to play the game. Kicked off the new Dark Hold campaign where all of the known world was conquered by an invading horde of life eating horrors from the shadow realms. All that remains of humanity is the Dark Hold. A circle of onyx mountains closing off the last villages and cities of mankind. Even there, when the light of day fails, night terrors stalk the lands for human souls. Only the presence of the Shepherds keeps them at bay (think dark elf + slender man). Our band of intrepid heroes start off as a group of problem solvers working under the guidance of Shepherd Flynn. Things are going well until the day of the eclipse when strange things begin to change for the heroes - and others throughout the land... 30+ Years of Fantasy HERO and I still love it. Best system ever.
  4. Oh, I was thinking it would be in the usual Joe Rogan podcast format. You have both guys at the table and you just talk for a few hours. Maybe 90 minutes - each - without the other guy there discussing policies and governing approaches and what not and then an hour with both guys present where they can challenge each other on hot topics.
  5. I'd rather watch the proposed 4 hour single debate hosted by Joe Rogan. So far Rogan and Trump are on board. On average Joe has a higher monthly viewership than CNN and I prefer the long interview format over the 4-minute spots with guests screaming talking points at each other.
  6. According to this article ( https://www.civilbeat.org/2020/09/honolulu-police-are-issuing-an-unprecedented-number-of-pandemic-tickets/ ) some of the citations are in violation of their own rules. Specifically people going to the beach alone or travelling with family members getting tickets. Hitting 5,000 tickets in a single weekend is a big deal as these all carry criminal charges and not merely a fine. Maybe many or most of these were justified, but there will be plenty of poverty stricken locals getting swept up by incompetent, callous and corrupt HPD officers for doing things that aren't even against the rules. The HPD's track record for corruption makes Chicago look like Mount Celestia by comparison.
  7. Back in the 80s when we nerds were more willing to crunch we limited the shrinking bonuses to the size of the weapon you're being attacked with. Anything smaller than my fist counts as the size of my fist, etc. This lead to characters using larger surface area weapons (shield bash, for example) to deal with tiny opponents.
  8. It won't bubble up to the level of national news, but the people of Hawaii are getting obliterated by fines. The HPD issued 5,000 coronavirus violation tickets (misdemeanor, $5,000 fine max, 1 year in jail max) in a SINGLE weekend. HPD is currently set to make $25,000,000 per week on these tickets. Who needs tourists for tax revenue? Just destroy the locals.
  9. I've never liked the size modifiers for DCV outside of ranged combat. For ranged combat you have a smaller target so I can see it being harder to hit. In melee combat unless the size difference is extreme it's much more relative to movement speed than anything else. If I go to step on an earthworm it doesn't get +12 DCV for being 1 inch long making it nearly impossible for me to hit it. I'll hit it 100% of the time. Same for an ant. Now if it is very small AND fast then its a problem (small flies for example). For the sake of balancing realistic *feel* without introducing too much additional crunch to the game we've settled for: Size alters DCV vs. ranged attacks/spells, but not melee attacks.
  10. While still an interesting bit I originally read that as "Transsexual Satanist Arcanist" which would have been even better.
  11. Texas managed to get through the opening week of school in reasonably good shape. That being said we just got a letter from our school district indicating the first positive test case for someone in the school. :S R0 number is the best in the country (for today). New Cases are down. Hospitalizations are WAY down and daily death numbers are trending down as well. Even if we see a rebound (and I'm convinced we will) we should stay within hospital capacities. Mortality rate in our area of Texas is 12.4 per 100,000. Just over twice the murder rate and an exact match for firearm death rate. But, for the state as a whole Coronavirus would be in 3rd place on the "What kills people in Texas" list so the distribution of the illness must be really uneven. Overall it would be in the 50-55 per 100k range. I live in a county with a million people and we're below 25% of that. Wife is still scared to death. Can't wait for 2021. This year has suh-hucked.
  12. If we're talking grounds for another impeachment run I could see that. But others were discussing charges of GENOCIDE in international court which requires "with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in substantial part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group" and that I, respectfully, cannot see ever happening. He just got nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and unlike many nominees actually worked toward some significant peace deals (Israel & UAE; Serbia and Kosovo economic normalization). I think maybe the first president since Jimmy Carter to not start a war or new conflict? That his ego hasn't forced him into something so far is just shy of miracle. Agree those are good or disagree, but leaping to committing genocide on his own people is .. I honestly don't know how to respond to that. Trump is THE target group for the illness (over 70, fat, doesn't get enough rest). I think you can have a meaningful discussion about majority privilege within certain geographical and time boundaries and it can be beneficial. Class privilege is a worthwhile discussion as well and, at least locally for me, especially relevant as we have a huge number of immigrants from India. I have had jaw dropping conversations with tech working peers from India around class/caste and let's just say the views I've encountered so far are not what you'd call egalitarian. A strong education system is a good counter-balance to class differences and something we should invest in heavily, but let's have the conversation. It hurts all of humanity if the talents of the poor are not developed to the benefit of all. Let's solve that problem. But when we start ascribing traits to individuals based on their membership in the whole (say White Privilege) then we're just running down the racism road again and it's seemed like for decades we've understood that this is a terrible road to go down. Even my not-really-white kid understands that its logically inconsistent to say don't be racist and then prejudge things about people based on race.
  13. I saw that one when it first popped up and it really is infuriating. The school is so cavalier in its abuse of students and civil rights it frightens me to think of what they'd try to pull if private schools and home schooling weren't options. Combined with the Coronavirus threat I really see homeschooling picking up steam over the next year. There's no reason they couldn't gently remind the child to put away his toy or that the school has some major issue with blue and orange plastic gun shaped toys that pose no threat to anyone. Still, this kind of stupidity in schools is rampant everywhere. My daughter is already bellyaching about the White Privilege sessions she has in class. Firstly, her mother is full blood Spanish-was-her-first-language Mexican. Secondly the racial breakdown of the students and thus the society she will grow up into looks like this: She's in the second to last group. Maybe you could fudge her into the White group if you're not paying too much attention. She's fair. If we don't move it's very clear the group enjoying the privilege in these parts will be (if its not already) "Asian". It's been fifty-seven years since Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech and we're still failing to grasp the concept of "content of their character". It's like society was making great progress in that direction; decided they didn't like where it was going and put the car in reverse. Morgan Freeman already solved this problem, but I doubt we'll listen to him either. He just nails it in a single minute of video.
  14. You'd never successfully sell the idea that Trump was intentionally trying to kill - in whole or substantial part - America. Bad judgement call? Yes. Attempting to kill off all of America? Come on, guys, nobody actually believes that. As an old, fat guy Trump is in the most likely to die demographic for the illness. Generally the type of villains that commit genocide don't include themselves in the target group. Easily one of the most unpleasant politicians in recent history, but this is WAY over the top. Will we throw Dr. Fauci in front of the court as well for saying things such as the Trump Administration's response being impressive and that he couldn't imagine anybody could be doing more? Everyone on the task force? How about Pelosi and her dancing in the streets of China town recommendation? How about everyone supporting protests with hundreds and thousands of people chanting in the streets together night after night? Just vote him out of office and be done with it.
  15. Probably because magic items are something you have while magical spells are something you know how to do. They are closer to skills or powers than equipment. Though even back in the Fantasy Hero 4 days we made wizards spend permanent CP for magic items (the old +2 Independent limitation) and they didn't always last for the campaign.
  16. Texas numbers are holding up better than expected. I thought last week would wreck us, but perhaps we'll need another week or two for the mass influx of school related cases to pop up. Took awhile, but we finally got our R0 below 1.0.
  17. Yeah, we're not containing this thing. It's so contagious we need close to 100% compliance with safety protocols and we're just not going to get that.
  18. Really comes down to balancing, imo. If you make players pay points to possess or attune (in 5e parlance) to a magic item you help prevent magic gear from creating an imbalance. If you don't have characters pay cp for their gear then you have to pay a lot more attention to overall character balance as the GM. You'll have to insert or remove items throughout the course of the game to keep things reasonably close between characters. Both approaches work just fine. It's really just a matter of how you want to run things. Probably due to the influence of D&D what I've historically seen done the most often is: * Fantasy settings the gear is not paid for in CP. * Super Hero settings the gear IS paid for in CP.
  19. That's a really interesting question. Maybe some sort of usable by other advantage with the restrictions it is by way of watching the images projected from the medium? Images with the limitations of only of memories that have been previously read? Plus usable by other, charges, etc.? I would think Transform on the mental copy of the original memory (telepath effectively has a copy of the original memory) to make it stored on a physical medium outside the brain along with a 2" teleport to move it? No great ideas here, just winging shots at the problem.
  20. Bad weather also being the basis for Ghosts of Tsushima which is better than anything politics has given us in the last few decades. Seriously amazing game with a really cool historical basis and a ton of interesting Mongolian lore bits.
  21. You're correct. I was basing my napkin math on the virus taking out 3-5% of the population of the world, but the death rate in America was MUCH lower (675k-750k). Good catch! Thanks.
  22. CovidTracking.com numbers are OK, but not as good as I was hoping. Texas numbers should explode in about 10 days (most schools opened up for in person this week or will next week on Sept 8th.). I think even the most stubborn people will have to admit this is much worse than the seasonal flu and its still going. But it's not as bad as the 1917-18 flu which would have killed 16.5 million Americans based on today's population. Though, that number would probably be reduced by massive improvements in health care. National: Texas:
  23. Texas numbers continue to improve, but we're 5 days away from schools re-opening for in-person education. I expect to see the schools shut down within 2-3 weeks of the re-opening. The wife and I are somewhat reluctant to pony up for the after-school care given the likelihood that we'll be back to having the kiddo at home within 2-3 weeks.
  24. Brutal week you're having there. Hope everything works out!
  25. Meanwhile in Texas hospitalizations are down 60% from our late July peak. The death rate is finally starting to drop as well. Just in time for in-person schooling which begins on September 8th. I suspect to see hospitalizations heading back up by September 15th and deaths by the end of the month. Though the damage from the shutdown has been so bad both economically and in terms of suicide, drug overdose, domestic abuse, child abuse, etc., that I'm starting to agree with Ivan Drago.
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