archer

I'd like to see it hover over that Mars rover which just died because too much dust was covering its solar panels.

From what I've seen on a couple of TV documentaries, the Hell's Angels started off as nothing more than a motorcycle club which eventually was targeted by police because of their disruptive behavior (rallies that disrupted traffic, being loud, etc.) It wasn't until their leader was arrested on more serious charges that the gang as a whole started turning to outright criminal activities to raise money for his legal defense. Take that for what you will.

I think the US would definitely have to take this carefully. In Columbia, those various groups are having to buy political influence, often with drug money, out of self-defense (from other criminal cartels, the Colombian government, and the US government). In the US, I'm in favor of decriminalizing drugs which would remove a major source of revenue for gangs. If you coupled that with a defacto decriminalizing of gang membership, it would reduce the gang's access to funds and radically reduce their need for funds at the same time. We could put federal and state money from the War on Drugs into rehab and various community outreach programs, like those mentioned in the article, which would help ease the transition. As far as police enforcement goes, violating the law would still result in arrests and prosecutions. You'd just be stopping the police from targeting members of a gang for special attention (they could no more specifically "go after" the East L.A Ruffians than they could go after the Orange County Republican Party).

I roll Hunted appearances but they don't necessarily show up in the session if they don't fit into that session. I'll put them in as soon as is reasonable. I'm not sure I remember how Hunted has been dealt with in every edition but as Doc said, it doesn't necessarily mean they show up personally to fight the heroes. They could be taking notes on the hero in the background or taking notes through a henchman. Or buying the only videotape of the big fight scene. Giving advice to the bad guy of the week. Stealing something from the bad guy of the week while he's busy with the heroes. Be committing a crime or espionage in another part of the city while the heroes are busy. The Hunted blackmails someone who works at the heroes' HQ or one of the character's DNPC's. Setting up a cop or agent to do something heroic during the team's battle in order to increase his status and the cop/agent later turns out to be a henchman of the Hunted. I think of a "Hunted" as the Hunted doing something that's going to affect the hero. But the hero doesn't necessarily notice that it happened in the same session that the Hunted was rolled. Sometimes I don't figure out what the Hunted did until after the session was over. I might not have meant for that heroic agent to have turned out to be particularly heroic. But I might decide later decide that the heroism was a set up masterminded by the Hunted so that the agent gets access to something which will become a pain in the butt to the character. Sometimes you are going to roll Hunteds and every character's Hunted will randomly get a successful roll for that session. If you are into big chaotic fight scenes across a city as everyone in the world tries to get the McGuffin, just throw every Hunted into the mix at once. As for how players use it, I encourage players to integrate Hunteds into their character's backstory. And if they're just looking for points, I encourage them to instead look into psychological complications instead of randomly putting in Hunteds. If the player doesn't care about the Hunted, it's tough for me to care about the Hunted...and the other players might not care about the Hunted at all, which can make it a pain in the butt to integrate into sessions very often. (I have the same philosophy on DNPC's.) If they are wanting a Hunted just for the points and insist on a Hunted rather than some other complication, I'd encourage them to take the same Hunted as one of the other players, if that's okay to both of them or to pick a solo villain who could easily become part of teams or a hireling for various villain organizations so it'd be easier to work him into the story. If two players have similar origins, like one was given his power by PRIMUS and the other was give his power by SAT, I might encourage them to pick one organization or the other and both be from that origin. If they're open to that idea, it would keep my from having to integrate two different US government organizations into the campaign on a regular basis and having to try to find ways to make them distinctive when they're often similar.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/3/26/18281325/ecuador-legalize-gangs A very compelling article. The country of Ecuador and several individual cities around the world have legalized gang membership. They've found that by doing that, violence between gangs plummeted and governments could offer social services which would help gang members transition out of illegal activities. The US in particular uses membership in a gang to figure out who to target for extra scrutiny, RICO violations, and tries to target gang members for arrest to get them off the streets. That's moved the gang problem into prisons and has escalated the need for gangs to raise money to pay for attorney services and for dirty cops. That has also escalated violence as gangs are forced to compete more strenuously against other gangs for territories and opportunities to illegally raise funds. Turning gangs into legal social clubs and cultural organizations seems to be at least worth a serious look.

It's tough to argue against the Dodgers being the best again after seeing a freaking 8 home runs in the season opener.

I love, love, love the promo that was being filmed. I had no idea how much I wanted to see that before I saw that.

Wow, another Rockies fan? What are the odds? I'm out of state right now but am planning to move to the armpit of the state sometime during the next two years. (And if you didn't get "Pueblo" out of the description of "the armpit of the state", you aren't a true Coloradan.)

Laurana Ranzz is Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl's third child (her costume is a blend of theirs plus a homage to other classic Legion uniforms). Her parents are still very worried about her mental stability because she wasn't born a twin like the vast majority of the other children on Winath. She hasn't shown any abnormal mental tendencies to her parents other than brooding perhaps a bit much over girls. She's currently attending the Legion of Superheroes Academy and shows promise because of training she's already received from her parents. She has both the mental powers of her mother and the lightning powers of her father (the lightning manifests as a glowing purple nimbus around her hands and she has a number of psychic abilities including a mental shield so strong that even her mother cannot penetrate it). She has not yet picked a permanent code name, having gone through six of them already during her first semester at the Academy. Both the teachers and her fellow students refer to her as Laurana rather than try to remember her code name of the week, though the teachers have been known to refer to her, very loudly, as "Ranzz!" when she screws up. Secretly Laurana has been using her mental powers to manipulate the romances of her fellow students. Some of it has been to make sure the choicest girls are available when she is interested in them. Other manipulations are just to amuse her because she really is mentally abnormal: she doesn't have the normal amount of "human" empathy though she uses her completely invisible telepathy as needed to figure out how other people expect her to respond. She is very careful to not get caught doing even the slightest thing wrong. If her manipulations are discovered and not handled delicately, she could go full-blown supervillain. Laurana has fantasized about going full-blown supervillain and has escape plans from both her home and the Academy if it becomes necessary. She's decided that her supervillain name would be Patch Job, for no particular reason other than that she thinks it sounds cool, and that anyone who complains about it will get a face full of lightning. Or maybe be mind controlled into becoming a nudist, whichever seems best at the time. Supervillain certainly isn't her first choice since she's spent much more time fantasizing about being a member of the Legion: having all of those adventures, being praised as a hero, and getting at least as many girls as Sun Boy did in his heyday. Her current superhero code name of the week is Cerebra.

Jamie Madrox could wipe the floor with any other potential gamma-rage beast. I had him in my top six then narrowed down to my top two before I went back and read everyone else's submissions. It's fortunate for the rest of us that this is a popularity contest rather than a fist fight.

Arggh...how to narrow it down to only two! (And darn you Pattern Ghost!) Impossible Man - he's already green so no one would suspect he's a gamma-powered rage beast until it was too late. Longshot

JK Rowling reveals that you can not get any more of your own home than the last time. Apparently I'm reincarnated?

Then there's the story about the Southerner from Virginia who during the course of his life moved to Tennessee, then Arkansas, then Texas. Then he died and went to Hell. The change was so gradual that he didn't notice the difference.

I'm shorter than Modok? That's just embarrassing....

What do you do when you find out your pet bear is bi- ?

You poor man....

LOL As Thanos was portrayed in the comics at the time, his chest was so thick that it wasn't even a certainty that Wolverine's claws would reach deep enough to reach Thanos's heart if it happened to be in the part of Thanos's chest where Wolverine obviously assumed it was. And Wolverine made no effort to rip or dig around. He just stuck the claws in and struck a pose as if thinking, "Okay, you're dead now." In contrast, you can actually see Thanos's arm and tell whether you cut it off successfully or not.

She's already 45 years old and they're talking about signing her up to play an non-aging character over a movie arc that might last 15 or 20 years? I'd rather them sign a complete unknown who they could get cheap for at least two movies and who could pass for someone who doesn't age for the amount of time she's likely to play the character.

You'd think that a few centuries of combat experience would clue him in to the vulnerable areas of a humanoid, even if his formal combat training had been lacking.

I can't do that all day because that container is way too small.

In the comics, Wolverine went for the heart rather than doing the obvious thing and cutting of Thanos's arm. That one irked me for a really long time.

What I want to know is when did this guy install a camera in my bedroom?

Thanks for the link. I've got two family members who are still trying to find their place in life, maybe this will help them.

I use the speed chart. I don't try to explain it other than pointing out that some people are faster at acting than others. In boxing terms, I'm not going to work the speed bag as quickly and efficiently as Mike Tyson does since I never learned to hit things rapidly. I allow variable speed among the PC's. I might not allow it to at the beginning of a campaign if I ever again start with a group of people new to roleplaying. Last time I tried allowing different speeds, one of the characters bought high DEX, 4 SPD, and skill at disarm while everyone else was at 3 SPD. The 4 SPD character would consistently have the most dangerous opponent left in the melee disarmed before other people could act. That'd leave the other players the option of cutting down a disarmed opponent who might pick up his weapon and become dangerous again or always fighting the less dangerous opponents. That didn't go over well with the other inexperienced players because they felt that they'd unknowingly screwed themselves over by not spending points on having a higher SPD. Otherwise, I like the speed chart and how it gives players the option to behave tactically (abort, holding actions, etc.)

That looks like the speech itself must have been hilarious. I'll have to try to find the whole thing on YouTube.