archer

When I mentioned the "automatic doors on sensors" I was speaking about places like the door leading from the transporter room into the corridor. I specifically was not talking about force fields which replaced such things as the door to cells in the brig. That was a particularly ridiculous plot contrivance. I think Automatic Emergency Force Fields could be a useful supplement to doors because you never know when or where a hole might be blown into your ship: stopping people from flying out into space could be useful (not to mention being able to pressurize that interior portion of the ship while making repairs). But high tech should never be a complete replacement for basic safety.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking as well. In my opinion, there shouldn't be a problem with a healer having to spam such a widely comprehensive restoration spell. On the other hand, Life Support: Immunity (Variable result, Usable by others, Charges) would be an interesting option, especially for an NPC. The person casting the spell would have to be able to accurately diagnose what is wrong with the person in order to attune the curing spell properly. That'd give healers a real reason to know something about medicine or poisons rather than just slinging spells. And the charges limitation could create some tension over whether the healer can figure out exactly what's wrong before his number of attempts run out.

That's very striking. But it's a bit distracting that the IRL one is a mirror image.

Considering the number of uninvited and unvaccinated boat refugees funneling through Libya and Lebanon into Italy in the last decade, I'm shocked there are still people in Italy who think that mandatory vaccination is a bad idea. At least with normal land borders, countries have a chance of offering refugees vaccinations near the border towns if it hadn't already happened in some other country along the refugees' route. But with their whole country essentially being a border, Italy has been seeing 100,000-200,000 boat refugees a year being dumped somewhere at random on their shores (rather than having them arrive in a confined geographic area). Yeah, chicken pox was getting off very lightly.

I don't swear IRL except for maybe twice (ever) with my kids in order to deliberately place special emphasis on what I was saying. I wasn't raised in a household or extended family on either side which used swear words in conversation so I just never picked up the habit. Kind of weird because neither side of the family was overwhelmingly religious when I was very young. In writing fiction, I'll use whichever swear words I feel is appropriate to the character. My favorites from fiction: From Battlestar Galactica: frak From Star Wars the EU: Sithspawn/Sithspit - Usually used as a single word exclamation when the person is excited or shocked. Holy Sith! - humorous for the anagram kriff/kriffing - roughly equivalent to a mild form of the f-word kark/karking - roughly equivalent to a not mild form of the f-word lubed - meaning either "fantastic" or "screwed", according to context vaping - mild curse about the level as saying "damn" dwang - as in "deep in dwang". Probably derived from some Mandalorian word, the term is usually used by clones in the GAR. shebs - meaning buttocks, from the Mandalorian language shab/shabuir - from the Mandalorian language. "Buir" means father or mother (the language not distinguishing between the genders) and "shab" meaning excrement. So a shabuir could be used to mean you are a "crappy parent" in a society where family is everything and passing along what you know to your kids is the ultimate in cultural values. The term shabuir can also be used somewhat sympathetically to a parent who has tried to do everything right by their kids but everything turns out wrong for the kids anyway (e.g. - a parent who was put in a crappy no-win situation with his kids). shebs - meaning buttocks, from the Mandalorian language dar'manda - Mandalorian, someone who was born a Mandalorian but who has lost his cultural heritage or has deliberately turned his back upon it. In literal terms, it means that upon death that the person's soul will not return to the Manda (the collective over-soul or heaven). So saying that someone who has deliberately turned his back on the Mandalorian culture is "dar'manda" is roughly the equivalent of saying he's become a soulless monster. There's a lot more Mandalorian that's wonderful for cursing and abuse. If I had to pick one culture from which to derive insults, it'd be this one. Firefly: Gorram Ringworld: TANJ futz/futzing bleep expletive deleted - Bleeping out bad words on the boob cube and putting "expletive deleted" in the written news became so common that saying "bleep" and "expletive deleted" became the new swear words used by society. The censors decided that they'd have to live with those new curse words being in use since obviously despite whatever they tried to censor that people would just adapt and move on.

Italian politician who was against mandatory chickenpox, measles, polio, etc. vaccinations comes down with chickenpox. https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/434838-italian-politician-who-opposed-making-chickenpox-vaccinations

I like the "No Lives Matter" poster. It neatly cuts to the heart of the controversy between the "Black Lives Matter" and the "All Lives Matter" factions.

At least that box look large enough that a cat looks like it could fit inside. My cat likes crawling inside empty 12-pack-can soda boxes then reaching out to grab people as they walk by.

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My personal opinion only. To be nobility of some sort, you would need to purchase Member of the Nobility at whatever level is appropriate for your title and/or family connections. To be a member of nobility who has access to wealth, you would also need to purchase the wealth perk. Many times in the past, being a member of the nobility and "being wealthy" did not necessarily go together. They might have been fantastically wealthy compared to a peasant but other than an ancestral home, some weapons and armor handed down through the ages or won on the battlefield, and some land which they couldn't sell, many of them weren't wealthy in terms of being able to throw money around. You can have quite poor noblemen who have trouble putting food on the table for their household (much less purchasing armor for their sons who are coming of age) or you could have quite wealthy noblemen. And many times both wealthy and poor nobility existed within the same kingdom. So I agree with you up to this point. As for a castle, if the character is going to both own it and the castle is going to function as a base, the player(s) needs to purchase it as a base (then use the base's points to purchase the various people and lands which make a castle a functional living place). Now if some elderly relative is still alive, still actively owns the castle, and remains the person with the highest title within the family line, the castle and the relative would function as plot hooks to get the PC's involved in various adventures rather than a PC's base. But once the PC becomes the guy in charge and the castle is his, it's his responsibility to come up with the points to pay for it. And the PC being responsible to pay character points includes knocking off his elderly relative or allowing someone else to kill the elderly relative so the PC can inherit the place. (I would attempt to make this clear to the PC's during character-building. Inheriting a title and lands is both an advantage and to some extent a drawback because the PC could very well be on the hook for laying out more character points in the future than he might want to be putting into having a title and all the perks that go with it.) ==== Once a PC commits to being a viscount and having lands and a castle, I would think it would be much cheaper to buy the castle/land as a base then use the base's points (aka "whatever character points the player wants to commit to it" times five) to buy servants, fealty-sworn knights and various men-at-arms as followers than it would be to for the PC to buy all of those followers directly with his own character points. A GM note on castle servants: Servants in a castle were many times considered to be part of the household which gave those servants many rights and privileges which someone who worked only for wages didn't have. 1) People who were of the household would "eat from the lord's table". Not literally but the lord made sure they were fed, even during the lean times or in famine. 2) They had the right to take shelter in the castle during times of distress even if their actual living quarters weren't inside the castle. 3) The lord might take special note of the sons or daughters and arrange marriages, apprenticeships, becoming a squire (rarely), etc. which might give the kid an advantage in life which she might not otherwise have. 4) Visitors would know that the lord's household was under his protection and not take liberties as they might with mere hirelings. 5) Members of the household who became disabled or elderly would be assigned lighter duties rather than be fired. Those who became too elderly to be of any use at all were still allowed to eat from the lord's table, which was a real benefit in an era with no governmental social services. 6) In a fantasy setting, a lord might arrange for a priest to heal people of the household who became sick or injured. That's not an exhaustive list but you get the idea. (That's a recounting of an ideal situation and the reality would vary according to the personality of the lord. But some lord who stayed too far from that would gain a negative reputation among both nobility and commoners.) Anyway, the point is that each servant will know whether the lord considers him or her (and their family) to be part of the household or whether they're just working for wages. Someone who is part of the household will show a certain amount of loyalty to the lord because the lord has shown loyalty to her. Someone who is working for wages in an occupation which would normally be filled by someone who is part of the lord's household will be wondering what's going on in the lord's head...they'll be wondering why the lord has no loyalty to them. Now that might not be the lord's mindset at all, he might just be a clueless ( no KS: Responsibilities of Being a Member of the Nobility, so to speak). But those people who would rightly consider themselves to be nothing more than (disgruntled) hirelings would be more open to bribery, being spies for some other noble, to steal items from the castle, embezzle, etc. than someone who knows she's part of the household. So if the PC tries to cheap out (ironically, "cheaping out" by using his wealth perk to pay wages) and not purchase the people who work inside the castle as being followers as well (or doesn't at least explicitly clarify the status of each of the people who work in the castle to them), feel free to use that against him.

Okay, let's try this one on for size

Free Cory Booker 2020 bumper sticker https://act.corybooker.com/page/s/bumper-sticker

I'd have automatic doors on sensors everywhere in a habitat that was outside of an atmosphere. That's one thing I think the original Star Trek series got mostly right. You might vent a short section of corridor or a single room. But you aren't going to lose a significant fraction of your air to a limited breach.

That's 5th edition D&D rather than 5th edition HERO.

DARPA Is Building a $10 Million, Open Source, Secure Voting System https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/yw84q7/darpa-is-building-a-dollar10-million-open-source-secure-voting-system I was extremely skeptical when I read the headline (as in, "there's no way this will end well). But after reading the article, it seems what they're doing has real possibilities to accomplish what it says it's supposed to accomplish. Building the hardware so that it runs a specific set of software rather than running any malware which might be downloaded, like most hardware will do, seems like an interesting approach.

When emotions are running high immediately after a tragedy isn't the time for politicians to make sound policy decisions. That's how the US got things like Japanese internment camps and the Patriot Act.

The vast majority of jokes in the human experience aren't funny to every person, every time. I follow in a grand old tradition of humorists.

When it comes to a place to settle down, I'm a fan of having an atmosphere of some sort vs not having any atmosphere. Maybe I'm being optimistic but the ability to get free nitrogen and hydrocarbons out of Titan's atmosphere would have to come in handy sooner or later.

If my centaur character plays Twister against the Grim Reaper with my soul on the line, I could put a hoof on each of four spaces plus my hands on two more spaces without straining. That's Extra Limbs in my book, baby! j/k

I found these in the wayback machine. Don't know if it is exactly what you're looking for. https://web.archive.org/web/20070328063607/https://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26137 https://web.archive.org/web/20100802020552/http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/24210-Champions-V-amp-V-Conversions

Thanks for identifying the problem. A DNPC is a vastly different thing than a Contact and requires a completely different type of commitment from the player. The player obviously didn't sign up for her to be a DNPC and refuses to treat her as one. Make him buy off the DNPC complication for her then give him the option of whether to buy her as a Contact in the future.

Whose games have you been hanging around in?

That's what I get for nominating two exotics.

Shazam (Captain Marvel) Captain Cold Ice Betty Cooper Angel Power Girl Veronica Lodge