archer

My daughter has played both D&D and Pathfinder while I've only done D&D. From talking to her: Character creation is more difficult and involved in Pathfinder. The other players in the game, if they are casual players, might not even have heard of the book where you got your character class from, much less know what your character class does. As Pathfinder characters progress in levels, they get an increasing blizzard of abilities so much so that the player has trouble keeping track of what her character can do, much less the DM be able to keep track of and anticipate what the characters might be able to do in a particular situation. For example, this Pathfinder wiki shows 48 regular classes and 107 prestige classes. https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Category:Character_options After character creation and forming an adventuring group with players using classes that you've never played with before, the adventure plays out mostly like D&D from a player's perspective.

Superheroes as they exist in the public consciousness come from comic books, primarily Marvel and DC. Comic books were crippled by the Comics Code Authority from the 1950's through the 1960's (and partially crippled even after that). DC bent over backwards to make their superhero comics geared toward boys (rather than girls, teens or adults) until the late 1970's. So for people who are in their 40's, 50's, or 60's, "comic books are for children". And the overly campy Batman TV show of the 1960's, while fun, didn't exactly convince people that comics were a serious form of entertainment. Under the original CCA, writers couldn't mention werewolves, zombies, or vampires. Government officials, policemen, and judges couldn't be referenced as being anything less than paragons of virtue. Seduction couldn't be shown as well as sexual "perversion" and sexual "abnormalities" (I'll leave it to your imagination what they considered perverse or abnormal back in the 1950's when the code was written). Criminals and crime could never be portrayed as glamorous. And quoting, "In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds." I wouldn't even touch DC stories in the 1970's or earlier because they were so bad (in my opinion). The first time I got into a DC storyline was the Legion of Superheroes. Bouncing Boy was walking down a hall going to a team meeting. He was repeatedly flipping his flight ring up in the air and catching it while he was thinking about retiring because of the teammates he had seen killed. Then when he made it into the meeting room, two of his teammates were trying to rip each others' heads off. And I thought that this might finally be the kind of DC book that I could be interested in. That was not long before The Great Darkness Saga (1982) so it was probably right at the beginning of Paul Levitz's second run on the LSH (and I eventually picked up the back issues of his first run on the book). Anyway, fantasy was never gimped by government interference with the content which was provided to the reader or roleplayer so it has never had that same level of stigma to overcome in public opinion.

I still can't get over how terrible the trailer for Shazam looks. Wisdom of Solomon??

Democratic Candidate Blows Fundraising Lead On Massive 15-Story Lawn Sign

That makes no sense at all: Trump claims he is in favor of logging.

The only time it might make a difference that I can see is if there are multiple GM's for that universe. I used to have a character with a Force Wall shtick and one multipower slot was a Wall which was transparent to energy attacks. It was useful for crowd control (whether civilians or minions) and for containing Blaster characters who had a low STR score. It would be irritating to face multiple villains whose powers change significantly (in how they interacted with my shtick) depending on who is GMing that story arc.

I like the concept of "use an ability in order to increase it" because it helps keep the PC's characters from growing in directions which are both radically different than the original character concept and radically different than anything the character is experiencing during the campaign. If the character has never expressed any interest in computers or vehicles and has been adventuring for months through mystic realms, I'd balk at allowing the character to immediately spend his accumulated earned points on Computer Programming and Starship Operations. But as mentioned earlier in the conversation, I think this should be handled as part of the campaign background rules (hey, be aware that you'll need to use an ability in order to increase it) rather than obsessively trying to keep track of what actions each PC is taking during adventures. Exactly. When a player wants to gain or increase a skill or power that she hasn't been using during game time, the player and GM should discuss what kind of downtime activity the character will engage in which will give the desired result. You want to gain Area Knowledge of a nearby city? Bum around in that city for a few weeks. Learning French? Travel abroad or study a language course. Increase your END or running? Exercise or enter a marathon.

It was like that in Daggerfall, which was released in 1996 as the second Elder Scrolls game.

I don't trust that Trump can remember anything which any advisors try to tell him long enough to relay it to someone else over the phone. But I also don't trust that Trump understands, at all, the difference between information which should be kept secret vs things which you can say in public.

CBS remake series Magnum P.I. I was fully prepared to dislike this remake and only watched it out of morbid curiosity. But they've actually captured some of the charm of the original series while making most of the recurring characters more relevant. CBS has also gone out of their way to make multiple crossovers of minor characters from their (aging) Hawaii Five-0 series so a full-scale crossover event will be coming. I could see this series making it for another season and becoming a guilty pleasure.

NBC's new series Manifest I've never been a fan of how NBC handles science fiction and unfortunately this series is proving to be no exception. An airliner full of passengers disappears from the skies for 5 years then returns as if no time had passed. Spooky things ensue after the government lets the passengers out of quarantine. That's not a much different premise than several other shows from the last few years but NBC had deftly managed to avoid casting anyone interesting or writing stories which would make me care for the characters.

The Hillsborough County (FL) Republican Party decided to have a fundraiser dinner and booked none other than Steve Bannon to be the guest speaker. Tickets to sit at Bannon's table were being sold for $2000. A VIP ticket was a still respectable $1000. General admission tickets were $125. Apparently by last week the organization realized that tickets weren't selling well and cut ticket prices dramatically. A seat at Bannon's table was reduced to $500, VIP tickets were reduced to $300, and general admission was reduced to $50. By this Monday, the organization announced that tickets to the event were now free. Who says there's no such thing as a free lunch? You just can't make this stuff up. https://www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/buzz/2018/10/23/steve-bannon-tickets-now-going-for-zero-dollars/

Nebraska's tourism bureau decides to honor the concept of "truth in advertising". Their new slogan is “Nebraska. Honestly, it’s not for everyone.” No kidding. https://apnews.com/16f9b22a658c4e308508d856b4708292

I thought Crisis on Infinite Earths was a great story. But I wasn't as impressed with it as a reboot.

Light sabers weren't written up in earlier edition HERO products which tended to be very short on details about what a character's backstory was and how his powers worked. I would interpret them as as energy weapons since they've been introduced as such in fiction and so I have no doubts about the nature of the damage they produce.

"Hey, Claudius! The lions are done eating the Christians: send in the clowns!"

Alien civilization abandons giant ice cube project saying, "Taking it home would be more hassle than it is worth." https://gizmodo.com/nasa-releases-more-pics-of-freaky-rectangular-iceberg-1829962438

It's not the $2 billion which stands out to me but that it's an unexpected $2 billion in addition to all the other money they've already borrowed this year. And that after this additional borrowing gets them through this rough patch that they're expecting to have to borrow another $3 billion per year indefinitely.

In earlier edition write-ups, I've defaulted to "if STR can be added to the HKA, I count it as physical" whenever I was in doubt.

Over-Kill, Destroyer of Civilizations Mind Control continuous, uncontrolled, area of effect radius, 0 END, persistent, inherent, invisible power effects, megascale with the single command of "Don't cast a mental entangle". Transform continuous, uncontrolled, area of effect radius, 0 END, persistent, inherent, penetrating, invisible power effects, megascale "transforms target into someone/something who cannot cast a mental entangle, who becomes enraged if they suspect someone can cast a mental entangle, and has a Psychological complication: Paranoid and suspicious that other people can cast mental entangle". EGO +425 and Mental Defense 40 If you're playing an edition which allows an elemental control, you could save a few points. No, there's no guarantee the character still couldn't get hit with a mental entangle. But most opponents would be both Mind Controlled and Transformed into not being able to cast one. And the few opponents who could resist both those attacks would be either ripped to shreds by everyone else on the planet or would be too busy defending themselves from everyone else on the planet to track the character down.

Michigan city bans clowns on Halloween because they are too scary. https://www.ksat.com/news/no-clowns-allowed-michigan-city-bans-clowns-on-halloween

Netflix's New $2 Billion in Borrowing Raises Wall Street Eyebrows https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/netflixs-additional-2-billion-borrowing-raises-wall-street-eyebrows-1154325 The article says they're having to continue to borrow heavily to create new content and will continue having to borrow heavily for years to come. So if that's the case, it suggests that the money coming in still can't cover the expense of creating their product and won't in the coming years. And that's despite the fact that Netflix's revenue grew a whopping 34% in the third quarter. Their main hope seems to be that the CBS, Disney, and DC services crash and burn so badly that those companies will have to re-release their content to one of the surviving services.

After watching the first episode of the reboot, I turned to my spouse and said, "I don't think that had any of the charm of the original." She cracked up because she realized I was just stating my opinion rather than making an intentional pun.

The Incredible Corny George Renninger invented candy corn in the late 1880's during his alchemical attempts to recreate the Philospher's Stone. But while his efforts didn't fully achieve all the powers of the Stone, his original candy corn formula did have the fortunate effect of making him age only very, very slowly. Even more fortunately, George was able to slightly alter the formula and sell his powerless candy corn through the Wunderlee Candy Company as a tasty treat to children of all ages. He parlayed that small fortune plus judiciously distributed longevity candy corn into control of a small secret society which was run for a number of decades as an unofficial offshoot of DEMON. When heroes shut down his secret society in the 1960's, George became despondent and started over-dosing on his corn. Whether through age, repeated brushes with demonic forces, or through constant overdoses of alchemy-laced sugar, George's sanity has fragmented and gone. The decades of using his original corn formula has left George's cadaverous body and skin as hardened and dried as last year's candy corn. He wears a candy corn themed costume of white, yellow, and orange. His main weapon is a candy corn "bazooka" which blows out a vast quantity of armor piercing decades-old candy corn. But when he has some time to plan, he will first use powerful ritual magic to soften the playing field or summon demonic allies. George is perfectly willing to work with others either as leader or as an underling but he is something of an acquired taste. He hasn't gone through the trouble of staying familiar with the modern world and he tends to not be able to focus on one idea long enough to follow a plan through to the end. His allies, and enemies, refer to him (behind his back) as "The Incredibly Corny" rather than "The Incredible Corny". But not to his face, twice.

I voted "Bleeeehhhh! I would serious think about quitting a game with this". If the players aren't witnessing the birth first-hand, there's no reason to make the birth so gruesome. Having the doctors and nurses back away in horror as the newborn does something spooky then is either stolen by the bad guys or grows and disappears under his own power is sufficient. If you want a mother to die in childbirth, don't have her die through physical damage to the hands of her infant. The mother can die because of the medical complications, because of VIPER, or as a side effect of the baby using its power to leave. But don't have the baby do a move through on her. However, if the players are witnessing the event as you first outlined it, I would serious think about quitting a game with this. I don't want to deal with newborns covered with afterbirth, umbilical cords, or even mothers as they are giving birth. That goes beyond merely not being fun. I don't mind at all playing in a game that goes well beyond PG-13 but I think it is important to pick your times and places to become ultra-bloody. And during childbirth with the newborn being a multiple murderer isn't even remotely the right place, for me at least.