archer

6 hours ago, Pariah said:

Now that Senator John McCain has died, who in the GOP is going to have the guts to stand up to the President?

Dunno. I got the impression that a lot of us let the GOP when Trump got the nomination.after the hijinks at the convention.

4 hours ago, Lucius said:

Next up: dungeon spaces

 

Don't tempt me like this. My wife has been watching way too many interior design TV programs.

7 minutes ago, Badger said:

Most of the time they both are completely wrong. 

 

Note: On a serious note, I think in politics a lot of the time,  a side is right for the wrong reasons (I dont know if that makes sense to you)

 

 

I find that when one of the sides is right, that they've quite often reached that position for the wrong reasons.

Slovotsky's Laws (not a comprehensive list, for that I recommend reading the Guardians of the Flame series)

A hero's work is never done. Which is one of the minor reasons I don't recommend the profession.

Boldness is like a condom. If you depend on it all the time, no matter how good it is, and no matter how good you are, eventually it will break.

I always have a fallback position whenever I take a risk. If all else fails, I'll die horribly, at great length, and in great pain. Mind you, it's not a good fallback position...

When it comes to dealing with the law of averages, it's best to be a habitual offender.

Relax, the universe is out to get you.

Doing the best thing right away is much better than doing the second-best thing after much hesitation. I didn't say it's easier, mind, just better.

The difference between being a trusted friend and a devoted vassal is non-trivial. Me, I'd rather be the first; vassals tend to go the well too often.

Not getting cut up into bloody little slices is the key to a sound plan.

The old saw says that the first time is an accident, the second time a coincidence, and the third time enemy action. As a matter of policy, I'm suspicious of accidents, and I don't believe in coincidences.

It takes a lot of time to make things go right, but they can all go to hell in a heartbeat.

While it doesn't get the good press that hard work and industry get, laziness is a talent to be cultivated, like any other.

Wanting it doesn't make it so. If it did, we'd all learn to want harder. I can already want quite vigorously, thank you very much.

When it comes to throwing a fit, it's better to give than to receive -- and much better to avoid the whole thing entirely.

I'm a simple man. All I want is enough sleep for two normal men, enough whiskey for three, and enough women for four.

Travel, it seems to me, has always done more for flattening the arches, callusing the feet, and irritating the hemorrhoids than broadening the mind.

Arguing is one of life's great pleasures, even if you have to argue with yourself. Course, I could enjoy the other side of that argument, too.

The first ninety percent of the job takes the first ninety percent of the time. The last ten percent takes the other ninety percent of the time.

There isn't any pleasing some people. The trick is to stop trying.

I'd always liked Robert Thompson's idea of avoiding compromise, of letting the person with the strong convictions have his own way... and then I realized that encouraged people to have strong convictions when they don't have enough data.

6 minutes ago, assault said:

 

Which of course changes things completely.  The question becomes: "what changes do you want, and what magico-technobabble is necessary to justify it?"

I thought I did a good job of answering the question in my original post in this thread and that alternate world of superheroes incorporated many of the suggestions that other people brought up in subsequent posts. Adding super-powers doesn't have to mean that you have to jettison all your sense of how history progresses from one era into the next.

Just because there are two opposing sides in a controversy doesn't necessarily mean that the truth is somewhere in the middle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation

A particularly good thing to remember when discussing politics. Sometimes only one side is right. Sometimes both sides are completely wrong.

Pathfinder took years to grow from a good idea into a horrific complexity of an unlimited number of rulebooks.

Obviously, they are being much more aggressive for Starfinder.

13 hours ago, Tech said:

This feels like it should have been started in the Non-Gaming Discussion forums.

I took the question to be in the context of a universe which has super-powered beings running around in it.

In general, I like the philosophy that the more lucky you are, in number of dice, the more often you should have the chance to be lucky.

Of course, using that philosophy, no one should ever choose to be very unlucky.

3 hours ago, massey said:

 That whole coastline is shaped funny anyway.

That's a good point. There's no reason why Cape Cod, Chesapeake Bay or any of the rest of it has to be unique. You could just create a big blob of landscape off of nearly any of that coastline.

17 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

I'm gonna give up suggesting ideas to debate on here, every time it turns into "here's why that's stupid and you should shut up because its new and that frightens us, precious"

People not listening to what you say, being pig-headed, deliberately pretending to misunderstand what you are saying in order to score imaginary debate points, etc. is all part and parcel of discussing anything even slightly controversial on the internet. Go to Breitbart and try talking no-holds-barred politics for an hour or two.

I kind of like the idea of "takes no BODY" for an automaton power.

Take the pink "Humanoids" that the Hulk's foe The Leader often deploys in droves. They stretch and don't seem to take much damage from melee combat but they break apart if you hit them just right with an energy blast. But the same one that you just broke up will pop right back up and start fighting again. Despite the special effects, that always seemed to me more like they were recovering from being stunned rather than regenerating from death.

On the other hand, "takes no BODY" seems like a terrible power for a player to have. A player with that kind of power would take chances which would make Mr. Immortal blush. That'd make it hard as a GM to control the character if he's immune to falling off the largest building in the world, orbital skydiving without a parachute, walking through acid, floating around in outer space without a spacesuit, drowning, etc. You've eliminated a lot of the utility of a ton of powers and skills.

At least with the kind of people I've gamed with, you'd have that character, without any fear of permanent harm, tanking the big bad guy while the rest of the team handled the minions. In World of Warcraft terms, the person could tank forever without getting any heals and the worst thing he'd have to worry about is getting stunned for a few moments. That's a little bit over-powered.

A beginning player on day one of playing shouldn't be able to walk fearlessly into single combat with Dr. Destroyer.

On the other hand, a day one team of new players should very well be able to face Dr. Destroyer's Robo-Annihilator and have to find a way to stop it without being able to do any BODY to it. "Unstoppable" adamantium/prometheum automatons are seen in comics all the time. Force the characters to trap, entangle, drop a building on it, or otherwise find some way to restrain it.

I think the power would be best treated like a NND attack in that there should be some secret way for the thing to take BODY damage which the players would have to discover. Maybe it takes damage when exposed to kryptonite, is allergic to bad puns, dissolves in water, etc.

54 minutes ago, Surrealone said:

Not dying from taking BODY is fundamentally no different from dying from taking BODY and then resurrecting a la Regeneration -- because the end result is the same: you live after taking BODY damage that would otherwise have killed you -- and are effectively unkillable. ( It is for this reason that I assert that not dying from taking a massive amount of BODY is basically just a special effect of Regeneration that has Resurrect capability.  The same is true of limb loss/disablement and regrowth/use.)

 

 

Whether they are functionally the same depends on what's happening.

You could stand in the exhaust of a space shuttle and take no BODY if you take no BODY. But if you take BODY then regenerate from death, you are 0 DCV, prone, and waiting for your next phase for your regeneration to kick in. Then unless it is a post segment 12 recovery, you lose your whole phase regenerating rather than being able to take other actions. Then after you regenerate, you're still prone until your next phase if I understand correctly.

That's potentially a lot of difference, according to what's going on around you.

'Nuff said. https://xkcd.com/1992/

2 hours ago, Cancer said:

CubeSats going interplanetary

 

That is labeled "Full Access", so I think that should not be locked behind the subscriber wall, but I have been deceived about that before.

 

CubeSats (that's a Wikipedia link) are small spacecraft intended to be cheap and relatively easy to make.  Originally single cubes 10 cm on each edge, later versions include spacecraft made of several cubes.  The point is that you can launch lots of them all at once for cheap, often as hitchhikers on some other launch.  Bunches of them have been sent into Earth orbit.  It was originally intended that there was no engine aboard them: they just went into whatever orbit they happened to land in; there's useful things that can be done (both science, and engineering testing) with that sort situation.  And it is cheap.

 

There are several now going on interplanetary missions, and the concept of sending many tiny, inexpensive interplanetary missions is very interesting for planetary science.

I understand the usefulness of the darned things but I just cringe at the idea of putting even more things which are too small to be detected/avoided into Earth orbit.

The guy strikes me as being an alien named "Bubblicious". But I'm stuck as to where to go with him from there.

On 8/22/2018 at 10:59 AM, Christopher R Taylor said:

Well I meant less a general indictment of bigotry by Japanese than a specific cultural attitude at the time of WW2, where after centuries of basically isolation and propaganda the Imperial nation had very high opinions of themselves and very low opinions of everyone else on earth.  And there was some reason for thinking so; their planes were much better than what the US had to put out there at first, for example.  But it did lead them to some pretty atrocious (atrocity-laden) treatment of conquered peoples and prisoners, sadly.  And as Assault noted, that led them to self-defeating behavior.

I don't think you necessarily have to have everything happen during the WWII years when you are talking about what things would be like in an alternate reality today. There's been 7+ decades gone by since then.

Yeah, there's going to be a lot of the old guard thinking passed along to new generations. But you're also inevitably going to get people who want to toss out old ways of thinking when it isn't being effective and want to do something else.

In the alternate campaign world I spoke of, the Japanese leadership was figuratively (and sometimes literally) decapitated by the rise of supers who took over their nation. The Japanese eventually went on to kick the British out of India and destabilized other British colonies throughout the Middle East. But that was only after the Japanese had consolidated their Pacific holdings and China, something which caused them to realize they didn't have enough soldiers to banzai charge their way through every situation and to realize that they'd been woefully under-equipping their troops when compared to other modernized armies.

But you could accomplish the same result just through attrition without wholesale replacement of Japanese leadership. Tojo was born in 1884. Yoshijirō Umezu born in 1882. All of their top level people who were part of the rise of the Japanese military state were born in the 1880's and 1890's and wouldn't have lasted through the 1950's regardless.

By the time a few years after the peak of the war had passed and the Japanese had absorbed SE Asia, Mongolia, and China, they'd be looking for trade partners, alliances, and destabilizing their remaining opponents on the world stage as much or more as they'd be looking for additional territory that they'd have trouble pacifying.

12 minutes ago, death tribble said:

Trump would not be president ?

I don't think you can take that as a given. The Drumf's came from Germany to the US in the late 1800's to early 1900's.

According to a NY Times article from the time, Donald's father (who had Americanized his name to "Trump") was arrested for rioting while taking part in a KKK rally in New York City.

I don't see any reason for someone of German heritage and a KKK upbringing to be automatically out of the running for becoming president in the kind of alternate world we're talking about.

Did you hear about the new restaurant they opened on the moon?

Great food.

No atmosphere.

Might be a good idea to give him the ability to speak English, French, or German in addition to his native Russian.

Sickle

 

Quote: "No von makes fun of mine accent! I am Russian, not sum German peasant!"

2 hours ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

"Is there anyone in Rome who has not slept with my daughter?!"

From "European Vacation"?

Labradoodle

- An artistic lady whose "paintings" come to life courtesy of her Mental Images (she makes painting gestures with her hands and the paintings come to life). One of her favorites is the classic "dogs playing poker". Most of her images tend to be dog-themed but that isn't a real limitation on her power, which might catch some opponents off guard if they've met her in the past.

She has two trained "killer" labradoole guard dogs she often travels with. She also tends to multiply the number of guard dogs with her Mental Images. So heroes who want to avoid killing animals might have a tough time figuring out which dogs are real and which aren't. The two real guard dogs are almost identical and one of them is a foundling, so she's not quite sure whether the second dog is "real" or whether it's some new manifestation of her powers.

She had telepathy and Mind Link with canines (dogs, wolves, coyotes, and jackals) which she uses often. She can also mentally dominate canines but will only use that power to save herself or her teammates.

Has the reputation of not much of a hand-to-hand combatant but that's mostly due to a reluctance to mix it up if there are alternatives available rather than a lack of ability. She's not the type to try to claim a leadership role but she's inventive and creative so she's not shy about spouting ideas or trying to push the group consensus. That dynamic doesn't work well in a real dog pack which generally has a defined alpha so she's a bit of a disruptive element even though that's not the way she sees it.

1 hour ago, massey said:

Huey Long was a scary dude.

He seemed like a good governor, for the era, as far as his policies went. He shifted taxes off of individuals and onto industry (mostly oil and gas), constructed roads and bridges so that commerce could happen more easily in the state, and put enough money into public education to buy school books so that children statewide would be allowed into locally-run public schools (children weren't allowed into public schools, at all, at the time if the family couldn't purchase school books for each of their children, which was a significant financial barrier for most families).

I could see myself coming up with similar programs if I found myself as governor in that time and place. (Which is saying something considering my politics.)

As governor, Long did a lot of underhanded maneuvering and heavy-handed politics to get his way. But considering the machine politics as it was practiced in many areas of the country, it wasn't anything particularly unusual. Distasteful, unethical, and illegal but not particularly unusual.

Long really didn't go completely off the rails from what I remember until he became a senator and got presidential ambitions. Then I agree that he became very scary....

40 minutes ago, Mr. R said:

Classic Ice Blaster

 

Now alone and in pain emotionally, she hides out until something sets her off and she lashes out.

If she has mood swings, low self-control and lashes out at people, I would think at some point she would earn a Hunted by Police, PRIMUS, or whichever other agency chases supervillains.

9 hours ago, death tribble said:

Wild Cards: The Black Trump last of the Card Shark trilogy. Various of the characters race against time to find and destroy the Black Trump which will kill all the Aces and the Jokers. Things don't turn out that way as the virus will now kill everyone. The end of the trilogy also marks the end of some of the characters who had been in the books previously or had been referenced peripherally. These include Belew, Churchill and Senator Hartmann. Sad in a way but it clears the decks for new characters.

But Croyd is still around.

I'm a big fan of Captain Trips.

1 hour ago, unclevlad said:

 

I can see skipping Australia too, but...why would India be a big prize?  The islands were for oil.  Going after India...steel?  Maybe but you're stretching further and further away.  They've already got a TON of hostile territory to control in eastern China.  I can see them going after the Philippines, but getting to India would probably mean controlling Indochina and Thailand.  UGLY, as we found out, to fight in those jungles.  At least at first, I think they'd just go with political pressure and have them be a puppet state as a buffer.  Granted, these are the Imperial Japanese nutjobs, so they may not, but going after India would, I think, lead to long-term failure as they overextend.

 

India has vast amounts of croplands and the population to farm it. If the Japanese assisted with transitioning them into mechanized farming, there's no reason the area couldn't be exporting huge amounts of rice and wheat just as it does in the real world. The Japanese would be basically replacing pre-war the food imports from the US with importing food from India.

In order to take India though, I'd guess the Japanese would have to appeal to various independence groups in Ceylon, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Promise each of the groups autonomy in their region and alliance in exchange for assistance in kicking the British out;

You'd end up with the region being a patchwork quilt of Rajas controlling small regions. But frankly, I could see Japan being quite content with that in exchange for naval bases in the Indian Ocean and no British presence. The British would have a hell of a time retaining control of their colonies in the Persian Gulf region with the Japanese having fleets in the Indian Ocean and offering assistance to independence groups in other British-controlled areas.