archer

They could always do a Tebow and turn the worst one of the lot into a tight end....

WHAT WE NEED TO LEARN: LESSONS FROM TWENTY YEARS OF AFGHANISTAN RECONSTRUCTION by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/lessonslearned/SIGAR-21-46-LL.pdf#page=1 If you've ever wanted to read a 140 page official report detailing everything we got wrong in trying to nation-build in Afghanistan, you've come to the right place.

The lack of a capable offensive line?

The NFL testing rule are quirky from what I've read in Boston news. Yes, you're required to get tested daily. But you're required to get tested before you leave. Getting tested after you arrive at your destination isn't sufficient. And that's where Cam got caught up in the misunderstanding. There are plenty of teams which already have quarterback issues (such as Denver) and could use some depth. And now that Cam is out of a job, he might be more motivated to get vaccinated to satisfy prospective employers....

More and more Hollywood celebrities are announcing that they no longer practice Scientology. Apparently, if you become good enough at it, you no longer have to practice.

Well that didn't take very long: Al Qaeda Kingpin Resurfaces In Afghanistan Surrounded By Taliban Security https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/42189/al-qaeda-kingpin-resurfaces-in-afghanistan-surrounded-by-taliban-security https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/amin-al-haq-who-helped-osama-bin-laden-escape-us-capture-once-returns-to-taliban/ar-AANVMr7 Edited to add a backgrounder on the Al-Qaeda and Taliban ties. This article was written shortly after Trump in 2018 announced he was willing to meet and negotiate directly with the Taliban: https://warontherocks.com/2018/09/deadly-cooperation-the-shifting-ties-between-al-qaeda-and-the-taliban/

That would be a great way to handle it if you could incorporate "having to have the right loot" into "which powers the VPP would allow you to use and how many active points you could put into the weapon".

I had an NPC hero who had his own theme song he played whenever he showed up. I don't remember the song anymore. He was an annoying wannabe with some minor powers who thought he was much more cool and powerful than he actually was. Superhuman strength compared to a normal but not much strength for a superhumanly strong person, if you know what I mean. Flight but fairly slow. Fairly low-powered energy blast. A striking appearance. Utility belt with an array of low-powered gadgets inspired by James Bond and superhero movies. Depended on Flash a lot and wasn't very careful to make sure that it only hit the enemy rather than the enemy plus heroes and bystanders who are trying to get away... The main use for his Flight power was to try to get to the cameras first and give interviews which would show up on the nightly news. You know, like leaving the actual fight in progress to go warn the reporter and camera man that this was a dangerous situation and that they should move back for their own safety. And then answer the reporter's questions about who it was the PC's were fighting and get his account of whatever assistance they were giving him as he handled the situation. He's the kind of guy who'd show up at Comic-Con as a guest who charges for autographs, signed pictures, and selfies with fans. And if Comic-Con didn't think to invite him, he'd track down and pester everyone associated with Comic-Con until he was invited to be a guest. He wasn't really a bad guy but he kind of wanted his superheroing hobby to turn into his day job and he too often let that be the first impression of who he was when dealing with other heroes. I wasn't really trying to point balance him because he was a NPC so I didn't treat his quirkiness of playing a theme song announcing his arrival as some sort of character sheet disadvantage. I mean, it was often a disadvantage in real life but not on his character sheet. He was actually using a device to play the music so I guess his compulsion to play it could have been treated as a psychological complication.

If you're wanting to simulate the game (which I haven't played), it sounds like the players would be earning character points through their adventures then spending it to upgrade their weapons or personal characteristics. Beyond that, I'm guessing at what would work. If you're really wanting to give out loot then take it away by making them spend it to upgrade existing weapons or buy new weapons, I suppose you could charge some amount of gold per active point of change in the equipment. Like if they want to trade armor piercing (+1/4) on a 60 point Blast to make it Reduced END (+1/4) instead, that's 15 character points of change. So if you're charging 5 gold per character point of change, it'd cost him 75 gold and no character points to alter the weapon. And if you want to make other limitations on when he can do it like he needs the tongue of a tyrannosaurus in order to reforge the weapon, you could add that requirement as well. Of course, charge the gold plus character points if he's increasing the real point cost of the weapon. There might be a more elegant way to adapt the video game into a Hero game but that's the first thing that came to mind.

Having your Summon be an uncontrolled monster isn't always a bad thing. Summon it at range inside the walls of some city while you're outside the walls, for example. If there are monsters rampaging through the city, the leaders of the city are much more likely to see the need to hire adventurers to take care of the problem. Though come to think of it, that's more of a strategy for my "neutral evil" mercenary character than for standard heroes....

I had a private conversation with Bill Clinton, knew Newt Gingrich's lawyer, and met a vice presidential candidate (not for Clinton). One remove: two different connections to Jack Abramoff who has been at the center of repeated presidential and congressional campaign funding scandals and who wrote and produced a couple of Hollywood films. My niece has met Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers repeatedly. (My niece has also been asked for her autograph repeatedly as fans have been under the mistaken impression from time to time that she was part of the stars' celebrity entourage.) My wife and daughter met Selina Gomez. I used to fill up at a gas station where some of the 9-11 hijackers were caught on video as they were hiding out before 9-11. Sure, my list might be puny. But how many people know they are two steps removed from Osama bin Laden?

For ATW, who tends to push things to the point of no return...and also because the song is awesome. For Crane, my longer-running character, never really had a theme song as such.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/unvaccinated-unmasked-teacher-spreads-covid-19-elementary-school-students-cdc-n1277852 No printable words to describe my reaction to most of the story. But then there's this part at the end of the story where the CDC basically admits that a 72% vaccination rate in the county isn't enough to stop community transmission...which is what I've been saying since March 2020. If you have a virus that's as infectious as measles, you need a 90%+ vaccination rate.

Point of Know Return by Kansas

I've never even heard of a player being traded for a bottle of booze. Even from a team as bad as the Jags.

I'm a fan of the company at least attempting to keep some kind of continuity. So stuff like the LSH Threeboot drives me nuts. I have no idea how high their number of reboots is at the moment just for that series.

First they came for the mimes... And oh hell yeah I said something. I didn't want them to think I was a mime.

Why aren’t there many famous female mime artists? The glass ceiling.

Every year, hundreds of children are shipped off to mime school... never to be heard from again.

I still want to market "Enterprise" brand toilet paper: Enterprise toilet paper: We circle Uranus hoping to wipe out Klingons.

Seen in passing today: a mask will take away your freedom but so will a casket.

Yeah, you creatively come up with 200 new villains per year for 60 years and creatively try to keep your comic book world from seeming like a huge joke of idiots donning a costume for the express purpose of shortly thereafter dying at the hands of "heroes".

Two detectives are standing in the park, none to close to the corpse of a dead mime. Holding his nose, one detective asks an officer why this particular mime smells so bad. The officer gestures to a nearby office tower, "Sniper scope. The shot must have been three hundred yards." Confused, the detective says, "But sniper bullets don't cause bodies to stink!" "Well, it wasn't the sniper bullet itself. It's that the mime put on such a convincing death scene that bystanders just applauded the performance then went on about their business."

Look at it as a feature, not a bug. The big two comic companies print between 20-25 titles per year at 12 issues each per year. Plus there's assorted annuals and one-shots. That creates a huge need for villains to grace those pages. If the villains die, full stop, rather than being left for dead and miraculously reappearing later, the writers have to come up with a constant stream of new villains. And the audience would become conditioned to not get attached to the villains because the villain would get killed off after a few of appearances. And there could be no "redemption" arcs for those characters nor any chance for them to sink further into whatever madness drove them to become a villain in the first place. Movie supervillains can be killed off because even at a frenetic pace of churning out new movies, there's at most three movies per big comic book company per year (as opposed to 260 comic books minimum per year).

Two detectives are standing next to a witness who's closely scrutinizing a lineup of clowns. Short clowns, tall clowns, sad clowns, happy clowns, and clowns with big floppy shoes. One of the detectives says, "It's okay, take your time. Just tell us what kind of bozo would kill a mime."