archer

After his speech for the North Carolina GOP, it's official: Trump is on the no-fly list.
 
https://www.thewrap.com/donald-trump-pants-backwards-kris-kross/

This exactly.
 
When I had money to buy products, I expected the products I bought for a game system to be playable with the game rules plus that product alone unless it stated in large print on the outside front cover "Not playable unless you have this list of other products as well".
 
 
You can play D&D perfectly well without a Monster Manual. The game was around for years before the first MM was printed in 1977.
 
I can't say how every group did it but in the boxed set there was a Monsters and Treasures booklet. When I needed something new, I reskinned it and changed its behavior a little bit. Even after the first MM was printed, many of the monsters they printed were re-skins with their stats tweaked a bit. I was so used to reskinning by the time I had access to a MM that I reskinned most of their monsters so that players who had access to the MM wouldn't instantly identify everything.
 
That works for D&D because the monsters for the most part are infinitely replaceable. It doesn't really matter whether you're using goblins, orcs, or kobolds. Or whether it's an ettin, ogre, or troll. 
 
Even inexperienced players and DM's have enough experience with pop culture to know what a goblin, ogre, or troll does and can fake making one if he doesn't have access to an official one.
 
 
But is there a cultural consensus on what a Firewing is and does? Would Oculon be a suitable replacement for Dr. Destroyer in an adventure or should I go with Ankylosaur because he too has an armored suit?
 
You could get away with not including the bad guys in a Western Hero adventure because a human with a gun is pretty much a human with a gun, with the difference being how hard the GM works to bring his character to life.
 
But for Champions? I'd argue that there's far too much variation for a person with his new purchase in hand to be able to guess right in what bad guys to use, if he has no access to the suggested ones.
 
 

As my former pastor used to say, there's nothing wrong with a Seventh-Day Adventist that a little Sunday School wouldn't cure.

Cahhoun’s first ship of the New Frontiers series was an Ambassador Class.  Basically the same same weapons, engines and sensors as the Galaxy class but smaller as it did not have the extra quarters and facilities to carry families.
    See, I’m a nerd!!!!     I can help!!!!!

Yeah, being the clean-up crew for the Dyson sphere would be pretty cool.
 
Either the interior or the exterior surface would be hugely greater than all the worlds of the Federation, Klingons, Romulans, Tholians, and Gorn combined even if you counted in all the worlds that each of those civilizations just visited at least once.
 
The Enterprise didn't make anything like a concerted effort to explore the thing since it was way too busy trying to save itself. There could have been 40-50 existing civilizations still on the thing plus ruins everywhere.
 
Yeah, in theory the interior surface was scorched. But any civilization capable of building a Dyson sphere would surely either have (or leave behind) forcefield tech that could shelter cities or at least clusters of buildings. If nothing else, the inhabitants would have plenty of solar power.
 
And of course the exterior surface could be used just as any space station but with the additional advantage of having access to the interior to replace raw materials such as air.
 
You could put a TNG-era Constitution class starship like the USS Excalibur (Captain Mackenzie Calhoun's first ship) there and have more exploration, diplomatic, and rescue missions than a crew could finish during an entire career.

I see what your are saying, but there is marked difference in game content.  A person who is going to GM a game of D&D, can't do it without owning the Players Handbook and Monster Manual.  You can get away with never buying a Dungeon Masters Guide, but most people that run will buy it.  The PHB, MM and DMG are widely considered the minimum "core" books needed.  So leaving out of an adventure module the creatures/monsters that everyone already has a copy of won't cause waves.  Leaving out key NPC's, Monsters and Villains will break it. 
 
But Hero by design has no centrally required NPC, Creature, Monster, Villain book required just to play.  D&D gives you stat'd monsters and creatures but never gives you the behind the scenes "rules" that they use to create and balance monsters.   For Hero the GM and players create them all as they go.  Or they can buy extra books where someone else did the drudgery of the builds.
 
The point is that games like D&D requires the DM's to buy the book that contains most of the monsters needed to play the game.  So an adventure only has to refer to that manual because the DM will already have it.  A Hero game adventure designer cannot assume that the buyer will have more than the core rulebook. 
 
For a superhero game, a espionage game, or pretty much any game that relies on a relatively small cast of antagonists all of which have detailed roles to play, they have to include them and the associated details.  
 
Cranking out a D&D adventure is easy barely requiring thought.   Sketch out a plot/storyline (the hardest part) and then just plug creatures with the appropriate CR. Done.
A Fantasy Hero Adventure is much harder and almost requires you include not just all the encounters, but pre-gen player characters as well.  If not to play, then to allow the GM to gauge the parties needed strength.  Because Hero has no established method to determine just what is what PC power-wise.  D&D has Levels.  FH has nothing.  Every GM establishes their own limits and caps.
MY idea of a starting point for PC's may be built on far more points than your multi-campaign veteran.  Or the reverse.  The very core concept of Hero as a tool kit ensures that if you compare FH campaigns from people in four different states they will all have different build limits.   I have seen games where one persons "Goblin" was more deadly than anothers "Great Orc". 
 
/ramble
 

Facebook Plans to End Hands-Off Approach to Politicians' Posts
 
it will no longer keep posts by politicians up on its site by default if their speech breaks its rules...
The change...is a retreat from a policy introduced less than two years ago, when the company said speech from politicians was newsworthy and should not be policed...
politicians’ posts will no longer be presumed newsworthy, said the people with knowledge of the plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Politicians will be subject to Facebook’s content guidelines that prohibit harassment, discrimination or other harmful speech
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/technology/facebook-politicians-posts.html
 
Woot!

Needs one for Nick Fury with the last one labelled "Ominous threat".

I'd imagine most villains would have an online presence. Probably only a few of the most self-destructive of them would broadcast their crimes. But they'd hype how great they were and such plus receive praise from their fans. Superheroes never seem to press charges for assault and battery against themselves from supervillains hitting them or attacking their bases. So if a villain was careful to set up their fight where they didn't create property damage to someone who'd press charges, they could post all kinds of pictures about them clobbering the heroes.
 
Some of them might try to use their social media accounts to create alibis (No, really, look I posted this picture of myself all the way across town as the crime was happening so it couldn't have been me).
 
I'd expect few heroes to have active social media accounts in their hero identities. They might have fan sites tracking them and posting things or hire publicity agents to manage the information flow of what is made public.
 
But most heroes would be properly paranoid about broadcasting information which might help identify them. If superheroes have been around in the world very long, there'll be horror stories in the community about heroes killed when their ID's were discovered and the gruesome trail of friends and loved ones who'd been captured and tortured. And "keep your identity private" would probably be one of the first pieces of advice passed along from experienced heroes to new heroes.
 
You don't necessarily have to have a classic secret ID. But you sure as hell wouldn't want to go around broadcasting it unless you have some pretty particular circumstances (like having no friends and loved ones outside the team and you live in a state of the art superhero HQ with all the latest defensive systems).
 
I think some of the superhero/supervillain print magazines would have survived to the modern era. Maybe as digital magazines only but the interest in superheroes as celebrities would still exist. And I think you could still go to checkout aisles in stores and find out that Pigeon Girl is having the secret love child of Muscle Dude and the 10 most important things to do before the Co-Dominator invasion fleet arrives next month.

First, don't tell us to feel free to post comments when you don't want us to feel free to post comments.
 
Second, politely requesting us to not make off-topic posts in this thread is fine.
 
Third, that was not a polite request.
 
Fourth, you have absolutely no control over what people post on this thread and don't post on this thread. This is a discussion forum on a website which deliberately has a free-flowing discussion forum. If we were to for some bizarre reason want to discuss haircare tips here, that is perfectly fine.
 
Fifth, if you insist on having control over the discussion, you need to go to the "clubs" section and post there instead of here.

First, don't tell us to feel free to post comments when you don't want us to feel free to post comments.
 
Second, politely requesting us to not make off-topic posts in this thread is fine.
 
Third, that was not a polite request.
 
Fourth, you have absolutely no control over what people post on this thread and don't post on this thread. This is a discussion forum on a website which deliberately has a free-flowing discussion forum. If we were to for some bizarre reason want to discuss haircare tips here, that is perfectly fine.
 
Fifth, if you insist on having control over the discussion, you need to go to the "clubs" section and post there instead of here.

There's a little mountain town in southwestern Montana that was something like a family shrine when I was growing up. My mom's side of the family would gather there every summer for a week or so. That's where my mom's mom (Granny) and older sister are buried. It looks like we're going to have a simple memorial service and burial for her there the early part of next week.
 
Thank you all so much for your kind words in your sympathy. It means the world to both Lady P and me.

I've seen Ghost Rider transform an existing motorcycle into his hellcycle. But I've also seen him summon the hellcycle out of thin air. So I guess it depends on whether or not he wants to carry his existing motorcycle with him from Point A to Point B while in hero ID.
 
In the Ultimates Universe (Earth-1610), Ghost Rider reverted to Johnny Blaze while on holy ground and lost all his powers, including the hellfire motorcycle.
 
I'm not sure whether the mainstream (Earth-616) Ghost Rider has that limitation or not.
 
That limitation would probably be worth the same as giving some versions of Superman a total power loss when in the presence of green kryptonite, IMO.
 
As for the original question about the power, I'd say that if the character defines it as a stock motorcycle that he ought to give it a turn radius ("My character rides a Kawasaki ZX-15") because other people he comes in contact with who have that exact bike should have their bike behave the same way (and differences in performance should come from Combat Driving).
 
If the character defines it as my suped up super-motorcycle, he's not going to be in a chase facing the same motorcycle. And he should have it perform in whatever manner he desires it to perform.
 
In short, the character can't change the game world with his choice of powers (such as declaring "the Kawasaki ZX-15 doesn't have a turn radius" because, ahem, yes it does). The player can build his character's powers but the player cannot determine how the game world's environment works.
 
 

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/01/trump-lost-generation-491474
 
A fascinating look at the "Trump effect" on the Republican Party, including:
 
“of the 293 Republicans who were serving in the Senate or House on Jan. 20, 2017 — the day of Trump’s inauguration — a full 132 (45 percent) are no longer in Congress or have announced their retirement or resignation.” 

My condolences, Pariah.

Man, they should make Contortion its own Olympic sport so all the effort some straight white men go to explain how media spotlighting women or minorities isn't actually successful or popular despite all evidence to the contrary doesn't go to waste. 🤣

I read these words as an English sentence but they don't make sense. Everything is made for me and I'm a middle-aged White man who used to buy comics thirty years ago, so clearly Captain Marvel was made for middle-aged White men who used to buy comics thirty years ago.
 
Or maybe it was forty? Anyway, point is, I paid my dues back when comics cost a buck and a quarter every issue, and now I'm entitled!

Reynolds Wrap FTW!

Mum is back home. She has a hernia which does not require acute surgery as the notes put it. More meds and she goes back to have a checkup in two weeks. However it took over 3 hours to get the new medication before we could try and get home.
The council wanted to visit next Tuesday but that is not happening. The official involved seems to have a problem with us. We don't know why. Yet.

I haven't seen WandaVision or Falcon and the Winter Soldier to be able to comment on their message.
 
Carol Danvers as Ms. Marvel was developed to be a feminist icon and was portrayed at having a chip on her shoulder about gender issues more often than not. That's not the way I would have chosen to take the Captain Marvel character, but it's generally in line with the portrayal of the character in the comics.
 
Endgame importing the Captain Marvel character with her over-the-top power levels meant she was going to overshadow some of the lesser-powered characters, even if they'd toned down the (gender) chip on her shoulder aspects of her character.
 
As for Ant-Man and the Wasp, even in the Ant-Man movie, he was played for laughs. In his appearance in Civil War, he was played for laughs.
 
In Ant-Man and the Wasp, after having a few months experience with the suit then no experience with the suit for two years, he was paired up with the Wasp who had more than a decade of experience with the suit. 
 
Even if the Ant-Man character hadn't already been played for laughs in two other movies, the person with more experience in the suit SHOULD have been the person who was more competent in the suit.
 
The only reason Hank recruited Scott to be Ant-Man in the first place instead of letting Hope do it was that Hank was being over-protective of her.
 
(Personally if I were doing the Ant-Man and Wasp characters, I'd have done Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne. Let Hank be the obsessed genius and Janet be the wealthy, fashion-conscious, and somewhat ditzy heiress who financed his dreams. But I'd guess that Marvel didn't want to deal with "is this version of Hank going to turn into a wife-beater because the writers want to highlight domestic abuse and this is one of the few married couples we have" speculation.)
 
 
Personally, I highly dislike the negative "gender in your face" which you get in pop culture and advertising.
 
But I haven't seen it in Marvel movies except where it's been appropriate for one character's personality and in one appropriate situation.

Reynolds Wrap FTW!

Yeah, it's probably been 20 years since I read any of the books. I've got them stored away in a closet somewhere but considering the problems I have moving boxes, I might not get a chance to read them again any time soon. 
 
A shame because I'd like to read Phule and Hammer's Slammers to get me into the mood for playing Battletech on Steam.

What amazes me is the amount of people in the country that openly support authoritarian fascism. It's insulting and frightening at the same time.

I do as well, but since I work primarily with teenagers, hardly anyone ever notices.

If you meant on my part, it was completely intentional.