archer

I'm actively opposed to things like this.  I think it's a horrible value and I won't go for any of these single-provider streaming services.  I'm actively rooting for them to all fail.
 
The way I see it, I already have most of what this service would offer.  I have Netflix and Amazon Prime, and each of those services offers me hundreds (maybe thousands) of different movies and TV shows.  I can almost always find something I'd like to watch.  If this DC Universe thing doesn't exist, then I can watch most of what they're offering on either Netflix or Prime.  I can do that already.  So what are they offering that is new that I can't watch right now without paying for their service?
 
I know they're planning on removing their shows and movies from these other streaming services, but that just means they're taking away value from me that I've already got, to try to promote their own service.  I don't like that, and so I won't support it.  Even if it wasn't a bad value, I wouldn't support it because I don't want to encourage other companies to do the same thing.  It's part of why I won't get CBS All Access -- I'm not going to be goaded into getting it just for a show they'd have put on Netflix otherwise.
 
And finally, I just don't think they've got enough content for me to want to pay just for their stuff.  It's not a very good deal.  I don't even think Disney's service is going to be worth it to me.  They don't have enough stuff for me to want to see each and every month.  When it's October and I want to see scary movies, what Disney films will I watch?  You can only watch the Legend of Sleepy Hollow cartoon so many times.  I think these specialty services have very limited appeal, and a very limited library.

Trump doesn't understand world trade.  In business, if you drive a really hard bargain and come away with no deal, you move on to the next company.  In world trade, if you drive a really hard bargain and come away with no deal, there's no other Canada to move on to.
 
The Canadians are also well aware by now that Trump is a serial fraudster whose word is worthless.

Article.

From a yearly game that takes place in a 31 year old campaign.
 
Me: "So you probably don't remember this, but these guys in the crystal armor and swords... they showed up in 1994, sent back in time to take out Capt. Hero. (A PC back then.)"
 
Player: "Holy crap. We've played so long we are now IN the dystopian future that they came from!"
 
Me: "I don't know whether that is cool or very sad."

For those who aren't familiar with the product https://www.dcuniverse.com/coming-soon/
 
Basically it is anytime access to DC movies and old TV series plus access to a limited selection of their back issue comic books (their choice of which ones). In addition, they're starting up 4-5 new TV series which are only available on their service (for now).
 
The cost is $75.99 for 12 months. But if you sign up now before the service goes live, you get an extra 3 months free.
 
Personally I think the Superman movies stank and the couple of good Batman movies I've seen a dozen times. I've got Green Lantern and the new DCU movies on my DVR. So getting movie access is meaningless for me.
 
I don't really have any use for their old TV series. The ones which weren't animated weren't very good. I'm not sure if the service has the DC series from the WB network since none of them were shown in the advertisement trailer. But I would assume that WB has the resale rights to those at least for a few more years. I'd like to see the Justice League and Young Justice series again. But honestly, those are available (stolen) online anytime I feel like helping some website break the law.
 
A limited number of back issue comics would be interesting except that most of those series are available (stolen) online already. And available as the complete series rather than whatever few that DC might want to let me see. I would assume that their intent is to get you hooked on a storyline then cut you off at the end and show you instructions on how you can pay more money to purchase the additional issues online.
 
The new content series is vaguely interesting. The third season of Young Justice is something which should have happened long ago.
 
The Titans series (a renamed Teen Titans) looks terrible at first glance of the trailers which DC has released in various places. Starfire in particular looks badly done both in makeup and character.
 
Other series are Doom Patrol (which has intriguing possibilities but I haven't seen any trailers), Harley Quinn (maybe okay), and Swamp Thing (very little interest on my part).
 
So basically it's $7 a month (minimum) for not very much that interests me. And the price goes up from there if I don't buy the service a year at a time.
 
If I still had a steady income, I'd be more interested. But I could pay not very much more per month, get into World of Warcraft again, and have hours of original entertainment every day.
 
If you are the kind of person who already goes to the movies a couple of times a month and who already buys a lot of premium cable channels, the additional cost to get the DC Universe package as well isn't all that much extra.
 
 

Cross Tie
 
Hermann Haupt, once the chief engineer of the Pennsylvania Railroad, became chief of construction and transportation in the Virginia theater of operations. President Lincoln was counting on him to keep the army supplied but despite his best efforts, the Union army kept losing battles and supply bottlenecks threatened to extend the war indefinitely.
 
Hermann kept at his job, driving his men without mercy, but nothing worked. Growing alternately despondent and angry, he drunkenly swore that he would sell his soul to the Devil himself if it would keep the trains moving and bring about a lasting Union victory.
 
But even Haupt isn't sure if it was the Devil himself or some other entity which appeared to him next.
 
A deal was struck, a bargain made, and within hours the trains suddenly began running on time regardless of whatever obstacles appeared.  Haupt's despondency disappeared but in its place he felt a darkness growing, threatening to consume him.
 
At the very moment of the signing of the surrender at Appomattox, the last remnants of Haupt's soul shredded and he became a driven embodiment of destruction.
 
In the years after the war, a circle of mystics managed to contain him but only at great cost to themselves. More recently, a dark ritual at a monument to the Union victory released Haupt to once against walk the Earth...this time as the villain Cross Tie.
 
-------
Cross Tie appears as a giant of a man, close to seven feet tall. Inhumanly muscular, wild hair, flickering ebon eyes.
 
massive amount of strength
 
Multipower
RKA conjured railroad spikes 
Entangle of conjured twisted rails (AoE one hex)
flight (plus run, swim, leap) with train sound effects (especially noticeable)
Deflection with the special effect of conjured cross ties or rails batting away the attacks.
 
Stretching by swinging around a conjured rail (no fine manipulation)
 
Regeneration with resurrection
Life Support: immortal, heat/cold, radiation, no breathing, eating, or sleeping required
 
tiny VPP for minor magic effects, just a few tricks he's learned because he's been around the block a few times
 
Tactics
 
WF Firearms
WF Bayonettes
TF Steam trains
TF: Horse, wagon
 
Perk: West Point alumni association (yeah, like you are seriously going to try to tell him he can't be a member just because he's a demon of some sort)
 
 
Distinctive features: his build and eyes
small vulnerability to holy objects (relics, not holy water)
Unfamiliar with modern world (note he is unfamiliar because he didn't live through most of it. Unlike some demonic entities, he's perfectly willing to learn about light switches so after he's in the world a while, he will buy off this limitation or change it to just being unfamiliar with pop culture)
 
His preferred tactics are to close with whichever ground-bound opponent it looks like he could crush easily. If opponents try to stay out of range, he will RKA or Entangle. He's also likely to pick up and use any mystic or modern weapons found in his path, especially if he isn't familiar with it, just to see what it will do. He's not very fond of automobiles or aircraft of any sort and will use his casual strength to walk right through one if its in his path. Or waste his phase to destroy one even if it isn't particularly in his path. He will monologue on both the deplorable forms of modern transportation (as opposed to trains) and the glories of which can be had by devoting your life (or afterlife) to destruction.
 
He's not terribly concerned about taking damage and will endure a lot of punishment if that's what it takes to dish out some pain to a hero. He's also not very concerned about being captured because in his experience, someone will come along to release him...many times thinking he's a mindless beast and that they can control him. But while he is an engine of destruction, he is far from mindless and still has access to many of his human emotions and all of his memories.
 
Even though he is destructive, his goal seems to be more geared toward generating terror and disruption in populated areas rather than deliberately running up a body count or destroying things in remote locations. That has caused various mystics to wonder whether the emotions of innocent bystanders are fueling his undying powers in some manner....

< sigh >
 
I lost a massive response post I'd worked on for a couple of hours and don't really feel up to re-writing it all.
 
Speaking as someone who was part of the small conservative minority section of the Republican party for over four decades, Fox News is a cheerleading organization rather than a news organization. They pick a winner and a loser on each issue then slant all their coverage toward that bias. They'll go after a Ted Cruz in the 2016 election (or Newt Gingrich in 2012) with much the same glee as they go against Democrats. They have a business model where they jump on or create a bandwagon then use the effect of that to attract or keep viewers.
 
When I spent 15 years doing massive amounts of political blogging, I actively avoided reading the Fox News website and never linked to it. I was much better served by reading articles on a particular story on several liberal-slanting websites (and British websites when those were available) then comparing those articles against each other to filter out the bias to figure out exactly what's happening.
 
The Atlantic, in my experience, doesn't do a good job of presenting the news or commentary in an unbiased manner. But when you're comparing it to Fox News, sure it's going to be better most of the time due to Fox's business model of "promote or denigrate" everything.
 
When I have some time, I'm hoping to read and comment on that particular Atlantic article link. But if I don't get around to it, well, it's the Atlantic.

https://www.cbr.com/marvel-marie-severin-stroke/?utm_content=bufferc4611&amp;utm_medium=Social-Distribution&amp;utm_source=CBR-TW&amp;utm_campaign=CBR-TW
 
 
 
Rest in Peace, Ma'am. 

Cool. I just sent a couple of one-way tickets to Beijing to the White House, envelope marked "You've Won a YOOOOGE PRIZE! You're AMAZING!"
 
Let's see what happens.

Um, what color is the snow?

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.

Big Blue Book FTW! I just take Megascale and Change Enviroment from 5th and remove bonuses from taking Packages and I am good to go...

Personally, I still use BC and AD,  I don't like change, and it was that way for way too long for me to change.
 
 
ANd Pluto is a planet.  #StopPlutoHate 

For Archer's list of scarce resources, I'd add status. We humans devote much of our time, attention and resources to status competiton. Our modes of competion and definitions of status are diverse, but pervasive. And it's the one resource that will *always* be scarce, no matter what whizzy handwavy technology we may invent. The one thing you can't give everyone is "More Than You."
 
An alien intelligence that flat-outdid not have social status as we humans understand it would be more alien than any tentacled methane-breather.
 
Dean Shomshak

My aliens can get very alien on occasion. But if they get too alien, there's not going to be a common frame of reference with PC's who are humanoid. If the characters you introduce to a campaign can't interact effectively with the PC's, you have to consider whether there's a point in introducing them to the campaign.
 
Consider humans.
 
The driving factor of our existence is scarcity of resources. We have a need for food, clothing, shelter, sex, and many other things which we either strictly cannot do without or which we highly desire to have rather than do without. And there's not a free supply of any of those things lying around anywhere with the possible exception of air in some locations.
 
We can understand the needs of aliens who have "scarcity of resources" as the driving force of their existence even if the list of things which they consider to be resources differ from our list. The Outsiders species from Larry Niven's Known Space series look like a cat o' nine tails which live on thermally-generated electricity (at very low temperatures) and exist in vacuum. But they use space ships and trade information for usage of moons around gas giants. They are both very different from us and not very different from us (for the convenience of both the author and the reader).
 
But think if oak trees had sentience.
 
If it is mobile at all, which isn't a given, its location is really its only needed resource. It makes its own food using sunlight. It gets moisture from the soil. It probably isn't hung up on sex or on how badly his kids are behaving. It doesn't need clothing and would have no cultural reference to understand the need for it in other species. It likely never attended school or prom. It doesn't care about landing a good job, the next poor excuse for a Star Wars sequel, or driving a fast car.
 
If we gained the ability to attempt to communicate with a sentient oak tree, would we have anything which it would want to hear or understand? Would we get anything even slightly useful, even as entertainment out of trying to communicate with that tree?
 
That's talking about a species from Earth which might have grown up a couple of miles from thousands of humans...and we don't have enough of a common frame of reference to even have a decent conversation.
 
Think about how much worse it would be trying to communicate with an alien which is really alien to "our frame of reference for interacting with the universe" and has never even seen our world.
 
I think that's why most aliens in fictional worlds tend to be more or less humans but with funny ears and noses.

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

A multiform looks like what you want it to.  This is part of the build process.  That said, the alternate form can have its own disguise skill or illusion power that makes its superficial appearance different from the alternate form's base appearance, and the cost of those is part of what you pay for in the build process.
 
A similar basic idea is one for which I made spells for a fantasy world, where secret papers could be obfuscated by both illusion powers and actual transform powers (documents to different documents), and multiple layers of both were explicitly permitted.  (This was in a very corrupt plutocratic city.)

Geometric, assuming all the created duplicates duplicate themselves when each act of duplication occurs.  The number of bases B after N duplications then is B = 2N.
 
If only the original item duplicates, then it's arithmatic, and the number of bases is B = 1 + N.
 
In either case, the total area A occupied at the end of it all is B times the area occupied by one base.  If The individual base area is itself a function of N, then multiply the two functions.
 
Depends on the precise build (or if you aren't in HERO system, exact wording of the duplication power).

Ant-Man and the Wasp is fun -- while you're watching it. Afterwards, it becomes forgettable to the point that I don't remember Ant-Man's name. The main thing I remember is that almost all of Hank Pym's misdeeds come home to roost -- almost all of what drives the film is a direct consequence of Pym's pride, arrogance, and inability to see other human beings as valuable equals.
 
the weird thing is that, while I found many of the jokes amusing, I didn't really laugh at any of them. There appeared to be some distance between myself and the movie.

You know what they say, "Demons are a Ghoul's best friend."

Exactly. 4th with bits of 5th like megascale.
 
I didn't feel like there was a clean transition from 1st to 2nd to 3rd so it made interpreting some published characters a little awkward. But 4th was a clean break and I felt it did a good balance of cleanness vs complexity.
 
When I'm thinking up characters, I think of them in 4th then have to adapt them to 5th or 6th (much the same way that someone who has English as her native language might think in English then have to translate that thought into French or Italian before communicating in those languages).
 
When I'm a player, I really like utility belts and figured characteristics. 6th lets you have one but not the other, which I see as a problem.
 
I started picking up HERO stuff the year it came out. It took me several years to find Adventurer's Club #1 after they started publishing it. Then I randomly found two copies of it at a used book store out of state, which makes that my favorite random RPG find ever.

Exactly. 4th with bits of 5th like megascale.
 
I didn't feel like there was a clean transition from 1st to 2nd to 3rd so it made interpreting some published characters a little awkward. But 4th was a clean break and I felt it did a good balance of cleanness vs complexity.
 
When I'm thinking up characters, I think of them in 4th then have to adapt them to 5th or 6th (much the same way that someone who has English as her native language might think in English then have to translate that thought into French or Italian before communicating in those languages).
 
When I'm a player, I really like utility belts and figured characteristics. 6th lets you have one but not the other, which I see as a problem.
 
I started picking up HERO stuff the year it came out. It took me several years to find Adventurer's Club #1 after they started publishing it. Then I randomly found two copies of it at a used book store out of state, which makes that my favorite random RPG find ever.

"There's a compromise bill to keep the notification bar but at least charge the battery."

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