RDU Neil

My favorite scene in the classic "To Live and Die in L.A." where the main character gets totally blown away 3/4ths through the movie... and nope... nothing saving poor Richard Chance in that one... dead, dead, dead.

That was so shocking to see that happen in a movie like that, where the expected cliché's didn't come into play.
 
God I love that movie.

An interesting article on why opioid addiction is such a much bigger issue in America than anywhere else...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41701718
 
But my favorite quote (of the various reasons why)...
 
Some Americans, says Professor Keith Humphreys from Stanford University, believe that life is "fixable".
"I'm 51," he says. "If I go to an American doctor and say 'Hey - I ran the marathon I used to run when I was 30, now I'm all sore, fix me', my doctor will probably try to fix me.
"If you do that in France the doctor would say 'It's life, have a glass of wine - what do you want from me?'"
In 2016, a study compared how Japanese and American doctors prescribed opioids. It found that Japanese doctors treated acute pain with opioids in 47% of cases - compared to 97% in the US.
"There is obviously a willingness, and a habit, of giving opioid pain relief that is not shared elsewhere," says Professor Feinberg.
"Other countries deal with pain in much healthier ways."

An interesting article on why opioid addiction is such a much bigger issue in America than anywhere else...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41701718
 
But my favorite quote (of the various reasons why)...
 
Some Americans, says Professor Keith Humphreys from Stanford University, believe that life is "fixable".
"I'm 51," he says. "If I go to an American doctor and say 'Hey - I ran the marathon I used to run when I was 30, now I'm all sore, fix me', my doctor will probably try to fix me.
"If you do that in France the doctor would say 'It's life, have a glass of wine - what do you want from me?'"
In 2016, a study compared how Japanese and American doctors prescribed opioids. It found that Japanese doctors treated acute pain with opioids in 47% of cases - compared to 97% in the US.
"There is obviously a willingness, and a habit, of giving opioid pain relief that is not shared elsewhere," says Professor Feinberg.
"Other countries deal with pain in much healthier ways."

Now if I can only remember this a year from now!

My sister lives in New Zealand and has lived in Australia. Our family had a poster in our pool table room given by Kiwi's to us... it said the following...
 
The Rules of Cricket
You have two sides, one out in the field and one in.
Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out.
When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out.
Sometimes you get men still in and not out.
When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in.
There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out.
When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game

I would say that Reversed Ogive (THV) Rounds would be Semi-Armor Piercing, which I would say is a +1/4 Advantage.  Full Armor Piercing would be your Hardened Core Rounds designed specifically to pierce armor and would be a +1/2 Advantage.   As you mentioned Armor Piercing would pierce through the amount of defense dictated by the Damage Classes of the attack.  So a .22lr AP round really isn't of that much use as it would pierce only 2 points of resistant defense.  This is probably why most AP ammo are rifle rounds.
 
I am not saying that ANY long gun is a rifle or has high velocity.  I am basing this on the round itself.  As an example there are Lever Action Rifles out there that fire .45 Colt ammuntion out there which would be treated as handgun ammo.  Similarly most submachine guns fire handgun ammo (the M231 notwithstanding which fires 5.56mm).  So it is all based on the round not the firearm at all.  You also cannot define it strictly by Caliber.  .50 Action Express is a very different round than .50 BMG (the former being a very large handgun round and the latter being used in Sniper Rifles and Machineguns).  This is why I have to go back to the actual Energy delivered by that Round.  Thanks to the wonder of the internet all of this information is right at our fingertips.
 
Before some Smart Aleck decides to chime in with the fact that barrel length does affect muzzle velocity.  I will say that in the grand scheme of things it isn't enough to make that big of a difference.  I have heard a 25-75 fps per inch estimation over or under 22" depending on caliber.  Now this may seem like a lot but keep in mind that two "identical" barrels can easily vary by 100 fps.  Take a 230gr .45 ACP Round.  When fired from an M1911 the muzzle velocity is 830 fps.  When fired from the M1A1 Thompson Submachinegun the muzzle velocity increases to 950 fps.  If we plug this into our previous calculations we see that the difference is ~150 joules (477 vs. 625).  While this seems significant they both fit in the 4-5 DC range so while you could increase the damage slightly if fired from a long gun, I wouldn't bother with it.
 
I suppose you could put a small Aid on longer barrel weapons or add a Limitation to the round.  But even by my uber-realistic way of thinking this is more trouble than it is worth.
 
T

Another peeve... worthless body armor on faceless enemies or police/soldiers.

This happens all the time... where the "faceless NPCs" on either side of a big fight... either the sinister badguys in their all black tactical gear... or a nameless SWAT or soldiers backing up the protagonist... their body armor does nothing. Single shots from pistols and such just drop them with ease, and the only purpose of the gear is to hide the faces of the stunt men playing the parts so they can be reused again and again.

I hear you.  I am not a math wiz either.  However, I am laying the groundwork for what is to come.  See below for details.
 
I remember your thread and that is one of the reasons that I wanted to address this.  I did not include the "light armor piercing" because I am saving that for specific ammunition.  I felt that if it were stated as a function of Soft Body Armor it would  serve as a "House Rule" which could carry throughout the genre.
 
 
What I plan on doing is exactly what you have eluded to.  Creating charts for various ammunition.  I am a bit of a nut for realism and I think that if players in DC games were presented with the various ammunition they could buy it would make it easier for everyone.  That is exactly why I needed the granular detail in the first post.  We'll see how far I get with it.
 
In the next post I will delve into Armor and how it works vs. firearms.
 
T

My favorite scene in the classic "To Live and Die in L.A." where the main character gets totally blown away 3/4ths through the movie... and nope... nothing saving poor Richard Chance in that one... dead, dead, dead.

That was so shocking to see that happen in a movie like that, where the expected cliché's didn't come into play.
 
God I love that movie.

The villain's idea in Die Hard was to create an explosion and get away as part of the emergency services which is pretty good. The X-factor of McLaine and the chauffeur is what did for them

And at the end of that article, the disturbing reminder... "The U.N. human rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, criticized the policy on Monday as “unconscionable” and compared it to child abuse. It was the latest point of tension surrounding the U.S. threat to withdraw from the Human Rights Council. "
 
Withdrawing from human rights. Pretty much the mantra of this administration.

The short answer being, "We don't know.  Hence the problem."  It could be any of those.  Especially since Planck and WMAP spacecraft don't agree; they ought to, since they measured the same thing.  But the fact that they seem to be converging on two different values, over multiple studies, argues against measurement error.
 
As for non-uniform expansion, no.  Or at least, not in a way that affects this measurement.  While the rate of expansion is not constant, it does appear smooth and consistent with General Relativity over the history of the universe we can observe.  And it appears uniform in all directions as well.
 
You might as well start with WIkipedia, since it links to more scientific stuff.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble's_law

Just online after returning. Played five really fun games...
 
Playtest of Catpocalypse... a PbtA homebrew where we played a gang of cats after a plague has wiped out most humans, and we had to save the Golden Girls from a gang of wasteland raiders. I'm not saying we saw the game headed in that direction, but when we drove off in our war-machine, commandeered by one of our compatriots, a robot cat called M.I.T. 10 (or Mitten) with Blanche flirting with a handsome raider who joined our side, and the them song "Thank you for being a friend..." started to play, the table was literally rofling so hard our faces hurt from laughing hours later.
 
Dogs In the Vineyard... one of the definitive "indie" games, finally got to play it, and our posse of misfit Dogs managed to redeem our Order and the town of Whitestone from the Sin of pride. (Really want to figure a way to use something like their conflict resolution system with Hero for non-combat/social conflicts).
 
Praxis: King of Storms... a GMless game where you choose the roll of a fallen godling, (Godborn, Titanborn or Gorgon) and I was the Prince of the Dead, at war with fellow gorgon Kyron, the Iron Spider, betrayed by a Godborn, confronted by King of the Titanborn, , dealing with Calypsa, Ocean titanwitch... and we managed to obliterate several struggling human kingdoms, flooded much of the earth, ascended the war to heaven, etc.  A truly epic scale game that is really more organized story telling, with minimal dice rolling.
 
Iron Edda Accelerated... a new Fate system game, Vikings during Ragnarok, using seer's magic, shieldbearers and those "bonebonded" with the skeletons of dead frost and fire giants against the Dwarves of Svartalfheim who have raised up out of the earth with mechanistic monsters and Destroyer mechs... it is basically apocalyptic mechwar... where we inadvertently wiped out all the Dwarves and all humanity by reviving Ymir and all the dead giants of ages past.  (Whoops.)
 
An East Texas University adventures (Savage Worlds)... Buffy style adventures of college students in East Texas fighting occult threats while trying to pass their midterms. This was a murder mystery of a ten year old girl from 1958, whose ghost came to us begging for help. Lots of occult investigating and hilarity ensued.
 
Good times all around. 
 
 

So, at the Indie games booth at Origins, there was a big sign for Champions Now, and they had a list of current games you can kickstart, but they didn't have a lot of explanation for it. 
 
Personally, if there really is a Nar set of rules for doing Champions, I'm interested just to see how he resolves the extremely "simulationist" build structure of Champions with a rule set that actually encourage director/actor stance, moves, and other constructs of modern indie gaming. 
 
I'm also confused about how he can seem to enjoy the old Champs math and structure of building a character, min maxing points at x3 breaks, etc. which always seemed to undermine actual story in my experience, as people were more worried about "did I get enough power for my points" rather than, "did I create an engaging character who can add to the narrative."
 
Ron Edwards has always struck me as dichotomous in his projected design/game interpretation aesthetics.

Just FYI if you haven't done them before... Indie Games on Demand (IGOD) is great because you can pre-reg, but you don't have to. You show up with generics and you'll get a game. (They hold three gaming periods a day 9am, 2pm, 8pm, every day, and only twice, the big times , Friday at 2pm and Saturday at 2pm did they fill up and have to turn a few people away. By pre-regging, I was just guaranteed a slot in a game over those who only brought generics, but 99% of those folks got in anyway.)  Get there 15 minutes before hand. Get a "boarding pass" (a card with a letter on it), they randomize the letter drawings. Your letter gets called, you go up with others of that group and choose a game that hasn't been filled yet out of 12-15 different games being offered. The Catpocalypse, Storm King and Iron Edda were all "I dunno... let's try it" situations, and they were a hoot. So you don't always know what you are in for, but if you are open to new gaming experiences and enjoy the cooperative storytelling (in general) branch of RPGs over heavy crunch system RPGs, you'll have a good time.
 
Try it out, next time.

Death Tribble sends flowers to the US

Last-minute sacrifices that are supposed to be tragic and noble, and maybe sometimes are, but that you can see coming a long, LONG way off.  Bruce Willis's death in Armageddon jumped out at me in this regard.  The odds of death go up about 10,000% if said character has children or other close family, and are 99.9999% certain if the character shows a picture of their kids (this last one can also apply to non-sacrificial death by any throwaway character who shows his/her teammates a picture of their kids and/or talks about them to any great degree).  Bruce's death also illustrates how you should never, ever promise to come home to your kids after "this job" is done.

Just online after returning. Played five really fun games...
 
Playtest of Catpocalypse... a PbtA homebrew where we played a gang of cats after a plague has wiped out most humans, and we had to save the Golden Girls from a gang of wasteland raiders. I'm not saying we saw the game headed in that direction, but when we drove off in our war-machine, commandeered by one of our compatriots, a robot cat called M.I.T. 10 (or Mitten) with Blanche flirting with a handsome raider who joined our side, and the them song "Thank you for being a friend..." started to play, the table was literally rofling so hard our faces hurt from laughing hours later.
 
Dogs In the Vineyard... one of the definitive "indie" games, finally got to play it, and our posse of misfit Dogs managed to redeem our Order and the town of Whitestone from the Sin of pride. (Really want to figure a way to use something like their conflict resolution system with Hero for non-combat/social conflicts).
 
Praxis: King of Storms... a GMless game where you choose the roll of a fallen godling, (Godborn, Titanborn or Gorgon) and I was the Prince of the Dead, at war with fellow gorgon Kyron, the Iron Spider, betrayed by a Godborn, confronted by King of the Titanborn, , dealing with Calypsa, Ocean titanwitch... and we managed to obliterate several struggling human kingdoms, flooded much of the earth, ascended the war to heaven, etc.  A truly epic scale game that is really more organized story telling, with minimal dice rolling.
 
Iron Edda Accelerated... a new Fate system game, Vikings during Ragnarok, using seer's magic, shieldbearers and those "bonebonded" with the skeletons of dead frost and fire giants against the Dwarves of Svartalfheim who have raised up out of the earth with mechanistic monsters and Destroyer mechs... it is basically apocalyptic mechwar... where we inadvertently wiped out all the Dwarves and all humanity by reviving Ymir and all the dead giants of ages past.  (Whoops.)
 
An East Texas University adventures (Savage Worlds)... Buffy style adventures of college students in East Texas fighting occult threats while trying to pass their midterms. This was a murder mystery of a ten year old girl from 1958, whose ghost came to us begging for help. Lots of occult investigating and hilarity ensued.
 
Good times all around. 
 
 

Understandable. I remember that incident and was thinking about it after I wrote this. So, for the record,
 
This is me two and a half years ago, right before I came out to myself:

 
And this is me three days ago:

 
I look a little different, but I think you can see me there in both.
 
And, just to be thorough, here's a video of me saying who I am.
 
(But also, look at my join date on my profile. I'd have to be playing the really long game on this)
 

The Presidential Bunker in the White House being the least safe place for the President.

That's why I enjoyed Last Action Hero so much.  In and of itself it wasn't a great movie, but it had so much fun poking fun at the action genre that I couldn't help but like it.

I don't think I ever did this. This thread wasn't here when the boards first began... what was that... 2003 or so?
 
How did you come up with your 'handle' (forum name)? RDU refers to my long running Champs campaign... begun in '87 and technically still has a game once or twice a year... ran pretty much weekly for 25 years. Neil refers to me. (Have used this handle online since '87 as well.)
What was the first tabletop RPG you played? AD&D... played the intro adventure from and early Dungeon Magazine (have to look in my collection, as I have the first 50 issues or so.) That original group moved to 1st Edition Champions (after trying Top Secret, Aftermath, Traveller...) and never looked back.
What was the first tabletop RPG you GMed? Again, AD&D after having played a while, wanted to make my own dungeon... a magical pyramid in the middle of the desert with a Lich ruling over all the traps and terrors and a rainbow bridge from the top where you had to battle the Kobold god to escape. Whatever... I was 14...
What are you currently playing/GMing? Currently running a bi-weekly campaign I call Secret Worlds using Hero. Think a combination of the Bourne movies with the X-Files... lots of martial arts, shoot-outs, conspiracies, Russian mobsters, Yakuza, weird science, ancient cabals, etc. Looking forward to a yearly get-together in July of some of my long term friends who have spread out over the land, and have a blow-out weekend of gaming back in my original supers campaign, mentioned above. (Well... blow-out weekend, is usually pretty tame for those of us now at a certain age where staying awake past 11pm is a hardship, but you know...)

I could give or take car chases, they don't thrill me, but I don't hate them... but Ronin is one of my favorite movies... ever.

The "death instinct" of slamming your foot hard down on the accelerator is a mystery as well.