Doc Shadow

Excuse me, I don't wish to be rude but you're making an awful lot of pronouncements as though they are the "WORD OF GOD" and above questioning. So I kind of have to ask: who the hell are you, and why should I believe one thing you're saying?

Not at all. A fellow named Jim Wright wrote it. I saw it on facebook and shared it on my page.

Regarding Trump's Wall, I did not write this but I'd like to share it. Let's say we build this wall. Let's say we give Trump the money and we build a wall 30 feet tall, 2000 miles long. Doesn't matter how, doesn't matter what it costs, don't worry about the details. Just go ahead and build the wall, right? No. No. Don't roll your eyes. It's not a trap. This isn't me doing that thing where I seem to ask a provocatively obnoxious question, but I'm REALLY fishing for something else entirely. Nope. Not that. I'm saying: we build Trump's wall. 30 feet high, 2000 miles long. Now, bear with me here: The US/Mexico border is 1954 miles long. Currently, about 700 miles is fenced in some fashion. Meaning a bit more than 1200 miles isn't. Why? Well, because most of the border is remote, away from urban development, in rugged territory, deserts, etc. So, if you build this wall, 30 feet high, 2000 miles long, 1200+ miles of it would STILL traverse remote territory. Follow? Now, people being people, it won't matter how high the wall is, or how thick, or whatever passive systems (such as spikes or concertina wire, etc) you include. Given enough time and resources, human ingenuity will find a way over, under, or through your wall in short order. Particularly in remote areas, outside of full time observation. In our case, that's about 1200 miles worth of remote territory. You don't need to take my word for this, you can research the effectiveness of such barriers from the Great Wall of China to the Berlin Wall, from Hadrian's Wall to the West Bank Barrier... What? What's that? Oh, right. The West Bank Barrier, the wall which divides Israel from Palestine. Yes? It WORKS, you say. It does. BUT it's not just a wall, it's a multi-layered defense system. Barbed wire, anti-sniper concrete wall over part of its length, vehicle ditches, electronic systems, patrols. It's monitored over its full length 24 hours a day, every day. It is patrolled over its full length 24 hours a day, every day. The cost to Israel (and Palestine) is high. It works. Yes it does. It keeps people penned up, keeps them apart, keeps people out, maybe keeps them from killing each other. Just as it was designed to do and a number of American conservatives look to that Israeli model as an example. The American version would have to be 3 times as long and vastly more expensive. That barrier was designed, rightly or wrongly, to separate nations and people at WAR. And the ONLY way a such a barrier works is with constant monitoring, constant patrolling. Because otherwise, as I mentioned up above, all you need to defeat it is a ladder and some quiet time. This is true of the West Bank Barrier. And it was true of Hadrian's Wall. And the Great Wall of China. The Maginot Line, the Berlin Wall, Saddam's line. Etc. They ALL had to be monitored and patrolled. Or they were no more an impediment to movement than any natural barrier, any river, or hill. Up above, I mentioned the Maginot Line. The French spent enormous resources to fortify their border. But once in place, those resources were fixed. They could not move or be used elsewhere. When the Nazis did a rapid end run around the fortifications through the Ardennes Forest, all the enormous resources of the Line were immediately rendered moot, left behind in their fixed, immobile positions. It's still there today, rotting, rusting, useless. By its very nature, a wall is fixed in position. Meaning, the defenses and resources of a wall are only useful AT THE WALL. At the wall. Walls are good for small, limited, controlled areas where the wall is part of a larger system, and continuously monitored, protected, and maintained. Where those manning the wall have a SIGNIFICANT advantage over those the wall is designed to control. Like a prison. Or a fort in hostile territory. For Trump's wall, 2000 miles long, to work, you will HAVE to monitor it in real-time along every inch. You will have to install cameras and sensors, fly drones and aircraft, and put out daily patrols. The wall will be constantly probed. Constantly tested. Constantly watched by those we're trying to keep out. There isn't any way to hide it. 2000 miles long, 30 feet high, and visible in orbit. We become anchored to our wall, constantly trying to find any weakness before the adversary does. Any moment of inattention, any blind spot, any weakness, will be found -- and exploited. The odds are with the attacker, not the defender, especially over that distance. Because that is human nature, ask any prison guard. Of course, the people of the US and Central America are not at war. Those seeking refuge in the US are unlikely to storm the border with a Blitzkrieg of tanks and dive bombers -- and if they were, WE WOULDN'T BUILD A WALL ANYWAY because the US military doesn't fight from fixed positions. Those who build walls in the desert often die on them. As Saddam's army learned -- or didn't actually, given how the second war with the US went. Again, walls are useful for certain limited applications. But they are utterly impractical over thousands of miles. Your assets become fixed, inflexible, unable to adapt, and if bypassed they're useless. You will NEVER get a return on your investment. If you have to have eyes on the border ANYWAY if you have to patrol the entire length in real time ANYWAY if you have to monitor the cameras and sensors and drones ANYWAY if you have to counter any breach anywhere anytime ANYWAY THEN YOU DON'T NEED A PHYSICAL WALL. For a wall to work, to DO what Trump promises, it CAN'T be a simple barrier, no matter how long, no matter how high. Like the West Bank Barrier, or the Great Wall of China, it would have to be a complex system of technology and human beings where the physical wall itself is the LEAST part, its defenses fixed and inflexible, unable to adapt to changing circumstance. And here's the thing: Once you implement the supporting systems and personnel you need to secure the wall, YOU NO LONGER NEED THE WALL outside of a few small areas. And without a wall, those security systems become much more flexible, mobile, unpredictable, and adaptable. They then have the advantage. And it is cheaper. Vastly cheaper. History, our own military strategy, and our national security policies learned over two painful centuries, demonstrate just how useless and ill advised a fixed defense is. A simple wall is a simple solution for simple minds and worthless for anything else.

It was what stuck out the most to me.

You're spelling Excalibur wrong. Sorry. I don't mean to be a pita but I had to say something, it was annoying me.

I've got February for my "Why My Love-Life Sucks Draft". That wasn't a joke, although playing it for laughs is a valid strategy. It's based on the fact that Spider-man's love life really does suck.

No, an imbecile. His plan will not work. In fact it could not possibly work. But he's too stupid to see it.

But Thanos is a sociopath. And a imbecile.

For books I'd strongly advise getting the GURPS World War Two series. Particularly the main book and the supplement "All The King's Men". They are chock full of the sort of background materiel that you don't find in Golden Age Champions. You know, the useful kind.

Baloney! Watch the scene again. He clearly gave up.

Nope. It was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw how easily he gave up.

Captain America. I may be wrong but it seemed to me that he deliberately stopped trying in AoU. Probably because he saw Thor's face start to fall when Mjolnir began to move and didn't want to embarrass his team-mate. Because that's the kind of man that Steve is. Whereas MCU Stark, ass that he is, tried to cheat when the hammer wouldn't budge. Or put another way. Stark is a fool. Rogers is a wise man.

Fred Hembeck because KNEES!

Everybody seems to be ignoring the "why", and most have missed that it was character (singular), not characters (plural). Those are the parts that make the question interesting and a bit difficult to answer.

Got a question for everybody. What Marvel character who is not currently in the MCU would like to see brought in, and why?

First off, I did not write this. KA wrote this many moons ago and published it in a thread right here on this forum. The problem is I doubt I could find it after all these years. However, as I recognized the wisdom he was bestowing on us all, I saved it to my hard drive. I now pass it on to all of you here today. Building a Campaign for Newbies by KA I am basing this on the problems I have had over the years introducing new players to Champions, and some of the solutions that seem to work. They may not work for you, but here they are. 1) Start with comics. If you don't own, and don't want to buy, the kind of comics you hope to recreate in your campaign, check your local library, or the 25 cent bin at the local comics store. Find things that very closely match the kind of world you want to have. (See below for suggestions on that) Insist that the players do their "homework" by reading at least some of these before you even begin to create characters. You will save yourself endless frustration if you and the players are on the same page before you get going. 2) Plan a day with each player to create their character, individually, in private, and run through at least a simple scenario. One player at a time. This will give you much more of a chance to get the player "into" their character. They will also be able to try out powers and see what they do, try out skills etc. My advice would be to come up with a scenario that allows for multiple solutions. A bank robbery with one or two hostages. A kidnapping. Gathering intelligence on a Viper base. You can run each character through the same thing, since you will be doing it one player at a time. This will give them a good idea of what their character can do, and what they might want to change. Be sure to let them know that this is a "simulation" or something, that doesn't count in the actual campaign. The easiest way to kill a new campaign is to have a bunch of players who don't know who their character is supposed to be and what he can do. They all just wander about, either killing everything they meet or doing nothing at all. Or the one "alpha male" Player starts bossing everyone around, and all the rest of the pack establish a pattern of just doing what they are told and never making any decisions. If you let each player get the feel of their character first, without the other players around, they will act more like the teams in the comics do. 3) No matter where you want your campaign to eventually end up, I would try to start out fairly close to Silver Age. Why? Well for one thing, it is not hard to darken a campaign as you go along. The players can find out that Police are corrupt, Friends can't always be trusted, etc. But it is almost impossible to lighten one. Players that aren't used to the Superheroic Genre will often act like they are The Punisher with a better gun. They will see no reason not to just kill anyone who gets in their way. Which means you will quickly have The Authority on your hands. The characters will have done things that no society would accept in the name of "right". The society will react by attempts to capture, incarcerate, or kill the characters, in turn feeding their anger and paranoia, and you will quickly end up in a showdown where the characters will either rule the Earth or be buried under it. You need to let the players get the feel of being Heroes. Give them the chance to actually do some good. Don't taint every victory with some sort of negative side effect. Some campaigns seem to run on the theory that "No good deed goes unpunished." GM: "You know that little girl you rescued from the fire last week? She was actually the clone of Hitler's mother. A neo-Nazi group is going to rapidly age her into a teenager and create a Fourth Reich of genetically enhanced Hitler clones that release hard radiation out of their testicles. Even if you kill all the Radioactive Hitlers, millions of people are going to develop cancer just because they were using the subways to travel around and everything is contaminated." Even if you don't want things to be clean and perky all the time, allow the players to actually help some people and accomplish something in the beginning. For instance, you could have UNTIL gradually become corrupt and/or anti-metahuman over the course of the campaign, due to internal problems, outside influence, etc. rather than having the players start in a world where basically everything was against them. Heroes struggling to do the right thing in an imperfect world, is a lot more interesting than cynical jaded beings with powers, doing morally neutral things, in a cynical jaded world. But if the players start out feeling like "everyone is against them" they will quickly descend into a Rusty Iron Age mentality. "Who cares what we do? Everyone hates us anyway. Let's go steal some weapons from UNTIL and start blowing things up." 4) I would start out with the idea that the team is already formed. Let the players know that they are building a Team Member, not an Individual Hero. You can come up with the background for how and why the team formed after you know who the characters are, but make sure that the players know they are part of a team. For some reason perfectly reasonable people can be utter bastards when it comes to this topic. It is just like the old sitcoms where someone who has never acted before gets a bit part in a movie, and is suddenly demanding to know "What's my motivation?" "You're at an ice-cream stand. You walk up, and say 'Give me a vanilla cone.' How much motivation do you need? You just want an ice cream!" "But why do I want the ice cream? Am I trying to recapture the innocence of my childhood? Do I have an eating disorder? Do I have an oral fixation? Is the ice cream symbolic of the ever-changing state of man's existence?" I have read stories here on the boards of GM's who were never able to get their team together. The players just kept coming up with crap like: "Well, sure, I hear the Police sirens, but why would I follow them? Those things go off all the time. It could just be a car theft or something. I am going to stay where I am and see if the bus station comes under attack by aliens. After all, my character does have Xenophobia as a Psych Lim!" "Why would I tell this person how to contact me? I don't know them. What if it's some kind of trick? They could be an enemy trying to discover my Secret ID. I am going to wait until they are distracted, and then fly into orbit. Then I will follow a random untraceable path to the Paranoia Cave and activate all the defense systems. After that, I am not coming out for six weeks. That way they can't find me." You are much better off just telling the players how the team got to be a team and going from there. If you start up another campaign with these players some day, then you may want to roleplay it out, but with a bunch of newbies, it can be like herding cats. 5) The Inevitable "Loner" Anyone who, during the creation process, starts down the "moody psychotic loner" path, should be asked: a) Why is your character on this team? What does it mean to him? Since he hates all authority figures and won't work with anyone, what in his personality is so overwhelming that he puts up with being on a team? Why did he join in the first place? Expect this to come up in play, often. When your character wants to stalk off into the night, there should be a hook that pulls him back before he is out the door. What is it? Because I am not going to run an individual campaign for you while everyone else sits around and stares at the wall for three hours. You can have that "type" of personality, but there must be a strong reason why, even though you don't like it, you stay with the team and follow orders. Otherwise, come up with a concept that is more of a team player. b) Why would the other team members put up with you? If you are such a foul-tempered, uncontrollable, individualist, why would rational people with powers of their own put up with your crap? Are you just crusty on the outside, with a "heart of gold"? Do you bravely throw your body in the way of attacks that might kill other team members? Are you the guy who "will not leave a team-mate behind" even if you die in the rescue attempt? Why weren't you kicked off the team the first time you opened your mouth? The other players aren't going to come up with reasons to put up with you, you have to come up with reasons you are worth putting up with, and then make sure you live up to them! Anyway, hope this helps. Good Luck!

So did I. It's one of my favs and I rewatch it at least every other year. Last night however I was watching Doctor Strange.

Captain America: Civil War

In a darkened room somewhere in Russia. "This one knows too much, Comrade Major. He must be dealt with quickly, quietly, and effectively. Send the Winter Soldier." "Da, at once, Comrade Commissar."

Aunt May (in her heroic identity of Golden Oldie) provides Galactus with a moon-sized Hostess Fruit Pie (whipped up by Franklin Richards) that satisfies the World-Eater's hunger. He gives up eating planets altogether in favor that flaky pastry and delicious fruit filling! The Universe is saved by Franklin, Aunt May, and Hostess Fruit Pies!

Is that anything like that holodeck program that I've heard about: "Vulcan Love Slave"?

I went with Melbourne, understanding, and Ireland. Do I have to create characters?

Yes we have.

Report: Everybody in the White House Considers Trump an Idiot http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/09/woodward-book-fear-trump-staff-idiot-moron-liar.html?fbclid=IwAR1FD35eDdedPVyHxLDtY-wtRMJxNOAChsQaKf2AvMxWSAlymam1dveiOqw

By the way. That California Governor wasn't Arnold by any chance was it?