GhostDancer

On this date 140 years ago, was the battle of Roarke's Drift.
 
 

The Battle of Dogger Bank took place January 24th 1915
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dogger_Bank_(1915)

The Battle of Talikota took place in India January 23rd 1565
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Talikota

The Battle of Raate Road ends with victory for Finland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Raate_Road

"... shall not perish from the Earth."

The battle of Towton took place, it is known as the largest and bloodiest battle fought on English soil. 29th March 1461
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Towton

Still one of the best story arcs ever, IMHO.

40 years ago - 

35 years ago - 

I had a steady Saturday D&D 5e group for almost two years and decided since we had burned through all of the main books that we could use a change of pace.  I'd grab one of the Pathfinder Adventure paths and run us through that.
 
Since we were going to be trying out something completely new I sold the very steady player base on the idea of trying out Fantasy Hero since I like the HERO system mechanics so much better.
 
I knew there'd be some exploding heads if I didn't ease them into it so we did a couple of mock combats with characters I built for them in HDv6 based on character concepts they told me about.
 
Things went pretty well and to avoid the +10 levels with swords to make eye shots at +2 OCV issue I pre-emptively resurrected the Combat Effectiveness Calculator (Turns out it was Adventurer's Club #3 Character Rating System...) as best I could from 3 decades old memory to keep everyone relatively constrained both by campaign hard caps and a total combat effectiveness.
 
It took the players a few sessions to get their heads around attacks that do normal, vs. killing, vs. use-hit-locations, vs. don't-use-hit-locations and the much larger array of combat maneuvers that are available.
 
The one thing players really like is that their characters are 100% THEIR characters.  The lack of class constraints and the flexibility of the system is the key selling point.  The interaction of armor in Fantasy Hero (makes you resistant to damage, but slower & easier to hit) resonates well with the group as does the damage scale.  Our Dwarven Rogue Explosives expert took a single heavy longbow shot to the shoulder (11 BOD, 33 STUN minus his heavy leathers (3 DEF)) and was nearly out of the fight.
 
The current cast of misfits in our War for the Crown run:
1-  The Fire Witch (my wife) - mad social skills and the desire to set everything on fire.
2-  Arden the Witcher - Player loves this build to death.
3-  Bolin the 2nd to Last Airbender - Defensive CC expert with barrier, heals and stretching (sfx water appendages for MA moves).
4-  Udyr from League of Legends.  I spent a couple of hours in HDv6 making all of the active/passive/lingering effects work right.  Most labor intensive character I've ever modeled.
5- Darran Redbeard - Dwarven Sapper and grenade happy rogue.
6- The fallen angel Gabriel from the Prophecy movies.
 
You can't do this very easily in most games.  The players are having a blast and the hexman dice really helped with counting BOD/STUN on normal attacks.

On this day in 1960 National Airlines 2511 blew up killing all on board
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Airlines_Flight_2511

December 24th 1818, first performance of the carol Silent Night

Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie Scotland resulting in 270 deaths in the air and on the ground

One of Australia's most enduring mysteries occurs when on 1st December 1948 the body of an unidentified man turns up
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamam_Shud_case

30NOV1954, the cosmos decides to throw a rock at Ann Elizabeth Fowler Hodges as she's minding her own business, taking an afternoon nap.
 
Lucius Alexander
 
The palindromedary says that made her the first documented human being injured by an object of extraterrestrial origin.

November 19th 1863 Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg address

1941China declared war against Japan, Germany, and Italy.
1958The anti-Communist John Birch Society was formed.
1965"A Charlie Brown Christmas" premiered.
1990Lech Walesa was elected president of Poland.
1993U.S. astronauts completed repair work on the Hubble Space Telescope.
1996Archaeologist and anthropologist Mary Leakey died in Kenya at age 83.

Rude Dolph

The Reindeer Raiders:
Dasher (speedster),
Dancer (dance style martial artist),
Prancer (light brick via legs),
Vixen (mentalist, only vs The type of person who would naturally desire her),
Comet (flying energy blaster),
Cupid (archer),
Donner (lighting energy blaster),
Blitzen (sound flash brick),
Rudolph (energy blast through nose),
and Olive, the newest member (duplication, to be all the other reindeer).

Fifty years ago today, Apollo 8 launched.  The mission was "simply" a lap to lunar orbit and back, with no landing attempt intended.  But it was the first inhabited spacecraft to leave low Earth orbit.
 
And it changed the world and how we think of it, if for no other reason than the unprecedented and stunningly beautiful Earthrise picture captured by Bill Anders while in lunar orbit.

To get you into a christmas mood here's  a cool music theme from TSO
Christmas Sarajevo 1224 [Instrumental].mp3

What about Olive?  You know, "Olive the other reindeer, used to laugh and call him names"?

I like to watch the Youtube Channel Extra Credits. They have now branched out into Extra History. And recently, extra Mythology. And guess who just happens to have gotten a episode of EM today?
As well as all his variantions.