Old Man

That the ninja started out as mercenary commoners is extremely likely, but I think disguise was the real reason that they continued to train with weapons like the kama or kunai. For infiltration and assassination they tended to prefer actual weapon weapons, like the katana; highly versatile weapon/tools, like the kusarigama; and easily concealed/transported weapons like shuriken and blowguns. Either way, though, there was plenty of both good and bad to go around in both the nobility and peasantry in feudal Japan. Ninja could easily be the good guys in any given situation, in a Machiavellian sort of way. Another thing that sets the ninja apart from a more generalized rogue is the degree of formalized training that they went through. Ninja learned codified techniques for stealth, disguise, espionage, assassination, infiltration, and combat, whereas one tends to think of rogues as being self-taught on the street, or at most apprenticed to a master in more organized environments.

Agreed. The stats, skills, and spells could be almost identical. But as I see it the paladin would be a warrior first and foremost, smiting the unholy and thereby protecting the sheep. Whereas the cleric would be more interested in healing, preaching, proselytization, and the general well-being of the sheep, and any combat would be incidental.

So this Korean ferry disaster is not going to have any kind of happy ending. God, what an awful way to die.

Yes (just watched WM again last night). Although I don't think the volcano in the film was actually Eyjafjallajokull.

An updated chart of Goldilocks planets, sorted by size and habitable zone, at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/04/140417-exoplanet-interactive/#close-modal . Newly discovered Kepler-186f is 493 light years away, so we'd better get going if we want to get there in time for dinner.

Or the same quantity of his favored high-end Irish whiskey.

In general Shadow World was really inconsistent when it came to Hero support. Most were basically Rolemaster adventures/supplements with Hero converted stats in the back of the book. Sometimes the FH stats were pretty detailed, other times they were pretty basic, and I think for one or two they were not present.

I have been known to pick on Starbuck's addicts by asking what their drink of the day cost, and then how many of those do they drink a year. Often that adds up to real money. Then I ask them how many calories are in that hot coffee milkshake they're holding. I'm a bad man. Anyway the point is that saving money on your daily stimulant is not a minor thing.

I wonder about that. Mag fed shotguns are notoriously unreliable, largely because rimmed shells are not a good fit for box mags.

Obviously someone noticed, or we wouldn't have a count of 26.

God, what an awful situation. I'd complain about people not wanting to see the doctor, except that I'm just like that. Maybe a little less now. Hang in there, T.

Are you insane?! Do you have any idea what that would do to the space-time continuum?

I put in the values for 'typical' campaigns, but I did play a couple of standard normal campaigns based on writing up the players as PCs. It's really sobering to write yourself up in Hero and then engage in to-the-death melee combat with something really fearsome, like a goblin.

It depends, is the bulb defined as Images, Flash, Targeting N-Ray Vision Usable By Others vs. Darkness, or Change Environment?

Is that a rhetorical question?

Huh, I didn't know there was a term for that.

That's exactly what I mean--the speed chart is only really useful if you have a reasonably wide range of SPD in the campaign.

I like the speed chart too, for Champions. But I've also played at least as much Fantasy Hero, and it just doesn't add that much to the game when 98% of the people and creatures in it are SPD 3, and once every few sessions you run into someone who's SPD 4. Opinions vary, of course. Another workaround I've toyed with is, for heroic games, halving the cost of SPD and putting everyone back in the SPD 5-9 range. That solves a big granularity problem and makes SPD a more interesting stat. But there are implications for END and REC that I never bothered to work out.

Regardless, on the map it would hail from "Not-Arakis", which is annoying because Arrakis is misspelled. Incidentally, what is "Kirby Space" supposed to be?

So sometimes you laugh at derision?

Oh? What is it then?

Did you know that back in the early days of the rating system, even G-rated films contained occasional swearing and nudity? And that adults would actually go and see G-rated films back then? So that the ratings system has gotten, if anything, more strict?

That's what N-ray vision is for.

Was your eclipse eclipsed?

Ow! *vomits in BlueCloud's shoes*