unclevlad

In many cases, details equivalent to "name 5 Civil War generals" in the fantasy world don't much matter in advance, so I get where Duke's coming from. To get started...genre and expectations. Genre: fantasy, sci fi, modern tech, modern street-level supers. Obviously build parameters here too. Expectations...we'll specify a fantasy setting: --magic: common or rare? How many people can do it all all? Separately, how many people can do it *seriously*? What about enchanted items? If magic is rare, do the common folk accept it or fear it? For full-time magical practitioners, are their SFX generally narrow or broad? An elementalist (fire, water, earth, air) is still narrow by comparison to, say, a D&D wizard whose magic can encompass any class of power/effect. --religion: complex or simple pantheons? Are there major factions? Major animosities, a la, Crusades-era Christianity and Islam? How much does religion influence daily life? --large-scale politics --races and racial politics, at least the basic info That should be enough to get the outline built, assigning most of the combat points. Background specifics will probably need more info but I, as a player, won't know what specifics...so asking the GM to know all of them ahead of time is unreasonable. Some? Yeah...like, a simple pantheon will probably be fully defined, whereas a complex pantheon, maybe not. Quick aside...I think my favorite religious setup is Bujold's Five Gods books. Father (judge, law); mother (medicine, household); Son (battle, hunting); daughter (youth, spring, new life); and the Bastard (too complex to explain quickly...not an evil god at all, but one that's expiated as much as worshipped). Belief...almost universal. Bujold has a very nice funeral ceremony showing the soul of the person has been accepted, which answers a HUGE mission of any religion...what happens after death? And it's otherwise pretty simple and straightforward, not overly bogged down with excessive trappings of portfolios and whatnot.

No, because it's useless against anyone with balanced, regular defenses...and mostly useless as long as the defenses are pretty close to each other...so it's only "AVLD" when they're notably skewed. But in that case...yeah, it's pretty similar. Which is the issue raised earlier, that it feels very metagame-y.

What a CLASSIC NFC East matchup!!! Ebb and flow based on who made the last big mistake... And the Giants made MULTIPLE mistakes on the last drive, but the last was the worst. Heinicke moves WFT, with help from a Giants offsides (and the Giants calling their last TO to avoid too many men on the field, stopping the clock)...long FG attempt. Always right. Hold on! You ask for a miracle, I give you ...the New York Giants. OFFSIDES!!! Five yards game can't end on a defensive foul, so an untimed down. Kicker slips it a couple feet left...it was nice and straight, and snuck inside the upright. Credit to Heinicke...big time raspberries to the Giants. AGAIN. They SHOULD be 2-0, but they have perfected the art of snatching defeat from the jaws of Victory.

Smart weapon that shifts between PD and ED? HOW? There's one SFX combo where this can work because they're so closely interrelated...electricity and magnetism. A magnetic ball is, for me, physical defense; electrical is obviously energy. But that's also SUPER specific. And I usually, as noted, do that with MP slots, or in a VPP. I don't think it's metagaming because it's costing you damage. This is an effect that *would* impact DCs, I believe because it modifies defenses. Even if not, it's costing you active points for, at most, VERY marginal effectiveness...but if it's impacting damage caps, or decreasing the damage added from other aspects...it's completely not worthwhile. And I've said before...the system has too many options and tries to do too much now. Adding another advantage needs solid justification, IMO, and it definitely isn't here.

Oh dear. Was doing a few things, not paying attention to the TNF. Come back to hear Joe Buck saying lower leg injury..."bad enough that we're just not going to show it to you." More bad memories associated with that phrase...or similar ones where they *did* show the injury (Theismann)...ugh. Just...ugh.

Whoa... I'm not fond of many modern comics; the style today doesn't sit well with me that often. But Norm Macdonald was an exception. Dry and understated and often pointed. He died today at 61, from cancer he'd been dealing with, it's reported, for some time. Bummer.

Just spotted as ESPN's betting show starts. Current odds to win the SEC: Alabama 10-17 (you'd have to bet $17 to win 10) Georgia 2-1 Next best was 15-1.

Oh. My. Gosh. NFL Live is discussing tonight's junk matchup. Dan Orlovsky just FLAYED the Giants' offense. "I love watching tape...but not Giants tape." "What's the definition of insanity...doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. That's the Giants...doing the same thing over and over and over." "BORING." "A good coach puts players in positions to succed. Jason Garrett puts his players in position." Brutal.

Depends on the acre, and the degree of self-sustenance you're anticipating. On the Jeopardy! move...that seems like the best call they could make, considering. You know Jennings, at least, is going to do everything he can to help right the ship; this has been a total screw up.

I can't see a problem with balance offhand; but, describe the power SFX. I'm not sure it makes sense. If anything, I'm not sure it'd ever make that much sense to apply, either.

Definitely better him than me. Does capture the state of the program post-Carroll. OK, this is one writer's opinion, but it RIPS!!!!!!!! Helton...and hiring him in the first place...painting him as Simply Not Ready To Be A Head Coach. https://saturdayblitz.com/2021/09/13/usc-football-top-candidates-replace-clay-helton/ The article points out a number of factors like penalties. So I'm looking at the Stanford game stats: --USC had more first downs, yards, and time of possession, but... --Stanford scored on their 2nd possession on an 87 yard run. Poor pursuit lanes, poor positioning on defense. --Just saw this...USC's KICKER gets ejected for targeting on the opening kickoff --USC has 9 penalties for 109 yards...and PI in college football is never spot of the foul. So that has to be multiple 15 yard penalties. --USC was supposed to be the ranked team, at home and they got taken to the woodshed. 42-28 doesn't indicate how bad it was...it was 42-13 before garbage time scores. So if the article has merit, then I can see where maybe there was just another repeat of things.

That might literally be true, but it's meaningless. Land isn't usable for residential purposes for many reasons: --agriculture/food production --parks and national forests --environmental issues (flood zones, tidal zones, swamps) --unsuited to development (unstable ground, a lot of mountain terrain) --in the desert southwest, water is a SEVERE limitation --ecological/habitat concerns And I'm sure there's others I'm not registering right now. PLUS: there's a huge difference between housing and land. The single family home isn't the only reasonable model for residences.

They tried. Unfortunately, this isn't that surprising. I can hope the school districts can win in the end, but I don't expect it.

A song by the Silver Bullet Band...in COORS???? Probably every time a visiting team yanks a reliever, mid-inning...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/15/sports/olympics/fbi-hearing-larry-nassar-biles-maroney.html High points: --*multiple* gold medalists testified at a Senare hearing into the GROSS mishandling of the Nassar case by the FBI. --the current FBI director apologized quite profusely and called the failures totally unacceptable. Abuse was reported by multiple team members...and nothing was done by the agent taking them. Which sure as HECK makes me ask, WHY NOT??? Something like...oh they're just brats, or even, oh, the way they flaunt, they're asking for it..... I don't know but I would LOVE to find out, and while the guy has been fired, what the story says means a simple firing is *nowhere near* adequate.

No, but he is an Excitable Boy.; Of course, if it was at Coors, the right song (at least from the fans' perspective) would be Thing to Do in Denver When You're Dead.

I come at the literal question from a different angle...as it stands now? The answer is No. The problem is coming up with a replacement approach.

So terrible. My deepest sympathies.

Q. Did you have to have an extra serving of the refried beans?? A. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Ohio is a sharply mixed state; there's multiple good-sized urban centers but a LOT of rural territory. The rural areas are where this is happening; the story gives a graph of vaccination rate versus voted for Trump, and the correlation is scary good. Overall, Ohio's in the middle of the pack in terms of full-vaccination rates. Both sides are lying with statistics, of course. The headline makes it sound worse...those 66 (of 88) counties account for how much of the population? The overall rate misses the fact that large swathes of the state...like many others...are lagging behind badly. The ranking number alone...Ohio would be 30th of the 50 states...blows up very MINOR differences...Ohio's rate is 49.3%. 8 other states are within 1% of that. We're still at the same question we've had for multiple months: how to convince the skeptics to accept the vaccine. They've proven too intransigent to accept the ongoing cost, so........

We can rephrase that a bit. Some years back, I saw a good definition from D&D. An encounter is anything where success or failure has consequences. That's a great definition that's completely system-agnostic. And it leads to the rephrase: when you're not in an encounter, VERY FEW limitations are actually meaningful for PCs; for the bad guys, they become plot devices quite often. And note that an encounter doesn't necessarily imply you're running on phases, or at least not explicitly on phases. A B&E to search an office and hack the computers there for information isn't on phases as far as the PCs know...but failing carries various risks.

Sure, but those questions are only meaningful if the action is still in combat mode, on phases, mostly. If it takes long enough to be on non-combat time, then once he's back up, the rest of the recovery will happen. An exception is if the Regen's bought as Resurrection only...then the question of How Much BODY? is significant. This is another argument, of course, for nailing down the process in the first place, if it can take place fast enough to still be in combat.

Helton's first full season after Sarkisian, they did go 10-3 and finished top 5. Might make a better case to point the finger higher up. Haden canned Kiffin in an extremely public and embarrassing manner. Then there was the confusion...Orgeron took over and went 7-2, only to NOT get the permanent job he likely deserved at the time. And letting Sark have it? What had Sark done at Washington? I also don't see how Sark "ruined" the Huskies, given that he started with a team that'd gone 0-12 the year before, and 5-13 in conference the 2 years before that. Granted, he couldn't get past mediocre...but that made USC's choice to hire him that much more questionable. Now...unless you mean the point about USC hiring Sark *during* the season. Yeah, that's bush league, but got to put that on USC and Haden as much as you put it on Sark. And while I hate it...poaching coaches between the end of the regular season and their bowl game is very, very common. (It may be that my attitude here was mildly influenced by the 1978 Colorado Buffs, who hired Chuck Fairbanks away from the NE Patriots *mid season*. Then the team utterly imploded, going 7-26. It was not a good period....)

Edsall's record was horrible. In his 3 years (17-19) this time around, he was 6-30. Now maybe he would've lasted longer...but when he comes out and says "this is my last year," well, what reason is there to stick with him? You might be right that they have someone in mind, but it's a horrible time to try. Who are you gonna get right now? Also: Kiffin got canned by Pat Haden, who's gone...and who, IIRC, was pretty roundly criticized for how he handled it. IS USC still a top-tier job? Or is it another one where the light shining on it is mostly reflected glory from decades ago? And, to be sure: Pete Carroll's time. But since he left, they haven't been the same at all. Flip side, of course...all programs have down periods. The overall serious weakness of the conference doesn't help. Lack of major TV exposure...West Coast so bad time slots, a terrible conference network...and practically NO representation in the playoffs by any team in the conference make it look like, at best, a 2nd-rate conference. That's a hard sell.

And the context made it SO much worse. GW TD called back on review, 1st and goal at the half yard line, made it 2nd and 6. They DIDN'T score. But on the flip side, give the Raiders credit for forcing the turnover and coming back...once to tie at the end of regulation, then to get that GW score. Can you spell "coverage breakdown'? I knew you could. Welcome to week 1. And a boatload of injuries, as I understand. Anyone else note that the networks put both stadium debuts (with actual fans in the seats) in prime slots? Typical Broncos. Undefeated and tied for last.