The Old Hack

This is actually one exception to my 'scam' call in my previous post. If I could figure out how to charge telemarketers calling me like I had a 900 number, I would happily listen to their rambles.

This is why I use the Force. None of all this overcomplicating claptrap, just a few simple basic rules: Through conflict comes passion. Through passion I gain strength. Through strength I gain power. Through power comes victory. Through victory my chains are broken. The Force shall set me free.

It means it is a phone company scam they like to offer to places that have a ton of incoming calls, like information centers or public services offices. They get the plan for next to nothing and can call out all they like while the people who call them for help get fleeced. Since inbound traffic for such places is invariably much bigger than outbound, the company offering this 'bargain' makes a mint off it. I guess this means Signor Mlunatico has a lot of inbound calls offering him stuff to buy.

<3

And here I thought you just posted here because you love us

Tough luck. Get a different mutation.

Thank you. And yes, that last sounds entirely reasonable. I have in fact at times sat down hard on my urge to say things for this exact reason. Calming down and analysing them for later, sober discussion seems like the better idea here. Or alternately, venting at someone you trust who is better able to handle the overflow.

This truly massive and execrable joke had so many bad things about it that it still astonishes me that there is something out there that qualifies as 'much, much worse.' One of the tables was a radiation-caused mutation table. From this you could get uncanny results such as: "Good Housekeeper." I can just see the latest mutant to join the X-Men, the amazing Lysolator. He can sweep through any home and in a matter of mere hours clean it so it sparkles, reorganise the kitchen more efficiently, organise all the books according to the Dewey system and do all the laundry, and best of all, even get rid of the dust in hard to reach places like behind the kitchen hardware or beneath bookshelves and armoires.

*snicker* Bad ijuin. No Internet.

Thank you for sharing that link. Interesting article, it gave me a good deal to think about, and I am grateful for that. As to not finding a girlfriend, it took me more than thirty years to find one. On the plus side, she turned out to be a really good one and today I am married to her.

Yeah. Sometimes you just can't help that. Jealousy is not an emotion I am proud of, but for a long time I felt it strongly in connection with my older and by far more successful brother. This was also due to certain sibling problems we brought with us into adulthood. And it can poison relationships badly. It took long years before I was finally able to begin laying the resentment I felt to rest. But when I succeeded, it made a huge difference for me. I truly hope that if Tedd does feel that way, she will find a better way to deal with it than I did.

This is truly brutal. While we knew or suspected most of this, we finally see Tedd let all her frustrations out about it. I am so very thankful Elliot is there with her. He is the one person Tedd trusts enough to vent at without wanting to hold back because of other reasons. (Yes, I believe she also trusts Grace that much, but I also believe that she would want to avoid letting her full fury land on Grace because she knows how much this upsets her. Grace has problems of her own, and to Tedd's great credit, she does not want to aggravate them.) I noticed that, too. I wonder if it is in part because she is letting so much emotion show and moving so energetically that it is stretching her clothes, making her body shape stand out more. It could also be magic, of course, the sheer power of her emotions affecting her mark and her shape. It could be either or even both.

We played the crap out of that game. Then we got GURPS Car Wars and for a while we roleplayed the crap out of that instead. I miss these times.

This... actually sounds worse than that absolute mess of a roleplaying game someone released way back in the nineties. At least that was mainly bad due to horrible rules. It featured such brilliant rules as "each player could only create one character ever" and it was possible to die during character generation. So one reviewer said that he would like to have reviewed the game but couldn't because his one character ever died during creation. There are many terrible games out there. It frightens me to think that there is one which is actually SO MUCH WORSE that it lies far below even the execrable standards of the rest.

My most heartfelt condolences, Critterkeeper. I am so sorry. My thoughts go out to you and your family.

Join the AADA instead. Be safe. Drive offensively.

Please, Professor. We may have young postal workers on these forums.

It depends a bit on the version. They made a somewhat simplified one a while back. But at its height, good Lord yes.

He did, yes. It is not as stark a contrast as, say, dark brown on pink. More like a light red on pink. This is of course in reference to melanin-poor skin types. It might be a different kind of distinction if, say, Greg was marked. (Hypothetically speaking. For all I know, he counts as Awakened.)

I tried hard to make sure that it wasn't all just bad jokes at the expense of my players and in general we had a lot of fun. I did like to make quirky villains. I had a pirate villain inevitably named Jolly Roger. One of his widgets was a stuffed parrot sitting on his shoulder. All it did was serve as a radio for him but my players were as if hypnotised by the ridiculous thing. Every time they fought him they ALWAYS spent an attack on blasting it off his shoulder. Every. Single. Time. And since that was its real purpose -- tricking enemies into wasting an attack on shooting it instead of him -- I considered it a grand success, ablative armour for the character. Of course, he wasn't a very powerful villain, so the players always beat him anyway. I didn't mind. My game philosophy has long been that I in general would rather make my encounters a bit too easy than a bit too hard, as long as they are creative enough to ensure everyone is having fun. Then when I do drop a hard encounter on my players they know that I mean it and start thinking.

The first time I ever saw the COOP brand was on a tray of eggs in the supermarket. Ever since I have imagined them as a sinister megacorporation operating out of a gigantic chicken coop.

Champions was fun for absurd powers. I once made a villain called the Michelin Man. You can guess what he looked like. One of his main powers was that he made his targets easier to hit. He accomplished this through making them grow bigger (Aid to Growth) linked to a Strength drain that could only drain extra Strength gained from Growth. Effectively his targets got all the disadvantages from getting bigger but nearly none of the advantages (better reach being the sole exception.) His power worked through a huge bicycle pump he was carrying around. He would attach the hose to his target and then vigorously pump, blowing them up to a much bigger size. My players hated him.

To clarify: It does not matter what WE think. Tedd thinks the danger is real. That means, for all practical intents and purposes, that to her it is.

Ah. Yes. I can see that. This sounds frighteningly plausible in Tedd's case. I am very glad she has Elliot to support her.

You are not alone. Tedd has had her entire rug of dreams and ambitions yanked away from under her and she has to deal with this on top of everyone else. What is strange is not that she is making plans for a worst case contingency but that she is dealing as calmly with it as she is.