The Old Hack

Mrs. Prof's father went ashore with the second wave at Omaha beach that day. Unarmed, as a medic. He made it all the way to Germany, methinks. I'd have to ask again, but she's gone to bed. Let her sleep.

Sadly you need to add TT to RPG for table top RPG due to the computer games that just because they have classes and levels think that they are RPG and that, even with D&D latest growth, computer RPG players still out number table top players.  I remember when "gamer" either meant you gambled a lot or played table top games.  Less than happy that it means computer game players now.

The fact that Europe had a fairly mild winter did have something to do with that, but either way with the Nordstream pipelines destroyed Europe not getting any where near the volume of Russian natural gas as they were before. 

Russian tank identification guide for Ukrainian AFV


For those that don't get the meta joke the tank labeled as "M1 Abrams" is in fact a Leopard 2.
Also for those that don't follow the Ukrainian war daily, Russia has claimed it's destroyed multiple Leopards and has released a video of one being destroyed by a helicopter fired anti tank guided missile. The thermal image is of the tractor in the lower right. Leopard 2 have not been used in combat by Ukraine at this time

You need to re-read your "Traveller" lore.  :-)  Of course Traveller backstory is the correct future history, even when parts of it are prehistoric on Terra.

I've been ill for the past 5 or 6 days with what my doctor's physician's assistant calls a nasty cold that's "headed in the wrong direction." I was having trouble breathing over the weekend and didn't spend any time on the computer. As a result of my appointment on Monday, I've been put on 10 days' worth of antibiotics (Augmentin) and have been told to take it easy. Easier said than done.
Oh, and my weight shot up to 328 lbs thanks to the damned gabapentin that was in the pain cream my pain management doctor gave me. I was hoping that the gabapentin wouldn't cause its usual side-effects on me since it was being applied externally this time, but noooooo....
I quit the cream, and now my weight's going back down. It was 326 lbs at the doctor today. My shoulder's hurting worse, too. Sigh.

Their treatment of Hong Kong qualifies as a show stopper as well.

The protesters thought they had a chance to safely be heard because Gorbachev was visiting Beijing.  
And they protested peacefully, even coming to attention as the Army colour guard raised & lowered the flag each day.  Right up until Gorbachev left & the PRC ordered the foreign press out of Beijing.
 

It was one of the defining moments of my post military life.  To this day I try very hard to avoid buying things made in the PRC.  I'm aware that this is harder than it should be.

The Pyramids were never supposed to go anywhere.
The Sphinx, on the other paw, was . . .
Well, you know how difficult it can be getting a small cat to do what you want . . .

The fact that defending makes you use an action, vs a reaction means that The Dan has strayed from 5e, not that he said he was using that.  Protection is a fighting style that fighters and paladins get.  However Paladins don't get fighting styles until 2nd level, which may indicate the the party is 2nd or 3rd level.

 
Protection. When a creature you can see attacks a target other than you that is within 5 feet of you, you can use your reaction to impose disadvantage on the attack roll. You must be wielding a shield.

New game rules. But though George is aware of what a tank is, he is not aware whether the group's current tank can be trusted to do his job. Speaking from personal experience, just assuming that can at times be... overly optimistic.

Nope. Not a cop. I said less likely to face oppression from royalty. He is clearly aware of the inherent unfairness of the system. On the other hand, the gate guard griffin was clearly in the position of law enforcement and look how he reacted to Virginia when she showed. It's a bit like cops from our world facing a Black man with a cell phone and shooting him twenty times. I do not know how that would have ended if Liam had not intervened but I am, shall we say, not eager to bet a thousand dollars on the outcome being harmless and without injury.
Liam, I suspect, is in the position of being immensely privileged but not having the leverage to intervene directly. He may be helping the rebels because he believes he can shape the situation to reach a less destructive outcome than open warfare. It would be unsurprising if saddening if the rebels were much less optimistic about that and were preparing for violence anyway.

"The Human seems a bit upset.  He doesn't know for sure if I knocked the glasses off the desk or not.  He found the lens after only a few minutes crawling around.  He needs to keep his glasses in the glasses case when he's not wearing them" - Explorer the Cat.

 

Spices would be risky; an unfamiliar spice is not likely to be recognized as valuable. You wouldn't know the agricultural situation in the other world, and spices may be like they are now, fairly common. On the other hand, if you come from a spice impoverished realm, you might not think of that, and they are very portable.
The salt one is funny. Yes, it was valuable in ancient Rome, and you need some in your diet; if it is scarce, that is a factor. Animals look for and remember salt licks. You have to wonder why the ancients did not use large scale evaporative flats to extract salt from the sea; sea water is in relatively endless supply. If you could time travel, you could buy a couple of large cartons of Morton's (US salt brand) and go back and buy up much of Rome. I don't think that's a great item to count on being scarce in your alternate universe, but again, you might not know that if you were in the scarce salt side.
Gems in general have issues. They have to be graded. if uncut, the value is lower. If cut, they have to be cared for; they tend toward brittle, and can chip. Diamond in particular and hard, but not tough. If you drop one, it can fracture. (Diamonds are much more plentiful than the market would seem, prices propped up by De Beers marketing. If you want a notion of their real value, try to sell one back to a jeweler.)
Art and publications of any form, including card, are going to have to deal with 'What the hell is that?' (I like your idea for a Technology: the Menacing game.)
A classic car could work within our world. Make your transport part of your wealth transfer. I don't see this working across universes.
Technology can be a valuable commodity. That's likely what they want to take back.

The problem is that urban warfare is a rather different animal than urban law enforcement. I am very much afraid that the proliferation of automatic weaponry, hand grenades and more modern tactics has made it a bad time to be a horse in a place like Kherson or Bakhmut. This is not even mentioning open land. Horses might still be useful for transport, I admit, but the wise rider will keep his animal away from the front lines.
This gives me an amazing mental image of a moon base where astronaut cavalry patrols its environs on spacesuited horses.

The problem is that urban warfare is a rather different animal than urban law enforcement. I am very much afraid that the proliferation of automatic weaponry, hand grenades and more modern tactics has made it a bad time to be a horse in a place like Kherson or Bakhmut. This is not even mentioning open land. Horses might still be useful for transport, I admit, but the wise rider will keep his animal away from the front lines.
This gives me an amazing mental image of a moon base where astronaut cavalry patrols its environs on spacesuited horses.

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

To be fair to Hitler, he at least did somewhat better during his initial invasion of Ukraine.

To be fair to Hitler, he at least did somewhat better during his initial invasion of Ukraine.

I dunno, I hear that in Ukraine you can find Russian tank parts just lying all over the landscape.
Well, about a century ago -- I think it was in 1929 -- Winston Churchill was confronted with a mining strike. He was enthusiastically planning how to deal with it, a plan which included tanks, when he was informed that the negotiators had settled matters with strikers and that the miners were already returning to work. He got so mad that he threw his pen across the room.
This was of course absolutely in character for the man. I don't think he acknowledged the existence of any sort of problem that could not ultimately be solved by throwing tanks at it. His conflict seeking mindset might be best explicated by his quote "There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at and missed."

I leaped to that conclusion with both feet. Could be wrong, but OTOH, the resolution is due, and they fit the clues we've had so far. NOW it makes sense why Dan was hiding them. I assumed they were Uryoums, like Virginia.

Yeah, that's a possibility.  It's really the only one that make sense right now.