Saturday, July 29, 2017

PLaylists

So I just finished going through a LOT of videos and organized them into some play lists.
If you subscribe to a list you will be notified when I add more items to that list.  I have subscribed to many lists and turned on notifications for my daily news so I dont have to go looking.  I hope that maintaining my own list will help save some time for others.  At the very least it will save me from piling up the bookmarks!

Gaming

RPG Tips: For Players
RPG Tips: GM Advice and Resources includes everything from GM tips to map making tutorials and how to come up with names and languages.
GURPS Videos  is a list of videos that include book reviews and game sessions, as well as  a number of tutorials and other useful things GURPS related.
Theme Stuff is a short collection of music that might be good to play as mood music.

Politics

War of America is a collection of videos, good and bad that I think are important social issues going on.
Trump is a list for things that tick me off about the current administration and I use these in tweeting to my legislative reps or activist posts.
Health Care is about various news or educational items related to Health Care.
Climate and Environment is about Climate change and things we need to pay attention to if we want to continue have quality air and water.

Adventures, Campaigns, Encounters, and Quests.

On the GURPS forums we have had a recent re-occurrence of a sort of per-annual topic which is how to make GURPS more popular.
One thing that comes up is GURPS needs more adventures, then the conversation gets side tracked with what is an adventure and what kind of adventure do you really want and why.  So here I go over some terminology.

Encounters

These are typically one shot events, often random encounters or just a distraction or obstacle. An Encounter usually takes very little work by their GM. Typically you pull a foe or group of foes from the bestiary or other appropriate book and fight a single battle.

Adventures

These are a bit more involved and may be played over multiple sessions. Typically a map is involved and several encounters and obstacles in the way of completing some task.

Quests

Typically a specific type of adventure where an NPC assigns or requests the players go accomplish some specific task.

Campaigns

A long running campaign consists of multiple adventures and encounters. A Campaign may be a few months or last several years.

Settings

This is a world and includes the background but is run as a sandbox and no pre-planned campaign or adventures.  Games run in a setting are likely to involve the latter but it is not part of the initial material. Especially for example a setting book., if it is it is a very optional part of the material.

Friday, July 28, 2017

GURPS Game Videos

So on the SJG Forums Mook (Author of How to be a GURPS GM) posted some links ot various GURPS Games that are on video.  These things exist for a variety of RPGs and can be both entertaining and a demo of a game.
In compiling this list I was surprised at just how many are out there so at some point I started to create my own playlist here


Reviews and Tutorials


Interviews

Thursday, July 27, 2017

How can anyone trust thisWhite House to be able to handle anything with even a small degree of competence?

Scaramucci is inept.
I wonder if he will last the weekend and if he does it shows yet again how inept the White House really is.  I mean asking the phone call to off the record it would still have been stupid to say but toi forget that key detail?  And this is a communications Director?

His quotes ranked

This is actually kind of funny but after the laugh is over its scary to realize these guys are in charge of the country.

Senator Graham remembers that the government was set up to be a check and balance against abuse of Power.

Senator Graham came out against the firing of Jeff Sessions today
Senator Sasse and Senator Grassley reportedly also came out against the idea.
I wish my Senator James Lankford (forget the useless snowball Senator Inhoffe he cant get his head out of the sand) would do the same.
Additionally Graham says he will introduce legislation (I'm sure Trump will veto it) to protect special prosecutors in the future.  Good news for America, at least a few GOP members are stepping up to their responsibility.

Democrat vs. Republican: A study in Ethics and Morality

Readers of this blog may think I hate the Republicans and like the Democrats.
That is only half true as I hate both parties.  Not all individuals in both, but overall both stink.

However the latest GOP attempt to pass something, ANYTHING along the lines of repeal for Obamacare (The Affordable Health Care Act) shows the hypocrisy in a dramatic (though not the only) way.
Republicans screamed that not enough time was taken to discuss the AHCA and that it was passed without bi-partisan support.
The AHCA was debated in the senate for a month and numerous GOP amendments added to it.  This after taking about a year to pass through various committees, being scored by the CBO, and public exposure and discussion.
And now?
Republicans have been screaming for repeal and Replace for over 7 years yet never bothered to actually work on a plan.  If they had we would have seen it by now.
Instead they keep coming up with rushed plans behind closed doors where not even all party members get to carefully examine it before voting on it.  They deliberately exclude and dont even try to get Democratic support. Granted getting support to repeal a bill that you passed and so many of your party sacrificed for would be a tough sell but to not even try?
Further after failure after repeated failure the GOP Senate decided to just call for a procedural vote on a bill none had seen just so they could check a box.
Understand that this is not actually passing anything but it is a step towards it. The idea i to vote quickly on whatever Mitch McConnel wrote and try to hash it out in reconciliation between House and Senate leadership. Democrats are expected to try and push amendments in order to slow things down enough that people will have a chance to read it.

Do you understand the difference here?
Democrats worked on trying to make health care better for over a year and let the public and Republicans look it over and put in amendments and comments. Their President asked them to take a stand for making Health Care better (not perfect but it did slow down premium rate growth and saved lives) and they fell on their swords and many lost their seat as people did not really understand what was really going on. Democrats suck at messaging compared to Republicans, witness how much more popular the AHCA is now after Republican attacks and people have a chance to see the real benefits to them compared to GOP plans.
However now that they have the power the Republicans refused to do the homework on crafting a bill (7 years and nothing to show for it?) and keep trying to sneak something past not only the Democrats and the American People but others in their own party as well.  They violate everything they complained about before.
Republicans have demonstrated they are short on ethics, morality, and commitment.

Right now many want to pass something, anything so they can go home and aid they kept their promise to Repeal and replace.  They forget they also promised to make it better and transparent.
What they did not forget is to cut taxes to their wealthy donors.

I hope people remember what happens here and hold them accountable.  Though they are trying to procrastinate and pull one over us by pushing out most of the damage for two years.
So they hope to get reelected because people wont realize the costs in time.

In summary both parties are full of problems but at least the Democrats are less bankrupt than the Republicans.  Lets replace them all by voting in fresh faces at Brand New Congress!

Trumps Thashes about to try and distract

I have been worried about and telling as many people as I can, including my legislatures that Trump is willing to damage and possibly even destroy the the country to distract people from his crimes and poor poll numbers.
Consider the latest effort, banning and removing Transgender  people from the military. Imagine fighting for the country in say Afghanistan and you suddenly hear you may be forcibly discharged from the military, Possibly losing all benefits you earned from your service and possibly facing felony charges depending on how they go about that discharge.
Why?  Money? Congress was already looking at exempting medical expenses from their benefits (Hint: Make it up by having Trump skip a visit or two to his resort and tax subsidized property Mara Lago).
What about his shameful speech to the Boy Scouts? Was it self aggrandizement and his typical bragging and mud slinging?  Or was it another effort to distract us?

Now it is true that so far none of these and other efforts are very effective, firing Comey did not stop the Russia investigation and if he fires Sessions and Roesenstein in efforts to stop Meuller even the cowardly and sycophantic GOP will likely step up and reenact the Special Counsel/Prosecutor law.
At least I hope so.

However even though he has had more resignations and firings than any other President in history at this stage we see little more than lip service by the GOP. Even though we have plenty of evidence of actual crimes we see stalled investigations as the GOP continues to protect him because they have chosen to put party ahead of country.
At some point they will realize its not working and even if they dont change priorities they will see that this attitude will cost them the power and seats they so crave.
I have informed Senator Lankford, Senator Inhofe and Rep Lucas (my legislative reps) that they are encroaching on becoming accessories after the fact and violating their oath of office.
Everyone who cares about America needs to do the same.

Elected officials need to realize and be reminded that they work for the People not a few ultra wealthy or corporate donors. Lining their pockets by selling out the country will eventually cost them.  It is up to us to see if they get away with it in this world or have to wait till they come before God.

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Health Care talk

So confused about Universal Health Care, Medicare for all, or a Public Option?
This is a good explanation.
Here is another

A Public Option is a reasonable compromise as Insurance companies will still exist but they will be forced to be competitive or get out of the market.
However Universal Health Care is more where I think we need to go.  Lot of options on how to pay for it.  I think basically payroll taxes like we currently use for Medicare and our employer based insurance.
But the republicans will have to cave and allow it to negotiate prescription drug prices which they dont like and is the requirement they placed on Medicare and Medicaid.


The Free market bit tht republicans want will simply never work.  Health Insurance is something everyone needs but needs mot when they do not expect it.  And if you do not have enough the tax payers and hospitals eat the cost.  So it shuts down rural hospitals and medical care and bankrupts millions of Americans and small companies.

DNC proves yet again they have learned nothing

So this story where the DNC used barricades to block access to Nina Turner.
They still have not learned and despite the rhetoric just proved yet again that they are not changing.

We need to kick them out and get in people who will work for the people not corporate donors.

The Uncivil Party, GOP are becoming more the party of Fascism and Authoritarianism and leaving Democracy and Patriotism behind.

Senator
Wow, listening to TYT today and this article about the Pentagon spending more for Forest Camo uniforms than desert camo so someone could benefit financially really hacks me off.
We all know there is lots of government waste but it is extra enraging when that waste actually hurts the country and in this kills kills more soldiers.

Senator Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) said he would be happy to take his fellow Republican Senators outside and shoot them.
We had a GOP rep body slam a reporter in Kansas during the last special election.
We here in OK had a GOP house rep tell his constituents to just shut up because they don't pay his salary.
We have had a couple of cases where the GOP had reporters arrested in the past 6 months.
Finally we have the vast majority of Republicans refusing to hold Town Halls.

The GOP can no longer be considered the patriotic party, instead they are the authoritarian and fascists party.

Lets see what they do over the next week with Health Care.
Meanwhile democrats are raising more money and candidates than ever before at this stage of an election cycle.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2017/07/24/does-the-opening-predict-a-wave/?utm_campaign=Brookings%20Brief&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=54625936

Adding Rep of Buddy Carter Georgia thinks someone should go over to the Senate an "Snatch a Knot in their ass"  Not sure what that means but it does not sound civil.

Monday, July 24, 2017

Huge Dem response

Watch thiscvlip, the key item is about 10 minutes in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luqyEECcY9c
That is a huger number of fresh faces.

Random Dungeon and cave generators!

SO a post on the GURPS Forumsaskingabout charecter sheets got me looking at Myth Weavers.
This site is a nice resource for a GM.
Dungeon Generator  and Cave Generator make useful random maps.

There are some other items here but those are pretty useful for any game system.

Sunday, July 23, 2017

Updated GURP Setting page

Made a few minor updates to some pages.  The main GURP update is reorganizing my Settings page and dded a few thins to it.

Thursday, July 20, 2017

Jeff Sessions under fire for doing the right thing

I don't think Jeff Sessions is a good guy.  I think he is a misogynist and a racist.
However recusing himself in the Russia  investigation was the right thing.
The Dictator in Chief however has been pretty mad about it.  In his mind its all Sessions fault that he is under investigation for the Russia mess.

The bit about he would never have hired him if  he knew he was going to do that tells us a lot about Trump.  It makes it clear that he thinks of the Attorney general as the Presidents lawyer not the countries lawyer.
I think Sessions should stay and rough it out.

I would hope, but of course don't expect the GOP to stand up and protest in mass if he is forced to resign.

Rep Steve King, another traitor to the USA

Listening to yet another GOP member try to deflect and provide cover for Trump.
He made it clar he would rather go back and re-investigate Hillary again over her emails than deal with Trumps Russia issues.
These people need to be removed from office!
I get partisan politics and why they want to blame the other guy for everything but at a certain point you have to step up and put the country ahead of your party and political agenda.
Now I don't defend Hillary, shes corrupt and has lots of problems.  However she had her day in court and its over. The Great Obstructionist Party went after her for years and came up with nothing to convict her on.
STOP rehashing history over a politician who has made herself irrelevant.

And his crack at Obama makes him deserve to be shot for treason.
Could Obama have done more? Yes, Should he? Probably but he did try and the Great Obstructionist Party stopped him. They REFUSED to team up for a bi-partisan complaint over Russian meddling and call for tighter security.  They REFUSED to take the issue seriously and to this day thier dear leader still says nothing to see here and it was some guy in a bed somewhere, or maybe Chinese, or maybe whomever. Republicans did not want to help and now they are culpable.  Had President Obama gone out on his own it would have been the brave thing but it would have backfired and they would have roasted him over it on air.
We ALL know this.


Where is the red line? At what point will the Greed  Over Patriotism group finally step up?

Just look at the public record, the things the average American can see for themselves.
President Trump is guilty of violating the Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution.
He is gettign pay for access and DOUBLED his membership fees for his resort Mara Lago and meets with foreign officials there and shows them off to members.
He golfs almost every weekend and uses the weekends and even the White House website (till he was forced to take it down) to showcase his properties and add value to his brand at taxpayer expense.
He is guilty of money laundering for the Russian mob.
He is guilty of obstruction of Justice and witness tampering and intimidation.  Ok he is incompetent at it and has not succeeded so far but failing does not absolve you of guilt.
His defense of his sons meeting with Russians was that its ok because nothing came of it is not a true defense, nor is it true that anyone would have done the same. Al Gore turned his into the FBI and the gal who tried it with him is in jail.

At what point will these people finally step up and act?
At this point they are supporting and aiding and abetting criminal actions against the United States of America  When will they stop?
When will Trumps loyal base of 35% of America finally have had enough of this?
They waiting for him to get on with his promises? Willing to sell out the country as long as they get what they want?
If I cant appeal to their integrity and patriotism how about their sense of entitlement? He WONT do anything for you!
He has proven and does so every day that he cares about no one but himself.  His inability to stop bragging about himself and stop blaming everyone else but himself for things that go wrong and his inability to stop tweeting stupid shit has erased any chance he had of getting anything done.
A REPUBLICAN controlled congress is still unable to pass any major legislation, 6 months  in.  they are incompetent and so used to obstructing they have no clue how to work together to get anything done.

The Trump supporters and the GOP leadership must step up and start working for the country instead of themselves. The rest of us must vote or otherwise remove them from office at the earliest possible opportunity before they destroy the country.

You stood by while he accused a former president of a felony.
You stood by while he lied to everyone about his connections, even as evidence continues to mount.
You stood by while he wastes taxpayer money and lines his pockets.
You stood by while he takes money from Turkey in return for holding up on supporting the Kurds against ISIS.
You stood idly by and provided cover while he fired investigator after investigator, First Yates, then Bahria, then Comey.
You stood by while he tried to intimidate and threaten witnesses against him.
You stood by while he tried ot intimidate the director of the NSA and CIA into talking Comey down.
Your standing by while he lays the ground work to destroy the credibility of the entire DOJ.
Will you continue to stand by when Jeff Sessions and Rob Rosinsiten are forced to resign?
Will you stand by when he gets rid of Meuller?
Will you stand by when he gets us into a war to get his poll numbers up and provide another distraction?
Will that finally be enough? Though of course by then it may well be too late.

At this point the GOP is guilty of aiding and abetting after the fact, those who did not know about this ahead of time.  Right now I feel your morally and ethically guilty.  At what point will you be legally guilty?
I know your all rich white men so wont ever get charged or go to jail.  That does not make it right, it just means you will get away with your crimes against the country.
Hopefully God will take care of you on the other side.




GURPS Broken Into Pieces

GURPS is at its heart designed a a modular system.  Pile up all the parts and you have an overwhelmingly large and even unwieldy system.  However almost no game is designed to work that way. Instead you pick and use just the pieces that are appropriate to your campaign.

Pick Your Attributes

GURPS has just 4 core attributes, DX and IQ cost 20 points a level and HT and ST cost 10 points a level.  You start with a base of 10 and add or lower the attributes based on your character idea.
Brainy type? Up the IQ level.  Athletic? Up DX for a gymnast, coordinated type, HT for the long distance runner or ST for the strong muscleman. Adjust each to taste and within your point budget not random die rolls.
Higher point games are for more impressive character types.

Calculate Secondary Attributes

Secondary attributes include Basic Speed, Move, Basic Lift, HP, Perception, Will, etc.
These are based on your attributes and you can buy them up or down to adjust to get the type of character you want.  
Smart but head in the clouds so does not notice much? High IQ but buy down Per.
Not very bright but animal like senses? Low IQ but high Per.
Coordinated but not able to move very fast? High DX but buy down your Move (yards you can move in a turn) or even Basic Speed (Initiative and Dodge).

Tweak With Talents

Talents represent someone with a general aptitude. The basic set includes a handful and GURPS Power Ups 3: Talents includes a lot more and how to build them.
They can be for someone who is good with plants or animals, or maybe a natural hacker.  talents are not needed but they allow fine tuning and are cheaper than buying up core attributes.

Choose What You Are Good At

The last part of this process is deciding what skills or advantages you have.
Skills represent things anyone can do with the right training.
Advantages are special abilities, some you have to be born with, some could be trained (Improved memory or ambidexterity).  This is where GURPS really shines in allowing you to fine tune a character but the sheer number of choices can be overwhelming.
The GM should pair down the list and there are tools like the trait sorter that can help as well as free PDFs or the index in the back of GURPS Basic.
For any given campaign you only need a fraction of these abilities.

Flavor and Getting More Points

Finally we have Disadvantages, Perks and Quirks to round things out.
Perks are very minor advantages and Quirks minor disadvantages for 1 point each that are mostly flavor.
Disadvantages are things like One Leg, Blind, Overconfident, Duty, etc that limit you in some way but also give you points in return to buy other stuff with.



That is really all you need to build a character in GURPS.

Though I do support this idea by T-Bone

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Trumps Money Laundering Connection

An article in The New Republic called "Trumps Russian Laundromat" makes good reading.  It is well sourced and revealing in just how far back Trumps Russian connections go.
Included sources include not only public statements from his sons but from Trumps own book "The Art of The Deal".
So tell me again why the GOP offered this man as the best the party had to offer?
Why do they continue to support him, no matter how many things keep coming out the GOP just keeps sticking to their support of Trump.

At waht point do we call the GOP to account for this?  In the beginning they could claim they made a mistake and were ignorant.  However every day that gets harder to believe and by continuing to provide excuses and aid in covering up his crimes, refusing to call him to account for the crimes already proven, or impeach him to protect the selling out of the country the Republican party is more and more culpable.
At what point are they criminally liable for conspiracy to defraud the United States, aid and abetting and accessory after the fact in his violations of the Emoluments clause?

Al Gore had someone approach him with info but instead of taking the meeting he called the FBI and the lady is now in jail.  But Trumps lawyers and members of the GOP say this time it was ok, and in fact if there was anything wrong it was up to the Secret Service to stop it.

Republicans were up in arms over China Gate and now complain about the Ukraine, however because this time its a Republican its all ok. Why are ANY of these things ok?
The GOP simply cares more about their party than they do the United States of America.


Plain and simple we must get rid of the people now in charge and replace them with new and honest people. Check out Brand New Congress.


Monday, July 17, 2017

GURPS Adventures

GURPS Third Edition had quite a few adventures, GURPS Fourth Edition nearly as many.
Of course Third Edition material is over 90% compatible with Fourth Edition.  The stats are mostly the same with just the point costs being different in several cases.

I personally have little use or desire for adventures.  To me NPC or monster stats, including equipment loadouts are more useful.  Plot ideas and adventure seeds, especially maps are also useful.
However others want single adventure, quest chain type adventures or even campaign meta plot type adventures.
What do you think and want?
Feel free to comment here or on the forums thread here.

Linked Page

Sources

Misc

Sunday, July 16, 2017

Broken Care Reconciliation Act

The Grand Old Party is so stuck on the idea that they have been promising to Repeal the AHCA for the last 7 years that I think they have lost sight of what they actually promised.
Trump ran and won on the idea of making Universal Health Care and the GOP has been promising something better, with lower premiums and better coverage.
The concepts they are focusing on instead are...

  • Taxcuts for the wealthiest.
  • Taxcuts and incentives for Insurance CEOs.  Why do they need a special benefit/perk?  How is this even classic republican?  If they run a good business they should not need further incentives.
  • Free market policy.  The idea beign that more competition lowers prices and improves quality.  The trouble is that wont work for Health Care. Remember Insurance companies make a better profit if they can get people to pay premiums and no need medical care.  There is no free market concept that encourages insurance companies to provide good coverage at good prices.  They WANT people who are at risk of getting sick to go to another company and will be fighting for the healthiest part of the market and trying to avoid covering the rest. Republicans are either too stupid to understand that concept or they just don't care.  I think its more the latter.
This bill is not about, nor does it even try to improve health care.  Its about checking off a box and passing a tax cut to themselves and their donors.

So if they manage to get it passed everyone who loses coverage, knows someone who loses coverage or see rates go up faster than inflation, or knows someone who dies because if this needs to remember this when it comes time to vote again.
The AHCA was not perfect, nor even as good as President Obama promised but it was better than what we had before. Working on improving it or replacing it with something better would be the right thing to do.  However the Great Obstructionist Party has been unable (actually it looks like they never even tried) to come up with something better, despite 7 years of looking forward to this.

Saturday, July 15, 2017

Remember the good old days in American politics?

When I was growing up people voted to swap parties in power to change direction and correct for the last party overstepping.
Democrats were pro labor and the common man.
Republicans were for the wealthy and business.

One party would hurt the opposite side of the country in order to help their side.  We HAD to switch back and forth as a form of balance to gt one side from getting too much of the pie and hurting the country overall.

Now?
We vote for the opposing party to the one in power out of disgust with the one in charge and what they have been doing.
Corruption is no longer an isolated incident that is unusual. Now its the daily grind.
This is not something that happened overnight, or even with Citizens United, though it accelerated with that passage.

We must remove the majority of our politicians and do so in such a dramatic and powerful fashion that the message that voters will not longer tolerate it is made loud and clear.
Too many people do not even bother to vote out of sheer disgust and the feeling that it simply does not matter who wins.  We will just get more of the same, voting is not choosing who is better but who is less evil.
Can we do that? Can enough Americans stand up and say "We are tired of your lies, corruption and stealing from the country!"

Thje next election is in 2018 and I hope we see record turnouts at the voting booth.
But for now we must all call our elected officials and express our feelings, we must attend the town halls of those few still having them.
We will only get change if we push for it, and push hard.

Sunday, July 2, 2017

Raising the Minimum wage

Seattle recently raised its minimum wage  to $15 an hour, though it wont fully get to that level for some time.
One study said how this went the opposite of usual in these cases and actually lost jobs.
Here is an article citing specific issues with that study and how it was done.
The Journal of Labor Economics cites that increased minim wage does not increase unemployment in most cases.

The trick here is something economists call the elasticity of Labor and Demand.
Many states have a higher minimum wage than the federal level.
Another article here

A state by state review of what states have a higher minimum wage  here is interesting.
Notice something in that list?  Those states are the among there wealthiest around and have the strongest economies.
If you raise the minimum wage you have a lot more people able to spend money, especially younger and poorer people who are more likely to spend it.  This has the opposite effect of Laffer Economics aka Trickle Down Economic where you give taxcuts to the wealthiest in the hopes they will invest it and create more jobs.  We have seen several attempts at this since the Reagan era and it fails every time.
        So why do Republicans favor it?
Why does a party based on conservative values that is against welfare for poor people want it for rich people?  Why does the GOP "Grand Old Party" give loophole after loophole for the rich and tell the poor to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. That they should buy Health Insurance rather than an iPhone.
That These religious leaders..

are some better than these ones...
Think about it for a bit.  This whole thing is why I left the Republican party.  It use to be they were the party of the wealthy and defense while the democrats where for labor and civil rights.
However after Jerry Fallwell sucked them in they have sold out and lost their way.  Now truth be told both parties cater to the wealthy donor class and largely ignore the regular voter.
But the hypocrisy of using God to promote yourself while not following his Word ticks me off more than anything else.  Read your bible and you will see that what is going on is not what it teaches.