Review of the weekly blogs.

This weeks Gaming Ballistic Blog Update is out and reading the things I came across these.
If you blog about GURPS consider submitting yours to the lst.  If you like to read about GURPS its a good weekly summary to catch up with.

Motivational Lenses
Really nifty list to help flesh out your character and why they do what they do.

Mooks Darknet game.
Session 0 where they spend time making characters and deciding the type of game it will be.

The rest had some good stuff too, those were just my personal favs this week.
Honorable mentions are the Sorcery spells from Generic Universal Eggplant and from Ostary's Tactics we have ideas on making the thief more party friendly

The Four Primary Attributes of GURPS

Some threads on the Steve Jackson Forums inspired this post.

GURPS has 4 Primary Attributes and some secondary ones calculated from those.  Other games typically have more, usually in the 6 to 10 range from my experience,

Some people think 4 is too few, others just enough.

So lets take a look.

IQ

This is the overall mental ability score and includes Will, PER and a LOT of skills are based on it.

An optional rule is to make Per(perception) and Will default to 10, because some concepts require a smart individual who is not very observant or strong willed.  And vice versa, animals are often very observant but not very smart,for example. Another item is Social skills being based off IQ.

GURPS already supports buying these scores up or down but  lowering Will and Per as you raise IQ arguably makes IQ to cheap for all the skills it raises.

• IQ [20]
• Per [5]
• Will [5]
• Charisma [5]  Not considered an actual attribute but adds to many social skills.

DX

This is the skill of coordination, agility and fine manipulation.

Basic Speed and Move are in part calculated off this attribute as well.

Some people like to break it up, and especially separate Move or Initiative from it but overall my impression is most people are ok with this one.

• DX [20]
• Basic Speed (HT+DX)/4 [5 per +-0.25 to Basic Speed]
• Basic Move = Basic Speed (dropping fractions) [5]

ST

This is most useful in low tech campaigns where you use muscle powered weapons but it also dictates how much you can carry and is used for base HP. Not many skills are based off it, so its cheaper.

• ST [10
• HP [2] Hit Points are pretty cheap but not dying is a typically popular goal of players.

HT

A few skills are based off HT, mostly the kind that rely on good endurance such as Hiking, Running, Swimming, etc.  Also one like Sex Appeal where being in good shape is a string asset. FP or Fatigue points are directly derived from HT since they represent endurance.

• HT [10]
• FP [3]
• Basic Speed (HT+DX)/4 [5 per +-0.25 to Basic Speed]
• Basic Move = Basic Speed (dropping fractions) [5]

Summary

While I understand the IQ is too cheap argument, I do not fully agree with it. Drop Per and Will what you have is 10 points to raise a lot of skills.  That makes it a very powerful Talent (normally a 10 point Talent would raise 7 to 12 skills) I think this is ok, as more than 12 skills are not likely to be core and really useful to a character in most games.

A big exception to that is Spells as skills (the default magic system) but they have their own 10 point 'super talent' anyhow in Magery.

Certainly DX skills are more valuable to most charecters as that covers nearly all the combat skills.

High attributes can create a problem with super high skills but thee are ways to deal with this as well.

• Stat Normalization: This is the optional rule of limiting stats to "realistic" levels.
• Rule of 20 (p. B173) limits defaults to 20 so superhuman attributes wont help defaults, meaning you need to put at last a point into it to benefit fully.
• Idea: Super Attribute is a +25%  (GURPS Supers, p. 23) enhancement applied to attributes above 20 to let them exceed the Rule of 20. What if you applied that and changed the rule so that score above 20 (or set lower for more gritty settings) does not apply to skills?  In other words IQ 30 counts as IQ 20 for skills unless extra levels are purchased with the Super Attribute enhancement?
• Idea: What if skills (or maybe just a set of skills, such as Social Skills) were based off 10 but gained a Trained ST type bonus (Introduced in GURPS Martial Arts: Technical Grappling) instead of being directly based off an attribute?

Overall I am happy with the GURPS key 4 Attributes as too many other games suffer from so called "dump stats", this keeps it simple but with different ways to tweak towards an infinite variety of character types. Between attributes, advantages, disadvantages, skills and talents  the player has an incredible range of affordable choices.

Early Primaries.
Texas voter turnout is up almost across the board.
Especially democratic turnouts so far which is awesome.
https://ballotpedia.org/Democratic_Party_primaries_in_Texas,_2018#Early_voting_in_Texas_primaries.2C_2018

It is looking like a lot of people are riled up. Your not likely to see this for incumbents, people voting more than normal is a strong indicator they want a change.

Trickle Down vs. Rising Tide Economics

Also called Supply vs. Demand side economics, here is a really brief outline.

Trickle Down Economics

• Basic idea is give more money to the rich and they will hire more workers, raise wages, etc.
• Corporations have some control here because they can simply raise prices. This is however limited by competition and consumer demand. The exceptions are industries with monopolies or services such as utilities.
• The GOP method is to apply corporate tax cuts, deregulation and tax loopholes such as putting money overseas.

Rising Tide Economics

• Basic idea is give more money to the working class and they will buy more stuff which enables companies to hire more people to sell more stuff.
• Workers have limited options in getting a raise, as long as someone else will take the job at a lower wage.
• Increasing effective Take Home pay is the key and this can be done through Unions, income tax cuts, raising the minimum wage, lowering medical expenses and insurance premiums and child care assistance or tax deductions. Also lowering the cost of education plays a role.

Which is better?

Both work under the right circumstances and to a limited degree.

The weakness of Trickle Down is most of the money is not spent towards growing the economy and hiring more workers is only useful if you have enough consumers wanting your goods to justify the extra expense.

The weakness of Rising Tide is business expenses go up, so prices may rise as well. Enough volume can keep that from being needed.
Rising Tide is more effiecent as the same amount of money spread between more people means more people are buying things.  As demand goes up companies need to hire more people to meet it which means more people have more money to spend, etc. The cycle does a better job of feeding itself.

Also some Progressive strategies actually help both economic models.
Medicare for All lowers employees and employers medical costs at the same time.  So business expenses go down and their profits go up and employees have more money in their pocket.  The ones who suffer here are Insurance companies and  possibly drug companies, if the government allows itself to negotiate prices the way private industry does now. Most of America wins here and it works well for all the other industrial powers.
Another factor is too many people have to work two or even three part time jobs because employers prefer part time to avoid having to pay for medical benefits. This eliminates that problem.

Tuition Free College or tax credits for education. Educated people are less likely to be involved in crime and more likely to get better paying jobs and imp[rove the country with new ideas and inventions. The cost in taxes needs to be seriously considered, but hey if we can afford to repeal the Estate Tax for the rich or Pass Through loopholes or Hedge fund tax discounts we can certainly afford it and the effect will be better for the economy.

Lowering Childcare costs is another tough nut to crack. However it would lower crime rates and promote better developed kids if they are not left unsupervised.  I have known many single parents who have to turn down some good jobs because it wont work with child care. Typically they have to pick the kids up early and often the higher pay is not enough to offset the higher costs.

Oklahoma 2018 US House Races

Oklahoma 2018

Deadline to file is in April, we need more people to take on the incumbents if were to avoid massive layoffs starting in 2019

District 1

Incumbent: Not Running

Campaign Financing for all Candidates

Candidates in order of Financing: Kevin Hern, Tim Harris, Andy Coleman. Nathan Dahm, Danny Stockstill

District 2

Incumbent: Markwayne Mullin

Campaign Financing for all Candidates

Democrats: Jason Nichols

Republicans: Markwayne Mullin, Brian Jackson, Jarrin Jackson, John McCarthy, David Smith

District 3

Incumbent:  Frank Lucas

Campaign Financing for all Candidates

Candidates in order of Financing:

District 4

Incumbent: Tom Cole

Campaign Financing for all Candidates

Candidates: Tom Cole, Mary Brannon, John McKenna

District 5

Incumbent: Steve Russell

Campaign Financing for all Candidates

Democrats: Elizabeth Britt, Kendra Horn, Tom Guild, Eddie Porter

Add Paul Ryan to the Obstruction list

I havent been happy with most of the GOP over how far they are going to protect Trump.
With the Nunes memo we now learn that Paul Ryan was cooperating in the conspiracy against the United States with Carter Page. Thanks to the GOP everyone now knows how long Carter Page has been under survelence, including those potentially working with him.  The GOP did not succeed in discrediting the Meuller investigation but they did send out a warning to others possibly involved so thy can run or destroy evidence.
Go back and listen to Carter Pages interview last October. He said he expected Speaker Ryan to release publicly info on the FISA warrent on him and the Dossier.
Lock Him up!

The GOP  has decided to go all in on attacking the FBI, DOJ and the FISA judges (Which last month both Nunes and Ryan voted to continue as is and said it was vital to our national security for them to be able to spy on Americans) and for what?
Another publicity stunt!
That is all the memo is. its the opinion of some of the GOP on the House committee. They hid a lot from us and are afraid to let the Democrats on the committee have their say.
The bias in the memo is clear and we know from media reports that a lot of flags had been thrown up on this, including by the Australian government.
Honestly, just listen to this guy talk and you can understand wht the FBI was watching him.
Maybe Trump was not working with Russia for help with the 2016 election.
However there is so much here that bears investigation it would be criminal not to.
Carter Page, Stephen Popadapolis, Mike Flynn, Paul Manafort, Jeff Sessions, Betsy Devos, Blackwater, Jarad Kushner, money laundering, refusal to sanction Russia, The meeting with the Russian Lawyer, and more.
If Trump was actually innocent he would not have gone this far and made all these pathetic cover up attempts.

Carter Page
Listen to some of the other interviews this guy gave.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGohRTrY1rw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJUNvtC_Qqc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzm_AVBWO84

Why Medicare for all is a win for America

Watch this if you care about Medical Costs.

It was a good Town Hall, far more then any other sitting Senator or Congressional Rep would care to do.
Medicare for all would..

• Reduce business costs as employers would no longer have to spend so much time, money and staffing to handle company based insurance,
• Reduce lost productivity since their employees would be healthier.
• Save workers money paid towards premiums.
• Raise employee and likely business taxes but STILL mean each pays less annually, and get rid of copays and time lost while waiting to see if they will cover a procedure.

Who wants it or something like it?

• The Left wants Medicare for all because its the moral and christian thing to do.
• Medical Providers (Other than Insurance and Drug companies) want Medicare for all because it saves them money and hassle.
• Businesses want Medicare for all because it saves them LOTS of money.
• Workers should want Medicare for all since employers can more easily higher full time people.
• Workers should want it since wages could go up.  Ok, they may not but its the same logic as giving tax cuts and hoping they use that money to increase wages.
• Older workers who are often let go and discriminated because of their age. Insurance companies try to discourage companies from hiring older workers.
• Women who are discriminated against.
• Vets who are also discriminated against by insurance companies.
• Taxpayers who will save by reducing all these bailouts and cut back on related expenses.

Who does not want Medicare for all?

• Banks who profit from foreclosures from medical bankruptcy.  This is the number 1 reason for bankruptcy in the USA.
• Drug companies who make billions off scams with insurance companies.
• Insurance companies who profit off your pain and suffering. They take your money for premiums then try everything they can to avoid paying the bills they promised you they would take care of.
• Some Conservatives who feel the old way is always the best way and fear change.
• Politicians who rake in billions from Banks, Drug and Insurance companies