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No shit, I voted for Bill Nelson rather than Rick Scott for Senate over the Parkland package of bills further infringing on my gun rights.
So now Skeletor is pissed off that they're trying to repeal portions of it before the courts do it for Tallahassee?
Way to protect your RINO legacy there Rick.
The guy with the silver PPV had these cup-holders!
I need to hit up a couple of places to see if I can snag a couple of pistons for my own set.
We did one day of the Sick Week Drags as spectators today.
Met some fellow Australian car enthusiasts.
As a matter of fact, it does have a Hemi in it!
The PPV can be made to drag... 9.662.
The disadvantage that causes you to drop dead the moment you hit negative hit points in GURPS 4e is Fragile (Unnatural). -50 points for those scoring at home with a plan to create a Siwanis as a character.
Not quite the same as the 3eR just drops dead at zero, but very close to what I need when combined with Injury Tolerance (Homogeneous; Not horns).
The Lovely Harvey has begun her annual grapple with the US Tax Code.
This is yet another case where computers and the internet have made the task both easier and more difficult.
At least three cries of, "why would I expect my password to work twice?" have been uttered.
Every place she needs to log into has demanded a change of password and verification.
Since she has to do the verification, literally, every time she uses these sites (once a year at tax time) why even have the password?
GURPS 3eR had invulnerability, which was handy to make something, well, invulnerable.
It was:
You are completely resistant to damage from some attack form(s). Knockback can still occur, however. The cost varies according to how common the attack for is (see Absorbtion, CI p. 49, for examples of attack rarity):
Any kinetic damage: 300 points.
Common: 150 points.
Occasional: 100 points.
Rare: 75 points
Very Rare: 50 points.Note that this a powerful advantage and should not be used unless ordinary Damage Resistance truly would not suffice. Also note that this is an expensive advantage and that many attack forms have cheaper specific defenses (eg., Immunity to Poison vs. Poison, Doesn't Breathe vs. gases, etc.).
Special enhancement: The attack does not cause knockback. +20%
Expensive in this context is also 1/3 cheaper than 4e for the normal starting character too.
4e GURPS Update says:
InvulnerabilityThis advantage no longer exists. Buy a very high Damage Resistance and/or specialized Immunities instead.
This came up because I just restarted doing the Fantasy Bestiary conversion and there's an Arab critter called a Siwanis. It's like a musical cape buffalo without all the gregariousness the cape buffalo is known for... The way you kill it is to target its horns. They're well armored and hard to hit, but a mere 15 hits kills the beast. Hitting it anywhere else is pointless. 4e tells me to use ordinary Damage Resistance to make this thing invulnerable... But how far do I take that?
I hate this situation where, if I specify a DR, I have just made a "use more dakka" situation.
Do I scale it for a fantasy character? Because a fireball can be pretty damn big in 4e.
Should it stop a tank round? I like mixing genres, so making it immune to 120mm APFSDSDU would be needed. Though a HEAT round might just blow them horns right off...
One reason I set out to do this converting was to learn the differences in the rules and to make sure I could make every monster with a defined rule as written effect.
Right now I have it as DR 7,000 (Tough Skin). That should keep the typical fantasy group from killing it.
I need to figure out the special rule that keeps the 15 hits to dead from being treated like 15 HP and all the effects on movement and consciousness. I found it once, but...
There's two Roman words for sword.
Gladius which is latin for sword. It's probably a loaner word from Celtic.
Spatha which derives from a Greek word for broad bladed and morphs into several Romance languages word for sword. It also is the source word for spade.
I love that style of house, but they're all in places I don't wanna live for one reason or another.
I have been free of the wretched hive of scum and villainy which is AR15.com for two weeks.
I've actually read some books in the mean time.
Creative juices are flowing that had stopped.
Who knew that would happen.
Except for like five people who have no other way to get hold of me, I wonder how nice life without Facebook would be. I once took several years off from that place.
A legit BM-59? Not a parts kit?
I am so fucking in.
Just need to sell a couple kidneys, liver and all my blood.
You only need one liver, right?
Though it looks like their BM-59 is missing the grenade sight and the bipod. Deal breakers. Just like not including the stripper clip guide... I'm looking at you James River Armory.
I've only been working on it for 20 years...
I've got the GURPS: Bestiary 2nd edition for 3e completely converted to 4e.
I've got 15 pages left of GURPS: Fantasy Bestiary. Maybe 45 critters.
Some of the blogs on the sidebar have been moved from one category to the other.
My cutoff for moving to the "used to entertain" section is going idle for a year or longer.
A couple have even moved back to the normal blogroll by posting regular like again!
More are gone than have returned.
I have also deleted a couple where the old link is dead, but the blog is at a new address and I had both listed.
Willard suggests we replace nitrogen with helium for executions and I suggest using a full chamber instead of a mask.
Even if it causes horrible pain on the condemned, it's going to be funny as fuck listening to their high, squeaky cries of anguish.
To make the next oil change on The Beast as simple and easy as possible...
It takes two gallons of oil each change, and to save money I buy the 12 quart wine-box.
Measuring 8 quarts out of this box proved tedious.
So I bought a 2 gallon gas can.
I figure I can fill the gas can with new oil and be very close to the correct level.
Since it's oil and not gas, I have no need for the Al Gore approved pour preventing spout and have converted it to an older style one.
When I started gutting the gasoline emission features for future oil use I discovered that my BRAND FUCKING NEW gas can...
HAD GASOLINE IN IT!
Not a lot, but some. About 1/32" deep in total.
Someone used this can and returned it and Wal Mart put it back on the shelf.
That has to be safe.
The o-rings for the washer fluid filler neck seemed a bit weak, so I ordered a replacement neck.
The new o-rings are a MUCH snugger fit.
I now know what I have to remove to get the angle on the tube to get it into the hole and seated.
1. Filler neck bracket.
2. Air filter box. See important note below.
3. Unplug the driver's headlight capsule.
Important note: Never remove the mass air flow sensor from the filter side; always disconnect the downstream connection.
This leaves a gaping hole that you can get your whole torso into and reach around the radiator to get at the reservoir's inlet.
You read that right. Reach around the radiator.
The washer fluid reservoir is in the front bumper.
I know!
Now I need to get some washer fluid to see if the obvious leak was the only leak.
Update: No leaks apparent after ten minutes.
They snuffed a murderer with nitrogen gas yesterday.
The media is, almost uniformly, calling nitrogen toxic.
But it isn't.
You're almost certainly breathing it right now! I say almost certainly because there might be readers who work in places that use a pure oxygen atmosphere or a helium mix.
Toxic is poisonous. Nitrogen isn't poison. Again, 2/3 of what you're breathing right now is nitrogen.
Our murderer died from a lack of oxygen. It's what hypoxia means.
It's not even that something changes about nitrogen if the concentration increases.
He'd have still died if we'd replaced the oxygen with helium and left the concentration of nitrogen alone.
It's the lack of oxygen.
We don't call water toxic when someone drowns, for example.
The other day I noticed a pool of washer fluid under The Beast.
The problem was the fill neck had come out most of the way of the reservoir. The tube was in the mouth of the tank, but the o-rings weren't. So if you filled the tank, once the level got to the bottom of the tube, it just poured out.
Slipping the neck in all the way, seemed simple, but I couldn't quite get the angle on it.
To get a clear line of sight meant taking the driver's side headlight out. To get that out you have to remove the bumper... Nothing complicated, but enough of a chore that my inherent laziness prevented me from overcoming "start project" inertia.
While looking at it again, I wondered if I could get the angle with the neck removed from its bracket.
The answer is, "YES!"
There's no guarantee that it won't still leak, but it's got a better chance than just the tip in the hole with both o-rings outside.
A modeler noticed that the muzzles of the Vickers MG's on his Sopwith Camel were on the wrong side of the barrel jackets.
Looking at the pic, you can see the guns are completely upsidedown, including charging handles on the "left" side of the gun.
I noted that the handles are, correctly, facing down despite being on the wrong side of the gun.
I am now reading about how I am wrong because a ground gun's handles face up. Like the handles in the instructions, actually.
Look at those handles, facing down into the cockpit in this period photo of a Camel cockpit.
Guess what is being used to refute that photo!
A photo of a model.
A photo of a restored plane with dummy guns.
A photo of a model with MG.08's and a Fokker charging system in a Camel! This same someone even said the Vickers and Maxim are identical... Except they aren't. Very VERY similar, but not identical and there's more distinction between the aircraft guns than even the ground guns.
I use an NAS box to store files.
This is handy because we use laptops for most stuff.
My laptop is running Ubuntu.
When I got the NAS it was Ubuntu 20.04 and everything worked fine.
I upgraded to Ubuntu 22.04 and things took a turn for the odd.
Listed in the network list was "NAS Box" and "NAS Box (AFP)".
"NAS Box" wouldn't take the login and passwork, but "NAS Box (AFP)" did.
Kludge works, drive on!
The connection to "NAS Box (AFP)" would drop at random and take several minutes to reconnect. Irritating, but not insurmountable. Nothing critical either.
Last night there was a Linux update to Ubuntu and all of a sudden "AFP Not Recognized" shows up when I tried to connect to "NAS Box (AFP)".
Being monkey curious, I tried to connect to "NAS Box."
Login and password accepted, drive mounted!
This is what it was supposed to be doing, but wouldn't since the upgrade to 22!
Happy dance!
I am intrigued, but will prolly limit my fermented fish sauce to the Lea and
Perrin's variety.
Sounds a lot more palatable than Surströmming; which isn't bad if you decant it properly and like strong fish.
I've cooked with Thai fish sauce before, and that small bottle lasted years; until it got broken. A little went a LOOOOONG way.
The best John Moses Browning guns are from after he's in the cold, cold ground.
The M1911A1 morphs into the .38 Super Gov't Model.
But "his" best design is the Grand Puissance.
This gun was brought to fruition by his apprentice, Dieudonne Saive.
Saive lacks the name recognition that Browning gets, and two of his designs get accredited to Browning. The Grand Puissance and "Baby" Browning.
Never mind that Mr. Saive also begat the MAG; still in wide service.
I forgot John Moses Browning's birthday.
Again.
It's more post-worthy if I remembered.
My .380 Pocket Hammerless is just about my favorite JMB design.
If you really did spend $2,500 on a t-shirt and dockers; you are a fucking moron.
5.11 stuff is nice, but it ain't that fucking nice.
Shadow, being a kitten, runs 1 or 0.
Because we're still keeping her separated from Beeper, she's confined with me at night.
1.5 hours dead sleep.
1 hour "LET'S PLAY!" "And if you don't play, Monkey, I will disassemble your laptop kinetically."
1.5 hours dead sleep...
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
This has been my sleep schedule for the past... uh... when did we get the little demon again?
Don't worry, I am not in her way.
Rachel Maddow says that electing Trump will be the end of politics.
PROMISE?
I think she thinks that's bad.
I am so sick of politics I've been posting tabulations of TL3 and 4 GURPS ranged weapons in great detail rather than listen to the tripe.
But can end politics just by MAGA?
Sign me the fuck up!
Today is the 20th anniversary of me signing the mortgage on my house.
Go me!
It's a 30 year note, but we've been paying a little extra principle every month, so we should be paid off sooner than 2034.
Harvey noticed that we've both lived here, in this house, longer than any place else our entire lives.
I looked back at where I've lived and I don't think I can call myself an Iowan any more.
Just 13 years, total, in Iowa. 10 in Illinois. 2 in Minnesota. 2 in Germany. A year of other places, most shorter than 6 months.
26 in Florida. I've almost lived longer in Florida than I've lived any where else combined.
Before this house, my previous record for staying in one place was the 8 years in Bolingbrook, Illinois; and that was through the end of 4th grade.
The longest stretch in Iowa was 7 years and I didn't live longer than a couple years at any given address.
I appear to have finally defeated the wanderlust.
Daniel Defense has acquired Hudson and has a new version of the H9 coming out.
Skipping to the important part: $1,299 MSRP.
Colion Noir likes it.
For the price, it'd better be great!
But for the street price of three Glocks?
Is it substantially better or just marginally better?
Daniel Defense, you wanna send me one to review?
Not a single fantasy game I own has an arming sword.
That's not technically true. They all have one.
None of them call it an arming sword.
It's a broadsword or a longsword.
There's entire books on why those labels got applied and why they are considered incorrect today.
Everyone should make an M16A4 clone.
Don't forget the accessories out front!
Do some aiming and pointing for a while and then switch back to your normal AR.
You will be shocked at how light and pointable your normal AR is now.
Think of the kittens!
It should be noted, before I start wandering here, that all the various kinds of swords we have put names to were just called "sword" in their day. Most of the names are from archaeologists attempting to sort out the timeframes of grave goods.
Oakeshott typology is probably the most famous way to sort what GURPS will call a "broadsword" and D&D will call a "longsword."
GURPS has a list of swords that are all "broadswords" under the rules.
The D&D 5e equivalent to "broadsword" is "longsword" and it covers a wide variety of side-arms. Perhaps more because the "versatile" tag means it can be used 2-handed; which would imply bastard sword is included.KhopeshBroadswordLarge FalchionPataShotelBastard Sword (used one handed)DaoEstocHook-SwordJianKatanaLongswordBackswordCavalry SaberEdged Rapier
This is a continuation from 4e where the weapons list is a bit longer, but still much shorter than 2e. I don't have any 3e books (or 3.5e books for that matter).
2e was longer than AD&D.
D&D, starting with 4e makes a distinction between "simple" and "military" weapons. 5e calls the distinctions "simple" and "martial."
With how over-the-top inclusive Wizards of the Coast went, I cannot but wonder if these categories are from the thinking about "assault weapons" among liberals.
The historical divide over some weapons is related to sumptuary laws in that you needed to be of a certain social rank to have them.
Cost wasn't the only reason a peasant didn't have a sword in many places.
But ahistorically egalitarian D&D can't make the common/noble distinction and still have adventurers, so...
I'm amused to note that 2e has a firearm, an arquebus. It also adds the rapier. 4e and 5e don't have guns, but keep a sword that was developed from guns driving armor off the battlefield.
Warhammer FRP is even more consolidated, most everything is a "hand weapon"
Hand Weapon: This broad class includes one-handed axes, swords, clubs, maces and hammers. These weapons are all comparable in use and effect, and no distinction is made between them in the rules.
Yet it still has a rapier...
Pathfinder 2e follows the same pattern as D&D (shocking! I know) but breaks the falchion out from longsword and still has a separate bastard sword.
Rapier without firearms again...
LBB Traveller has guns, so many guns...
Sword is the one handed, all inclusive sword. Broadsword is a two-hander. Cutlass is loosely defined enough to include a rapier.
Top Secret might have rules for swords, it definitely has rules for throwing them...
Top Secret SI has a "sword".
Looking for different weapons because I've become stuck in a rut on every character sheet is something I've done before.
Amusingly, much of the time there wasn't much difference in the game stats.
A Galil in T2K is a heavy M16. It's a heavy M16A1 that does a little less damage has a little less range in GURPS.
9mm pistols are pretty much all the same with small variations in mass and capacity.
I got chided for always having a 1911, Hi-Power or Glock 17 on my character sheet depending on the game.
So one day I took a S&W M&P .38 revolver for a private detective character.
I could have knocked them over with a feather!
Discovering that the lowly sling is a valid weapon in GURPS against Smedley The Orc got me to looking at other weapons on the list that I would not typically buy for a character.
Then I was wondering if some of these weapons were also valid in D&D.
Getting a spear instead of a sword is one example.
This feels like the same moment when I realized that the bog standard mail I'd been buying for my character might not be the most cost effective option.
If you're going to advocate for GURPS, you need to say, "Hi, my name is Angus, and GURPS once sucked."
1e and 2e are very similar and they aren't very good.
The promise of a better system is there, but it's not realized.
In 2e you could make, almost, anything you could imagine but didn't quite have the tools to convert a different imagining to GURPS.
This was, mostly, fine for me because I've made up everything from whole cloth a bunch of times.
But play was clunky. There were obvious gaps where should be rules. There were even a few places where there were rules when there should be gaps!
3e went a long way towards fixing things and realizing the promise of the original game.
But things started to... bloat... from there.
Every world book and supplement had additional rules. Rules which were often contradicted by another world book or supplement.
It took major work to keep them sorted out. Squabbles occurred when someone would prefer the solution from one supplement and someone else preferred a different solution. Both being published and official rules for the game we were playing right this second.
3e (revised) plus the two Compendium books consolidated most of those extra rules and eliminated almost all of the contradictions.
Once characters were made, 3e and 3eR play very smoothly.
But there were still strange things. If you wanted to fly like Superman, the last place you'd start is by buying "Flight". You wanted to custom make a flight like power out of telekinesis. It was a LOT cheaper.
The similar Hero system had something like this too. There, if you wanted to move quickly clinging to the wall like Spiderman, you didn't buy clinging; you bought flight with the limitation, "must touch surface".
4e consolidated things again. Some of the optional rules from the compendium became core rules but the real change was the advantages becoming effect driven rather than process driven.
Flying is now flight, regardless of HOW you fly with some modifications to account for how. Flight is flight now.
Hi, my name is Angus and character creation in GURPS has always sucked.
It's not difficult. It's cumbersome.
It's cumbersome because there are so many choices to make.
There are many choices because there's a lot of detail.
The good news is, once the choices are made, the actual play is simple.
The bad news is a player new to GURPS is going to be needing a lot of hand-holding to make a character that can do everything they're expecting their character to do.
Worse, a player new to the very idea of role playing won't even know what they're expecting of their character and will completely miss essential skills and advantages while crippling themselves with disadvantages.
4e's character templates help a great deal here, but there's still a lot of choosing to do.
Class based games, like D&D, shine at character creation because most of the choices are pre-made for the player and the class also informs the player what their role in the party will be.
Admitting this is the first step to recovery.
I've been a staunch advocate for GURPS for nearly 40 years now.
I've endured a lot of people who've clearly never played it dismiss or insult the system the entire time.
Certain phrases keep cropping up.
One that's certain to raise my ire is "story driven".
What's story driven?
That's when the story is in the driver's seat and the players get to make a limited choice of actions; none of which affect the course of the plot.
The GM is letting the players add some color to their story, not the players making their own.
The counterpart is "character driven" and that's the characters in the driver's seat and the GM "simply" provides a space for them to run amok. The players call the tune and make their own story.
Wanna know something?
They are both game system independent.
You can be story driven with ANY RPG. You just need a GM to sit down and write one, then insert the players into their world.
If you prefer one system over another, that's OK, but don't think that it's inherently better for your preference.
My preference falls from having a setting in my imagination that cannot be presented with rules carefully tailored to a single setting.
Once I'd learned GURPS, I discovered that its toolbox could be applied to the settings with the tailored rules.
Remember that "for nearly 40 years"?
I also remember changing rules every time we changed setting. We had at least four different rule sets for fantasy settings along the way.
Sorting out the details and differences of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, from Chaosium Basic Roleplay, from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying from Rollmaster Rolemaster was NOT easier than converting them all to GURPS.
And those were JUST to play fantasy worlds.
Aside: To anyone bitching that GURPS is too complex and hard to play, try on OG Rolemaster someday. It's got rules and a table for what you want to do, in one of those books, someplace...
We quickly found that we could play in any of those settings using GURPS, but often couldn't play the setting from one fantasy RPG using the rules from another.
They were too setting specific.
But the road to GURPS wasn't paved from trying to run Warhawk with Chaosium.
It really started when a player in Twilight: 2000 tried to get a sword. Years before GURPS came out.
The thing that cinched it was the "reality check," or as I've said here a couple of times, "Will it GURPS?"
The challenge: Without writing new rules, take a real world situation and play it out in-game.
Over and over GURPS has succeeded and other games failed.
Aside: I am sick to death of people dismissing or condemning GURPS when it's obvious they've never played it. I've been doing this a long time and I have seen all of these arguments before, almost to the word, and the person struggling with the rules will phrase it differently from the person repeating criticism that hasn't applied since the very crude 2e rules were in print.
What GURPS is, to me, is a way to tell MY story without making my own book of rules to supplement the published text and having learned its subtleties, found that I no longer needed to learn a different ruleset every time I wanted to tell a different story.
At the end of the day, what I think the real problem is for most people is that GURPS doesn't come with a setting. The GM has to, literally, make up everything from scratch and gets nothing pre-made for them. That will include informing the players of what kind of characters they should and should not make.
The player is presented with more work as well. For many, GURPS will be the first time they HAVE to make a choice about everything on their character sheet.
I've guided a lot of players through this process and the "HAVE" to make these choices often becomes "GET" to make these choices when the GM du jour goes "story driven" and they have to make a D&D character and find many of the things they want to do are precluded by their character's class.
PS: You do need to LEARN other rulesets to port their settings to GURPS. I've done it many times. Its main strength is that you CAN.
What if Goliath was wearing DR 4 scale?
Lobbing a stone:
Heavy Sling $20, Shots 1(2), 2d cr, 36/72; 2-12 raw, 0-8 penetrates, 0-8 damage (average of 3)
Sling $20, Shots 1(2), 1d+2 pi, 72/120; 3-8 raw, 0-4 penetrates, 0-4 damage (average of 1)
Dart Sling $20, Shots 1(2), 1d+2 imp, 72/120; 3-8 raw, 0-4 penetrates, 0-8 damage (average of 2)
Staff Sling $20, Shots 1(2), 2d-1 pi, 120/180; 1-11 raw, 0-7 penetrates, 0-7 damage (average of 2)
Sending a lead bullet:
Sling $20, Shots 1(2), 2d-1 pi, 144/240; 1-11 raw, 0-7 penetrates, 0-7 damage (average of 2)
Staff Sling $20, Shots 1(2), 2d pi, 240/360; 2-12 raw, 0-8 penetrates, 0-8 damage (average of 3)
Clearly, I've been underestimating the value of a sling in GURPS, they're better than bows much of the time! Especially in the confines of a dungeon.
"E85" at the local station is anything from 52 to 83% ethanol.
Doing the test drive to Tampa now!
Update:
E85 ($2.429/gal) with 62% alcohol indicated by scanner gets 20.5 mpg.
Normal 87 octane unleaded ($2.929/gal) is 26.5 mpg.
Ethanol Free 89 octane ($3.519) is 28.7.
With current prices, E85 and Ethanol free are 12 cents a mile.
Regular is 11 cents per mile.
With the factory tune, none of the fuel choices offers more power or acceleration.
There's a form of Crossbow called a prodd.
The main distinction is it lobs a lead or stone ball instead of a bolt.
ST 12 Prodd Shots 1(4), 1d+3 pi, 240/300; 4-9 raw, 0-5 penetrates, 0-5 damage (average of 2)
ST 14 Prodd using one leg on the stirrup or a belt-hook $25 (Shots 1(5)), 2d pi, 280/350; 2-12 raw, 0-8 penetrates, 0-8 damage (average of 3)
ST 15 Prodd using both legs on the stirrup Shots 1(5), 2d+1 pi, 300/375; 3-13 raw, 0-9 penetrates, 0-9 damage (average of 4)
ST 16 Prodd using a goat's foot $50, Shots 1(22), 2d+1 pi, 320/400; 3-13 raw, 0-9 penetrates, 0-9 damage (average of 4)
ST 18 Prodd using a 1.5x windlass $55, Shots 1(16), 2d+2 pi, 360/450; 4-14 raw, 0-10 penetrates, 0-10 damage (average of 5)
ST 24 Prodd using a 2x windlass $100, Shots 1(23), 3d+1 pi, 480/600; 4-19 raw, 0-15 penetrates, 0-15 damage (average of 7)
ST 30 Prodd using a 2.5x windlass $155, Shots 1(32), 4d pi, 600/750; 4-24 raw, 0-20 penetrates, 0-20 damage (average of 10)
ST 36 Prodd using a 3x windlass $225, Shots 1(43), 5d-1 pi, 720/900; 4-29 raw, 0-25 penetrates, 0-25 damage (average of 16)
Just remember, dear readers, someone asked for all this in comments.
