Annoying Questions I'd Like Answered...

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Sun Nov 25, 2012 3:02 am

Nah, the Onion is too liberal for his tastes. He probably thinks that Prickly City is a true story, though.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Sun Nov 25, 2012 11:56 am

Whether the USA or the USSR get to be the good guys of the Cold War depends mostly on how many kilonazis any given action is worth. How does someone killed early stack up compared to someone forced to live in poverty and/or oppression before dying normally? How many regular deaths is one dude tortured to death worth? Is toppling a democratic ruler a crime in and of itself, or is it only indirectly bad because of all the other bad things that necessarily happen in the process? If so, how bad of a crime is it, again, not taking into account any of the deaths, torture, or oppression that may or may not be a direct result of the toppling? And so on and so forth. It's a grizzly calculus to answer a stupid question, so the right answer here probably involves less history and more punching the sort of people who provoke these sorts of questions in the first place.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun Nov 25, 2012 11:52 pm

I was thinking it'd be worthwhile for arguing with them, because you could point out numbers in different categories or whatever. But you're right, it's not like they'd listen - the CIA could have murdered everyone on the entire planet and the USSR could have just been one big housing program for sick children and puppies, and they'd still be steadfast in their opinion.

Yeah, the punching is the best option.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Mon Nov 26, 2012 1:32 am

What would be the short-term month-to-month economic impact of a privately held corporation making 200 billion dollars a month in net profit and just stuffing that in a non-interest-bearing checking account without reinvesting it in anything?

erik · Post by **erik** » Mon Nov 26, 2012 4:43 am

hyzmarca wrote:What would be the short-term month-to-month economic impact of a privately held corporation making 200 billion dollars a month in net profit and just stuffing that in a non-interest-bearing checking account without reinvesting it in anything?

For these purposes, I'm presuming that whatever bank is holding that money is doing jack squat with that as collateral to make their own lending/investments. Basically, the money is stacked and stored in a giant warehouse. Essentially like that 200 billion/month disappeared from the economy.

The level of impact would depend upon where the money was drawn out of the economy. If it was spread out over the entire U.S. it would suck as that is 2.4 trillion dollars over a year... but mind you our recession amounted to something like 50 trillion lost over a few years, so that number is not necessarily apocalyptic. Now if it were more localized or happened to a smaller country that could fuck everything up right proper.

That's also a stupidly large amount for a single corporation to be making in net profit. Apple has been going balls to the walls with huge profits and they're shy of 1/20th of that.

Averaged over the course of a year that's 1.3 trillion dollars that isn't circulating. That's 1.3 trillion dollars that could be spent to employ say 32,500 people at 30,000/yr+10,000 in benefits. That's people who will basically be spending all that money again and helping keep other people employed as well, in addition to funding the government with taxes.

That money is going to circulate and create many times the benefit of just the first time it is spent something like 6-18 times that amount.

So you'll actually be seeing far, far more than 32,500 people go from being net drains on society to being net positives if that money was spent. And the opposite if it is not spent.

So by holding onto a shit-ton of money, you're basically keeping that money from circulating and thus denying businesses to employ people with that money and for people to spend that money, thus costing thousands upon thousands of people employment that they might otherwise be able to attain.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Nov 26, 2012 6:47 am

erik wrote: Averaged over the course of a year that's 1.3 trillion dollars that isn't circulating. That's 1.3 trillion dollars that could be spent to employ say 32,500 people at 30,000/yr+10,000 in benefits. That's people who will basically be spending all that money again and helping keep other people employed as well, in addition to funding the government with taxes.

Trillion is three orders of magnitude bigger than billion. You are missing three digits off that unemployment figure. Should be 32.5 million people out of work.

So by itself, such a monetary draw would increase unemployment by 10.5%. Plus the associated knock-down effects of businesses going out of business going out of business all across the country.

-Username17

erik · Post by **erik** » Mon Nov 26, 2012 6:54 am

Oh shit. You're right. I used a spreadsheet and left off three zeroes.

The Vigilante · Post by **The Vigilante** » Mon Nov 26, 2012 7:40 pm

Of course, the problem with this scenario is that as long as there are investment opportunities (private or public), banks will always tend to lend up to the legal limit within their jurisdiction, or trade excess reserves on the interbank lending market. Which goes a long way to explain the present liquidity trap situation.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Mon Nov 26, 2012 8:55 pm

erik wrote: That's also a stupidly large amount for a single corporation to be making in net profit. Apple has been going balls to the walls with huge profits and they're shy of 1/20th of that.

If's from a mega-corp RPG, based around starting with a few hundred bucks and exclusive access to some alien super-technology.

At this point, 100 billion of it comes from a global monopoly on medical cybernetics and a 50 billion of it comes from a global monopoly on telecommunications infrastructure, excepting a few last mile providers that we couldn't be assed to gobble up. The rest comes from miscellaneous stuff, mostly military contracts, including a monopoly on man-portable laser weapons. Also, we did hostile takeovers of Microsoft, Apple, and Google, which are now wholly owned subsidiaries.
200 billion a month is what we have left to stick in our sock drawer after we pay for the super-secret illegal shit like our army of brainwashed fast-grown clones disguised as a PMC, cyborg spies, AI tanks, and a stockpile of multi-gigaton fusion bombs.

I'm fairly certain that the only reason that we haven't been hit with anti-trust actions yet is that the global economy would collapse without us.

Some of the other players are concerned that continued patenting of alien-derived technologies might damage economic competition. I don't think they properly appreciate how far that ship has already sailed.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Mon Nov 26, 2012 9:10 pm

why are you not being murdered in your sleep?

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Mon Nov 26, 2012 9:11 pm

why has no government taken you over yet?

The Vigilante · Post by **The Vigilante** » Mon Nov 26, 2012 9:37 pm

Is it fun to play Accounting & Dragons ?

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Mon Nov 26, 2012 9:49 pm

well, i could see it working in shadowrun for example . . player owned and operated corporation, high profile jobs done by the players or the players hiring other runners for stuff to do . .
i think "krass, eon and the fat guy" did something like that to hillarious effect . .

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Mon Nov 26, 2012 10:05 pm

sabs wrote:why are you not being murdered in your sleep?

Because we usually sleep in either a secret underground nuke-proof bunker informally known as the doomfortress or a secret space station in the Ort cloud and have an AI looking out for us. Someone recently detonated a low-yield tactical nuke into our main office using a brainwashed employee as a suicide bomber. Terrible devastation, but it didn't do anything to the secret underground levels where all the Cobra Commander shit is going on.

Stahlseele wrote:why has no government taken you over yet?

A very good working relationship with America's MIBs, huge illegal campaign donations, lobbying, and PR blitzes. And we saved Detroit from Armageddon, so that helps. We're politically unassailable Michigan, and quite popular everywhere else. We've got massive programs giving out free cyber-organs to the poor, too, which I presume our PR firms make good use of. And we're actively spending 50 billion a month to keep the shittiest parts of Africa stable and using out PMC to prevent any genocidal civil wars from flaring up. So we're quite popular on the Dark Continent, too, not that this matters much.

The MIBs think that we're sharing all of the alien tech with them and doing joint research (we're actually keeping most of the really good stuff for our private use). We've saved their assess and are playing by their rules as far as anyone can tell and are very friendly with them. We've got enough evidence to blow the secret wide open if they come after us (not to mention the Cobra Commander shit that they're unaware of) and fighting the aliens is more important than fighting us, so we get a pass.

The Vigilante wrote:Is it fun to play Accounting & Dragons ?

It would be more fun if the GM updated more often, but yes. Though it isn't Accounting and Dragons so much as it is XCOM and Dragons with a side-helping of X-Files and Dragons. It's more XCOM due to the rapid pace of reverse engineering and tech development, but we've still got the massive conspiracy stuff and several looming alien invasion by multiple groups of hostile aliens.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun Dec 02, 2012 3:44 am

So for characters that are effectively proficient with every weapon ever (Jesters, Soldiers with a Human Stance), what exotic weapons are cool and have some actual use that makes them worth playing with?

We all know that people were amazed by spiked chains ten years ago. I suppose mancatchers/scorpion claws can be good for grappling, and then there's that special maul used by the "bigger than minotaurs" in MM4-5 that just have better numbers.

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Sun Dec 02, 2012 4:30 am

Improvised and/or oversized weapons are the way to go, for Jesters at least.

A friend of mine ran a game with a Jester BBEG who carried around a Colossal crossbow (so basically a siege weapon.)

At low-mid levels it would actually be extremely powerful (this was a level 10 game, so 6d8/attack at an average attack bonus isn't actually that big when save or dies are coming online.)

There's also much fun in killing people with spoons or something.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sun Dec 02, 2012 4:39 am

A Jester could also go upside heads with bigass Comedy Mallets.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Mon Dec 03, 2012 10:26 am

Maxus: That's pretty much how I played my jester. If you feel that's underpowered, use your poison handling skills to coat the thing with some drow poison. yeah, the dc sucks but the effect of failing a save on that it's pretty damn hilarious.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Mon Dec 03, 2012 9:26 pm

Is there a site somewhere that does analysis of the capabilities (technological and otherwise) of various Sci-Fi and "Sci-Fi" {stories/series'/universes}? (i.e., not just Star Wars and Star Trek)

EDIT: Ideally with nice graphical representations, like is done with ship sizes.

e.g., "This is how many Earths they could blow up"
"This is how far they can hit a minivan-sized target from with a starship"

ModelCitizen · Post by **ModelCitizen** » Mon Dec 03, 2012 11:14 pm

Cynic wrote:Maxus: That's pretty much how I played my jester. If you feel that's underpowered, use your poison handling skills to coat the thing with some drow poison. yeah, the dc sucks but the effect of failing a save on that it's pretty damn hilarious.

New annoying question: how does one get drow poison? Admittedly I haven't tried to figure this out since like 2003, but as far as we could figure out it came into existence through a drow racial ability + MTP. Is there a market price or craft DC for it?

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Mon Dec 03, 2012 11:37 pm

RadiantPhoenix wrote:Is there a site somewhere that does analysis of the capabilities (technological and otherwise) of various Sci-Fi and "Sci-Fi" {stories/series'/universes}? (i.e., not just Star Wars and Star Trek)

EDIT: Ideally with nice graphical representations, like is done with ship sizes.

e.g., "This is how many Earths they could blow up"
"This is how far they can hit a minivan-sized target from with a starship"

I dunno about sites that can do that, but whenever I am reading/playing/whatever a sci-fi story with a sufficiently well developed universe and lore, I generally like figure out that stuff myself.

Example: I made a chart (a long time ago) comparing the various power levels of various Transformers. I then made similar charts for Bionicle, Megaman, Firefly, Star Trek, Star Wars, WarCraft/StarCraft, and Spelljammers. I used similar criteria to what you gave (the "This is how many Earths they could blow up" for example).

This was all based off of what I had seen, read, and watched about the various IPs. For the TF one, Galvatron was on top; Bionicle it was any dude who could wield gravity; for Megaman (this included the X series and other spin-offs), it was Zero; for Star Trek it was the Borg; for Warcraft, it was either Gul Daan or that demon dude that Gul was looking for (I can't really remember); and I forget what I got for Star Wars, StarCraft, Firefly, Spelljammers (Giant space hamsters, that's what I got).

Then, for shits and giggles, I wrote a story where all the things at the top of the charts had a big fight and they all ended up getting eaten by Unicron.

This probably isn't that helpful to your question.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Tue Dec 04, 2012 1:43 am

RadiantPhoenix wrote:Is there a site somewhere that does analysis of the capabilities (technological and otherwise) of various Sci-Fi and "Sci-Fi" {stories/series'/universes}? (i.e., not just Star Wars and Star Trek)

EDIT: Ideally with nice graphical representations, like is done with ship sizes.

e.g., "This is how many Earths they could blow up"
"This is how far they can hit a minivan-sized target from with a starship"

The best site you can find for that is the Spacebattles.com forum. It doesn't have easy charts, but it does have a bunch of anal-retentive assholes who will spend time measuring pixels frame-by-frame just to prove that they're "right".

http://forums.spacebattles.com/

If you want to compare two sci-fi civilizations just post a topic, either in the general (for general comparisons) or the versus (for who would beat each other in a fight). There will most likely to heated arguments, especially when a universe is wildly inconsistent about it's power levels but those arguments will give you a general idea of a universe's capabilities. At the very least, you can get least you can get a ceiling and a floor based on the best and the worst firepower and range showings.

If you post an extremely lopsided fight by accident, people will quickly point that out, too.

Basically, just go to the general forum, post a topic asking what X setting can do, and you'll probably get an answer shortly, unless the setting is really obscure or unpopular.

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Tue Dec 04, 2012 1:45 am

DOITDOITDOITDOITDOIT!

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Dec 04, 2012 1:14 pm

ModelCitizen wrote: New annoying question: how does one get drow poison? Admittedly I haven't tried to figure this out since like 2003, but as far as we could figure out it came into existence through a drow racial ability + MTP. Is there a market price or craft DC for it?

Drow poison is listed in the DMG. It has a market price of 75 gp, which like all poisons in the game is crazy steep. But you can minor creation the shit up by the cubic foot, so by mid level you can have as much as you want.

-Username17

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Wed Dec 05, 2012 6:01 am

I am taking a Geography Field Studies class with a disorganized professor who didn't provide any recommended reading. I have been asked to write a pretend proposal for a "dream project" that involves field work to show my grasp of the material. I need to cover budget, project objectives, permits required, and an outline of the project itself from start to finish.

Does anyone know where I could find something similar (a written proposal for a field-work research project including budget) I could use to compare my draft with, so I could see if I'm phrasing things clumsily or leaving important concepts out?