We had to have my Mother-in-Law's septic tank pumped and roots removed a few years back, and called up the local specialists: B_____ Brothers Plumbing. Two gentlemen arrived who set about digging up the tank, prying off the concrete lid, cutting out the root mass, and pumping out the tank. "Wow!" I thought, "These…

New Yorkers pay over $3,500 a month in rent for giant ratholes…

I was unaware of that, and had kind of scoffed when the article referenced people criticizing eating horsemeat because of the prevalence of "performance-enhancing drugs". I'd figured commercially-sold horsemeat would be farm-raised for the purpose, rather than retired racers, which I'd have expected to be even…

Agreed. While horses have been somewhat romanticized in the West for thousands of years, up through the end of WWII they were important beasts of burden, routinely worked to death, so any resistance to horse consumption was rooted more in it being perceived as a cheap, inferior meat, rather than a pet.

It's deeply weird to think that there could well be old fish swimming around off Greenland that were babies when the Aztec Empire fell.

I have three different theories…

It's the Klingon Minister of Fashion: Ru P'aul.

Denmark?

But it was the style at the time.

I read that as something even more ridiculous — That he recognized that the girls in the topless bar he went to in college were fawning over him just to get him to pay for a dance, then compared Kelly's behavior to theirs, but somehow concluded that meant that she was really into him? As opposed to… say… trying to get…

That's one way to look at all those horrific tables — Random Aristocrats Generator.

I don't much care for the format, but there's a great deal of on-line RP gaming going on via Google Hangouts and such. I agree that learning/playing with friends is best, but on-line is an option, especially once you get your feet wet but perhaps find you want to play more often or different games/genres than your…

I'm not sure AH was ever technically a stand-alone company the way SPI had been. I believe it was owned by the still-existent Monarch Publishing, which was part of how it managed to stay afloat longer than a lot of other board wargame manufacturers — the parent's deep pockets helped cushion it economically, and it had…

Maybe not the FBI, but it seems about par for the CIA.

I play most of my RPGs (generally using GURPS) with more-or-less the same old codgers I've been playing with for decades, but I've sensed that the generation gaps of style are likely pretty wide, and a bit more subtle than just "older people think things out more". We have one twenty-something player (the son of a…

You could theoretically project that sort of skeevy lunacy on any RPG, but the thing that makes F.A.T.A.L truly jaw-dropping for me is that it's layered onto an un-self-aware parody of unplayably minutia-ridden game rules. The designers aren't just vile people, they're OCD vile people.

Some supplies you don't skimp on…

There are definitely Role-Playing gamers who approach it as more of an open-ended boardgame than as improv theater. Sometimes they don't mix well with the committed role-players, but sometimes there's a certain synergy there, since the role-players may not have much tactical sense.

Google "F.A.T.A.L" sometime…

Umber Hulks were a higher-level staple back when I was playing in the mid-to-late '70s, but I don't believe I ever encountered or ran a Beholder. I think we considered them so overpowering as to be kind of an obvious F-you by the DM, and stuck to more attemptable-seeming foes.