And now, a word from our sponsors

[elz]

Three reasons to donate to OTW during its current membership drive:

1) We've had two separate offers from people willing to match donations, one of which is in memory of Sandy Herrold. It would be wonderful to max those out! You can also make your own donation in honor or in memory of Sandy or other friends/family members/fellow fans.

2) Next month is (I think?) only our second contested board election, where 6 lovely candidates are running for 4 open seats. To be eligible to vote, you need to have donated at least $10 US within the last year, by October 17th. The OTW board meets quite often (as boards go) and can have a significant impact on the mission, morale and effectiveness of the organization, so if you're interested in AO3 and other OTW projects, it's worth paying some attention to.

3) AO3 server space! Traffic has increased a LUDICROUS amount over the last year, and donation funds pay the hosting costs and fund future upgrades. $$$ = servers = fic/art/vids! And we have some exciting projects in the pipeline for the next year!

Massive thanks to everyone who's donated in the past or who has already donated this year!

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In more frivolous news: eeeeee, Avengers trailer! I am kind of stupidly excited - I think fandom's free-floating enthusiasm for the movie is contagious.

Comments

[samvara]

Avengers \o/

Erm umh. Yes. Donating = Good!

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[(Anonymous)]

in my reply to trail_of_ink about how a Character Strength must include not just a stngterh but the ability to use that stngterh. If I wasn't going to separate out senses, I'd just have a Perception score... someone with sharp senses but little understanding (or vice versa) might have 1 or 2, someone with both sharp senses and finely honed comprehension of those senses might have 3 or 4.The giant's stats were written before I made a few changes to the stat system. At that time, players had Primary Strengths that included Perception, and each Primary Strength had two Secondary Strengths. The SSes for Perception were Sight and Hearing... not because these are the only components of Perception, but because they are the ones 1) most immediately useful on an adventure, 2) most strongly developed in human beings, and 3) most readily trained. Bonuses to taste or smell were possible, but they came through other facets of character creation. The sense of touch was considered to be covered by Dexterity.Perception Checks functioned a little bit differently from ordinary checks, which would usually be against a single specified Secondary Strength... with Perception Checks, you could use any and all relevant sensory bonuses. If someone was hiding in the bushes and making noise, you could add your bonus for Sight and Hearing, and if you had a special bonus for smell you'd add that, too, but a sense of smell fine enough to give even a +1 bonus to detecting people/animals hiding in a bush is stepping outside the realm of ordinary human ability. If the subject were something like a lifeless golem, Sight might be the only possibility. If it were a zombie--rotting flesh but perfectly still while in lurk mode--then hearing might be out but smell wouldn't. If you were searching with eyes and hands for a secret compartment, Sight and Dexterity would both count.The only thing that's really changed here is the elimination of Primary Strengths and the stat of Perception. If I didn't see the point in having Sight and Hearing as separate quantities that can be developed, I'd just ditch them and put Perception in their place.But an especially keenly developed sense of sight or hearing (or a noticeable deficiency in either area) are the sorts of things that distinguish characters from each other in what we might call ordinary ways, while a lack of a sense of taste or smell can be an interesting character point, but is more in the nature of being a quirk, and a finely developed or unusually powerful sense of taste or smell is something that sets a character apart in more unusual ways (cf. Hannibal Lecter or Wolverine).The Perception Check rule is still in place, even without a generalized Perception stat. So even though the giant's write-up might change a bit, the bonus to smell would stand the same way.

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[(Anonymous)]

Holli I love photography myslef and you are indeed a gifted photographer. I knew you did some of it and have seen the wonderful pics of your kids but had no idea this was your gift. See you next week.