Interesting news bit: In preparation for the World Cup games, police in Japan have developed a gun that shoots a 25-m square net over fans who bring just a bit too much enthusiasm to the proceedings. Specifically, the police are worried that their standard method to rein in rowdiness – judo-based restraining moves – may prove difficult against hyped-up, beefy European hooligans. (Like the police, we’ll politely refrain from specifying British. Oops, just did.) A comment from the World Cup security division, Sapporo HQ, Hokkaido Prefectural Police: “Of course, martial arts form an important part of our training, but if you take the size and power factor into consideration, (the…

Know what’s one of the hardest development tasks for a GURPS add-on — heck, for just about any RPG? A slick system for variable action times. That is, rules to allow one character to perform certain actions (typically attacks) twice as fast as another, or five times for every four of a foe’s, etc. HERO‘s Speed stat doesn’t quite have it. It’s great that Speed 10 lets you have an action rate a little slower than Speed 11, which is a little slower than Speed 12. . . but what about a creature a little slower than the human norm of Speed 2? The only level allowed below that is…