Go dunk your head! Seriously, you can see the effect in a pool - look at how well you can see things above and below the surface, go underwater, and open your eyes. Things will be fuzzier.

You’re trying to reason away an effect that people actually see, and that you can verify independently. That’s the opposite of how science works.

For a scientific explanation, my first Google got came up with this - an article about some kids who do seem to see normally underwater. It also includes this explanation for our blurrier experience:

When the eye is immersed in water, which has about the same density as the cornea, we lose the refractive power of the cornea, which is why the image becomes severely blurred

…so what happens when you use goggles? Or a camera?

Lakes can be dirty, but you can see the same effect in a pool. Or your bathtub.

I thought it was adorable! I’m hearing Portal’s turret dialogue with these.

“Hello? …are you still there?”

Hah, it was a while ago when I saw chatter about work being done on that. Nice to see it came along so well!

Don’t know anything about Into the Odd, but I know Blades in the Dark had some people working on a Shadowrun conversion; the heist nature of that game appealed to them. GURPS also handles Shadowrun pretty easily, you can find other people’s conversions online.

Ironsworn was my first exposure to a fiction-first game! I didn’t really gel with the setting, but still really like the mechanics. Ended up backing Starforged (and later Sundered Isles), that seems like a much better fit for me!

GURPS is my go-to system. It’s incredibly flexible, both in what it allows you to do as a player, and what kind of game you can run as a GM.

It’s an older system, and by default is rather simulationist - it grew out of the same tabletop wargaming that D&D did, and tends to take a more realistic approach to what players can do than more narrative systems. I like some of the more narrative systems as well - Starforged is my other go-to system - but the characters always feel a little more loosely defined to me. GURPS is perfectly happy saying “okay, you can fly, you can turn invisible, and you can’t be killed” - but if you want to make your character more nuanced, it’s not only possible, but encouraged!

On the other hand, if you just want to throw something together and go, you can do that too! One of my players has a character sheet that consists of their racial abilities, 5 or 6 regular skills, and a high level “Security!” wildcard skill. And 3 guns. They’re a nightmare in combat, because “Security!” is their all-in-one skill with pistols and melee combat, along with anything else a person with a security background would be expected to know - it’s been rolled against to evaluate patrol schedules, reading a foe’s body language, and shadowing a mark, among other things. That character plays alongside someone with three different templates (classes), a mount, a bevy of different equipment options, and something like 55 different skills - because that player -wanted- that kind of detail. And they’re both very effective in their domains, and play off of each other well.

That’s the thing that really sticks out to me about GURPS - it’s very playable with a very minimal ruleset (GURPS Ultra-Lite is free, and 2 pages - http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/ultra-lite/), and can seamlessly expand when you want more detail. And not only are there a lot of options for that detail, they also show their work - so if you’re still missing something, you can generally still come up with reasonable rules. It just gets a reputation for being super complicated because the people who discover it tend to get excited and throw everything in…

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

He also offered him a ton of money!

“Ten thousand. All in advance.”

“Ten thousand! We could buy our own ship for that!”

…

“We can give you two thousand now… and fifteen when we reach Alderaan.”

Could also just call their character out in whatever post you create, if they can be trusted to stay out then.

I mean, they do keep coming back.

Though in my case, I run a game for a few family members. They have to come back!

Who do?

What power?

The babe with the power

Hah! Don’t really see the appeal of Macs either :p No shade to people who do like either (my wife likes macs and my brother likes D&D!) They just both feel so constraining to me, and it feels like that’s kind of the point?

I think it’s better to think of all the add-ons and supplements as GM inspiration, rather than hard and fast rules. Most everything in GURPS is set up to arrive at a skill roll or attribute modifier; so even if you don’t remember a particular rule for a particular edge case, you can generally eyeball it and come up with a modifier pretty close to what’s in the books. The books give a lot of guidance on how to reach that modifier, though; and give you enough information to feel comfortable coming up with your own modifiers outside of what they outline. I feel like that’s a lot of what GURPS brings to the table - a simple system, with an internally consistent set of guides about how easy or hard a given action might be.

I just want to point out, with GURPS templates, players can absolutely get a character ready to go pretty quickly without missing crucial skills or abilities. GURPS’s Dungeon Fantasy line comes with a set of templates that mirror D&D’s character classes; you follow the guide for your preferred archetype and put together a character that has what you want. If you want to mix and match between them, you just invest the points and pick it up; it even has some guidance on what likely will and won’t synergize well.

And if that’s still too granular, the Delvers to Grow add-on lets you just select “packs” of upgrades, worth 25 character points each, and tailored to specific templates. This lets you roll up basic characters in about 20 minutes (10 if you know what you’re doing!)

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I think I see storm troopers over by the TIE too; guessing it’s another vignette. No idea about the Ewok though!

Sharks are supposed to be able to smell blood from a mile or more away - that’s why throwing chum in the water is a good way to draw them in.

I hadn’t thought about dolphins smelling though - I wonder if it’s closer to tasting, maybe?