The problem I have with the "Army won't be enough to give you skill 4" idea is that if you cannot get a skill of 4 in the army, how on earth would anyone else outside the army ever get to that level? I don't think everyone would reach that level just for being in the army, but those who want to train will be able to reach it there.

The thing is that I feel that Keren is mis-using the Skills Rating Table - a mid career professional has about 4 years experience. While some conscript armies only train their soldiers for a short period of time, some citizen armies have a longer term of service like 2 years.

So if you get to practice and hone your military skills for 2 years straight (if you end up in a combat oriented unit), while you might not be a 6, I'd say that you'd be 3 or 4 or even 5(for the commando and snipers units who are held to a much higher standard).

Do you REALLY think somebody is going to get into a commando unit as a short-haul conscript? Drek, even the Soviets didn't put conscripts in the Spetznatz; they had to either have been in and stayed as a volunteer or be in for a longer hitch.

I'm not sure why you think I am "mis-using" the skills, since the examples given for firearms ability are pretty clear cut and speciffic to the military. A skill level of 4 represents a hell of a big difference (subjectively) over a level 3, even if you don't feel the Karma would indicate that or that the game mechanics are a big deal. A level 3 skill isn't conferred at the end of basic training; Level 3 is conferred when you get to your operational unit and are certified for deployment. That is why I was suggesting that some conscript militaries might not even get to full level 3 skill in non-primary skills: like the fellow who earlier mentioned being in a mortar specialization, I have no doubt they would be skill 3 within the duration of their service in Heavy Weapons, with a specialization in Mortars. That's a lot of dice. But standard rifle fire wouldn't have been a part of that specialization, more than likely, and the familiarization courses probably wouldn't have given more than a 2. Spend a lot of your own time, and convince your commander to let you check out plenty of ammunition (can't buy military caliber ammunition at the WalMart in most of Europe), then you might get yourself to a 3 on your own.

Now, actual combat time would accelerate those time tables, of course. It would probably only take a month of genuine combat operations to get to a 4 for an infantryman if they were a 3 at deployment. Units that trained up to a 4 would need more time to get to a 5, because that's even more experience, but it would still be within a couple months; remember, a lot of units like that train to realistic combat conditions anyway and frequently, so having real lead flying back wouldn't necessarily be as Darwinian as to the normal soldier.

Like I said just above this response, the minimum time is for all citizens, but to get into a "best of the best of the best, Sir! With honors!" unit, you need to stay past that "consctipt" time, and they will make sure to get you up to their spec. And yes, it has a large pool of conscript concepts, but NOT people running around with 5 and 6 skill in a 2 year mandatory enlistment!

You were right on track till the last part. The answer is: NO. Because if they came from inside, they aren't "deniable". It will always be suspected that they're still "inside" on the sly. Deniability means that the bad guys should have to start from zero trying to find out who's pulling the strings. Doesn't make much sense if every person comes back as from the same corp... especially if they all have corp-standard weapons and 'ware. Right? *grin*


Most people in the military are a specialist of one stripe or another. The catch is that the military also tends to mandate a certain minimum cross-training across a broad field: hand-to-hand combat, blades (bayonnet and knife), clubs (rifle in close combat), first aid, etiquette (military), and basic indoctrinational information and the basics about the enemy (read: knowledge skills). They also insist on physical fitness for some odd reason, so call it the whole Athletics group at 2. That's a goodly number of skill points right there.

Now, there IS an option to doing this: Talk to your GM. No, I'm not saying beg for more points. But actually talk to them about your idea and if you show you're building a realistic and apropriately rounded military character, they may be willing to let you role play as if your skills are higher, and let you ignore the usual training costs and time requirements for the skills that are higher than you can afford at start. It's not Munchkin, it's not broken, and it's not a big deal, really. But it DOES let you come in and act apropriately while working dilligently toward your goals. Keep in mind, that they will probably require you to buy those skills FIRST, essentially commiting your Karma while the rest of the party will be free to do as they please. But that can work quite well.

Does that work for you?

I have no problem with whatever skill rating a character has, regardless of background, as long as the player has acquired that skill legitimately.

THAT i can dig.

I also have no problem, and have done so in the past, with giving characters skills and gear they couldn't possibly afford at start if the player works up a really kick-ass background

Oh, they can HAVE the skill, but isn't part of the process of character creation supposed to be the "how did I come by the skills I have?" portion? Just don't toss some lame-ass excuse about having been in the military and that's all it took for whatever you decided to spend your points on. I'm not going to advocate banning a legally built character on the basis of what skills they chose; I am going to advocate the player not sitting down at the table until they come up with at least a solid explanation (it needen't be long or intricate) of where they picked them up, ESPECIALLY anything level 3 or higher, because that's the minimum professional quallification level. Dad was a Minuteman Millitia gun-not, and made you practice every day the way some parents make kids practice the violin? OK, that's enough for me. But that also beggs some interesting questions, doesn't it? NOW I want to know more about your upbringing, and how that affected everything else.

AGAIN: just don't tell me "I'm ex-military, so I'm Barbara Badass" and expect me to take you seriously. I will have the same disbelief if you tell me your dad was an Astronaut and that justifies you taking Pilot: Aerospace 6.

I hear what you're saying, Kerenshara, and I'm of two minds, both diametrically opposed

On the one hand, my RP syle and sensibilities have matured to the point where continuity and believability rear their head(s) and I have a desire for my players (or my character) to have the character's abilities and stats match with their backgrounds.

On the other hand, I also recognize that the game has to be fun and that some players don't like getting into their characters as much right off the bat, and so I'm quite happy to let a player stat up his character how he wants, as long as it's legal.

I'd prefer the player eventually match his RP and stats, but I guess I'm just not willing to drive players away; it's hard enough to get a group together

I don't know... maybe my government is lying to me. And the guys(plural since they all came from the same Commando company) that I went to university with were spinning me a yarn. You can tell them they may be called Commandos but they aren't commandos, but I am not looking for a fight with those guys.

If you look at the examples given in the book, those examples simply give the type of people associated with those skill levels. Specifically the Firearms examples do not list a timeframe on how long it takes for those people to acquire those skills. 4 years is simply listed for the mid career professional. I am simply mapping over the analogous units to those listed in the examples.

I'm not going to bother with the skill level thing any more, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.

I looked at your link, and I have to ask: are you telling me your friends were put in such a unit with a service period of under 2 years? I need to do a little more research on the infividual unit you cited, but I just am pretty skeptical about the idea that you are going to have conscripts with less than two years at a hitch inducted into such a unit.

All NSF (Full Time National Servicemen) personel have a 2 year term. Formerly it was 2.5 years for the diploma and "A" level holders (My brother and I served 2.5 years, but my cousin got the 1/2 year discount.)

OK, and at what point do they extend the invitation for the unit you cited to a prospective cantidate?

When you turn up at the enlistment center for your mandatory health checkup and I think you are already pre-screened for eligibility even before that. I can't really tell you more than that since I do not know how they are selected myself.

Regardless of the specifics of Singapore, I think the point Toturi's trying to make (and that several others among us have been trying to make) is it's not all the UCAS/CAS. Not every military out there today works just like the US branches of service, and that's before fifty-plus years of instability spawning new nations, of magic and technology turning the whole thing upside down, of corporations and their own "bottom line" oriented militaries get involved, and on and on and on.

Especially when you consider just how spotty the record is for the Shadowrun game statting things up, anyhow. Their skill chart's all out of wack with how they stat up their own NPCs, and the NPCs are all out of wack with each other (military guys included).

There are plenty of 18-19 year olds today serving as Army Rangers (listed as Firearm example 5 according to SR4's chart). Who's to say someone being trained by a grizzled old Wildcat, in the Sioux military (renowned specifically for training, not tech or cyberware), couldn't similarly get a 5 in a combat skill or two by 18-19 years old, well inside their mandatory period of military service?

Holding other players up to a higher standard than the writers of the game, and insisting they fit your idea of what a military character should be like, just seems like it would be a little counterproductive and frustrating to me.

That could very well be the case, except I have yet to see a SINGLE "uncreative" ex-military 'runner that WASN'T supposedly from an American pattern military. Everybody who's been willing to put THAT much creativity and thought into their ex-military character has gone the rest of the way and been believable. All of my players have been from the North American continent, or at furthest the United Kingdom; Coming up with something "interesting" like being a Commando from Singapore or a conscript Mortarman from Sweeden would have been more effort than it was worth to even bother to find out existed. If I had run into a "uncreative" ex-military 'runner claiming to have been from a secondary or third world army, I might have been specifically inclusive in my OP. Anybody willing to do the legwork to build a "foreign national" character (relative to their own nation of birth) is already putting enough effort and creativity into the character to satisfy me. If you happen to BE from one of those countries, and your experience tells you that my perceptions of the discharged members of the militaries of THOSE countries don't fit my general mold, then that's fine and I accept your distinction. I THOUGHT I had been clear about it being people claiming to have come from the US Style of military; Perhaps I am mistaken on that.

n/m

I guess it all depends on what one considers a "US-style" military; when you're saying US-style, do you mean UCAS/CAS?.

I don't think it would be likely that Canadian institutions would be absorbed without having some effect on the instituations into which they were being absorbed, the military included. For what it's worth, the union of Canada and the US in the game was incredibly poorly done, but to be fair, it was fleshed out just enough to fit in with the main design element of massive change.

About the skill thing for noncombatants or atleast not active combatants. I have two words: ammo detail.

You know those fools who load up everyones ammo at the range. They get to fire off all the excess ammo as well. You get alot of trigger time with alot of weapons if you volunteer or are voluntold to do it with any amount of regularity.

I would always volunteer to fire off the excess rounds from the LMGs. Hardly anyone else wanted to, because they had to clean it. I happily took the "downside" of cleaning the machine gun for the chance to fire off another 2k rounds or so

THAT is an excellent point, but I will point out the simple reasons for my assumption of American dominance in the combined force (and yes, I DID essentially assume CAS/UCAS or any military functioning on a similar volunteer system with moderately long terms of enlistment):

1) Size: For example, the total modern Canadian interceptor force as of most of 1^st Edition totaled some three dozen F/A-18 Hornet fighters, less than the equivalent of a single American Carrier Battle Group.

2) Arrogance: The US military (and most Americans: ask any European who's had to deal with them as tourists) are supremely, shall we say, self-confident about their own rectitude. Combined with #1 above, I don't see there being much interest in keeping the existing Canadian military structure intact in-situ.

3) Logistics: It's easier to run an army when everybody uses the same forms, the same uniforms, the same vehicles, the same ammunition, the same language - you get the idea.

4) Cross-training: Most of the Canadian military had already been involved in extensive cross-training with the US forces so things like doctrine would be fairly compatible on the ground level. Higher up, see numbers 1 through 3.


As long as they don't wind up coming down on you when you accidentally BREAK the thing. Things like barrels have a finite life measured in number of rounds. And just using the LMG/MMG at the range isn't necessarily translate into escalated skill levels, as the higher levels would include experience with moving targets and so forth. So say you're a range control officer, and assuming you didn't ORIGINATE in a line infantry unit, and you presented this as a rationale for a skill up to 3, I think I would be well well satisfied. Even somebody who was a cook (something probably largely being handled by drones due to cost in most militaries by 2060) could use having a friend at the range as a good reason to get up to a 3. For the most part, anybody with a formal military background can (conscript, volunteer, careerist, whatever) can easily justify nearly any military-related skill up to 3. Is it so much to ask that ANY character justify where a skill of 4 or higher came from? If you are truly a long-haul veteran, then there are many skills that could be at that level realistically, or if you are from a crack unit. Most of the time you don't have anywhere enough points to do that realistically, however, at character generation.

And to the point that was made about 19-year-olds in the US Army Rangers, if they made it that quickly, it's because they were that naturally good to have been able to hack it. And just passing BUDS does not make a S.E.A.L out of a recruit: there is a year or more of intense training, much of it actively dangerous, to build up to the level of proficiency we expect out of members of an active duty team (Lots of 5s and some 6s). But those kind of people often have an interesting story, too. And I would wager somebody fast-tracked like that is neither a misfit nor a screwball.

Ok, riddle me this.

If you can't be a "good" shot unless you're basically a LRRPing Army Special Forces veteran with years of specialized training, then how do you explain the legendary Russian snipers of World War II, who had none of the resources you mention?

You refer to the legendary Vasil Zaitsev, who was taught to hunt dangerous prey as a boy? An actual hunter will have a higher longarm skill because they practice their craft in the field. Hunters who must use their craft to feed themselves, doubly so. And these people were able to pass on their ability to their VERY willing and highly motivated students. But notice that such individuals are practicing their craft live in the field under stress, as opposed to at a target range. Now, VR training would count for a lot, but human beings are going to respond diferently live fire than even the most realistic simulted training.

But here, everybody having this debate has put more thought into theirbackgrounds than I originally was complaning about. "I spent extra time at the range because I was friends with the range master" is great, because that's a good contact to have as well, for example. Two birds with one stone! A story for your higher-than-typical skill as well as a snap background for a contact.

I'm jumpin in a little late here, but here's my two cred worth...

RL companies like Triple Canopy and the corp. formerly known as Black Water hire nearly exclusivly from the vast pool of soldiers nearing or just passing their ETS date. There seems to be a fuzzy grey cloud covering the distintion of these corportations being fully merc or not, but as far as following the same Law of War that the U.S. does they certainly fall under that distiction IMO. I personally have served with some darn fine marksmen and ground tactitions during my time in service, some who retained in the service for 20+ years and some that ETSed at 3 to 4 years. The majority were fine examples of United States servicemen but it didn't mean that when they returned to the civilian sector they didn't fall into the same vices and habits that every other person does. I know that put into the sixth world it would be a mighty fine prospect to put the skills the military has given me to use for high dividends. Now morally I'd be against about everything that happens in shadowrun, but money talks and getting a good paying civilian job is frankly a daunting task for most servicemen who chose a combat arms MOS (outside of privatised security or law-enforcement). I don't see an x-ray tec or WO pilot having that hard a transition compared to a groundpounder or FO, but it's still a whole different life than most lead. Just because at some point a person felt a spark of national pride or, let's be honest, realized they needed a good paying, honest job, doesn't mean that 4 to 20 years down the road they are going to have the same predispositon. You can look at any military history and see plenty of highly trained individuals, PTSD asside, that made some rather dubious choices in enterprise.

I guess it's just strange for me to imagine a whole ton of people playing only from the CAS/UCAS nations. That feels like throwing tons of sourcebook material away, to me, by ignoring ten of North America's twelve potential background nations. Much of the fun of Shadowrun specifically comes from exploring backgrounds that come from each of the uniquely "Shadowrun" countries that are available, and trying to get a character that feels like a Sioux or Tir citizen, a Salish Shidhe tribesman, someone brought up in the CalFree Saito regime, or whatever...the CAS and UCAS normally feel boring to me, when I'm making a character.

I brought up the Rangers as an example of how out-of-wack the SR skill rating "examples" are (and as such how goofy it feels to me to take the chart too seriously, and demand my fellow players adhere to it in any meaningful fashion). When they say an Army grunt is a 3, a Marine is a 4, and a Ranger is a 5...so what? How do you then justify an Army soldier that scores Expert compared to a Marine that barely qualifies? And there are plenty of young Rangers out there (an organization with an average age of just 24) who've never seen combat, so how does that stack up to the Ranger tab allowing them a 5, when that's a higher default level than a "combat vet?" It just seems silly to me to demand additional explanations from your fellow players, based on some abitrary cut-off point when the skill rank chart is so wacky. If someone says "I went into the Army, nothing exciting happened, and got out after my four year hitch," and flashes an Automatics skill of 5 at you, you're that's not good enough. But, by the defining levels of that chart, if they say "I went into the Army, got Ranger qualified, nothing else exciting happened, and got out after my four year hitch," that...would be?

I mean, the same chart says your average go-ganger has a 3 in Pilot Ground Vehicle, your average go-gang leader a 4, and your average Ancient -- just any old Ancient -- has a 5. So every gang out there is composed of guys of the "competent professional" level of rider (guys who live and die on their bikes), but if a character just happens to go "You know what? I like green better than red, so I'll just change my backstory and say my Elf was in the Ancients, not the Princes," suddenly he can have another two points in his primary driving skill.

...isn't that kind of silly? Doesn't that feel like putting a little too much weight on that skill level scale of theirs? I prefer to just worry -- especially if I'm just another player, and no the GM -- that the folks I'm playing with are happy with their own characters, that they're not breaking the rules of the game (since the feel/intent is so often difficult to rationalize)...and then worry about slinging dice and having fun. Life's too short, and the NPC stats versus Skill Ranking Chart is too silly, to kill myself worrying about the small stuff.

And to the point that was made about 19-year-olds in the US Army Rangers, if they made it that quickly, it's because they were that naturally good to have been able to hack it.


I have to disagree. There are plenty of 17 let alone 19 year olds that have made it through to Regiment. It doesn't take a "naturally good" cantidate to pass through Jump School or RIP, they just didn't quite when it got hard. I've seen some non-shootin, bullheaded mugs pass through and get their tan berrets but good soldiers they were not then, but those skills they needed were honed at their unit without doubt. But as far as a wide range of rating 3 skills just because of an ex-military history... no sir. As a paratrooper I never delved mutch into mechinized warfare, we used up-armored HMMMVs but heavy tanks and APCs. not at all. I couldn't cook to serve a company sized element... I'll be honest I can barely cook to serve myself. So it would depend on their job. There a reason why there's so many MOSs in the military. There's really no "Army of One". An S1 finance SGT usually isnt going to be as good a marksmen with as wide a variety of weapons as your standard 11Banger and your standard 11Banger isn't going to be as proficient in most of the support roles that it takes to keep him on the ground, even 18series (SF) sodliers have specalizations... there's just to mutch to know.

Emphasis mine.

This seriously isn't a shot at you MaxwellHouse, I am borrowing what you said to demonstrate a point I have been trying to make: 3-4 years in a primary combat MOS is fine for Firearms Skill 4, which truthfully is a "damn fine marksman". I'd be curious to know how many US Army Scout Snipers (I would say that their minimum entry requirement would be Longarms 4 closing in on 5 and the training course pushes them to a minimum graduation skill of 5 with a specialization in Sniper Rifles) who were accepted to the program with less than at least 4 years in service.

"Damned Fine" isn't quite the same as "World Class" or "World Champion" or "Legendary" (5, 6 and 7 respectively). I would say that "Qualified Expert", if backed up with a little live action experience, could EASILY be called "Damned Fine" and be Skill 4.

I think the fundamental diference between myself and many others is that many others believe that Skill 4 is easily and routinely available. From a pure Crunchy Bits perspective, that may be true, but I don't see it that way subjectively or from a story perspective. Reaching the skill level in ANY skill to be considered a "Veteran Professional" is a notable achivement by ANYBODY.

For what it is worth, I just use the Terminology of the Scale...

Unaware
Untrained
Beginner
Novice
Professional
Veteran
Expert
Elite
Legendary

The examples are just that, examples and have no other real meaning... I could be a professional that has performed the same skills for 35 Years (Professional Electrician for example) and have just a Rating 3 skill level (professional), but still be a master Electrician... or I could be a Prodigy Mathematician with a skill of 6 in Mathematics and still be only 10 years old... again, examples are just that, Examples...

For the record, I do not consider Bill Clinton to be a good example of a Legendary Socialite... Sorry, I just don't... You can be legendary and still not have a a high ranked skill... it is all relative

Just my 2

Most definatly Keren, I'd go as far as to say that many that have been to Benning and taken the long and trying... two week course, successfully graduate to a skill lvl 3 with said specialazation, not 4. I've seen some good hunters out there that could stomp an Army, Marine, or Navy marksmen lol. Sorry I missed a post didn't mean to get all butt hurt. My apple-polu-loggies . My point in all is that military training is flawed and rushed. Unless a character has a good backstory of practical aplication I don't see a military background as reson for a whole slew of high active skill ratings. If anything good soldiers know what to do but until tempered under the real stress of combat don't really possess the actual ability to act... maybe higher knowledge skills? Anyways no slight taken and I hope I haven't crossed anyone this evening... considering it's my first day...

I find most of them too stupidly written to be worth considering. There are, to be generous, a total of 10,000 Ute tribal members, mostly in SE Utah and SW Colorado. There are 300,000 Navajo, mostly in AZ, NM and Utah. There are two million people in Utah, most members of the LDS. So what did SR do with this situation?

Sorry, I'd rather play a Japanese combat swimmer.

That's where Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "willing suspension of disbelief for the moment" comes into play. The sourcebooks have said -- for four editions now -- that the NAN exist, and that they recruited heavily enough, or bred like bunnies pre-Awakening, or whatever, to make it happen. So they're there, and they can make for interesting character-spawning regions, if you let 'em. Personally, I've always had a strong pro-Tir bias (I've only made three or four NANners), but it's not real, either, and I don't let that slow me down.

Please note that there are other first world armies other than the ones of UCAS and CAS - your post implies that's not the case. Don't know if you meant it, but that's the way it came across.

I never worried about breaking the LMG - the rounds needed to be fired (or our ops budget would be reduced), and the order to use the gun until the rounds were gone was given by a higher pay grade than mine

As for skill 4 being impossible at the range, well, I've seen some infantry ranges that were pretty intense.

Wasn't the speciffic intent, inasmuch as it related to all the people I had seen play crummy "ex-military" characters had chosen one of the two.

THAT right there probably stems from the single fact, that most Shadowrun Characters are between 16 and 24 Years old it seems.
And they are mostly based in the US of A. So it's SLIGHTLY more believeable if the army they supposedly learned their stuff in is,
you know, at least on the same continent as both their birth town and city of current intrigue . .

*nods*

That's the reason I observed earlier that if somebody did enough legwork to come up with a character who WASN'T from one of those militaries, but still had a "special forces" background, they were probably well on the way to coming up with an interesting and believable character that they would role play anyway.

I was referring to more than one person. Zaitsev wasn't the only sniper. There were others. Some women too.

But, yeah, I guess that's a seperate issue than throwaway backgrounds.

Zaitsev helped train a lot of their snipers IIRC. The Soviets were pretty smart about how they handled training their snipers, overall. They put time and effort into mentoring them properly. In a way, I can even see why idealogically: a single Russian woman can be armed with a weapon that is the product of Soviet production and she can kill even the most elite German with a single trigger pull; What's more egalitarian than that? Reportedly, the women racked up better numbers than the men, and a SIGNIFICANT portion of the sniper pool was female IIRC.

"Throwaway backgrounds". Yes, I think that term fits neatly into what I have been trying to describe. Thank you.

One thign that I have learned over the years is that when comparing a woman and a man with equal competence and training with firearms (especially longarms) is that the Woman can generally outshoot the man... only catch is that most women do not have equivalent training/experience for the most part... though there are always exceptions of course...

Just an interesting note...

Most women tend to listen to the instructor because they don't feel they are genetically endowed with the ability to shoot well.

I think there's also a biological hand/eye coordination thing at work.

As a former resident of SLC and non-Mormon, last I heard 62% of the population is LDS (about 1.3 million out of 2.1 million).

Nigel Findley got Salt Lake City wrong from word one.
First off...there are lots and lots of guns in Utah.
Two, they are not pacifists.
Three, chances of the Church giving up Provo...slim and none.
Four, they take care of their own...if you aren't one of them though...stir shit up at your own peril.

I will have to convert my SLC:2060 into a PDF and post it up on my SR website. Should give you a good idea of how I think SLC would evolve in the Sixth World.

That would be cool, the version published was insane. Utah is where the state sued the state university system to have them honor concealed carry permits, and won.

As organized religions go, they don't get much more gun-friendly than the Mormons.

A lot of that gun love comes from the fact that they have historically been persecuted and there is a mood that the rest of the country is out of step with Utah values. The Church actually encourages its members to keep a supply of food, water, and other essentials for emergencies (which is actually a good idea considering that the city is built over a major fault line). Not everyone does (of course not all of them tithe either) but quite a few do.

Yup. If I was the organized religion type, I'd lean their way. As it is, I just share certain traits with 'em and I'm maybe a bit friendlier to their missionaries than most.

Neighbor calls, tells of Mormon Missionaries (the youngling type) coming around the neighborhood. Spy them up a ways, and dig out the Halloween gear. Greet them at the door with an apron spattered with "blood" and hands and arms coated in it. "Oh, I'd be happy to talk with you! I was just sacrificing a chicken... did you want to just wait until I'm done or would you like to help?"

*Evil grin*

"It may not be very sporting to hold a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent, but it sure is fun..."

Yeah, it frustrates me that a lot of times I get the feeling that lots of women hold themselves back when deep down inside they've got a strafe-jumping headshotter just waiting to emerge.

In a civilian setting, my experience has been that the women were less prone to beat themselves up if they missed a shot. Personally, I had to fight a tendency to berate myself for missing something that my coach showed my on video tape. You could see my facial expression change when I missed a blue rock, where as the girls on the team remained focused and calm. And I wasn't the only guy that it was happening with. Anecdotal, so it might not mean anything but a thought.



I am not going to promise that my take on Salt Lake is going to be better (or even sane) but it certainly is a different take than Nigel's. I want to add some art and maps to the document but once it is done I will give ya a shout out to let you know it is available.