Smersh

Like the baton model that's already available in War Mace? To go with the riot shield in Shield Defense?

As a purely historical note, Presence was virtually required for tankers prior to Issue 3 - Taunt was single target back then.

No one tell J_B about that first point.

Man, I could go for one of those right now.

And it's 6:40am here.

Why, yes, I have eaten more than my share of these over the course of my life. My wife cannot, for the life of her, understand the appeal.

To each their own. More for me.

Actually, it's quite odd. I get the contact (Belladonna Vetrano), and can take the missions, but I can't run them without being a subscriber. I get a popup at the mission door to that effect.

I can still drop the missions, though, and could theoretically complete the arc that way.

Which is a strange way to do things, I reckon, but it does work.

That can be inconsistent, but I have been premium for a couple of months now.

Then I should probably not mention that I can also access the Emperor's Sword arc on my Alpha Unlocked characters, too.

Actually, the term antedates her usage of it considerably.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/automagical

The more you know!

Well, converting CoX to Castle Falkenstein would be a hell of a thing, now wouldn't it?

Yeah, mechs with bows are totally unknown.

Well, that's vaguely annoying, but not unexpected.

Reminds me of a character I ran into on Virtue at one time - "The finest scientific mind of his time - his work with fire and stone tools was revolutionary!" He was, naturally, a caveman-themed stone/fire brute. I think his origin might have even been technology.

That's Genesis Climber Mospeada, comrade.

Well, the important question to ask is why these players are taking their time.

Is it that they're slow on the draw themselves? Are they unfamiliar with the rules or RPGs in general? Do they feel like they're lacking information sufficient to act on?

My long-standing player group was always relatively quick on the draw; when I found them sitting and staring at me, it was because I hadn't adequately set the scene - a failing on my part, not theirs.

One of the ways I promoted people paying attention when it wasn't their turn (appropriate to the more over-the-top action campaigns) was the token system - once per session, a player could throw in their token and act again out of sequence - with the strict understanding that if they weren't trying to save their teammates, they lost the token and got no action.

As to your go-to, I approve most heartily. I always tried to structure my game sessions as television episodes, with the accompanying narrative structure, and I generally chose one player character to be the focus of a particular episode. Rarely, a two-to-three session character arc - but that could leave other players chomping at the bit. (File that under "things I learned from Mekton Zeta.")

Ultimately, though, there isn't a one size fits all solution to involving every player - it has mostly to do with the reason the players aren't as involved.

Let's assume that I am not reading Red Hood.

Would you care to elaborate on this?