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Oh my god! This again. I worked on that damned game. The crew was Steve Peterson, Ken Zarifies, Nicky Robinson, her (soon to be ex) husband, Ray Greer, Bryce Nakagawa, and myself. It was for 386, and 486 machine gun it’s SVGA capability, and it was my first computer animation gig, out of college, and Lordy was that a labor intensive game. Bryce and I replaced another artist, who’s well drawn porn comic took off. We scrapped his character art, and Bryce took over interface and some backgrounds and I did character sprites and effects. It was a slog as the scale of the characters changed (smaller) and the animation catalogue increased. The test and convention builds worked well, but he bottleneck was the scripting system; and Steve could not get a handle on it, especially with the 3in. Disk based limits. Hardware was tiny back then. Only the character generator from that game made it out of that project. That became Heromakr.exe which shipped with the BigBlueBook.

“So if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech, right? You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg. If you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent and your god, and f— off.”

Started working with a new artist named Cường Nguyễn from Vietnam. I found him through a group on FB that discusses public domain characters. He's been doing some characters for a group of Neo-Nazi villains known as the Neo-Teutonic Order. First up is White Lighting, a speedster who can generate an electrical field as he runs. After that is Aryan Eagle, who has wings and clawed hands. Lastly is Panzerfaust, who can generate explosive energy blasts from her hands

Extend that to local government as well. I work in that area, and local government can make expansive decisions which impact your daily life administratively. For example, integrated health and human services agencies can determine access to emergency food, oversee the ambulance system, can suspend civil liberties in behavioral health, remove children through Child Welfare, control access to housing for vulnerable populations and so on. Local elections matter. Edit: spell check made "expansive" into "expensive" (that too, of course)

I've had problems with players goofing around with landlines. We were playing in the battalion Comm Shop at Camp Fuji and some of the guys kept shocking each other with TA1 handsets. The generators in the handsets spin so I guess they were rotating.

I would like to pick Jackie Chan as the greatest warrior in the land. This is the good stuff. CES

In some areas, I am to the right of Sanders. But we've veered so far off to the right... as in, perfectly honorable and good Republicans are now considered RINOS or Lib lovers, that I think the country needs a hard jerk to the left to course correct back to the middle. My hope is that Sanders is the guy to do that. When I hear Biden has the lead, it always seems to be 'okay, he's safe' but I don't feel any enthusiasm for him. Maybe that's my bias and folks are shaking pom poms for him... but safe doesn't motivate folks to get excited enough to vote.

Getting back to the Ulimar Jungle... This setup has good adventure potential. Indeed, you could build a campaign (or at least a story arc) around the jungle and dealing with its inhabitants. As it happens, I presented such a campaign premise in the part I wrote for Masters of Jade, for WW's Exalted. For background, the Guild is a world-spanning commercial organization. Much of it was designed as an unholy cross between the Triangle Trade, the Opium Wars and the East India Company, but I tried to slip in a few suggestions that commercial exploration did not necessarily have to be Eeevil. Here's an excerpt: ---------- <2>Trading Posts and Voyageurs At the other extreme from the massive caravans, lone voyageurs paddle canoes and walk forest trails deep in the Eastern wilderness. Some of the Guild’s most precious medicines, such as age-staving cordial and seven bounties paste, are made from plants that only grow in places no caravan could ever reach. Voyageurs also hunt rare birds and animals for their pelts, parts and plumage. For living treasure, they risk disease, toxic animal, plant and insect life, and the lethal attention of hungry beasts, maddened spirits and unfriendly natives. In Nathir, a feather-worker takes delivery of gleaming purple plumes that shall complete a priest’s ceremonial cloak. A master swordsmith pays a full dirham for jars of forest mimic blood; it will quench a new artifact, the Lying Blade. One cloaked and hooded voyageur presents himself at a side-door to Doctor Alethia’s fortified compound. He — she? it? — brings the great physician living, disembodied arms taken from the Wyld, as replacement limbs for the maimed and very rich. Or maybe something else. <snip description of Doctor Alethia> <3>Trading Posts Instead of hunting rare plants and animals directly, some Guildsmen think it makes more sense to befriend the natives and pay them to do the work. The catch is that the intrepid trader must visit the natives where they live… and in the far East, that often means up in trees that may grow a mile high. The Tree Folk and other Eastern tribes feel comfortable in trading posts that resemble bird’s nests or spider webs of living vines. Visitors from civilized lands find it takes some getting used to. With this much money at stake, they make the effort. <snip description of voyageur Jinru Rose-of-Dawn> --------------- So: Explore the Ulimar Jungle looking for valuable (magical?) plants and animals, try to avoid or befriend natives as needed. If the latter, get involved in their problems and conflicts, with each other and the wider world. Or reverse it: The PCs are Ulimar natives facing both promise and peril from outsiders. Dean Shomshak

Breaking the Benny Hill Barrier: When the speedster is doing something wacky at super-speed, the sound of Yakkety Sax can be heard. The Adam West Effect: When the hero punches someone, the words "POW!" "BAM!" "KA-BLAM!" appear.** ** Actually did this once. Foxbat had stolen a replica Batmobile, as well as costumes and other stuff from the 1960s Batman TV show, and the heroes figured out that he planned to kidnap Adam West and Burt Ward after arranging to have them appear at a mall opening. With part of his gadget pool, Foxbat created the Photonic Optical Waveform (POW) generator, to project holograms of "POW!" etc. during the expected fight with superheroes. He even had a "WHIFF!" projected if one of the heroes missed.

There is an attitude that blossomed after the Movie "Heaven's Gate", cratered in 1980, taking the Western as a genre, and the studio that made it, United Artists, down with it. That attitude was stated as, " It is irresponsible to allow a single individual to control the investments of many other people. ". So the studios burdened directors with a bureaucracy, and financial oversight, so that the studio was insulated from the risks of an auteur. But during the 80s and 90's there were still small studios that allowed young directors to make a film, but with the limitation of a small, fixed budget, and a short schedule. It was in this environment that James Cameron proved himself. However with the media consolidation in the late 90's that venue closed down. What became from the media consolidation was a lack of competition, and a very risk averse attitude, so that only a guaranteed screenplay that would put butts in seats received the green light for production. in 2005 a book entitled Save The Cat was put out, that took the structured screenplay approach pioneered by Syd Field's screen writing books, and locked it down to stopwatch and per page precision. Save The Car gave a fairly fixed template to various genres, and soon people using this method saw notable box office success. Soon, most screenwriters adopted this method, and films after 2005-06 fell into that template. Notable non adopters of this method were Quentin Tarantino, and Martin Scorcese.. However, the risk averse studios preferred that approach, as it did put butts in seats reliably, for a while. But the audience eventually and instinctively figured out the sameness of the films and attendance slowly and steadily declined. That coupled with sequelitis, rising prices, and this new Sopranos show on HBO, meant that people were finding other things to do.. Marvel caught lightning in a bottle. They found the right scripts with the right person at the right time.. Before the Disney purchase they had moderate success with the Wesley Snipes Blade movies, but only after the Disney purchase were all the ingredients put together. Notice that Warners/DC have not been able to make consistently successful Superhero films until the past three years.But I will say that DC won't get their unified success until they get a audience approved Superman film. However the recent news of Warners brining inJ. J. Abrams to helm their superhero films is a grave mistake, as his track record on recent Star Trek, and Star Wars shows. Now it is true that with the massive lowering of costs in equipment, and the democratization of information due to the net (as well as massive software piracy) there has never been a better time for small independent productions to make crafted, personal vision films. Equipment size, cost, and power requirements have dramatically reduced crew sizes and the need for teamster semis carrying equipment. With talent and practice you can get that Hollywood look with 5 or 6 non-Union people with equipment that will fit in one van. The TouTube Channel Corridor Digital is a prime illustration.. The bottleneck, though, is distribution. Distributors know that Theater Owners are as risk averse as the studios are, and will only book films that put butts in seats..Small independent, or Art House theaters have their own distribution and elected genres, and the Cineplexes will only book a sure thing. If fame and fortune is not your thing, you can always release on YouTube, but big Hollywood is ossified and will continue to stumble along in its gigantic way, until it can't .Kecin Feige may continue to keep Marvel an excellent film franchise, and he may recover Star Wars, if his supervision of The Mandalorean is of any indication, but when a streaming service is 10-12 bucks a month, and a movie is 20 buck, once for 3 hours, the economics of the theater model don't look so good any more. Scott (who worked in Hollywood for a few years)

The general Limited Power covers a lot. I see no reason you couldn't look at the Time Limit Limitation from 6th and import it into 4th via Limited Power.

I guess that means that the nations supply of pale lonely virgins is in short supply.

All salient observations, Dean. Regarding the Tarnwater specifically, while the map does appear to show the river skirting Mount Melgar, for my own game use I decided the river would actually pass underground at that point, through the caverns that TA p. 79 indicates exist beneath the mountain. The passage goes on to state that no one has succeeded in exploring them. That feature, as well as the Tarnwater bordering the Whispering Waste, would likely dissuade most people from traveling on the river. However, for those who might want or need to follow it underground, they'd discover why p. 283 says explorers have never returned:

I know I repped it above, but just one more time, I want to say "_THANK YOU_" for that. I agree: it doesn't look, feel, or sound like "magic' when you see it broken down and analyzed into component mechanics. Of course, it doesn't really feel like super powers, either, but it's just so much more detracting when it's called" magic. " I've never made a secret that I don't like the micro-specificity that the entire system has trended towards. I have also never made it a secret that I don't buy NPC books as a general rule. I have never fully-disclosed that I own all of them from 4e back. It's the new ones that are useless to me: a power with several _lines_ of modifiers? I can't tell what it's supposed to do because I haven't got the time to parse the damned thing; I am quite serious about needing to parse them. I can't even _read_ some of them. Now a published work is one thing; you want to know precisely what the character can and cannot do. But that stuff has no place clogging up a character sheet: name the power, list the costs, effect (mind control: xD6), and the END. _you_ know what it can do; the GM (should, or some thing's very wrong) knows what it can do. If there are questions, consult your worksheet or detail sheet, which you should have handy anyway (the GM, I mean: he needs that detail to plan his adventures around). We use a lightly-modified 2e sheet as the character / play sheet, with a completely separate "detail sheet" for those early occasions when there is a question or two. It keeps play and "let me see that" moments much cleaner and easier.

Parties get split all the time without anyone having an obsession with it. If you've disadvantaged yourself to save points or have greater power in some other area, any good GM is going to make that matter once in a while - without ever being "obsessed".

A huge killing attack.

XDM, UAA, Megascale Area, Continuous, Limited (to dead worshipper souls only). Apply QoL modifiers like Dimensional and 0END as needed. Edit: Megascale Area, not just Megascale. Important part of the thought got trapped in brain instead of making it to keyboard.

The "Scorigami" streak is over.

I take this from: Neither of the items I have emphasized are CP costs. The discussion of characteristic rolls and END costs both refer to "standard rounding rules", as does Stretching (p 284), damage from heat (6e v2 p 150). Oddly, it's not mentioned in halving DCV, but with no other guidance, it seems reasonable that "standard rounding" would apply.

Long Long is really in this whole thing for his own amusement. He doesn't need the money - he's pretty wealthy. But on occasion he finds himself fighting someone who can actually challenge him, or has powers that his inherent near-indestructibility and immense strength can't deal with, and that makes the whole situation worthwhile - boredom is the enemy. His teammates assume he took the name "Long" ("Dragon" in Chinese) as symbolic of his powers. He's never bothered to inform them that it's just him being literal.

Theme Music: Composed by Eric Idle.

A post by Cygnia got me thinking of those songs that , whatever the musician may or may not have meant them to be, came like a life line.... I imagine some have quite a few, and others only a few. Whether you're just going through hell, angry and helpless, or wondering where the hope went- the right music can be powerful and personal. No need to say why, but this thread is to list which songs that helped you hold out or even gave you a metaphysical hand up. One for me.... I'm told it's used for Parks and Recreations... but that's not how I came to know this one. It instead came to me at a time when it looked like I was helpless to help some loved ones.. that still happens a lot, but this song promises something. Before that, and on the opposite end of the spectrum, was Luka by Vega... this is not a hopeful song, but sometimes , even when circumstances aren't as bad as in the song, you want someone who seems to "get it." I got more but those two stand out. Anyone else?

Our next pick is our Monster. Zarko the Dhampir is just what it says on the can ... a dhampir, the offspring of a vampire and a mortal. Maybe it'd be better to say "THE dhampir" rather than "a dhampir", because in the 4th Century, Saint Heliodorus cast out ("melted" in the hagiography) all the vampires and vampire-spawn in Dalmatia, and forbade their return. But one vampire-human union was still in the womb at that time, and avoided the destruction caused by the saint, and one's first arrival on earth can't be construed as a "return". Thus Zarko the Accursed was born in a mountain village, and has stalked women in Dalmatia ever since. Unable to assume human form due to the saint's intercession, Zarko shifts among bestial forms as he goes through the night, looking for women to kill, since the saint also made it impossible for the dhampir to mate with them. Zarko is a CGI construct of shifting but universally loathsome appearance in our movie, but he is voice-acted by the great Boris Karloff.

I'd better get her while she's still available (at least, I think she's still available....): Greatest Warrior in all the Land: Gal Gadot as General Thalassa

I left my prepared text at my office Friday, but I have just about everything plotted out now. Wizard: played by Vincent Price. Text to come in a day (or more, if this place gets paralyzed by snow as is within the possible forecast).

Hello, Sean! Welcome back! I'm still at work, so I don't have much time to read the thread at the moment, but it reminded me of something we tried for an espionage-type game: if you botched a Skill Roll, the Body of the dice were counted to determine how many Phases before you could try again. I know this is not at all what you are discussing here, but the reminder was nice, and it really added something to the idea of having to try a different approach for the hack, or diagnose and swap out another component in your repair, or switch to a more specialized set of lockpicks- whatever. It was a fun thing we tried once, and I wanted to share it before I forgot it for another twenty years.

Wizard: Sebastian DeClercq played by the incomparable Alan Rickman

Golden Retriever meets sister for the first time

in 5e (or was it 4e) UMA designing new styles/maneuvers: Guy made his own martial maneuver: Something like a block +2 OCV +3 DCV, +4d6+v/5 damage, full move, grab 4 limbs +20 str, target thrown to the ground. All for only 27 points.

Greatest warrior: Ice T (late 80s / early ninties, before he Doughboyed up)

Amid the chaos of the first day of class, a new profile image.

Cause he is a director in the 1970s

I have no proof, but I've never thought there was a strong connection, either. At the end of the day, there are two totally different things going on: Sitting on your butt, flattening a few brain waves, and being spoon fed a story-- every image, action, detail of that story--- and getting together with friends or at least like-minded people, and creating your own story. There may be overlap in themes or genres of the story, but at the end of the day, they are two completely different activities. There may be overlap in the two markets as well. Ultimately, though, not everyone who likes one activity is going to like the other.

"The new discovery in Russia marked the first time multiple generations of Scythian women were found buried together, according to the researchers. The youngest of the bodies may have belonged to a girl roughly 12 or 13 years old. Two others were women in their 20s, according to the researchers, and the fourth was between 45 and 50. Mayor said the findings suggested that young girls were trained early on, just like boys, to ride horses and use bows and arrows. “This was an egalitarian society,” Mayor told The Washington Post on Tuesday. “The fact that you have a range of ages is important because people previously thought that mothers wouldn’t be out fighting because they had children.” “In these small tribes on the harsh steppes, it makes sense that every single person has to have the same skills and competence to defend the tribe as necessary,” she added. “It confirms that these women really were warriors throughout their lives.” The discovery also represents the first time such a remarkably well-preserved headdress was found on a warrior woman’s head. According to the researchers, the headdress was 65 to 70 percent gold — a far higher portion than is often found in Scythian jewelry, which is typically about 30 percent." In short, previous unearthing of warrior women's remains were suggestive but isolated, but this one offers far more evidence that female fighters were an integrated part of Scythian society, and could rise to prominence and positions of authority.

Maybe I missed something but I think I was the one who said it was a" PR trick" used by some studios etc. But no offense taken on my part. I disagree that it has nothing to do with the actual problem of fan toxicity or cyberbullying, as it can have a dangerous "boy cries wolf effect' that makes it much harder for victims of the real incidents. Calling out sexism as toxic is fine because, well, bigotry against people is toxic, but deciding to deride what would otherwise be mere disapproval of quality or adherence to canon as 'toxic' is at kindest, hyperbole, and at worst,vilification. Looking back at the interview, it seemed to me like the interviewer was complaining about fans of superhero movies being too picky and labeling it as toxic. Cavill explained that he just saw that as passionate for they truly loved the characters etc. I think he's right not to assume toxcity is the norm for even passionate fandoms. But, of course, as a fan of superheroes myself I might be biased

I got to see the movie with my kids over Christmas break. And to my surprise, enjoyed it! It probably helped that 1) I had a low opinion going into it. 2) I really never read the expanded Universe that much and never Heir of the Empire. Geez I didn’t like the idea then that the Emperor came back as a clone. 3) it’s just a movie, I sat back and watched. 4) I really like the fast pace of it. Light skipping wasn’t a problem for me. 1) This IS Star Wars where the main Heroes pull off incredible stuff. 2) They showed how dangerous it was and explained how dangerous it was. I think the Falcon being on fire was a hint that it got too close to a star. I like how they grounded the fleet in the end. Ok Death Star grade lasers on each ship? Not as much a fan but oh well. Admiral Pryde was a nice touch. I think Snoke was a clone of Darth Plagius I was really and pleasantly surprised to see Han again. Loved the scene where Luke raises up his X-wing!

No matter how pleasing the soap scent, do not walk out of the men's room sniffing your fingers.

Dinner tonight will consist of a spiral sliced ham, cornbread stuffing, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, and dinner rolls. The wine will be a '14 Snowden cabernet. Dessert is pecan pie with coffee or Angels Envy egg nog. It's a good day. Kids are happy in their rooms playing with their toys in the case of my two high schoolers, while my 19 year old slipped out to see her friends for a gift exchange. Watching Its A Wonderful Life myself, and reflecting on the year. Swag was a bluetooth waterproof speaker for my office and camping, a PS4 pro, books (Witcher series and Pat McManus stuff), and clothes for work. Merry Christmas

Tri-tip at the in-laws tonight. Hubby got me a claymore sword! ❤️

Something in the title of this thread spoke to me. My history with Champions is so bound up with my real life that one couldn’t exist without the other. Around 35 years or so ago I was a guy in my 20’s and a girl I liked said “you like comics, I play a game that’s kind of a D&D for comic books.” “Come see if you like it.” So I went. If she said “Hey, every Saturday night we cut off our own heads, wanna come along?” I would have gone. I knew a couple of the people vaguely and I did have fun. The next two decades or so just kind of flew by. Some of that group and others that I met along the way became the best friends I’ve ever known. Others became enemies. A very few are closer to me than my own brothers. I became Godfather to the children of the “kid” I first got to know when driving him in to Boston to play after inviting him to join our group. He’s a man now of course and a Captain of Firefighters. (a REAL Hero) He met the lovely woman who would become his wife over a Champions game. The games came and went. GM’s and players did the same. Some friends have passed away, and when we remember them we always end up saying that they’ve just gone ahead to save us the “good table” in a room with a blackboard to put up a Dex Chart. Time and circumstance has spread us across the map although we stay in pretty constant touch. And I myself haven’t picked up a set of dice in a decade or more, but I think about those days often. Times both spent at the Game table and away, love and laughs and inside jokes we now have to clean up so we can explain them to the kids. Thinking about the title of this thread made me want to say to those who created this sometimes silly game and may have thought this a small accomplishment in a big world....Thank You for what it’s meant to the life of just this one player.