Spence

Ask what? I'm confused. Everything is to taste. I mean I know an avid Bollywood fan. So there are people for everything, but I am attempting to push through a horrendous movie where it has been almost physical labor to push a full 24 minutes into a 156 minute show. I mean a high order being that is thousands of years old invents a technological device to help farming and when literally everyone in the room indicates that it is far beyond current human understanding says "can you do that think" referring to mind control like a modern teenage genius that is technologically smarter than his emotional age. So far the characters have not established any kind of connection with the audience except maybe Hayek's character is stupid since the scene with the big red guy clearly telegraphs "you're being lied to" with trumpeting shout of obviousness. What few scenes there are that try to establish the characters are just long enough to utterly waste time while being too short to actually establish anything the audience can latch on to. I'll admit I have never read the Eternals and it has been a long time since I've read a comic. I the US comics industry shuttered it's doors back in the late 80's so it has been a while. That means I am going in to the movie with no knowledge of the story so everything is dependent on the movie itself. This movie is worse than the theatrical release of the 1984 Dune movie. They were actually handing out a three page cheat sheet with definitions of terms in the lobby. If you had read the book you could understand what they were trying to do, but with anyone that had never read the book it was a bomb at the box office. I am sure that there are people that liked it, but currently at 24:21 it is about as interesting as a monotone documentary about different shades of white paint drying. But I spent $5.99 on it and I will get my money out of it. If I can stay awake

That is outstanding. More Hero games at a single con than I have seen in years....

OK, thanks all. That explains it.

Well, I got Eternals through a special promotional deal. I've made it to the where Ajack talks to the big rock dude with red glowing flame pit eyes and is basically told not to think and just do her job. But I tell you, it has been a slog. I may try to endure a little more tonight if I can't find anything more interesting than paint drying. I cannot understand how they put this out without a test audience.

I know I am going to regret this. I searched the forums and the only mentions of the term were here and a thread you started, and in that thread the term wasn't actually defined. Though a quick skim indicates you have added a lot of additional complication to "solve" it. <sigh> OK. Since I have no idea what you are talking about Please define "STR bug".

I've played in a game with 9 before. But I find my ability to run a fun game drops off drastically whenever I have more than 6. I actually prefer 4 for an ongoing game.

Holy Bat-Cons Batman! So many PC's. Don;t tell me you run that many players in a single session? I hit a wall at 6.

So a different type of question for the convention forum. What were the last games you ran at a convention and did they succeed. And by succeed did you and your players have fun? I had stopped going to cons for the better part of a decade because of life. I had planned on starting up again just as the C19 hit. Last year in Oct 21 my local tabletop gaming convention, Dragonflight, opened it's doors. I had a fantastic time as I remembered what I had been missing. Of the three planned games I was able to run two. 1) Demons of Eldritch Shadow (Star Trek Adventures horror) 2) Darkness at outpost Delta Six (Nights Black Agents/modern GUMSHOE horror) Both games were full, 5 players, were fantastic. The players were great and actually adapted to the genre/game rather than try to mold the game into something else. Of course they immediately went off script and managed to achieve the missions in a most spectacular fashion. I have run the outpost scenario several times in the past and it usually results in one deranged and barely breathing survivor. In this case not only did they retrieve the data, but they all survived. All in all I had a rip roaring time and have already started planning for the next con.

And someone has to drag their politics into it. Sad......

I seem to remember something about that. But I can clearly remember among the gamers in my area the big thing was the game was incomplete. Physically. You actually could not play. At all. You could not actually make a character. At all. Take Champions Complete. Cut the binding, remove pages 42 to 129. Throw them away and rebind what is left. Sell. And there you have what happened with Fuzion. I can remember several games from board games to RPGs to wargames that were put out in the late 90's that were unplayable because they were simply incomplete. For Fuzion we would hear people talking as if they had played the game and we always thought they were lying because we could open the rulebook and there was no actual way to make a character. I personally believe that it would have had more of a chance if there had been a way to communicate directly with the publisher in real time.

I'd need a little more information. From what you are saying I am seeing something like the standard anime "power up" with each "new form" being more powerful that the last. Just what is this "innate quality" that everyone has? You could build a multi-form "template" with 9 forms, one for each "level" and then have the players apply their individual characters to them. Or I am completely out in left field and have totally missed what you are aiming for

I always went with the definition of Barbarian being "uncivilized" with civilized being defined as permanent settlements, cities and technology. This of course makes the scale sliding.

I found out who made the original sheet. They lost their original Hero Profile but their new one is mbaer99

Well one of the reasons was the physical book wasn't complete. The copy I got was literally missing entire sections. The intro mentioned "switches" and "dials". But those terms did not exist in the book in my hands. Years later I found a different copy that wa actually complete. My personal belief is that if Fuzion had been published in the internet age it wouldn't have cratered. The missing information would have been identified rather than just being another "half assed attempt at a game".

Hmmm.... I've never played an RPG at a con that didn't use pre-gens. I know all of the games I run do.

Ran out of "likes". So 💙

I don't want to set off a fire storm, I guess I shouldn't have made the comment because the Hero boards have been pleasantly clear if it. I'll PM you details that you can ignore 😉

Well SS2 wasn't supposed to be a well plotted movie. It was more like a Rowan Atkinson skit extended into a movie length. Plot holes a mile wide and a lot of "just because" logic. Nope, SS2 was not a movie to be watched in anything resembling a serious manner and arguing it wasn't serious enough is kind of like arguing that not all the costumes and armor used in Monty Python and the Holy Grail were period accurate. Why???

It is? I actually never noticed to tell the truth. I guess I had been playing Hero for so long I never found it hard in 5thR. But I never really went too far into 6th so I can't really say. May take a look and see if it is worth stealing for my hybrid 5thR games.

There was a time when the CW shows were good and most of the TV that I made sure to record and watch was on the CW. But then things just disintegrated to the point where they are now, bottom rung and laughing stock. I believe that the actual powers that be who own the CW recognized this and had begun to try an turn it around with shows like Superman & Lois. But the issue is that far too many of the CW staff/employees firmly frozen into their current content style that keeps trying to repeat the same thing and expect a different result. Plus the almost mandatory requirement to vilify the potential customer because they are simply not interested in you product. I believe everyone is a misogynist now, though I may have missed the new diatribe. IIRC CW came about when UPN failed and was merged into another venture with Warner Brothers. The new CW then changed it's content and introduced a lot of successful genre shows. I am most likely wrong, but I am betting that the "sale" of CW will end in the creation of another network and facilitate the ownership (whoever that winds up being) the ability to shed/fire/replace the CW creative and management staff. Since the 30's successful movies and later TV shows have been 90-95% story/plot/ENTERTAINMENT with 5-10% message. Be it political or social. In the last 10 years or so that has become 90-95% political lecture with 5-10% poorly written superficial story. With 0% entertainment and the movie/TV industry is hemorrhaging money. I am betting that we will see the CW be absorbed into a new entity with shows such as S&L and B5 setting the tone while allowing the remaining Arrowverse shows and staff to be cut loose. Just an opinion of course.

Thoughts on D&D I don't consider D&D as being "broken" at all. Well, except for 4th edition. That was definitionally broken garbage that should burn in the eternity of RPG hell . But back to D&D as a whole. I may no longer enjoy it as much, but I don't think it is broken. Like other games I do not enjoy playing (D&D 3.8 aka Pathfinder, Fate etc), they are not "broken" because they achieve what they are trying to. They may be too restricted or too loose for my gaming style, but that doesn't mean they are broken. The current D&D game mechanics are one of D&D's better version IMO. Still not a candle to Hero, 2D20, CoC, GUMSHOE. But a good rule set none the less and fun to play. Of course the company is in full bore self destruction mode. But hey, the ramifications of it are something for the next 5-8 years. Thoughts on Skills I have always thought that the ultra excessive depth of the Hero skill system as portrayed by 5thR and 6th were far too much to be useful in an actual game. But! Yes but. It is an excellent system to tailor a specific skill system for a specific game/campaign. In my supers games I tend to stay on the upped tiers. Such as Average Category for Knowledge and Field or maybe Discipline for Sciences. In my super games the Superscientist is just that. A Superscientist. Engineering - check. This is SUPER adventure in a SUPER world and the SUPERscientist is just that. They don't need to buy every possible subtitle that can be considered engineering because the are a SUPERscientist. For Fantasy Hero games I usually select a narrow list of campaign titled skills that resemble the ones you would see in D&D that the players pick from. Later after they have played a bit and have a grasp of Hero as a game I open the game to further customization. But I never ever ever turn players loose with the Hero Skill system un-throttled. It is far too easy to get lost in the minutia and wind up spending half your points on irrelevant and needed sub-specialties. Kind of like a modern degree post 90's. 20% general knowledge/skills, 30% professionally relevant knowledge/skills, 50% ludicrously irreverent fraudulent horse-sh*t, all at a premium price. But that is another topic of non-discussion.

no. IIRC i saw the clip when the guy I don't know talked about it for a few minutes as they went into some award show. In 2019??? He only mentioned that he had gotten the gig an was in the beginning stages. Then the coof. I wish I could find the clip again.

Not argument, that implies disagreement. We are having a lively discussion.

I was laughing my ass off. They were obviously an expendable distraction and none of them were expected to survive. It was like a British comedy along the line of Black Adder or Mr. Bean. Over the top stupidity somehow surviving. The big starfish sealed the deal. Stupid enough to be hilarious. No. I liked SS2. It wasn't high cinema, but it was entertaining.

I liked the Netflix shows, even the so called "bad" ones. The first Suicide Squad was so bad it didn't rise to the level of utter garbage. Surprisingly, Suicide Squad 2 was actually entertaining and fun. After the first one I almost didn't watch the second. I only did because it was free to me (borrowed BluRay) and I was bored.