Nolgroth

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Yojimbo and Seven Samurai. I can see where they set a standard for future movies, but honestly I was bored stiff watching both of them. I felt that I owed it to both myself and these classics to have a gander. Now that I have seen them, I can honestly say I like what evolved from them more than the source works themselves. I also like the Western movie versions (A Fistful of Dollars and The Magnificent Seven) better too. That's probably because I dislike sub-titles.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Bones. All six seasons. For character interaction and the whole procedural crime angle, it is hard to beat this show. The creative staff do not really know how to handle a long-term bad guy. So far they had three chances and each of them never left me with the satisfying "epic" villain feel. The episode Bullet in the Brain was a highlight of the show. I won't spoiler it, but I was wondering how they got that on prime time TV. My how the world has changed.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I For the first time ever, I fell asleep while watching a Harry Potter movie. I did end up seeing a great deal of the movie, but I was really thinking that I could have edited about 30-45 minutes of the tedium out and probably trimmed it enough to fit it in one release.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Thor - Liked it a lot. Like many, I wished the Destroyer battle was a little more dramatic. It was the scene in which Thor reclaimed his power though. To make the Destroyer too tough might have appeared to sell Thor's might short. Saw the trailer to Green Lantern (Netflix), Captain America (matinee), and Conan (matinee).

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Bones Season 1 and 2. Great show. Very few things make me belly laugh. This show is one of them. For that reason alone, it has joined the top 5 shows of all time. Working on Season 3. Just watched the Halloween episode (Mummy in the Maze). Emily Deschanel dressed up as Wonder Woman. Somehow managed both "sexy" and "funny" at the same exact time.

Re: what non-fiction books have you read? please rate it ... Men to Master My Mountains - (I'll post the author' name later) I haven't actually finished it, but the book is an account of the settlement of California. So far, while it has been easy enough to read, it lacks something. It is more of a commentary than a historical reference in presentation. I have been grappling with it one chapter at a time every few weeks. One day I hope to finish it. Looking for a good "dummies" guide to forensic pathology. I like what is in Dark Champions, but just a bit more would be nice. Any suggestions?

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Inception - Great movie. Love the timing (literally) and pace of the story. Action scenes are top notch and special effects are impressive. The latter is saying something considering the sheer fx overload in the last score of years or so. I love the "you decide" ending.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? The Tourist - Mildly liked it. Not much for the romantic style movie. I would have preferred a little more action. Still, not too bad as far as stories go. I got the twist wrong on this one. Always good to see Timothy Dalton getting paid. I really like his role as Volkov on Chuck.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Salt - Liked it. I figured it out pretty quickly, but that didn't stop me from enjoying about 90% of it. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time - Liked it a lot. Action scenes made it out to be Assassin's Creed the movie. I am more than okay with that. Also figured out the plot, including the true villain within moments of the adult scenes. Karate Kid - The new one. There is a difference between an homage to the original and one that duplicates the final fight scene to the letter. Didn't really like it, but didn't really hate it either. Resident Evil 4 - Liked it overall. Lots of room to make fun of as we (my kids, best friend and I) watched it. Tron Legacy - Liked it, but not as much as I hoped I would. Nice touch with Billy Bad Bot at the end, changing from red to blue. Daybreakers - Could have been good. Maybe I am burned out on the vampire theme, but mostly it was just too many stories wrapped into too short of time span. Would have made an excellent Showtime or HBO original series. Too much gore though. Not sure why the vamps exploded from heart shots since it was just a virus. Oh well. Angel - Seasons 1-4, working on 5. Mostly like. Hated that pregnancy took a central role in two seasons. Hated that both produced offspring that went on to be evil. Does Joss Whedon have some fear of pregnant women or infants? Makes me wonder. So far, season 5 is shaping up to potentially be the best season yet. Liking the interaction between Spike and Angel now that both of them are good guys with souls. Mind you, the previous flashback scenes did not give much info.

Re: Gemini Ascendant: Reborn Sorry folks. Lost track of my days. Sometimes happens when you don't have a steady schedule. I completely understand the desire to pull out. Good luck and I'll see you around. Thanks for being part of the game when it was strong and all of the patience you have shown lately. If I ever get myself back to the point where I can commit to a weekly game, I'll post a message in the Player Finder or something. -James

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Living in a Moment - Ty Herndon

Re: The Cape - What do you think of it so far? Really? I am so glad I gave up a few episodes back.

Re: Gemini Ascendant: Reborn Has anybody heard from Starwolf? I sort of need to know how to proceed with the game today. I hope he has a new modem/router.

Re: Dieselpunk? Yes, but the phrase Dieselpunk is so much more kewl and appealing to the younger audiences. In fact, adding punk after just about anything makes it kewl and edgy. Indeed, this works so well that I am now changing Everyman skills to Everypunk skills.

Re: Gemini Ascendant: Reborn Feels that way sometimes.

Re: Gemini Ascendant: Reborn Nothing like that. The timing sucks, but it was one of those important things. As far as I know, there are no great non-game commitments next week. Time to get back into the swing of things. Assuming I remember just what angle, within the arc, we left off at.

Re: Gemini Ascendant: Reborn Not trouble with the server. Once again I have to apologize, but this time for not keeping you in the loop. I had to help Merovign move this week and I suppose I was holding out hope that I would get things done in time for the game. By game time, I had completely forgotten about what day it was. The good news is that we successfully moved everything before the deadline (he had a really short time in which to clear the old place). Sorry again for not keeping you in the loop.

Re: Nostalgia: Anybody Else Covert Old Gaming Material? Good days those. Still learning the system back then. I never could reconcile the sheer cost of some Channeling powers within the context of a balanced game. Ultimately gave up due to not having any interested players.

Re: STR Minimum: somewhat overcooked? I have long felt that the STR Minimum, for almost all weapons, is way too high. I just made for a flat -5 to Str Min across the board. It was a quick and easy way to put the STR Min in its place. I'm sure you could get more exacting or precise, but it seemed to work pretty well for the campaigns I've used that house rule in since I implemented it.

Re: Your "2011" Pet Gaming Projects And to prove that anybody can take anything from some written work, I see Lord Liaden's Flames of Varkolak as the back story to a Tomb Raider style pulp adventure.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? A South Korean spy drama TV show on Hulu. It is English dubbed and called Athena: Goddess of War (or something similar). I'm usually not much into that sort of thing, but I decided to give it a try after watching a feature length film from South Korea that I really liked. The Athena show is really engaging. In just two episodes, it has joined the ranks of my favorite shows like Burn Notice, Castle, and Chuck.

Re: Colored Lights The standard method would be Images, Only to Create Light (-1). It only limits the images to creating light. It does not limit the color. I would say that Only to Create (color) Light would be a -2 Limitation.

Re: Nostalgia: Anybody Else Covert Old Gaming Material? I tried to convert the Wheel of Time (not the game but the setting) and failed to get it done to my satisfaction. I tried to convert Star Frontiers and ended up using prefabricated writeups from Terran Empire. I considered developing a Dark Sun adaptation but didn't even really get started. I did manage to "convert" a homebrew campaign, though most of that was a conversion of ideas rather than stats.

Re: LOTR thoughts http://www.lords-of-blah.nl/mearth/mearthmap.html http://www.ititches.com/middleearth/

Re: LOTR thoughts Sauron was Melkor's underling. Melkor being one of the Valar created by Eru (basically God). The Valar were pretty massively powerful and might be equated to the archangels or perhaps the gods of Olympus/Asgard.The Maiar, of which Sauron, Gandalf and the Balrogs are part of are sort of lesser angels. Still powerful, but not as powerful as the Valar. More information can be found at this link.