Nolgroth

Fame as the modern equivalent to worship. Works for me. Brings a whole new meaning to the lyrics of Fame by Irena Cara...
 
 

Got up to the Lord of the Graven Spear and the end of the First Epoch. I really like the inverted King Arthur trope here, where the Spearlord conquers much of the known world with the aid of a magic spear. SO much more detail could have gone into this. Hell, you could really make an entire chapter about this period of time and the time after where kingdoms are rising and falling all over the place, for that matter. In fact, the period of time just after the death of the Spearlord seems way more interesting to me than the default campaign assumption of eventually fighting Kal-Turak. Luckily (and also somewhat frustratingly) a lot of the details surrounding the Spearlord are vague and GM dependent. This character has the potential to be one of the most interesting villains around. Hate to say it, but much more interesting than the titular villain, Kal-Turak.
 
If I were to write the Spearlord's story, I would actually give him a name and make him a little less directly evil. Heck, in some parts of the world, he might have become a bit of a folk hero. He was, after all, a somewhat permissive leader that might well have brought stability to some nations/regions that had not experienced it before. But that's me projecting my own tastes into the setting. Let me finish the book as written before I get into all of that.
 
My reading is slowed down considerably by a head/chest cold. Every time I cracked open the book to start reading, I would suddenly jolt awake with a couple of minutes having passed by. Was hoping to get the history lesson done today.

Okay, started to delve into the history of Ambrethel. What I really liked about this section is that it made me want to open up the sections on the first of the human kingdoms and regions. It did little to make me change my position about human versus drakine. I need to delve further, of course, in order to give the other species a fair shake. Right now, though, the other playable species/races are looking more and more like boxes that needed to be checked off in order to make an epic fantasy rpg setting. 
 
Getting back to the early history, my biggest compliment and complaint is that the text left me wanting more...and there was a lot of information that was not available. Sure, a lot of that can and should be filled in by the individual GM. I almost feel like I need to build a timeline of events to see how things play out over the larger area. Also, the creation myth section is so bland and vague that it could have been replaced with something more concise. The format of the TA book makes a bit of light research a must. Learning the lore of, say, the Sirrenic Empire is going to involve jumping through at least a couple of sections. Maybe the NPC and GM sections will even have more information. This scattering of information has also sort of dictated how I approach the consumption of information from the TA book. A chapter by chapter review is simply not going to satisfactorily educate me on the lore of the setting. This might have been one of the things that caused my initially lukewarm response way back in the day. Also a warning to anybody just jumping in on the setting. Homework is required.
 
So far, enjoying myself.

So do you feel strongly about this?
 
 

I explicitly agreed that Kellie Marie Tran was the subject of abuse by toxic fans. I have admitted that such a thing does happen. My only contention is that it has become and easy out to blame fans for being toxic when the product itself was sub-par. Were you not reading or just looking for an excuse to take my comment out of context? 

Having run a 6E game way back when it came out, I would say your assessment is mostly fair. The difference is pretty small though. You could award R.A.W. experience awards and the players would not feel cheated or hampered.

I think Henry Cavill is turning out to be one of my favorite stars. In a recent interview, he dismissed the interviewer's characterization of fans as being toxic. He instead pointed out how fans can be very passionate about the subject material. I don't have a link to the actual interview, but I saw several videos on YouTube refer back to it. I just think it is pretty cool that somebody in Hollywood has taken a moment to realize that fans are going to have opinions about the things they love.

My general rule of thumb is to go opposite of the critical bought review of most recognized media outlets. I read the user score and watch a few YouTube creators take on the matter. 

I explicitly agreed that Kellie Marie Tran was the subject of abuse by toxic fans. I have admitted that such a thing does happen. My only contention is that it has become and easy out to blame fans for being toxic when the product itself was sub-par. Were you not reading or just looking for an excuse to take my comment out of context? 

I know what Nogroth is talking about. One example, IIRC-The Ghostbusters 2016 reboot trailer got a lot of flack on youtube comments.  Some where embarrassing examples of sexism "Girls? Really" "SJWs are the worst" stuff, but 90% of the  complaints were about how a reboot wasn't needed, the fact the trailer looked awful, the CGI seemed sub par... and other complaints that had nothing to do with the team being all women. Sony went in, and deleted that 90% and left the Sexist comments behind so it looked like ALL downvotes were because of sexism. It was spun as 'If you dont' go to see this movie, if you see it and don't like it- you're toxic fandom'
 
Star Wars fans who blasted the Last Jedi yet didn't take part in the abominable treatment of Tran (And it was horrible and I maybe one of the only folks I know who LIKES the character of Rose minus the rushed romance plot) still got lumped in with those that did by the director.
 
 
Toxic fans exist...
but the label is sometimes used against those that don't deserve it as a PR trick.
 
 

The indifferent ones probably aren't commenting because they're indifferent.

C:TNM remains the only version of Champions I actually played more than one session of.

Yeah, that happens. I just believe the label of "toxic" is applied way too often though and now seems to be the default excuse for a poorly constructed product's inevitable failure. I imagine it is a very subjective bar though.

It was built on 6e Hero according to the back of the book, but is heavily modified to fit the setting, and wouldn't be easily adaptable to other games/settings. 

My general rule of thumb is to go opposite of the critical bought review of most recognized media outlets. I read the user score and watch a few YouTube creators take on the matter. 

I've decided sometime in the last decade or so that I don't actually need critics to review material to let me know if I should like it. Mostly, their reviews completely miss the point and they don't take the time to even attempt cursory understanding of the source material for my preferred entertainment material. 
 
I'm not really interested in their political analysis, dismissal of entire genres they don't enjoy, or hostility to audiences who don't agree with them. They're welcome to their opinions, mostly they are wrong based on economic outcomes and audience enjoyment. 

I think Henry Cavill is turning out to be one of my favorite stars. In a recent interview, he dismissed the interviewer's characterization of fans as being toxic. He instead pointed out how fans can be very passionate about the subject material. I don't have a link to the actual interview, but I saw several videos on YouTube refer back to it. I just think it is pretty cool that somebody in Hollywood has taken a moment to realize that fans are going to have opinions about the things they love.

I think Henry Cavill is turning out to be one of my favorite stars. In a recent interview, he dismissed the interviewer's characterization of fans as being toxic. He instead pointed out how fans can be very passionate about the subject material. I don't have a link to the actual interview, but I saw several videos on YouTube refer back to it. I just think it is pretty cool that somebody in Hollywood has taken a moment to realize that fans are going to have opinions about the things they love.

Sapkowski has got to be pickled tink by all this...
The Last Wish is currently a best seller at Amazon and has been for a week
 
and then you have THIS sort of Advertisement
 
 

To be honest, I very nearly gave up on the game at the very same point (that may be the longest tutorial I've ever played). The game world opens up considerably after the tutorial, and the story only gets good in Velen. And builds from there into one of the coolest narrative RPGs I've played. 
 
But it does take quite a bit to get going, I can see that not being for everyone. And it's a narrative driven game, where choices determine story outcomes. Kind of the opposite of Skyrim's open sandbox in many ways. I like them both though. 

I played through the tutorial area, watched the next cut-scene, and then never went back to the game, for much of the reasons that you mentioned. I've since played Skyrim about three or four times, with a few mods thrown in. I use an Xbox One controller on my computer* for both, so that part didn't bother me. 
 
 
 
*Using one of these: https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/accessories/adapters/wireless-adapter-windows

Absolutely. I am not advocating for yet another setting, sourcebook or compilation of the rules. Without a plan, however, then any "Starter" set is just another product created in a vacuum. Without additional support material already built and/or scheduled to be published, then it is doomed to fail. That's what I'm getting at. Suppose Hero publishes the Fantasy Hero Starter Kit with some basic rules, a couple of pre-made characters, a high quality poster map for the introductory adventure "Lost Mines of Herodelver." Now what? There has to be more. Not some vague idea or notion. There has to be something tangible to keep people coming back. 

Absolutely. I am not advocating for yet another setting, sourcebook or compilation of the rules. Without a plan, however, then any "Starter" set is just another product created in a vacuum. Without additional support material already built and/or scheduled to be published, then it is doomed to fail. That's what I'm getting at. Suppose Hero publishes the Fantasy Hero Starter Kit with some basic rules, a couple of pre-made characters, a high quality poster map for the introductory adventure "Lost Mines of Herodelver." Now what? There has to be more. Not some vague idea or notion. There has to be something tangible to keep people coming back. 

There are so many potential things you can do in the Star Wars universe (as roleplayers have known for decades). Spaghetti Western/Samurai film is definitely one of them. I'm waiting for the Star Wars version of Agent 007 -- a Rebellion superspy of great daring and perseverance who is just as ruthless as the Imperial officers and crime lords she's trying to take down.

Eh... not really.  They did put together stripped versions of both 5th and 6th.  The Basic books. 
But they were just like CC and FHC, incomplete and designed as if they intended them to fail.
 
Think of it this way. 
 
Lets imagine you have a two game consoles.  
Console one sells games on a disc like the PS4 and XBox.  Buy a disc, load it and play.
Console two has decided that anyone willing to play a game someone else designed is daft.  So they sell the console, the source code and some resources and say "have fun". 
 
Which console sells and which one fails?  Easy to pick.
 
When Fantasy Hero Complete was put out it was also incomplete.  It is even more sad because they actually had partially built the other half in the Val of Stalla which was given out as downloadable content but never mentioned in the book itself.  If the material had been polished up and included in FHC plus the equivalent of a 1st level spell list so the people who wanted to play a mage had a starting point to reference, it might have taken off. 
 
The Basic books were not bad at all........as one part of a complete product.
 
But after 3rd edition, Hero never tried to make "playable" games except for Champions in 4th. 
 
Hero in 5th and 6th stopped being a game played for fun, and became a dry programming language for mathematicians.
 
In my opinion Hero has ceased to be a game, and has become a system reference document.