Joe Walsh

Ghosts (original, UK version): It's a pretty funny series. If you like Britcoms, you may enjoy this one. HBO Max.

Don't Look Up is hiliarous...and sad, being an accurate depiction of how the most powerful people on Earth react to impending catastrophe: selfishly and stupidly.

Yup, the story finished pretty strong. Better than I'd expected, anyway. Looking forward to where they take it. (And yeah, the mid-credits scene was a lot of fun.)

I'm surprised to say our best entertainment purchase this year was HBO Max. There's been so much good stuff on there, and continues to be, that we're likely to cancel Netflix for a year because we can't possibly watch it all.

8-Bit Christmas: Watched about 20 minutes of it. Fittingly given the theme, it seems like an 80s-era TV movie-of-the-week ripping off A Christmas Story. We bailed out. Hawkeye S1 E1 and E2: So far, it's good enough to keep watching. Not as good as S1 of most of the supers TV shows of the last 10 years, but I'm keeping my hopes up that it'll get better. Get Back: Pretty interesting look at The Beatles as they struggled to keep the band going. The first episode was the most interesting, because they seemed to be behaving genuinely (if sometimes horribly). E2 and E3 show them behaving much more for the camera, turning on the charm, being goofy, not getting into conflict, etc. It would be interesting to see more of the early footage some day. That said, E2 and E3 were still worth watching.

HBO Max: S1 of Love Life was pretty good (4/5). S2 is about the same, a couple of episodes in. Watchmen (2019) is a good mini-series so far (I'm about half way through). Different than the comic, but good.

Finished S3 of 'In the Dark' -- I'm good with leaving Murphy's story where it ends up. Finished S1 of 'Inside Job' -- It's a genuinely funny animated series that posits most conspiracy theories are true, there really are secret cabals running things, etc. Good stuff!

Fingers crossed. It really deserves to be available more widely.

Barry, S2. Wonderful right to the end. Doom Patrol, S3. Not quite as good as S1 and S2, but very, very good nonetheless.

The week of March 22nd, 2020, I was on a business trip. We were all monitoring the news. Ohio shut down, there was talk of other states shutting down. Then I got home and stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things and....the parking lot was completely full mid-afternoon on a Friday. People were coming out with their carts loaded with canned goods, paper products...anything they could get their hands on. I went in to see how bad it was, and the place had just about been emptied out. Desperate people were zooming from aisle to aisle, looking for things to buy. Arguments and fights were breaking out over who would get the last whatever. That's when I knew it was going to be a long, hard, terrible slog.

Barry S1. Another great series we're enjoying now that we have HBO Max. It's a dark comedy about an assassin and the people around him. It's pretty much all good so far. Lovin' it and looking forward to watching S2!

Jason fixed this issue, along with an issue with being able to download the PDF of Villains, Vandals, and Vermin when buying the book + PDF version. Thank you, Jason!

When I try to buy a copy of Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth (Book + PDF), the Hero Games store tells me, "Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth (Book + PDF) cannot be shipped to your location. " I'm in the US and the Hero Games store has no problem shipping other items to me. Is there a reason, or is this a bug?

Way back, I could get away with using unfamiliar place names from other countries. I've also used language generators like those in the Classic Traveller Aliens supplements. These days, I just sit and think, and eventually come up with something decent, or a bunch of decent ones that sound plausible to be of a piece if it's a bunch of named places in a given area. But if the PCs decide to go somewhere I don't already have a name for? I'll just come up with something passable on the spot if possible, or, if not, I'll just go with something punny.

D'oh! I was off by a day -- it premieres Thursday. Wishful thinking!

Doom Patrol S2. We just finished it last night, in time for S3 starting on Wednesday. Since the almost-completed S2E10 season finale didn't make it past the covid shutdown, we're really left on the edge of our seats!

Mustard, iceberg lettuce leaf, sliced fresh jalapeno, and tomato. The latter three in quantities sufficient to cover the bun.

That sucks! Giving up caffeine due to health problems was painful, and I still miss it sometimes. But I never enjoyed the taste of soda pop or tea as much as most coffee lovers seem to enjoy coffee, so I know I got off easy.

I couldn't stand beer until I found ale. Now, I can't stand. (Badum-pah!) Every type of shellfish I've ever tried has made me gag. I do like fresh-caught fish, but most of the stuff I've tried in restaurants has a funny taste to it, so I avoid that stuff. High quality sushi can be quite good, though. And I've never enjoyed coffee or coffee-flavored products.

Oh how awful, Dr MID-Nite. My condolences to you and your family.

It's great that WandaVision won an Emmy, and the team definitely deserves its set design win, but it'd be nice if genre series and movies could win the headline awards for acting, directing, etc. regularly too.

It's pretty uneven, but season one of Hacks turned out to be OK overall. The Harley Quinn animated series was better than that after two seasons, but still uneven. But season one of Doom Patrol was great! Very funny, good story, good characters...it's got just about everything I'd want in an offbeat supers TV show.

Looks like Biden's giving companies a push on that: employers with 100+ employees will need to either make sure their employees are vaccinated or test them weekly. And employees at health care facilities that receive federal Medicare and/or Medicaid funding will need to be fully vaccinated. https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-health-coronavirus-pandemic-executive-branch-18fb12993f05be13bf760946a6fb89be

Sounds fun! I'll play. Why your username? -I've usually been the GM in every group I've been with over the last 40 years. Why your avatar or if no avatar why not -It's-a me, Joe! What area do you live in? -Chicagoland What's your profession? -I'm in IT/Cybersecurity Are you a Windows, Mac or Linux user? -Linux personally. I was a Mac user for about 10 years beginning with OS X 10.1, and FreeBSD before that (and Windows 9x before that, and Apple // before that, and Atari 400/800 before that, with a smattering of others from time to time). Are there TV shows and/or movies you like to binge watch? -Firefly, Farscape, Buffy...more recently, Doom Patrol on HBO Max and the newer Marvel series on Disney+. What drew you to the Hero System? -Initially, it was just one of the very few supers systems out there. But once I opened that oversized box and started reading the saddle-stitched book, my mind was blown. Which edition did you start with? 2nd Edition gave me my start with HERO System. What have you used the game for? -Supers, fantasy, cyberpunk, western...just about all the usual genres except space sci-fi and toons. What point system have you ran or played in? -? Not sure what's being asked. Do you still play or GM the Hero System -My most recent stint GMing Hero was a couple years ago. Our there other games you play -Over the last five years, in addition to HERO I've GMed or played B/X D&D, BRP, Classic Traveller, Supers! Revised Edition, Tunnels & Trolls, Savage Worlds, Fate...probably a few more I'm forgetting. On an A to F scale how do you rate the system overall -It's a solid A. Could it be better? Yes. But as it is, it's very, very good. Followup question: If you rate the system below B- why are are still playing or using it? What are some house-rules, if any, you use in the past? -1/2d6 Stun multiplier, of course. We futzed around with a lot of stuff in the early years, but in the end most was either fixed or explained more clearly in a later edition. These days, it's so easy to take any edition and add things from other editions until you get what you want. Not a lot of need to homebrew any more, IME. That said, I do prepare standards documents for every campaign to give players a good idea of where (and whether) their character concept will fit into the campaign world. If you could put together a 7th edition what are some things you add, omit and/or change? -All versions have been very good, but I'm not a fan of huge tomes. So if I were being realistic, I'd start with Champions Complete, fix all errors, then lay it out with more whitespace like the 4e BBB. I would also try to make it clearer to those new to the game what the various levels of characteristics and skills mean (could be just adding a few columns and rows to the Average Individuals table and putting the table up front, but ideally there would be a chapter on the subject), and add some extended character building and campaign building examples...including campaigns where character designs are fairly simple and straight-forward, like early 4e and prior.

Yeah, it's about time for us to cancel our late-2021 plans. We had hope back at the beginning of the year that vaccines would get us to a better place by late this year. Bzzzt! Wrong again.