Joe Walsh

As a GM yes. I've been running Hero since the 90s in some incarnation or another. I will be a player in any game and have enjoyed a myriad of systems. For GMing though, make mine Hero.
 
I'm running a Star Wars Game with Hero right now and Talespire (Roll20 for Space combat).

It is possible.  My son tested positive in November and we isolated him in his bedroom, aired the house, wiped surfaces, upped our hand-wash routines, and wiped down everything coming out of his room.  His meals were delivered on a tray, he left them outside his door in the evening, we picked them up in the morning (to minimise exposure to air from his room when the door opened).
 
We might have been lucky but we stacked the odds in our favour.
 
Good luck.
 
 
Doc

Given that (at least in my opinion) the GOP House members had no intention of actually doing their jobs, but instead just being obstructionist / perpetually try to impeach Biden / posture and pontificate without legislating... I'm not sure them being tied up indefinitely just trying to elect a Speaker of the House is all that much worse, or even all that different.

The Menu. Now this is my kind of horror. Loved it. Ralph Fiennes is awesome as always, and I'm developing a huge crush on Anya Taylor-Joy. Highly recommend. 

A lot to catch up with
 
The Other
Twins in 1930s America experiment with astral projection. Diana Muldaur plays the twins mother. This has a slow burn until you get to the twist. Then you don't know what happens.
 
Next of Kin
After her mother dies a woman returns to the old age people's home that her mother ran. Then she finds her mother's diary. And strange things start to happen. This is an Australian film worth a look although the last act seems rushed.
 
Resident Evil: the Final Chapter
In this installment you find out about what happened and how the Umbrella Corporation pulled it off. Iain Glen plays the villain with some relish. Alice returns to Racoon City and the scene of the first film. I was not expecting much but Iain is really worth the price of admission.
 
The Howling III
Werewolves in Australia. It is cheap and it is fun. See once and then decide if you like.
 
The Mephisto Waltz
A music journalist is granted an interview by a famous pianist who it turns out is dying. But is there something sinister going on ? Alan Alda is the journalist, Jacqueline Bisset is his wife and Curt Jurgens is the famous pianist. This is a Quinn Martin production and has a guest spot from Bradford Dillman. Highbrow for a horror.
 
Pulse
A boy goes to spend Summer Holiday with his father as his mother and father are divorced. But the electrics are suspect and have caused the death of one of the neighbours. But is there something evil in the wires ?m It is ok but the film just did not grip.

It is for me. 
 
Tomorrow I'm running my first Star Wars Hero session, taking place about a month after the destruction of the second Death Star.  This will be session zero with potentially a combat scene also.  Hopefully it goes well. 

I thought that was James Woods as GM for a minute there.

I thought that was James Woods as GM for a minute there.

Nah, this frees him up for more Enola Holmes movies.
 
My bet is he lands on James Bond, provided they want the next Bond to be a white male. I've heard rumors they're considering female or BIPOC Bond. Not sure how firm those are versus speculative.
 
Maybe Marvel will grab him. They're going to be bringing back the X-franchises eventually, so there are plenty of opportunities there. For Marvel, Captain Britain or maybe Union Jack are pretty obvious choices, let him speak in his native accent, and lesser known to movie audiences, which provides creative leeway for the actor, director and writers. Plus, Captain Britain is X-adjacent.

The big announcement is here! You are not ready. 
 
 

Finally finished grading stuff and posted course grades, 25.5 hours before the deadline.  Man, what a slog.

One of the mistakes made with  GURPS as it developed was the continual adoption of skills and subskills. Overwhelming, in the end. Hero benefits from a smaller, broader selection, I feel.

It depends on your definition of common.  A sizable majority of Americans have barely any awareness that a world outside of the US borders exist much less that our government might be heavily involved out there.  Of those that are more political aware, maybe half are familiar with our nations history of meddling with other countries' internal politics and maybe a third of those see it as an ongoing problem.
 
As for the impeachment in Peru, I would bet money that we had nothing to do with it.  Peru just doesn't have or make anything that we care about enough to orchestrate a change of government over it. 

I strongly disagree.  They know what the consequences are.  To them it's a feature, not a bug.

Wednesday: It's cute, but not what I expected at all. That character is not Wednesday Addams in any previous incarnation. It's good to see Gwendolyn Christie getting so much geek work. 
 
Rings of Power: I'm having a hard time finishing this. To call it slow is a dangerous understatement. The director really loves their slo-mo and music cferscendos. It's not a movie, it's a series. Figure your pacing out. (And where the hell did all those horses come from?) 

Greetings fellow HERO System fans! I know these updates should happen more often; and I’ll try to improve upon that. But for now, here’s what’s going on with Hero Games and the HERO System at the end of 2022.
 
1) First of all, if you haven’t joined our Patreon account (https://www.patreon.com/hero_games), please consider doing so. By becoming patron you will not only help fund the creation of of new books, but also gain the ability to review and comment upon unreleased material before it becomes available to the public. Right now we have a little more than fifty patrons; but I envision Hero Games having more like one hundred in 2023. Then we would be really “cooking with gas,” in terms of getting manuscripts turned into books more expediently.
 
And I really prefer Patreon for Hero Games as a crowdfunding method over Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, or any of the other platforms. Though that is admittedly a personal preference.
 
2) Have you seen our Champions Complete bundle on Roll20 (https://roll20.net/)? It has everything you need to play Champions with your friends online, including all of the material from Champions Complete and Champions Begins usable in Roll20.
 
3) Carlos and I got in a proof for Thomas Stadley’s new champions universe organization book Institute For Human Advancement: Pride & Prejudice, and there were some issues. So we’ve made some changes, resubmitted it, and I have a new proof on the way to me right now. If everything checks out, we should have that book available in the Hero Games store, DriveThruRPG, Amazon, Indie Press Revolution, and at a game store near you.
 
4) With Christopher Hackler’s Gaslight: Horror & Heroism in the Victorian Era having been through the Patreon account, Carlos and I have begin editing and laying it out. We’ll be presenting finished chapters on Patreon before taking it to print early next year.
 
5) Steven Otte’s Heroes In A Hurry is currently being run through the account. It is in nearly final form, and will go straight to press afterward.
 
6) Michael Satran’s final work Imperial Throne has been reviewed by fans on the Patreon account, and the response has been quite positive. Carlos and I will begin work on that when we’re done with Gaslight.
 
7) We will continue to put out chapters from renowned game designer Scott Bennie’s final novel The Last Orc, at which point I’ll copy edit it in preparation for publication sometime in 2023.
 
8. We’re going to start putting up chapters of Phil Guinchard’s Gemini System soon. It’s a genre-agnostic game heavily influenced by the Hero System and OpenD6; and, like Champions Now, is the sort of experiment we’d like for you to see.
 
That’s all I can think of here at the end of 2022. As always, if you have a Hero Games manuscript, email me at jason@herogames.com and let me know.
 
- Jason Walters, Publisher
 

It is a bad business decision, but business is not Musk's objective.  Amplification of conservative voices is.  Democratic politicians have seen their follower counts drop, while far right politicians have seen their follower counts skyrocket by hundreds of thousands.  Many people have discovered that their Twitter accounts suddenly started following Trump without their consent or knowledge.  Twitter costs about $3B a year to run (or it used to before Musk fired everyone), at that rate Musk will run out of money in about 63 years.

We stopped watching The Patient (Hulu) and The Rings of Power (Amazon Prime) half way through each series. They just weren't holding our interest, and we weren't looking forward to the next episode of either. For us, they were more like the stuff we used to watch back in the bad old days before we had so many great choices. No reason to keep watching something that's not keeping our interest, these days.

She-Hulk (Disney+).  Definitely different from any other D+ MCU series, but I really liked it.  Especially the superhero-law parts, I'd love to see more of that.

Sorry GM Joe, I only made it halfway through your post. Could you summarize?
 
j/k
 
Life's too short to waste on finishing stuff you don't like.

She-Hulk: The S1 finale was just wonderful, at least from the perspective of this John Byrne era She-Hulk fan. I loved it and I hope there's a second season someday.

Every once in a while I come across what could best be described as a hidden RPG gem that is well-written and a solid game but got overlooked for one reason or another. My most recent hidden gem is Chaosium's Prince Valiant Storytelling Game, an RPG based off of the long-running (and still going) comic strip inspired by the legend of King Arthur. In many ways, it's like a rules-light version of Pendragon that was also written by Greg Stafford, whose love the Arthurian mythology and storytelling came through in this game book that was enhanced even more with some great art designs by Hal Foster.
 
How about you? What hidden RPG gems have you come across?

Anyone here ever play Theatrix?  Again, a more improv-based style of play...
 
And if you want sheer silliness -- It Came From the Late Late Late Show

Yes

My gaming group converted everything into the Hero system.
We would play the original rules for two or three sessions, get frustrated at the lack of rules, and convert it.
We played spies, cowboys, pulp, Cthulhu, pirates, Klingons, Star Trek, Star Wars, Middle Earth, Twilight 2000, … using Hero rules.