Lord Mhoram

I completely agree. The short story it was based on was also one of the best and most succinct distopias out there. It is really hard to top the ending sequence with people chanting Jon-A-Thon as he skates around the track. I saw that as a kid, and never lost the impact of that moment in my memory.

Man I haven't seen quark since it first ran. I'd love to see those released on DVD. With BG... When I heard that they were doing a remake I thought to myself "I don't care how bad it is, if it gets them to release the original on DVD to cash in on the publicity" and they did. I got Rollerball the same way.

Having just finished watching the whole thing on DVD, I'll give you some of my reasons, 1) Great overplot. Admittadly a number of the individual episodes were fairly mediocre, or outright ripoffs of other stories (towering inferno, guns of navarone, shane) there was always a little bit in the background dealing with the overplot. And the overplot hung together. Watching it in order really made my awareness of that come alive. It hangs together like early B5, later DS9 or Andromeda that way. Really groundbreaking as very little US TV did anything like that back then. 2) Myth and faith. There were so many reference to mythic background and the faith of the characters (especially Adama) that is just not seen on TV, especially SF TV which tends to be sterile that way. The whole trip to earth was based on legend, and he makes a couple of command descisions based on what he read in his scripture... and it turned out correct. 3) The culture - because they used thier own words for time distance and swearing, and the writers used fairly formal and almost 19th century style dialog, it had a very distincitive cultural feel to it. This wasn't just modern man in space, this was another culture, with different values and approaches to life- but still human. The increadible military and formal costumes were great as well and helped that. Given some of the "regular people stuff" just screamed 70s, but hey- the new one will scream late 90s to people in 25 years and seen dated. 4) The characters: Apollo, Adama, Starbuck; They all were very well drawn and very distinctive, and in my mind very real. I know people very much like them. And thier relationships really worked. 5) The ship design. For a military based SF show, that is important, and all the ships on the show are just gorgeous. Anyway that is my reasons for really liking it. I hadn't seen any episodes in decades, bought the DVD set and was prepared to wince at having liked this as a child. And as I watched them, yeah there were some problems, but all in all it hung together increadibly well. And the SFX, because it was not digital, did not age. You watch "The last Starfighter" and you wince at the Digital space effects (no slam here, I love that movie) but BG used real models, so now 25 years later, it still looks good. As to the new one- For me, personaly, numbers 2 and 3 above are the biggest reasons why I love the show, and those were the ones thrown out in the remake, so I was just *sigh* over it. That and the fact I don't like much sex in the fiction I watch, there was just a little too much of that for my tastes. Taken on its own, it wasn't horrible. It wasn't really good, but it wasn't really bad. But it sure wasn't Battlestar Galactica.

*blushes* No problem. I try and find things that my customers would like, and most of us doing superhero RPing are in the 30's and have fond memories of the sivler age, so it didn't really take a whole lot of work. The fact you went from Superlink to Multistatted was a great help, for use. We have a strong HERO customer base (well two groups) and an SAS group that looks for supplements, but no M&M people. So when things like Omlevex, Dragon's gate or other multistatted books come out I can try and spread the joy further. :-)

The strangest character I ever played, from a just plain strangeness angle was Meeb. An alien amoeba with Stretching, Clinging, Shapeshift, brick strength and D, and explosion (and later area effect) on his strength (he could use it out to full extension will all psuedopods). For me... I wander all over the character types spectrum, so I can't really say what kind of powersets would be odd for me, because I've done a little of everything. Personality wise thoug...I generally play goody two shoes Captain America/Superman kind of characters, most of my heroes have been upright citizens... all except for Alter Ego. He was a teen cybertelepath. He could also manipulate any kind of eletronics (and we growing into Jeffries (Alpha Flight) level manipulation). The kid was a chain smoking, foul mouthed little twerp, who got found by the PC team getting an ATM to vent its money at him. Now he had reasons to be a little on edge he was hunted by both PSI and Genocide. He was probably the oddest character for me to play. It was also a blast bouncing off the rest of the group in ways I had never done before.

If your comic store doesn't do a lot of roleplaying, and relies on Diamond/Previews for thier orders, you need to get in and tell them now. Omlevex was solicited in the Dec previews, and the "normal" order closing for that was last week (I do the comic ordering for the FLG/CS I'm at, and I ordered 4 of 'em). Diamond doesn't do a whole lot on holding on to RPGs, just initial orders (real RPG distributors keep backstock), so if it isn't ordered pretty much by the cut off date, they generally cannot fill the order (I've had that happen). If they do have another RPG distributor (Alliance and Diamond are owned by the same company so that is likely), then no worries. Oh and Cynthia, 4 is huge for us, we are a small little hole in the wall shop, that other than D&D doesn't have a whole lot for RPGs... because I am a HEROite we carry that stuff, and as it is a comic shop, I push Superhero roleplaying; I've been pimping Omleves and got 3 preorders for it (besides my copy). Three to HERO people and one for an SAS player.

My two are Blackcat and Ballistic. Cat: The basics.... A chi-mystic martial artist. 32 dex, 9 speed, and an 82 point Martial manuever/chi pool. Lots of tactical skills and broad knowledge. http://home.comcast.net/~lordmho/chars/blackcat.html Ballistic: The basics.... A supersuit supermage (started as a strait supersuit, learned magic later). Minibrick, high defenses, decent dex and speed, 60 point magic VPP. http://home.comcast.net/~lordmho/chars/ballistic.html Note that there is a let 0 end powers in ECs house rule in the game (grandfathered from 3rd edition). As experienced and old as these characters are, I figured it was be easier to link to thier char sheets on my webspace than repost them.

Ballistic would use his magic to do a little psychic surgery, and fix his problem and add in something else - if they guy ever looked a child (real or copy) with that kind of emotion again he would go suicidal and kill himself within a day. Blackcat would take him to another dimension and leave him there and then get in contact with her friend the ruler of the dimension byzantium to do something to this guy. Her first impulse would be to kill him, but she would overcome that.

Another variation of the power skill thing, is that if the character comes up with a really cool in-game situation to use a "new" power (especially at a dramatic moment, when the new use of the power is what stands in between defeat and victory), and makes their power roll, they can then buy it at the end of the adventure. We see that in comics, where a writer has a nifty use of a powers, and then the other writers say "cool" and add it into that character's repertoire.

Cat has had to do this before, fighting "herself", or rather the echo of herself from the darkforce from when she died, and later got depowered, and her powers grew sentience and started killing people. She would immediately go total tactical, but her villian self would probably do the same. If not that is where her edge is. Ballistic would cast a banishement spell on the double to send him home to backworld.

Ballistic would put on his space armor, switch his magic pool and cast "the wings of hermes", fly out to whatever it was in a matter of minutes and scope it out. Blackcat would try and talk to the aliens at the atoll.

A GOLD Dragon Lies Beneath! My inner dragon is the most honorable of all. I enjoy shape-shifting, humans, and the occasional crusade to save the world. I'm what you might call a Draconic Knight. Click the image to try the Inner Dragon Online Quiz for yourself.

The fantasy stuff being in the same universe as the SF I don't mind, the whole shoehorning the Superheroes in with the ebb and flow of magics is not one of my favorite things. However within each genre, I love the fact that each setting is connected. With Solar Hero era (whenever that comes out), Alien Wars, Terran Empire and The galactic federation we have a 800 year future history to play around in. This is really nice if you want to run a time travel game or whatnot. I hope that the fantasy settings do much the same thing, and flow from one to another.

http://www.liquidgeneration.com/quiz/images/spiderman.jpg'>http://www.liquidgeneration.com/quiz/images/spiderman.jpg To link it (the actual code): I usually get that or Beast depending on my mood.

My wife has been watching fansubs of this, up through episode 10 or so. She loves it. I'm not much for anime (I like Hakusho, Gundam Wing, Saiyuki, and Weiss Kruez so far) but watching that one over her shoulder looks like I might like that one too (along with Airmaster). The scene with Edward (the older brother) on the train when he realized he was on the tender was priceless.

No way in he.... uh heck. Sentinal is the original green lantern, fought in WW2, and didn't have a nice little ice nap there. He has the experience that Cap has and then some, and, especially in recent times, is the hero that Superman talks to as a mentor. His powerlevel has gone up over the years. As much as I love Cap (and he is my favorite Avenger) I give this one to Sentinel. I could give the other fight to Thor, then Sentinel kicks Thor's butt.

I have a couple of really strange ones. I was one a creative roll, just plowing out the spells. I came up with the idea of a slow creeping curse. So I was trying to model it, and came up with a body drain uncontrolled continous sticky 0 end persistant and some limitations - didn't affect living (but they could be carriers). The idea was you curse this person and everything he touches ends up rotting away. When I looked the spells over a while later I noticed that I had neglected to include a "turn off" condition for the uncontrolled, and had originally thought that if he touched someone, they were infected too, but that would only go out three from him (someone he touched, someone they touched, and lasted someone they touched). So I looked over what I had actually built, instead of what I intended to build and was "No way is anyone ever buying this spell". And I built it. There was the Xerox spell. Transform a page into a book that is an exact replica of a book held in the other hand of the caster. Nice for mages building up thier libaray. Some I liked for color. Feast of Rocks- Area transform into food (and table and diningware) freely stolen from the later Amber books. Had a lot of color. The simple version of the spell was "Stonemeal" which changed a rock into waybread.

Well according to the original BG pilot millenia. So that one goes to the Cylons, or its a tie. Cylons win. They have cool looking ships. They have guns. They can walk up stairs.

Beta all the way. My characters have a lot of personality but are total combat monsters. In a Rolemaster game I played, I had a 7th level mage outswordfight a 15th level fighter (yeah confessions of a teenage powergamer) and the GM looked over the character sheet and said "He could take over the party" he then looked at my other character (we ran two) who was a healer (cleric of a healer god) who foreswore weapons (yes I played martial artists even before Champions) who could have taken the rest of the party apart if it came down to it. The GM looked at me and asked "Why aren't you in charge here" "The Dwarf is a mage, not interested. The Cleric is a follower of a healer god, he just cleans up the messes. Why would I want to". Blackcat my long running champs PC turned into more of a leader as she became the teams tactician, and the new member trainer, but she just implimented policy, she never really came up with up. My wife on the other hand.... I mentioned the topic of the thread and asked her "Alpha or Beta?" then I looked over, and looked back to the computer, and something in my gaze must have said what I was thinking, as she then started bouncing the large can of sauce and noodles she was holding and asked "What did that look mean?!?" To paraphrase her "I've let other people be in charge, but they always mess it up".

I generally go for orchestral stuff (as can be seen previously) but another really great band for mood music is Ozric Tentacles. Really spacey instrumental stuff.

No I haven't. I'm actually fairly ambivalent about the whole soundtrack, I just love the main theme. I recorded the last track to my computer and edited out the start of that track, so I just have the overture/theme. That is one of my favorites. I thought it would be cool if a bit of that or "Where there's a whip there's a way" could have been worked into the Jackson movies as an homage.

I can't believe I forgot that one, it's one of my 2 or 3 favorite soundtracks. *Clears throat* Sings "Non Nobis Domine, Domine" Anything by Patrick Doyle is amazing. His Much Ado is great music for a lighthearted game.

I don't think it is superior to the Shore, but I do comment to friends "The only good thing to have come out of the Bakshi LoTR is the soundtrack". The only problem is that Leonard Rosenman has only one soundtrack in him. His LoTR and his Star Trek IV scores are almost identical. Other really nice music bits... For sinister music The Omen- it is amazingly good mood music. Lawrence of Arabia and the Ten Commandments have the granduer and sweep in the music for epic fantasy. So do The Mummy scores. The Black Hole by John Barry is also very nice. I'll use selected Mannheim steamroller pieces.. Small wooden Bachses or some of the pure piano music. Gregoran Chant as mentioned earlier. If you want to strech a little Ladyhawk and Dune. A little less traditional but the music is very nice. Brian Eno can work sometimes. I have a 10 CD box set of Laserlight Digital Classical music CDs called "power classics - high energy classical music for your active lifestyle" that I picked up for 20 bucks. Overtures, marches and bombastic classical music. I use that a lot. In that vein there are "cappucino classics" and "Classical music for home improvement".

I'd buy an "Old Guard NPC book" with Marksman, Flare and the gang, Galooper, the Golden Swordsman, Lenore and all that. It would be nifty. Don't figure it will ever happen, but it would be cool.

Go Slade. He's always been among my favorite DC villians. It is nice to see him in the New Teen Titans. I would like to see him and Logan duke it out page after page. Personally if Slade is involved in a crossover , what I would love is him and Taskmaster meet up, and join forces, and become a really naster training center/ occasional operatives for hire.