bigdamnhero

"That carpet's not even 2 weeks old!"

"And yet you let gamers in here with food. So who's really to blame here?"

(OOC obviously)

Another refreshing change with Diana is that so many of those other strong women are also emotionally damaged in some way.

A friend also pointed out how many of these other Strong Women are tied in with the concept of motherhood: either explicitly like Sarah Conner, or implicitly as with Ripley. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but just as it's nice to see a female character whose identity doesn't revolve around their relationship to their man/men, it's also nice once in awhile to see a female character whose identity doesn't revolve around their relationship to their kids.

But how many on that list were genuinely good people?

"It's my estimation that every man person ever got a statue made of 'em was one kinda sombitch or another." Malcolm Reynolds

Diana sees that all is not simple, that the people of this world outside her island are flawed and messed up, and she decides they're worth caring about anyway. They're worth fighting for anyway.  She doesn't become Jaded and bitter, rather she realizes that the fact they try so hard to rise above their worst makes them even more precious.

Right. Tho that is one thing that bugged me about the end of the movie: because Jenkins was forced to fit her inside the existing DCEU, we're told that Diana decided to fight and protect and inspire humanity...but then she basically hides for the next hundred years until BvS. That's not to say she was completely idle during all that time, obviously. But I still think it undermined the lesson Jenkins wanted us to take away from the ending.

Well put, LL. (Ima out of rep...)

And was it just me, or was Alex's little butt-scooch forward to give Kara a hug one of the cutest things in the history of television?

My justification for numerous low-level magic items is that a lot of them are basically generated by circumstance...

I'm out of rep for the day (and it's not even noon!) but I like this a lot. Sortof the reverse of "the magic was in you all along."

Also, now I really want to write a comedic fantasy adventure centered around a line of "My First Magic Item" products! I'm picturing a wizard of middling talent who got good enough to create +1 items, and then cashed out, and now runs a fairly lucrative business cranking them out; low profit individually, but he makes it up in volume of sales.

That's how I took it, NB; no worries.

And while antiquity bias annoys me in real life, this is fantasy gaming we're talking about and it's fairly standard in the genre.

Using Massey’s suggestion, you could put RSR on it (INT) and say that a blown roll means you or the bird didn’t understand what was asked.

I might use Animal Handler instead of straight INT, but a solid idea either way.

An issue I see with making it a Complication - or a Power for that matter - is that such things tend to be permanent parts of the character.

 

If purity of soul is something easily lost, tying it into the character points might not be the way to go.

Fair point. It depends on how comfortable your GM is with character revisions; personally I don't have a problem with players altering Powers/Disads/etc as dictated by the needs of the story.

But he only has a Mind Link with THIS one. He wouldn't be linked to the new one.

Technically true per RAW, but I felt it wouldn't make sense to tie those character points to a single fragile (and short-lived) animal. The sfx is it's something he's learned to develop between himself and a bird, so while the Mind Link is only with one bird, if that bird dies he can with time re-establish it with a new bird. Which is good, because his falcon did in fact get shot down a few sessions ago; the character went without for awhile until he could obtain a suitable replacement, and is currently training it up.

The grinding sound of death from my laptop cooling fan...

(Replacement already on order, but damn.)

BDH on the other hand, we shouldn’t have a bias because it’s old, it’s worthless. Can’t seem to remeber the C.S. Lewis quote (if it’s him) on how we assume that because we’re modern all that came before us was inferior.

Fair point.

The ~ranger in my current FH game bought it as Mind Link; the fact that his falcon has Animal INT as a Complication limits the amount & type of information he gets back from the bird. He also uses Animal Handler to get the bird to follow his directions. His intent is to eventually buy that up to genuine Clairvoyance so he can see through the bird’s eyes. (The cost difference isn’t actually that large, but he wants it to develop narratively.)

Christie Marston made practically identical objections when Jill Lapore's biography The Secret History of Wonder Woman* came out a couple years ago. (IIRC, there she complained because Lapore did meet with her, but didn't take her word for everything; even tho Laporte did specify that Marston's grandkids deny many of the claims.) Basically every time a new biography of Marston comes out, his descendants get all up in arms and try to insist there was absolutely nothing kinky or hinky or anything else going on, it was all G-rated sunshine in Mayberry, how dare you slur grandpa's sterling reputation! This time it's just getting more press because it's a film rather than a book, and because of the WW movie.

Now obviously I'm in no position to know what the truly true story really is. But there have been multiple biographies of Marston & Co, and they have all looked at multiple sources and come to similar conclusions about the relationship between Marston and his ladies. Marston's descendants seem to be the outlier, and they seem to me much more interested in protecting their reputation than anything else.

* Excellent read BTW.

I’d allow it if that’s what the player really wanted. And Analyze would definitely be appropriate; that’s how you seduce details of what happened beyond just where they went, ala Aragorn analyzing the dead Uruks and what happened to the Hobbits in Two Towers.

But it seems like a lot of points for what you get compared to just buying up Tracking Skill. Plus as a Detect wouldn’t it be tied to a PER Roll? That means you’d have to also buy up your PER to make it actually effective. Personally I think I’d be more inclined to instead slap some Advantages on Tracking Skill, like Takes No Time/Concentration, or whatever. But Detect seems like a legit approach too.

Edit: or hey, what about just adding the Sense Adder/Adv on Tracking Skill?

The opener of Kara hovering over the City listening for trouble reminded me of the similar scene in Superman Returns. (One of the few bright spots in that film.)

Yeah, I loved the season opener. It looked beautiful and the character work was as strong as ever. It reminded me a bit of the Buffy Season 3 opener, where Buffy is so distraught over the whole thing that she runs away, from Sunnyvale, from her Slayer duties, and from herself. But having her run away from Kara and lose herself in being Supergirl 24/7 was a nice twist. Not to mention a totally relatable coping mechanism. And I agree they wrapped it up a little quickly, but OTOH I’d just as soon not have to sit through half a season of Cold & Distant Kara.

I’ve basically given up on the other Arrowverse shows; y’all let me know if they suddenly turn around or something.

Zatanna - fishnets and unintelligible backwards-talk.

Isn't Justice League Dark still in the works? (At least theoretically.) Or was that just the animated version?

I actually like the fact that Hollywood has finally figured out that "superheroes" is a very wide meta-genre that can be used in a wide variety of films/styles, and not all superhero movies have to be the same. Superhero comedy? Awesome. Post-apoc superheroes? Great. Dark Conspiracy Supers? Ok. Horror Supers?...no interest in it personally, but seems like there'd be a market for it.

My books are all boxed up prepping to move, so this is just off the top of my head:

The Princess Bride by William Goldman. I'm always surprised how many fans of the movie aren't even aware there is a book. And as wonderful as the movie is, the book contains a few surprises that didn't make it into film.

The Prince by Machiavelli. Nuff said.

Physics for Future Presidents by Richard Muller. Talks about the actual science behind public policy, on things such as nuclear power, terrorism, energy, space exploration, & climate, in plain-English that even a politician could understand.

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The greatest Pulp adventure novel of all time IMO.

Q...I got nothing.

R:

Redshirts by John Scalzi. Think Star Trek as told by "Crewman #4."

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, coming soon to a theater near you. (And the trailer looks like they actually read the book!)

I'm not big on having "magic shops"...

Can I just say Amen?! Nothing ruins the mystique of fantasy for me like: "This is mine enchanted blade Skullsplitter." "And on what epic quest did you acquire such a worthy item?" "Picked it up at the corner store. 100gp, slightly used."

And sorry, it looks like I never responded to these, HvW...

Let's check this against "reality", that is: movie scenes.

Here is the famous trident-and-net-fight from Spartacus (1960):

...

First observation: The retiarius is throwing he ENTANGLE three times against Spartacus, almost every second phase he has. The net obviously has no charges and can be reused.

Great point. I had always thought of nets as something you throw, rather than something you hold and swing. The latter seems less effective, because the net isn't widely spread out, but eliminates Charges. For simplicity, I might just treat this as a Grab that allows the Grabber to keep one hand free for a weapon? You could even roll Hit Locations just to make it more interesting, like they did here.

By comparison: Another of the most famous net scenes: Conan the Destroyer (1984), Intro scene. "How not to recruit a barbarian"
...
Probably 5d6 or even 6d6, because you could not cut those with a simple dagger (without STR).
Those are 1 charge, recov.
Only can used from horse (or by giants).

Yeah, I'd give those nets a higher STR Min, but again they weren't throwing them.

Add Limitation: Ain't worth shit against a Cimmerian. But then, that's true of most weapons.

And one very different example: the net trap. In my opinion the main reason why people can have so radically different conceptions what a net does.

Here is the most famous scene that came to my mind: One of the first scenes of Lost (2004): Jake and Kate walk in the first trap.

...

We got another 2m radius Area of Effect. But as the net does not have to be thrown (it is layed out to be walked in) it is very strong. Not much chance to cut it even with the Ranged Killing Attack they have with them. (How do you build that? 7d6 ENTANGLE defends against most average gun damage throws?)

Hmm...seems like there the problem wasn't the net's high DEF as much as the DCV of shooting the rope, which normally isn't an issue for Entangles. So in that situation probably just assign a DCV for shooting the rope, I'm thinking DCV 8? It's a pretty small target. Plus probably 1/2 OCV penalty for the firer due to being Entangled? (Of course if they'd thought to shoot the rope right above them, they could've reduced the RMod, but it wouldn't have looked as cool.)

Mind if I borrow this net?

As long as you return it when you're done. And by "return" I mean let me know how it works and if you have any suggestions for improvement.

It's worth pointing out there's also a certain amount of antiquity bias going on in some of these, ie people believe Old X is better than New Y simply because X is older, or because they've always been told that Old X is better. These was a study a couple years ago where they had master violinists play several different violins while effectively blindfolded. Some violins were centuries-old Stradivariuses (Stradivariusi?) worth millions, others were modern makes, and one had literally been completed (IIRC) the week before the study was conducted. Without "knowing" which violins were supposed to be better, the experts overwhelmingly rated the new violins as superior in sound quality. The most expensive Stradivarius was consistently rated the worst.

Then there's survivorship bias, ie - people think old houses were better built simply because the crappy ones all fell down and only the best survived for comparison.

That's not to say there's no such thing as ancient secrets and so forth. But as L. Sprague de Camp put it in an old essay of his (I'm paraphrasing greatly), for every one example of "ancient wisdom" we have dozens to hundreds of examples of ancient stupidity, such as the ancient belief that digging a canal in the Suez would drain the Mediterranean because everyone "knew" the Red Sea was at a lower level than the Med.

A bit OT, sorry.

Fans: “Hollywood adaptations of comics need to stay closer to the source material...except for the parts I personally didn’t like!”

You can put Trigger on a Power, but can you put it on a Maneuver?

"If the GM approves it..."