massey

How is it whitewashing that characters who were originally created as white would remain so in a movie?

Suicide Squad had a black dude in the lead role. Luke Cage got his own Netflix series. Idris Elba has been the lead in a bunch of movies. Does the Rock count as black? They had a black Human Torch in that crappy FF movie. Artificially limiting it to Marvel movies is disingenuous, particularly since they haven't given that many characters their own stand alone films.

Make a good movie, people will want to see it. I think Will Smith proved that a black actor can carry a mainstream action/adventure movie back in the 90s. I don't see why this is surprising 20 years after Men in Black.

It's "Star Wars", so I don't think political intrigue or a murder mystery would fit. You need a war of some kind. I'd say Force Awakens should have had a fat and happy New Republic get blindsided by the pissed off remnants of the Empire. It would make sense that Luke had gone off to his island if he thought everything was taken care of. Yeah, his apprentice turned to the Dark Side and ran off, but that's not a threat to galactic peace. So you have a big Pearl Harbor ambush where the First Order just comes out of nowhere and smashes the good guys' fleet. The rest of the movie is people scrambling and trying to form some kind of resistance. Last Jedi could be Rey being trained by Luke, Leia's portion of the Resistance fleet (so there's still more out there) fleeing First Order pursuers, and Finn and Poe finding out about a secret super-weapon the First Order intends to build -- the Starkiller Base. You add in a Leia death scene in post production when Carrie Fisher dies. Go ahead and have Rey and Kylo Ren (who had good chemistry together) kill Snoke (who needs a different name) and take over the First Order. Rey falls for the "we can make it all better" line. Third movie is Luke sensing Leia's death and coming out of retirement to unite the remnants of the New Republic military. The fleet leads a pre-emptive attack on Starkiller Base to try and wipe it out, while Luke decides he's not going to lose yet another apprentice, and goes to confront Kylo Ren and try to save Rey. Luke sacrifices himself Obi-Wan style to show Rey that Kylo is too far gone, then she turns back good and defeats him.

If everybody is on board, there's no problem. Normally our games are high-powered enough that normal equipment really isn't helpful. Superman can carry around a shotgun if he wants, but honestly it really isn't going to do him much good. However, "paying points" is not the only way to look at this. While that is how it functions for the player, to the character within the game world, points are not something that he ever interacts with. A peasant who finds a magic longsword doesn't think "oh crap, I don't have enough points to keep this thing". To the peasant, he just found a cool sword. A different way to think of this is that points are a measure of a character's power and effectiveness. A peasant with a sword is obviously more powerful than a peasant without a sword. Thus, he should be more points. Now, if swords are easy to find and easy to lose, and this peasant isn't expected to hold onto the sword for longer than this encounter (or maybe the next couple of game sessions), then it's not really "his". If he's going to keep this thing and carry it wherever he goes, so much that it becomes part of his normal character description, then it may be something for him to pay points for. After all, he's now a much more powerful character than that other peasant with no sword at all. As a measure of character power, he's clearly more powerful. He didn't "pay" anything to get more powerful, he just got more powerful. The issue becomes if he gets too powerful for the campaign's limit. "This character is too effective for this particular game." Suppose you're playing some zombie apocalypse game. And you have a low point total for characters, because you want a ragtag band of survivors who try to escape certain death. Just normal people in an abnormal situation. But one of your players raids the sporting goods section of a Wal-Mart, and the convenient deep-sea diving store where he gets a chainmail shark suit. And the next thing you know he's welding metal plates to a bulldozer and driving around in his makeshift tank. Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but if this sort of behavior pushes him well beyond your point limit, he's now too powerful a character for this particular game. In other games, you don't get to bring a 10th level wizard into a 1st level campaign. Now... all that said, in heroic games you're usually allowed to keep whatever crap you can find. And if your group is comfortable with a house rule, you are perfectly free to do whatever you want. But the logic behind the rule isn't that the character is somehow mystically prevented from picking up the sword until he pays points -- it's that the game is about characters within a certain power range.

Yeah, it depends on what you want to be able to do. I have a Superman build somewhere, and he's got a VPP for "Kryptonian powers". How much of a limitation is that worth? If it's Animated Series Superman, it's probably worth a -1/2. Everybody knows what he can do -- heat vision, superbreath, flight, etc. But what if he's Pre-Crisis Superman? Not only do I need a (much) bigger VPP, I don't think I get any limitation at all. You've got powers like "fly around the world and turn back time", "erase memories with super-kiss", "take apart and reprogram robot at superspeed", "invent serum that takes away bad guy's powers", and other fun stuff. When I thought about it, there was virtually nothing that I couldn't find a justification for Superman being able to do in his VPP. Is there some power that you can't bullcrap your way into being able to do? Telepathy? What about a mind enhancing helmet? Or a spell of mind reading? If you can't think of anything, it's probably not worth a limitation.

Starfleet fulfills all the functions of a military, and has most of the trappings of a military. Now, it does other things as well. They are clearly involved with exploration and scientific research. But when the fighting starts, they are the ones who do all the shooting. There isn't another force that steps up and shoots at Romulans. It's Starfleet that does it. The presence of civilians on the Enterprise D is really a commentary on the type of combats that Starfleet expects the Enterprise to be involved with. Remember that at this point, the Federation was ending a long-term border fight with the Cardassians. Now, based on what we see onscreen (Federation ships kicking the dog crap out of anything Cardassian they come across), it seems to me that the Feds didn't expect to encounter much that could threaten the Enterprise when the ship was commissioned. The Borg hadn't been discovered. The Dominion was unknown. The Klingons were allies. The Romulans hadn't been seen for 30 years. The Enterprise wasn't expected to enter into heavy combat at all (though the Galaxy class was a very capable warship). The Enterprise D was also sent on a lot of diplomatic missions. Everything about it was a prestige assignment. Captain Picard was a career man who didn't make waves, did everything perfectly by-the-book. Will Riker was a top-of-his-class rising star who was squeaky clean (except for the fact that he supported a guy who was now an admiral during a mutiny). He has the image of a playboy, but really we see him hook up with one, maybe two women per season. The Enterprise gets every token you can find, from the only android in Starfleet to the only Klingon in Starfleet. It's a showpiece of what the Federation wants to present itself to be. It's the sales pitch, "join us and this is what life is like". The bridge crew are basically all people who graduated at the very top of their class and who have all the right political opinions and connections. In modern terms, they'd all be Harvard and Yale grads who have very well connected families and lots of money. They listen to NPR, voted for Hillary, donate to Amnesty International, etc. Now, fortunately these guys are all quite competent at their jobs. But it's gotta be the most pretentious crew in Starfleet.

I've been ignoring the holiday special and the Ewok movies for 30+ years now, and the prequels for nearly 20. Ignoring one more set of films won't make a damn bit of difference to me.

In Errand of Mercy, Kirk says "I'm a soldier, not a diplomat." In Star Trek: TMP, McCoy says they drafted him to get him back into Starfleet. Those are two examples I can think of off the top of my head, of Starfleet acting like a military. The statements in TNG about Starfleet not being a military primarily come from the first two seasons, when Roddenberry was running wild, throwing in whatever pompous and self-righteous crap he wanted into the show.

Yeah, how many Jedi do they have in the prequels? And the Sith have been hunted to extinction? Why do they think balance is a good thing again?

The Last Jedi is so long that you could cut it down by 20 minutes and it would still be longer than Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Trying and failing is one thing. But when you've got a 2 hour 40 minute movie, having a half-hour unneeded subplot that ultimately fails... that's where you trim down your movie.

You guys are spending too many points on something that's just a damn disarm.

I separate my Ep 8 critiques into two different areas. The first are production issues. Too long, needs serious editing, problems with pacing, etc. Characters who are too "jokey" for a movie that is supposed to be somewhat serious. To me the movie had too many problems in this area for me to really enjoy it. I leaned over to my girlfriend in the middle of the casino scene and said "this is kinda boring" and she agreed. These were problems with the execution that I think really hurt the movie. The second are the choices made for the plot and the direction of the film. I haven't really talked about this before. Mark Hamill stated his displeasure with what they did with Luke. I understand trying to buck the system and go against genre conventions to surprise the audience. I appreciate what they were trying to do, but I still didn't like it. But I tried not to judge the movie on its creative direction -- at least they had a vision they were trying to put on film, even if it wasn't for me. Now, there were several really good scenes. There's a good movie in here somewhere if they can edit the crap out of it and make a few different decisions with the plot. So I didn't completely hate it. I think I said earlier, all the Rey and Darth Emo stuff was really good. -- The two biggest problems I have with the story are these: First, the new characters aren't allowed to do anything important. Everything Poe Dameron tries ends up not working. Finn and the girl don't accomplish anything. All Rey really does is go get Luke out of his cave. Finn doesn't even get to sacrifice himself to save the Rebellion. Stupid ugly girl saves him. These guys are so unimportant the Imperials didn't even bother killing them when they're right there, like 20 feet in front of the AT-ATs. The message we get is "none of these guys are as good as the original characters". I don't think that's the message they're trying to send, but that's the message that was received. Second, I agree with Mark Hamill. That's not Luke. I get that he failed his nephew, and feels like he let Han and Leia down. But he wouldn't run off and mope while his sister was fighting against this massive empire. It felt really out of character. Now, they could have sold it differently. They could have played up him turning to the Dark Side a bit more. Rey finds the weird pit thing and she realizes maybe Luke isn't the good guy anymore. Maybe it was Luke's teachings that led Kylo Ren to be who he is now. Luke could have been a little too much like his father. Play up the struggle a lot more as one of good vs evil. But they never really sold that. He's just a depressed burnout. -- To get a tighter movie, here's what I'd suggest: -Ditch the one-liners, the Buffy-esque dialogue, and the uncomfortable humor. It detracts from the tension. -Speed up the space battle at the beginning. Don't have the bombers creep along before they dropped their cargo. Have them zip and zoom, flying at a break-neck pace. Much more exciting. -Make the chase between the First Order fleet and the surviving rebel ships faster, not looking like two fleets not moving at all. -Cut the space walrus titties. Yuck. -Make Leia die instead of Superman-ing back to the ship. Big emotional scene. You've got to kill her in the next movie anyway. -Eliminate the trip to the casino planet. Have the master codebreaker guy in the brig on the rebel ship as a captured "I do anything for money" guy. -Let the rebel leadership be okay with Poe's daring plan. In Star Wars, you should *listen* to hotshot pilots, because they blow up Death Stars. -Give Luke a good reason why he's not with the rebellion. He's not moping, he's doing something important. Maybe he's fighting the Dark Side within himself (scene of Rey sneaking out at night to find Luke going wild with lightsaber, slicing through boulders and releasing rage). Maybe she walks him back so he's not a danger to others. -Snoke's big goal is to fully turn Luke, as he turned his apprentice. -No need to see 3 versions of the same "Luke leering at sleeping Kylo" scene. -Get rid of light speed kamikaze attack. Because otherwise that's just the normal thing you would do. Instead have suicide run at regular speed, flanked by last surviving X-Wings. Reduce Imperial fleet size as needed because of lack of super-shockwave upon impact. -Let Finn heroically sacrifice himself stopping big gun. -Have Luke really be there in person. Finds out Leia is dead, almost loses himself to Dark Side, nearly slaughters Kylo Ren. But regains control at the end, lets self get killed like Kenobi. -Rey moves much smaller pile of boulders. -Bigger group of rebels escapes, with more ships. Meet up with fleet that they radio'd for when they got to the cave. There. That's my version.

I bought a bouquet of flowers today for my girlfriend. I told the florist I needed something that said "I'm sorry I yelled at you when my team was losing." There went 90 bucks.

My explanation of this is that it's not really an AI. It just seems that way. Moriarty can pass the Turing Test, but so can your basic, run of the mill holodeck program. Moriarty is an example of Geordi being stupid and basically giving the Enterprise a computer virus. This is likely a problem with the ship's super-easy user interface. It understands normal language and makes the best guess about what you want it to do. The ship knew to place things in a Sherlock Holmes setting, even though Geordi didn't mention it specifically. Through Geordi's imprecise use of language, he basically asked the computer to "devote enough resources to create an enemy capable of defeating Data, all other concerns secondary". So it created a subroutine within itself to play the villain. This is why Moriarty knows what the ship looks like. It's why he's able to build a machine with a lever that rocks the ship. Because he's the Enterprise's computer playing the role of "evil villain". He turns off the safety protocols because otherwise he can't really beat Data. The Enterprise crew never actually realize what they're facing. They think of Moriarty as being sentient, but they're paying no attention to the man behind the curtain. But he's just the computer's sock puppet. Once they think they've "beaten" him, he lets them turn him off, and the computer just quits playing the game (until its reactivated later). The crew never corrects that software bug because they never realize it is a software bug. No other Galaxy class ship has a Commander Data, so nobody else has the same incident (human crewmembers are far easier to challenge with mystery novels). They encounter Moriarty once more, and they beat him again, in character. Again they don't realize they're just playing against the computer (who isn't sentient but can fake it really well when you think you're interacting with a fluke AI program). The bug never gets patched, and then the Enterprise is destroyed in Star Trek Generations, so Moriarty doesn't reappear. One reason Moriarty might have been so convincing, something that wouldn't be repeated on other Galaxy class ships, is because of Minuet. When the Bynars steal the Enterprise, they program a holodeck hooker to seduce Riker. They use a super-program that is way more lifelike and more convincing than normal holodeck programs. Presumably, that level of high-end programming wouldn't have been present in other holodeck systems.

I'd just call it a disarm maneuver and leave the "too hot to touch" up to special effects. You're just wanting to disarm them, not do anything else crazy. No need to reinvent the wheel. Maybe put a limitation on it, "not vs lots of ED" or something like that.

A&M went to a bowl and a Big 12 game broke out.

Use a combination of held actions, presence attacks, and the cover maneuver. That should give you the result you want. To get a guy in the corner and hold him there at sword-point, that's covering him. If he tries to move, you get to stab him. If you are attacking every phase, you're literally swinging as fast as you can (effectively, anyway). If he moves past you after you attack, he basically dodged and shot past you as you were bringing your sword back. Don't think of him strolling past you as you tap your foot impatiently, waiting for your next action. You lunged with your sword, he bolted past you an instant later before you could ready your weapon again. Hero doesnt perfectly simulate D&D combat. That's not a bad thing, though.

There's a lot of inconsistency in Star Trek. I don't remember that statement in "The Pegasus", but that would have to be the lowest estimate of photon torpedo damage ever. Edit: I skimmed the transcript of the episode. http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/264.htm There's nothing in it to indicate the size of the asteroid. It's indeterminately big. Data describes it as a "planetary body". I don't think it's 5 km wide. Remember, when they discover the asteroids that used to be planet Alderaan, Han says that it couldn't be blown away, it would take more firepower than half the fleet. That gives us a pretty good upper limit for Star Destroyer firepower.

Horse crap. If the weapons were as powerful as the Star Wars fans say they are, the TIE fighter would have disintegrated R2. But it didn't. Star Wars weapons can't be as powerful as people claim, because their hand weapons can damage ships. We see people shooting at the Millennium Falcon, and at Boba Fett's ship. Snowtroopers in Empire are setting up a blaster cannon to shoot at the Falcon, with the apparent expectation that it'll actually hurt it. We also see a scout walker (that resists hand held blaster fire quite well) get smashed by two logs slamming into it. The energy involved isn't nearly as high as what people are suggesting. We see scout walkers and AT-ATs suffer serious damage from falling over, just damage from their own weight impacting the ground. X-Wings and TIE Fighters can shoot each other, and they usually blow each other up, but they can survive a shot without exploding, if they get lucky. Again, R2 survives a direct hit from Vader, and there's nothing onscreen to suggest that X-Wings have shields (Y -Wings do). Sure, R2 got main character defense, but that still puts an upper limit on how powerful Star Wars vehicle weapons are. Finally, small fighter craft can still damage larger ships. They don't do a lot of damage, but they do some. It seems that they need to concentrate on vulnerable areas to have any significant effect. But they still cause damage. Fighter weapons have to be capable of both causing damage to Star Destroyers, and also failing to blow up a droid (when they roll bad on damage). That gives us an idea of where they are, power wise.

And yet Darth Vader's TIE fighter blast failed to kill R2-D2.

Yeah, and West Virginia's QB is out. I think it was Texas that broke his hand. So I didn't expect them to do well.

Big 12 sitting at 4-2 right now. Not looking too bad.