Christopher R Taylor

According to the team that made Godzilla One the main bloat is in middle men. They pointed out that if the director wanted something done, he went to the person who does that stuff and said "we need this." In Hollywood there's like five steps to get there, with production assistants, diversity consultants, Union delegates, etc between the Director and, say, the set designer or location scout. Godzilla One cut all that out and saved literally millions. Between all the bloat and the craft services, etc it gets ridiculously expensive for no good reason. Look at how many producers a Marvel movie has. Why? Because every single person who can wants a finger in that pie so they can get a cut of the profits and point to it on their resume "I was executive assistant sub-producer on Cape Smashers III." Bloat, again. Some actors have gargantuan salaries (last year Adam Sandler was getting over 90,000,000 a movie, for crying out loud) but that's not all of the problem.

Resistant as an advantage has to end up costing the same amount that Resistant Protection costs. If it costs 3 points for 2 rDef then it has to cost the same to buy 2 PD and make it resistant. If you cut the cost of resistant for whatever reason, then Resistant Protection (and probably every other defense) has to be reduced.

Well that's a big part of the issue isn't it? They are spending so damned much on movies now that they have to make close to a half billion dollars just to break even. That's a ridiculous ask, and lately its been a painful fail. Yeah if you pull in a billion dollars, that 350 million dollars in delays, reshoots, and rewrites doesn't seem so bad. But if you made the same movie for 50 million, then you made even more money and it doesn't need to make a half bill just to see green. Famously now, Godzilla One cost a fraction what Hollywood movies do and made huge bank. It cost fifteen million to make. FifTEEN, not even 50 million. And it made over 100 million. When The Marvels made about that much, it was a catastrophic failure, because it costs so damned much to make.

Right, its got to be fast enough that moving to nearby systems doesn't require hibernation, but long enough that there is some drama and tension. If you can call home from 240000 light years and talk in real time, it damages the sense of distance, isolation, danger, and real adventure. Done properly it can feel like old ships exploring and traveling. There's adventure in the trip, but they are so alone they don't get news for weeks or months. There's no rescue gonna come hyperspace in like the cosmic cavalry.

This is the level of tech I prefer to be roughly max for sci fi settings. You don't want it to be a fast travel cut scene to get from one end of a galaxy to another, the distances and remoteness are a key part of the genre.

I would really like to see a War Hero book put out, probably best to do WW2 as the starting setting, then supplements for WWI, Vietnam, War on Terror, Civil War, Crimea, Napoleonic, etc. An update reboot of Cyber Hero might be worth considering, too. Kaiju Hero probably has a market as well. It might be worth doing a Survival Hero, covering stuff like post-apocalypse and other end of the world scenarios like a giant meteor strike, zombies, etc

Depending on the length of the spear blade, you could in theory slash with it.

Its a general rule that your personal powers are drained last in a "stack" of abilities. For example, if you have Power Defense and someone or something Aids your Power Defense, the aided part is drained first.

Yeah I mean you can technically decapitate someone with a hammer but you're gonna have to be Thor to do it.

Yeah I have a system like that in my game. Spirits that devour spent mana (and transform it into usable mana). The spirits can be activated by beliefs, spirtuality, and magic use to manifest as elementals, fae, etc.

I am pretty sure there's a rule about this but as I understand it: the defense works at its pre-drain amount against the attack. So: Drain rolls 9 points, power defense is 5, net result 4 CP drained (2 points of power defense drained, since adjustment attacks against defenses are halved). Next time, the drain rolls 5 points, going against the Power Defense of now 3. 2 points get through, draining 1 more Power Defense, and so on.

Yeah, its easier than writing actual challenging mysteries and clever stories. Compare that kind of thing to Columbo or Rockford or even Miami Vice. Heck even Simon & Simon. The better writer would create limitations of a ghost and use those (run out of ectoplasm? Cannot enter holy ground? Only can act at night? etc). They would show how no matter how much the detective learns who is guilty, they still have to build a case: trap the villain, or find a way to gather the evidence he knows is lying in a certain room he cannot enter without a warrant (well your honor, my spectral ex-partner saw it there...). They would have the ghost have his own agenda, what he is trying to accomplish other that a set of eyeballs that can walk through walls. But instead we got an endless array of psychics and ghost busters.

Part of boxing training is literally building up PD (toughening up so that hits hurt less), but some people are just... tougher. Guys like Jake LaMotta could just absorb an outrageous amount of punishment.

Some powers seem like they are most ideal for NPCs where you don't worry so much about the cost as the build.

Eric July is a social commentator on pop culture who created his own comic book (Isom) and is doing incredibly good business. He's since expanded it to several comics and is starting up his own comic book distribution company from the huge kickstarter funding he's gotten. He is the .001% that does amazingly well on a crowdfunding site.

More than a few younger sons of nobility went west to find their fortune, that's a possibility for some groundwork on an adventure. Also it was a convenient way for really bad criminals to escape justice in Europe for them to flee to the west in the USA and disappear in the vast wilderness. The British were, at first at least, super careful about the Maxim Gun and might have gone to great lengths to stop a copy or plans for one from getting into foreign hands (as in, US or even Confederacy). Going in the opposite direction, Wild West shows would tour Europe, particularly Buffalo Bill's. One of those could end up harboring a villain the PCs are chasing and end up in London.

Kickstarters are iffy and very time consuming, they can pay off huge but its always a gamble (unless, apparently, you're Eric July)

There was a TV show in the 80s, it was a filler for a canceled other show. It involved a detective who had a ghost friend (possibly his old partner, i can't remember) who helped him solve cases. I always liked that concept, it could make someone seem incredibly brilliant. They'd still have to build a case -- the information the ghost got wouldn't be admissible, of course, but it would basically be clairsentience with a bunch of limitations like physical manifestation of a sort, and time delay, etc. Of course on the show every single episode there was some psychic or exorcist or someone who could sense and block or endanger the ghost, which struck me as bizarrely coincidental.

I do like that concept, and I'll probably work something like that into my Dearthwood aventure whenever I get back to working on it. But I agree, environment is a major part of adventure and play that doesn't get touched on often and is an exciting part of play if handled right.

Apparently there was no sheriff of Nottingham at the time of Richard and King John as Nottingham was not yet given a charter (Henry IV did that). There was a High Sherriff of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, and the Royal Forests. So that's an anachronism if you technically wanted to include that bit.

I really like the Rolemaster version of resurrection. You can only be raised within a short time of death, before the soul leaves the body. However, if you use certain rituals, magic, herbs, etc you can extend the amount of time a soul remains in the body before you can be raised again.

Of all the games I have played, Tunnels and Trolls has the most evocative spell names. Immersion destroying, but evocative. You can actually imagine a mage yelling "TAKE THAT YOU FIEND!!!" and blasting an enemy.

Most of what magic feel magical in Hero is focusing on the special effects and description rather than mechanics. I mean you can buid all the D&D spells with Hero, but there's a big difference between "8d6 blast vs ED (fire) Area Effect Radius Explosion -3 to Magic Skill roll" and "a spark of fire flies from his fingertips and erupts into a gigantic ball of flame!"

As for non-replicable, what I mean is less that you cannot do the same thing twice as that its not science, it cannot be broken down in a lab an analyzed. So its not so systematic and well understood that you can break it down to its components, and sometimes it just doesn't work no matter how careful you were (skill roll, for instance).

Thankfully the Hero system takes a lot of the heavy lifting of balance out of your hands. The point system and power builds makes magic vs melee easier to control and keep in check.