Christopher R Taylor

I love Alex Ross, but you usually don't vote an active player into the hall, you know?

I am hesitant to be excited by either based on what we've seen over the decades, but I tentatively hope they can do the FF justice. We'll know pretty quickly if that's true or not based on if they choose an established, tainted, creative director or some newcomer that happens to check off a few identity boxes. Its possible. I want it to be a great movie that's a lot of fun but nobody's review, even the most positive, portray it that way.

If martial arts + James Bond doesn't fit the marvel universe where does that leave Black Widow, which is claimed to have been that very thing? The truth is, there's lots of room for a fun, witty, and exciting spy story in the MCU, but here's the flaw with their system: They don't do movies. They do huge arcs of movies. So each film is largely irrelevant in its self and only presented as a chapter in their Big Story. Iron Man was just about the only exception to that pattern in the films. His films were mostly reactions to the events that had happened rather than part of their Big Story pattern. They wanted x plot and events to move along their Big Story, so Shang Chi was written to be that kind of part. Eternals is another piece, whether it works or makes sense individually or not. Doing a smart, fun, self-enclosed movie that might also be a part of the larger arc is harder to do and doesn't really fit their system. But while Guardians of the Galaxy was a bit of a risk, it was a safe and calculated one, nested among several monster hits. If it flopped, well they moved the Big Story along, and made a billion on either side of it, so they could handle it. The Eternals was an even bigger risk, since they haven't had a monster hit since 2019 and for whatever reason, their latest films have struggled to pull in significant profit. At roughly $400 million to make, promote, and distribute, Eternals has not yet made a profit, but looks like it might pull Shang Chi level percentage earnings in a week or two (cost around 300 million total, earn 400 million). But, despite somewhat tepid reviews, Eternals is doing better overall. What's lost is the excitement, mystique, and anticipation that MCU films used to bring to the table. It feels too formulaic and corporate to many viewers these days, and the characters are less compelling and familiar. I don't think pointing to one success and saying "it worked once, it can again!" is a very reasonable response.

1st edition Fantasy Hero did the best at making the rules feel fantastic and magical then had a very down to earth barely-fantasy setting and scenario in it. They also put out Fantasy Hero Battlegrounds which was a book of several short unconnected scenarios, and they were pretty solid.

I think they greatly missed an opportunity to make a movie that was basically James Bond+Bruce Lee which is what the bulk of the comic's run was.

You figure the Chinese call those oranges Mandarin? It makes at least if not more sense for someone to use the term when they refer to themselves to westerners because that's something they'd be familiar with and their true name is hidden. The line was ridiculous, and just desperate spinning "See? See? We're not doing that old stuff, we hate it, please show our movie in China!" Mocking your own source material to curry favor with one market that is already hostile to you is just ludicrous. And it didn't work. It just annoys long-term fans pointlessly.

Yeah its a pretty silly idea, but used a lot in comic books. Immortal incredibly powerful beings who do petty crap and never carry out any kind of plots until the heroes show up. "I was around 200 AD, and was a potter, not using my powers to conquer the world or anything." Their reinterpretation of the Mandarin and the bracelets-- er, rings is pretty weak too, but they were terrified of any charges of racism or comparing to the Mandarin in the comics. The line about naming their leader after an orange though... uh, Mandarin is a Chinese term for a specific sort of person, its not some western creation and its not about an orange. They just cannot get past the crap from IM 3.

I wonder if you couldn't do an 80s era Commie busting DI variant sourcebook

That's the kind of stuff I use multipowers for, rather than using multipower as a spell structure

In many campaigns, the power level that mages will be working at to be equivalent to non-magical damage output will mean that magic isn't terribly powerful or effective for direct combat application. OK you can use up to 30 active points of power in spells, that's a 6d6 blast, against a dragon. After a successful magic skill roll then a to-hit roll. With side effects, gestures, etc. When it comes to direct application of damage, weapons are usually going to be the better choice in a lot of campaigns.

I am planning on making a Fantasy Hero Begins book for my campaign, a starter scenario to teach the system, but that will wait until I get the Player's book done so probably not much good for you. I am hoping at some point that we return to sanity for most people and start up real face to face gaming without people cringing in terror.

First movie Thor has a pretty major journey and change in him learning to be more humble and focused on helping those around him, but who asks for the villain in a movie to have major character arc?? A New Hope was great, but Darth Vader didn't learn an important lesson before the death star blew up!

If only Brandon Lee had done Shang Chi instead of the Crow. I love the crow but That would have been amazing.

That is an option, you could have an elf-like human subgroup with elfin culture and tendencies without being long-eared Tolkien types.

Everything I've read says that the movie really did not have time to give anyone character development with having to introduce so many new characters, an entirely new plotline, and an entirely new set of bad guys at the same time. As Dr MID-Nite notes, this probably would have been better handled as a TV series, or a miniseries, but here we are.

It would not shock me if Kirby did draw pretty heavily from that for his ideas.

Always great in everything. One of his greatest performances was Dr Yueh in Dune. Every performance was a gem.

That's like saying you have too many dice. No such thing.

Yeah its funny how woke went from "this is a term we're proud of and describes us" to "this is a horrible word and people should stop using it". But the truth is, almost nobody is complaining about any woke crap in Eternals, most are remarking how refreshingly devoid of that it is. Just slow and plodding and pointless.

There is a very slim chance that some monster might have an aging attack transform, which an elf would shrug at, but there's a reason Life Support vs aging is so cheap.

The official suggestions for all campaigns are a bit high in my opinion, but as others have said, it depends a lot on what you're thinking in terms of power level and range of abilities. The easiest and simplest way to decide point values is to determine what kind of enemies the characters are likely to face. If they are running up against giant ants and goblins, you can go lower. If you want them to battle dragons and liches, you're going to need to hand out more points. But as always, how the points are spent matters a lot as well. 75-100 will give you beginners, people who have almost no training and are basically normals with a few extra skills. This is roughly 1-3rd level D&D characters 100-150 will give you a nice low end starting adventurer, the kind who has some training but isn't super capable. This is kind of like 3-5th level D&D. Well that depends. You can make them as alien as you want or as normal as you want. Ideally, as Tjack says, they shouldn't be more powerful than humans, but again if you want them to be more interesting than you describe, they have to do and have things humans do not. For example, Tolkien's elves had better senses, could run on the top of snow and mud, and lived much, much MUCH longer. Elves in Elder Scrolls have odd personal abilities like absorbing magic and summoning ancestor ghosts. In Tunnels and Trolls they are small and green almost like faeries.

Windows11 is... not ready for prime time from all I have read. It breaks a lot of older content even worse than Window 10. And the tech giants are determined to get rid of Java.

/self plug on I am publishing a fantasy setting one book and several adventures at a time, a complete one that gives you everything you need to run a fantasy campaign straight out of the box. You can see the links for that in my signature. The Jolrhos Fantasy Hero setting is incomplete at this point but its for 6th edition. /self plug off

That is kind of the sense I get as well, like they keep trying to make "Fetch" a thing Guardians has and had before the movie its own comic book recently. And it gave them the broader universe for their setting, with cheap, gag-only versions of characters like the Collector and a touch of the cosmic stuff with Ego. There doesn't seem to be a niche for the Eternals.

The thing that confuses me is... why? Why make this? To lock in the concept so a Second World movie by DC looks derivative? I don't get it. Of all the possible projects... The Eternals??? I would have much, much rather seen an Adam Warlock cosmic storyline.