Christopher R Taylor

Barrier Peaks is seriously not my cup of tea but this could be fun and more content for WH is always nice

But does it have the boxing glove arrow?

With today's modern farming, it takes around 0.5 of a hectares to feed and support a single person. However, modern farming techniques, plant and animal breeds, medicine, fertilizer, etc makes farming about ten times as productive as in a medieval setting, or more. However, people tended to be smaller and many consumed much less food, so figure five times or 1 hectare (about 2.5 acres) of land per person. Its not that medieval farmers were bad (they had crop rotation, fertilization, irrigation, etc by the 1000s, and Roman agriculture was even better), its that modern seeds produce more, modern medicines protect animals and plants better, etc. Again, however, the land isn't the only way to survive. People can fish and if near the ocean eat shellfish, so cut that down a bit, so .75 hectares per person or lower at the shore of a large body of water or ocean. And, of course, magic might also affect this, rising productivity and providing alternatives to historical food production. Naturally, this presumes no disaster like blight, famine, disease, locusts, etc destroying food sources. But yes, 10,000 people is a small city, that's a huge number of people in one place in that cultural setting. By 1400 the biggest city in Europe was Constantinople with nearly 500,000 but places like Rome, Augsberg, Toulouse, etc had fewer than 20,000. Edit: I'm not sure where the 5 acre estimate is coming from, you can support a family on a farm of a couple acres, even without high tech farming techniques. One cow puts out more milk than a family can realistically consume, and a single deer can feed a family for months.

Reminds me of Molecule Man from Marvel Comics who could literally do anything but didn't believe or know he could, and thought he had to use a metal "wand" for his powers.

For character creation, I'm setting up five sets of templates: Races, Cultures, Stats, Professions, and Background. Races are mandatory, you have to take a race package from the various types. All the other templates are optional; they are there just to help build a character. Cultures are how your character was raised; just because you were born a Dwarf doesn't mean you were raised as one. Or maybe you were raised as a different Dwarf than the local ones. Stats are characteristic modifiers for things like academics and athletics types, giving modifiers for archetypes. You can take more than one of these if you wish. Professions are skill, perk, and talent suggested blocs for various types of character. Bard, Thief, Tradesman, Pirate, etc. This is the closest to "classes" that Hero gets. Can take more than one of these as well. Background is complications, covering various personality and experience types. Using this system a player can whip up a character pretty fast, with minimal effort or time taken going through the books.

The What If stories I've read about so far from the show have been pretty lame. Part of the reason the What If comic book was interesting was because it was released after decades and thousands of comics had come out, they could pick between all these stories and characters and come up with something good. There just haven't been enough stories yet to do a good What If run in the cinematic universe.

"Ja vell, dere are no Dwarven tieves because it all should belong to us as we vurk harder dan all de races combined. Ve are chust taking it back." --A Dwarven thief

I don't get paid for every book that's sold each time it changes hands. Just each individual book. Just like if you make chairs, each chair is sold separately. The design of that chair is your property because you created it and deserve credit for what you did, without having it stolen. But once you are dead, that design is protected as long as patent or copyright (whichever is applicable) does not expire. Since you, as the creator are gone, then you are no longer payable or can have control over it. Sure, but that's not because you created it. Its because its your property. I sell a book to someone, their book isn't anybody else's property either, its theirs and doesn't become public domain, because it is a product. The design of the chair, however, is a different concept.

All the characters changed (some quite a bit) from the first movie. They entirely recast the doctor, which is too bad because I liked the original one. I think budget, time, and makeup design was the key here.

You get all the royalties its just that they give you an "advance" meaning "here's some of your royalties to start with". Until that is equalled in sales, you get nothing more. But its a crap deal, you end up with around 15% of the cover price after agent and the publisher's cut, etc. Side issue, sorry to digress. Nah, with Amazon and other online POD publishers, they take a cut and you get the rest. Its a bigger cut than ebooks because they have larger expenses, but - and this is the important part - its still bigger than you get from a traditional publisher. Amazon runs both as part of the same service. There's a minimum you have to charge for both (more for books) but you set the price and set your cut.

First I've heard of this theory, sounds like Rowling's retcons of her Harry Potter stories.

I want to play but its not really a reasonable option

art is a bit different than other products someone can make. If I make you a meal, its gone when you've eaten it, and you're the only one who could have it. But a book, for example, is new to each person and can be re-read and enjoyed for generations. Why shouldn't a creator be paid for that work each new time it sells? Once they die its no longer their work to be paid for, so I can see copyright fading but until then, they reasonably ought to be paid for their labor.

Green Hornet was ghastly as a film, but a terrific concept.

The last thing this world needs is a CW version of anything, let alone Babylon Five.

yeah but that character reassembled after exploding.

Right, I am an author and I want full control and payment for my books, but after I'm gone? They're free to the world. It matters when the creators is alive because they should be properly compensated and their work protected against unauthorized use, but after that, its difficult to justify ownership. Like I said I can live with their kids getting some for a little while but this endless "we own this idea forever" thing has got to stop.

I am okay with kids having control over rights of their parents' work to keep it from being turned into crap, but its a bit tough to justify them being paid for dad's labor. August Derleth's work is a lot easier to read and is just as good, especially as at first you kind of get the sense that maybe humanity might be able to win and survive.... never mind.

Usually its not the same guy though. Disney ran his company very differently than the House of Mouse today

Sherlock Holmes still would be but the family decided to not contest it.

Overall I think copyright extends way longer than it ought to (and reasonably can be defended, in the modern era). How on earth is Mickey Mouse still copyrighted when its one of the most generic terms and part of pop culture today? How can someone reasonably get rights to something their grandfather created and earn money on it? But Busiek is right here: if the laws protect the companies, it should protect the creators as well in the same manner.

Mystery solved! Its Barry Winston! The only one left to ID now is Detecting with the signature KAC? I have no idea what book that is from. It looks like its from 5th edition, possibly Champions (which I don't own). FRED has a Keith Curtis listed, maybe him?

Here is the Winston picture, I remember seeing it in one of the books but cannot remember which

Marvel almost certainly will win but the creators families do have an interesting argument with the "marvel method" production. Much stronger than their case against DC.

I am working on doing a Field Guide build on Drive Thru RPG, which would include like 20 pages free, but you can check out this thread for a ton of drops of ideas and things I came up with as I was writing it