Christopher R Taylor

MSNBC reported that the TX Rangers home opener had 38,000 fans in attendance.
 
There's no COVID limitation on the number of seats the Rangers will fill for home games other than the number of people willing to pay to come to a game.

And that was the result with the *good* actors...

I still think Hayden Christensen's Anakin was one of the most cringeworthy performances of a major character in a major movie I've ever been unfortunate enough to watch.

How were you able to pick him out of so many bad performances.  I had actually wondered why with so many big names they were not able to bury it unseen.  John Wayne buried the Genghis Khan movie until he died.  I am surprised the cast of the prequels didn't do the same.  Then again, the prequels actually look good compared to some of the SW stuff planned for the near future. 

Yeah its pretty much left up to GM interpretation, my limit is "identifiable" within line of sight.

When I was a kid, I could see someone who was a quarter of a mile away at the back of the field which was behind our house. And that was long before I got glasses.
 
I couldn't tell who it was, but I could see that someone was there.
 
If the treeline had been further away than a quarter of a mile, I could have seen someone at a further distance and without any particular effort on my part other than turning my head in that direction and looking. And I wouldn't have had any minuses on my PER roll because the person was standing there in plain sight: I could see the person every time a person was there and I bothered to look.
 
I don't know what the RAW intend for mental powers, but I've always taken "line of sight" to be literal: you can attack if it is in the character's line of sight.
 
Now whether you can accurately identify who or what your target might be is another matter.
 
If someone was setting up a line of mannequins within your line of sight, you can spend a phase trying to Mind Control one of them. It won't work well because the targeted mannequin has no INT or EGO and it would have worked much better if you'd picked the person who was setting up the mannequins. But you could use the power because the target is within LOS and there's no range modifiers applied in the rules to the term "Line of Sight".
 
If you could see a black speck against the white snow, regardless of distance, you could use mental powers on it during your phase without range modifiers because it is within LOS. Yeah you might be guessing as to whether the speck is a person, a dog, a dead person, a dead dog, or a rock...but you can try use up your phase trying out your mental powers on it. 
 
2 cents, YMMV

Also, I think the whole "change expectations and expand the genre" thing has to be done years later, when the genre has become too predictable and standardized, not right at its beginnings.

As the executive producer, I can assure everyone that Zach Snyder had considerable input on the WW84 movie and its writing.  The author of that essay on Heroes though, he has it right: Jenkin is great at getting best performances out of women in her movies (the men are kind of bleh but fair enough, most women in other movies are bleh.  You're supposed to like the love interest because she's pretty and that's about it) but she's not much of a writer.
 
Zach Snyder can do good work but he needs to stay far the hell away from anything involving superheroes or good guys, because his view of the world is Sucker Punch.  He should have no power or input whatsoever with making DC comic movies.  None.

From all accounts, even people who gave it positive reviews, WW84 is pretty bad: over long, poor writing, uneven.  The first one wasn't terrific but it was fun and tight enough to enjoy for most of its run.  This one sounds like its just pretty bad all the way through and over 2 hours long.
 
And yes, I think the day of the theater is over.  I think theaters will shrink in numbers and be mostly run by studios now that the rules have been changed.

Its just a question of what is standard common equipment and what is not for a setting.  Nobody has to pay points for the small life support vs temperature extremes their clothes give them.  
 
Its like Everyman skills: you get this stuff for free because in your culture pretty much everyone knows it.  Don't sweat building most of the world.  I mean its fun to list the body and defenses of common objects in a scenario, but really you can wing it as a GM and treat it with cinematic logic rather than exact math: would this be more fun and interesting for the battle if he crashes through or bounces off?
 
I've told the story here before of trying a move through out of an elevator shed to save a DNPC.  I rolled almost all 1's bounced off the wooden rooftop. 
 
As a more experienced GM I would have let the character crash through without rolling because come on, its a beautiful cinematic moment and we're not simulating The Tick here.

Which is why, I think, 300 and Watchmen worked, because each had a solid story behind it, not just moments and visuals.  The moments like the Persian ambassadors being kicked into the pointless huge hole in the middle of Sparta was not just a badass moment, but a well crafted one that helped move the story along: this is how the Spartans deal with greasy manipulators and liars.  Frank Miller can write a hell of a story, Alan Moore can write a hell of a story.  With that as a framework, then you can have your slow-mo "this is going to look so awesome" moments because they're panels or sequences of a master storyteller.
 
Cut him loose from this and you get what we get from Snyder.  Sucker Punch was nothing but a series of flashbacks/dream sequences/moments.  It looked incredible, until it didn't and you realized that there was nothing to this but sadism and misery.  Its Zach Snyder's most Snydery film and the least palatable of everything he's made.

Yep, I have a few of the original comics I bought when they first came out and it was not a kiddy show. 
I don't really follow them anymore since the focus changed.  If I want Loony Tunes I'll watch Loony Tunes (the original cuts, not the "sanitized" versions they show now).

I agree that expecting the RAW rules to provide "balance" is a bad idea, it is up to the GM to provide balance, either through GM fiat or allowing the RAW rules to be bent/broken in certain cases.
 
If a player wants to play a Peasant who is brought along on an adventure with Warriors and Mages. There are two ways the GM can allow that to happen, either have the Peasant character start with a realistic point total to the concept (Normal Human, so like 50 pts or less) while all the other Players are built on 200+ points, but because of GM control of the game, the character is almost never attacked in combat as he/she is not seen as an "immediate threat" by the bag guys; or allow the player to build the character with the same 200+ points, but to break the caps and other "rules" that the rest of the party follow, so in this case maybe at first the Peasant character is allowed to have 10 levels of Combat Luck giving them basically 30 rPD/rED, but also restricting them to doing 1/2d6KA at most with any weapon. Then as the campaign progresses the more they raises their ability to do damage, the more their Combat Luck has to drop, until eventually they are "on par" with the rest of the party in defenses and damage dealing. 
 
And as for trying to imitate the LotR, I think that is also a bad idea as it is almost impossible to capture that kind of feeling/storytelling in any RPG, except maybe Amber Diceless. In any other system with fixed rules for attack, damage, phases, turns, skill rolls, etc... you can't really "capture" the magic or feeling of LotR without once again, ignoring a lot of the Caps, RAW rules, etc... I'm mean just look at those books/movies. How often is anyone injured in combat, even these massive wars? Almost never. They either get thorough fine, or they die. Almost never any in between unless it is for plot reasons. Frodo gets stabbed and almost dies, that regents son is badly injured and almost dies so his father wants to burn the body, but then he recovers in time, Frodo again gets poisoned, but rescued, and again Frodo also loses a finger, but I think that's it. Every other "injury" in combat also means the death of the character, Broimier dies, Gandalf dies. Even the Night King, once injured dies, and the Rohdan leader also dies once injured. But in all those other battles, and freaking wars when they are fighting and killing hundreds of enemies each, Aagorn, Legolas, Gimli, Sam, Mary and Pipin never get a scratch of damage. (actually I think Mary gets knocked unconscious once, but only for a few seconds and recovers without injury). So it would be almost impossible to play a game that captures the feeling or scope of LotR without massive GM fiat or by breaking the RAW rules to allow for such play. 

I'm not generally a fan of the horror genre, but I am very partial to superheroes, and an admirer of good writing for any genre. Back in 1990, author and RPG designer Allen Varney contributed an adventure to the Fourth Edition Champions book, Champions in 3-D, titled, "Horror World." This remains the most brilliant and effective translation of Lovecraftian horror to the supers genre that I've ever seen. It was based on the premise of an alternate Earth in which the heroic pulp-era investigators fighting to prevent the manifestation on Earth of nightmarish elder horrors from beyond... failed.
 
With Hero Games' permission, Allen Varney put the entire text from his adventure on his personal website, under the title, ANOPHELES: Atrocities From Beyond . That webpage includes the adventure proper, stats for its NPCs and monsters, and 4E Power constructs to model Lovecraftian sanity-blasting effects. (Fair warning -- it's not for the faint-hearted. Seriously.)

Funnt this got bumped tonight.
 
After months of hiatus, just ten minutes ago, we xoncluded the Halloween adventure.   Everyone seemed to enjoy it. 
 
 

I ran a Justice Inc game where everyone was run of the mill pulp era types: Private Eyes, etc.  They started out hunting down a serial killer who stabbed people with an icepick through the neck and bled them out.  Well it led to an old castle on a hill (the old Ravenloft module castle) where a creepy old guy was apparently the killer.  It wasn't until he laughed off bullets that they finally figured out he was a vampire.
 
The reporter tried to stab him in the chest with a pencil.

Yeah Batman as a superhero, sidekick training is okay. Batman as potrayed in Zach Snyders miseryverse, not so much.

Comic books are essentially storyboards and its deeply annoying to me that nobody seems to grok this and just use them for shows and movies.  Its all right there, the dialog, the characters, the story, the scenes.  For God's sake why not take advantage of that???

Comic books are essentially storyboards and its deeply annoying to me that nobody seems to grok this and just use them for shows and movies.  Its all right there, the dialog, the characters, the story, the scenes.  For God's sake why not take advantage of that???

Comic books are essentially storyboards and its deeply annoying to me that nobody seems to grok this and just use them for shows and movies.  Its all right there, the dialog, the characters, the story, the scenes.  For God's sake why not take advantage of that???

Yeah, and I think all three were included in the final product we saw in theaters.

I agree Christopher. Of course it depends on the campaign, but on the supervillain side, not everyone should use that many points. I've got alot of supervillains roughly around 250 pts fighting experienced heroes who've hit total points of 500+, 600+.  Not all the villains should be able to be a threat but sometimes being a nuisance gives the hero(s) a chance to show off. Properly done, my 250 pt 2-team baddies can cause quite the stir with heroes. Recently, had the experienced heroes fight a team of villains where none of the baddies cost more than 187 pts.

I find myself pushing to build many character concepts to the 400 point level; like I have to figure out new stuff for them just to spend enough points.  400+ points feel more like established older characters who have been in the world a long time and have a great deal of experience, filling in gaps, learning to use their powers in new ways, picking up contacts, etc.  If you really want a beginner character (like Superman when he first showed up, for instance) then the point values have to be lower for most character concepts.  If you want a mega character with a huge concept like the Specter or Martian Manhunter, then you need a whale load of beginning points.

I feel sorry for the queen, they seemed very close.  I wouldn't be surprised if she followed him soon.

I think it has been pretty well documented that the suicide of Zach's daughter had little-to-nothing to do with his departure from the project. That was merely the cover story given to the public.