Christopher R Taylor

Having seen Natalie Portman in other roles, its clearly Lucas' direction and writing that made her awful in the prequels.  There are plenty of videos with the cast of Star Wars complaining about Lucas' writing (nobody talks that way).  Ewan McGregor did a great job despite the restrictions but he's the only one that came across well.

Having seen Natalie Portman in other roles, its clearly Lucas' direction and writing that made her awful in the prequels.  There are plenty of videos with the cast of Star Wars complaining about Lucas' writing (nobody talks that way).  Ewan McGregor did a great job despite the restrictions but he's the only one that came across well.

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.

Plausible, but can we blame the script for his constant pouting?  
 
That said, I think ALL the Star Wars movies get far less criticism than they deserve, because we so WANT to like it that we overlook the many faults.  Who doesn't want a lightsaber and a starfighter???  Who doesn't want to be super-cool Han?  Vader's WAY more cool as the Mysterious Villain than he is as the Fallen Savior.
 
 

In my opinion Christensen was done dirty by Lucas.  Even Portman and MacGregor did poorly in that trilogy; Christensen didn't stand a chance.  I mean look at the script he was given.  "I hate sand."  DiCaprio couldn't have pulled that off.

Horror Hero and WW1 Hero.
 
BTW, I’m really enjoying Victorian Hero. We’re considering a cross-over with Western Hero as our first mini-campaign.

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

Hey, there.  Back after a plague-induced hiatus from TTRPGs!

Superhero group is going to be doing some interplanetary stuff (think X-Men and the Shiar Empire, etc.) and yours truly has been tasked with designing the vehicle for Our Heroes to travel back and forth, etc.  
 
Looking at some of the stuff in "The Ultimate Vehicle," I'm hoping some of you have house rules that you've had a chance to work out and playtest, that you'd be willing to share so that we don't have to reinvent the wheel.
 
For example, for space travel, how do you guys handle movement?  Do you use the "constant acceleration"/Cumulative Advantage option they mention on p.87, or have you found something better?
 
I don't think the authors took the time to consider just how freaking BIG space is.  Either that, or they never bothered to actually look at what their own numbers mean.

Take the "Space Merchantman" on pp. 95-96.  For "In-System Maneuvering Thrusters" they've given this ship Flight 20 x4 non-combat.  The Merchantman has a Speed of 2, so a standard interpretation of Flight movement would mean it travels 80" on each of its 2 phases, or 160m every 12 seconds.  At that speed, it would take them 2.9 years to complete a single orbit around the Earth at the lofty altitude of 200km above the surface.

Using the "constant acceleration" option, a trip of that same distance would take about 3 hours if you wanted to stop at the end of the trip, or about 1.5 hours if you just wanted to keep going.  The acceleration wouldn't even be too bad: just 1.3Gs.  For three years, the passengers might get tired of that.  For 3 hours?  Not a big deal!

I'm also wondering if I'm misunderstanding something (probably!) or if there's an error in the text.
 
Ultimate Vehicle, p. 23 says: "Vehicles may buy the Rapid Noncombat Movement (+1/4) (Hero System 5th Edition, Revised, page 124) Advantage for their Movement Powers.  However, they may not buy the Combat Acceleration/Deceleration or Noncombat Acceleration/Deceleration Advantages to improve the number of inches they can accelerate/decelerate per hex"
 
But one of the examples, the Nuclear Space Missile on p. 132 includes this in the list of powers:
Engine: Flight 40", x1000 Noncombat, Non-Combat Acceleration/Deceleration (+1)

Doesn't that say, "Hey, you can't do this, but we're going to give you an example of doing it anyway"?  Or am I missing/misinterpreting something?

I hope this finds all of you well, and thank you in advance for any input you may have!

I fully expect a significant drawdown in movie budgets in the very near future.  First of all you have movies like Indiana Jones and the Wheel of Time that cost 1/3 of a billion dollars--there aren't enough moviegoers in the universe to make that much money back.  Second, the streaming services have achieved saturation so they'll go straight into cost cutting/ens***tification mode.  Third, you have movies like Godzilla Minus One proving you can make an effects-laden film for 1/5 of the cost using, like, brains. 
 
But it remains to be seen whether Hollywood has learned to value good scriptwriting.

I've been watching a bunch of older films lately (including a bunch of B movies), and I realized just how much I missed the smaller productions of the past. 1984's Night of the Comet, for example, was made for about $700,000 (about $2M in today's money), but grossed almost $14.5M during its 6 week run in theaters.

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.

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.

Beta Ray Bill was the first "extra Thor," and his background was unique enough to make a compelling story. The "Thor Corps" concept was rather much, I agree. Jim Starlin even wrote a story line in Thor's own title, about how Thor's mind was starting to break down from multiple people being given his power and taking his identity.
 
But MCU Thor has already jumped the shark for me. His comic book incarnation is my favorite superhero, but after two Taika Waititi films and Avengers: Endgame, I don't recognize him in the movies any more. I doubt there's anything Marvel could do with him at this point to bring me back.

Marvel has a few more "successes" like The Marvels and they will go out of business.

I'm not really a fan of Beta Ray Bill. I enjoyed the original story by Simonson but I feel I don't like these characters that sort of steal the uniqueness of other great characters sort of like the Superman Family characters and the Batman Family characters.  There should only be one Superman and Batman.  Then handing out a magic hammer to a whole bunch of people so we have a bunch more Thors.  Also, Bill is essentially a slightly more powerful, more noble, and improved Thor.  I don't want that so yeah not really a fan.

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.

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

one could update Robot Warriors to 6e, which would cover Mecha (and apparently Kaiju)

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.

As I said earlier, GM doesn't want the Desolid always on, so that's why she can't stay Desolid 24/7...

I’ve done something like this in several games. The Fey (raw magic) exists, but is manipulated by enough people believing in it, practicing it (religion), etc.
 
If parents in the village all tell their children to be good or the boogieman will come and take them, and enough of the children believe it, the boogieman will manifest as a result of the Fey being manipulated.

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.

This is really neat, I’m going to dig into it and see if I can find some specs. I can imagine it landing on the roof of the Empire Club and a bold crime fighter stepping out. Perfect! 

Well, I've designed her if anyone wants to give her a peek or so...