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When overlit it tends towards dark blue (rather than black), and for all we know it will get a shift towards dark blue in the final comp treatment. But it is still too dark with too little color in it for my tastes. Look at all the red mixed in with the silver for Ant-Man's costume. The lack of color in the Wasp costume is highly conspicuous by comparison. I mean, I suppose they are going for contrast between them, but that creates an incongruent break in the design aesthetics of the two suits. Their suits won't visually convey the sense that they are a team; the only common element being the fact that they both wear a helmet.

Yeah, I think the mixture is dopey too (which is why I don't care for Shadowrun), but at the time it was quite a novel concept for an RPG module, and I had fun de-cyphering the alien text.

Ah, yes, thank you for that link! Boy, a lot of illustrations were taken out when the 1987 supermodule was released, holy cow! The alien writing is evident in illos 17, 18, and 24, with a little bit visible in illos 60 and 61 as well. You guys rock!

I'm hoping some AD&D old-timers out there can help me with something. I have this vivid memory from when I was a kid playing AD&D in the early 80s and getting my hands on a copy of S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. I distinctly recall the illustrations that were to be shown to the players, and many of them showed alien writing on the walls, on devices, and so forth. I remember applying basic substitution cypher cracking methods (frequency tables) to translate all the alien writing. Somewhere along the way I lost or gave away all my old AD&D modules, so I no longer own my original copy. But here's the thing: some years ago I bought the S1-4 "supermodule" off of eBay, and this alien writing is missing from all the artwork. Moreover, every image I see returned by Google when I put this module's name into the search bar looks like what I currently have. So either my memory is failing me and I'm thinking of something other than the S3 module illustrations (and no, it's not Metamorphosis Alpha or Gamma World, I've checked), or that alien writing was somehow removed (for reasons I can't fathom) after the first printings of the module and now there's no evidence of it anywhere (online anyway). Does anyone else know what I'm referring to, and can perhaps either corroborate my memory or correct it?

I love the Retro Encabulator video. Classic technobabble. It's fun to show it to folks and see how long it takes them to catch on to the fact that it's not real.

With its red/black/white color scheme, I just assumed this was the company producing my EVH Frankenstrat clone (which I named "Warbird"):

I don't feel that the worst thing about the suit we're shown is its color scheme. To my eyes, it's the overall design, it's cut if you will. It's just not flattering or attractive. But then, maybe that initial green one is supposed to be some kind of Kree spacesuit, and her supersuit (the blue and red one) will look more appropriately superhero-ish.

Except black in place of silver/white, naturally. They're probably saving the bright, vivid colors for the end credits where she tries on the blue and red costume.

Well, I wasn't imagining that she threw it through a wormhole on purpose (she'd have to know where one was for starters). I was merely suggesting that at some point in its year-long-plus journey in space it passed through one unexpectedly.

Yeah, I thought about that too. The only explanation I can come up with is that Fort Rozz passed through a freak wormhole and ended up in that blue star orbit. The question then becomes, how could the DEO possibly determine/track its new location? That requires a signal to reach Earth from the prison many light years away, which presupposes an ansible transmitter on Fort Rozz and an ansible receiver at the DEO. And if that's the case, then the whole Voyager gimmick is made even more unnecessary.

Darkness can be defined as blocking solar radiation, sure. It will only affect those characters or devices that have a Sense/Detect Solar Radiation. It won't stop any non-sense related effects of the radiation, like heat, sickness, cellular degeneration, DNA degradation, etc. Those require different defenses.

I was responding to this statement: "Marvel's unwillingness to put meaningful death into their movies is the only major downside, IMO, of the MCU." -- RDU Neil I presume you disagree almost completely with that assessment too, yes?

You'd think it would be, but so far it really hasn't been...

Bouncing signals off of Voyager (to reach the Legion ship) would have been useless. The closest star to Earth (apart from Sol) is more than 4 light years away. The blue man-killing star would have to have been even further away than that, making even a one-way trip for a communications signal several years, at least. Even if the Legion ship and Reign's "pod" can go FTL or fly through hyperspace, AFAIK the DEO doesn't have the tech to send communication signals that way. If they did, they wouldn't even need Voyager. But hey, any episode where I get to watch Supergirl and Saturn Girl work together gets a thumbs up from me.

That might help make Incredibly Cute Girl into a Saturn Girl that is actually useful.

The MCU is like a carebear RPG campaign where the PCs are never allowed to die (except temporarily) while villains and NPCs are routinely killed in each adventure arc. I read that quote from ABC's president and I see a man dutifully toeing the corporate line, adding all the necessary spin to a situation he didn't particularly approve of in the first place, but had no power to veto.

Well, the rules put the Linked Limitation on the lower Base Cost power, regardless of which power actually seems like the "main" power. If the HA costs 6 and the Drain costs 60, then Linked is effectively saying that the HA is restricted to only working when the Drain is used. Regardless of whether that makes any conceptual sense or not, that's the rule, and rule is written that way no doubt to minimize as much as possible the discount Linked provides. In this particular example, I guess the "restriction" you're really talking about is that you can't use the Drain without also doing (HA) damage, i.e., you can't Drain with a simple non-damaging touch, but only with a damage-inducing punch (you need to hit with an attack roll either way though). I'm not convinced that's worth a +1/4 Limitation discount, but whatever.

Well, I was never fond of Linked simply because if you get to use two powers at once, then I feel you should pay for two powers, both in terms of Character Points and in terms of Endurance. There are plenty of other mechanisms to help save points based on tight concepts and SFX (i.e., frameworks). Linked always struck me as unnecessary. As far as I can tell it didn't solve a nagging problem from editions 1-3, so I don't really know why they added it to the 4e rules in the first place. Having said that, if the goal is to use the 4e RAW then, yes, Linked is the accepted way to go.

Well, the sign I was reading was Disney stepping in to inexplicably force a fifth season in spite of the fact that ABC was about to cancel it. Everyone from industry insiders to industry watchers is convinced/assuming that season five will be its last. I suspect they are right, just as we all suspect they are right about Inhumans not coming back despite no formal announcement of that (yet) either. Besides, tossing a show into a Friday night death slot isn't something a network typically does if it intends to keep airing it.

Well, the same logic could be applied to the HA portion. You only get the "full power punch" when you activate the "exhaustion effect". Which power gets the Limitation? In my view, neither. And the reason why is that you're thinking of this in terms of there being a "main" power augmented by a "secondary" power. But that's a needless distinction to draw since the two effects always happen simultaneously. Therefore I'm advocating writing this as a single power that merely happens to have two effects which just happen to work like HA and (END) Drain. In terms of how to price this "new power", it is simply the sum of the costs of the two. Because simplicity is better than complexity, and the price of the power (as a simple sum for its Base Cost) is, IMO, perfectly reasonable.

I kind of feel that each season has had its hit and miss moments/episodes. Some had more misses than hits, and vice versa. This final season, for instance, has gone from potentially interesting mystery to boring, narratively-strained time travel nonsense.

Your definition of "free reign" is rather different from mine. Whedon has repeatedly said in interviews that part of the reason he didn't especially want to do Avengers 2, or be the creative lead on the MCU going forward (the way Favreau was originally tapped to after Iron Man) was that the scope and responsibilities of that role exceeded the creative freedom he would have. Favreau bowed out of that role for similar reasons. Their ultimate masters are Feige and the Disney executives that pay them, and those people had compromising agendas that no amount of so-called "free reign" could overcome.

Or just define Exhaustion Punch as having two power effects (HA and Drain) and pay for the combined cost as a single value (with a single active cost). They will "fire off" together by the definition of the power itself. No need to complicate matters with Limitations or Links.

Yes, you're right, he is giving them room to express themselves, so long as their vision doesn't compromise his. Maybe the phrase "tight leash" came across as too harsh, but from Disney's point of view, that is exactly what it is. Some have chafed at that leash, others have not. But the leash is still there, and it is very definitely doing its job (for the betterment of the brand, if you ask me).

It's the thought, not the price tag, that counts. He's not buying everyone an engagement ring...