zslane

I suppose that's true for the most part. However, to the extent to which firm (not hard, not soft, but something in between) numbers can be derived from the source material, it becomes a fun game to calculate and compare the numbers. If you aren't interested in that game, that's fine. You certainly don't have to play along. But is it really so hard to let others play without sh*tting on them for finding it fun?

To my mind, a "Mexican standoff" that brings a combat encounter to a grinding halt is not a game mechanics problem, but a player problem. Two people who avoid taking action because they are so preoccupied with what their opponent might do are the very opposite of action heroes. As GM, force them into action by introducing something one or the other can't ignore (a third combatant, an innocent bystander who needs help, an on-coming train with the bomb on board, etc.). Hacking the Hero System into functioning like a different game system isn't really a good solution in the long run.

The idea that computers in 4500AD would look and operate just like the ones from the 1970s, with the only difference being the names of the programs running, is very pulpy and anachronistic, which definitely reinforces the backwards-looking, Age of Sail orientation.

The whole "you nerds are weird" stance is pretty disingenuous coming from anyone who plays RPGs and understands how to willingly engage in the suspension of disbelief.

Didn't that require the use of one of the Borg's six transwarp hubs? That's not exactly a commonly accessible transportation technology. And didn't Janeway require help from her future self as well? I don't think very many vessels would be enjoying such short travel times. The ease and speed with which the Empire could hop-and-conquer any ST quadrant via hyperdrive is almost comical.

I'm not sure if 100,000 qualifies as "close" to 100,000,000. Once you get past all the technobabble describing transwarp, you only get speeds upwards of about 10e6 x c. Hyperspace travel is still two to three orders of magnitude faster. And hyperdrives aren't even exotic; they are common enough to be installed on single-seat fighters.

Indeed. Maximum hyperspace speed is not stated in the movies, however, the ability to travel "halfway across the galaxy" in a matter of hours as demonstrated in ANH, TPM, and AOTC requires speeds upwards of 10e8 x c. OTOH, maximum warp speed is ~2000c (warp 9.6), sustainable 12 hours for a single sprint of roughly 3 light-years. This appears to have increased to roughly 3000c for newer ships such as the Intrepid-class.

Yes, I think you have the gist of Hero Combat, Hugh. For playability purposes, movement and combat is distributed into "bins" called Segments, and how/when you take actions follows an artificial structure intended to make cinematic combat into a playable sub-game (in essence, a wargame). Some players are trying too hard to directly map this Phases/Segments abstraction to reality, and when they do that, they both over-complicate the game and turn it into something it is not. Trigger is generally used to represent something that happens without any extra active effort on the part of the PC. This is quite different from magically acquiring a new Phase in order to react to something (an "opportunity" as D&D would call it).

According to Riker, it would take the entire photon torpedo payload to destroy a single 5km wide hollow asteroid in "Pegasus". In other words, it would take the entire payload of the Enterprise-D (a capital warship with a crew of a thousand) to equal just one of Jango Fett's seismic charges (a bounty hunter's weapon).

If an opponent moves past you while you are effectively still in the final moments of your last attack/action, then you really aren’t in a position to do much about it. About all you can do is burn your next Phase to take a defensive action. If you want to simulate a character who prepares themselves to take advantage of an opponent’s action, then they must announce a Held Action. Fencing specifically is probably best handled as a set of Martial Manuevers, where all the micro-actions are abstracted as modifiers to OCV, DCV, DCs, and other effects (like disarming or whatever).

Well, seeing as how the action taken in a Phase is treated as basically “still happening” until one’s next Phase, a character isn’t in a position to respond to something else without essentially borrowing from their next upcoming Phase (which they can’t even do until the Segment after their last action was taken). The notion of “opportunity” is represented quite specifically (already) in the Hero System, and attempts to subvert that representation (Held Phases and Aborted Phases) are essentially attempts to play a different game.

That sort of thing feels like a Plot Device power, not something a PC pays points for to keep permanently. Like Peter Quill’s ability to hold/attenuate an Infinity Stone. That lasted one scene, with his status as latent Celestial having no further practical impact (that we know of), and being taken away by the end of the next adventure in any case. Classic Plot Device power given and taken by the GM to suit the adventure plot.

I lack the motivation or interest in such an endeavor.

Obi-Wan says that Luke’s father was “the best starfighter pilot in the galaxy,” and a “cunning warrior”. It is implied that he was a Jedi Knight (because he owned a lightsabre and followed Obi-Wan on a “damned-fool idealistic crusade”). But I can’t find anywhere in the Star Wars script where anyone says Luke’s father was “strong with the Force”. I think we must assume he was pretty strong if he was a Jedi Knight, but being strong enough to become a Jedi Knight and being strong enough to become Darth Vader are two very different things. There is nothing in the first film that indicates Luke comes from a particularly powerful line of Force users, only that his father was idealistic and skilled (i.e., by way of analogy, the implication is that he was merely one of Arthur’s knights, not that he was Lancelot).

This tells me that the writers of Traveller never heard of Moore’s Law (described in a paper in 1965) or neural networks (first conceptualized in the 1940s), and simply couldn’t imagine how these concepts might impact each major element of computing (processing, storage, I/O, networking, size, and energy consumption) over the course of three centuries. My advice to Miller would have been to find a computer expert and someone with imagination and get them together to postulate what computers might be like in the 23rd century (or if they would even exist at all as a single, discrete “device”).

Well, time will tell if I am wrong, but I think any trailer that ends with Thor asking, “Who the hell are you guys?” (followed by a cut to a shot revealing who “you guys” are) is enough by itself to drag record numbers of ticket buyers to theatres opening weekend.

I guess this is another case of the new trilogy aping the structure of the original trilogy, for better or for worse. Fans didn’t like the taste of it when they got their first dose back in 1980, and a lot of fans are turning their noses up at it now. I guess it will only be in the context of the 7-8-9 trilogy as a whole that we will be able to fully assess (and judge) any of the individual films. I mean, if you are the kind of person who believes ESB is the best of all the Star Wars films, then you believe that a middle chapter can be great even if it isn’t a satisfying standalone movie. As for Force lineages, well, we didn’t know Luke was anything more than a lowly farmboy until ESB. For all we know, that stable boy is part of some other powerful Force bloodline, and is also destined to be a legend one day. And when Rian Johnson writes his new trilogy, and has the villain hold out his hand to the now-grown stable boy and say, “I am your father!” there will be a strange sense of deja vù, and my eyes will do the same roll they did back in 1980.

I guess we need exit polls for online trailers now, to gauge interest post-viewing. I imagine that a large percentage of the folks who broke the Internet when that trailer first hit are highly enthusiastic for the film. It is mostly just the jaded nerds that are meh about it. I think this Avengers movie will pull in unprecedented opening weekend box office figures because it pulls together all the marquis MCU characters (not counting the Netflix ones), and I think a lot of people are excited to see the Guardians interact with the Avengers, and to see Dr. Strange interacting with Tony Stark, etc. A few folks (like some around here) may not find that especially enthralling, but I think the average MCU fan certainly does (and there are literally millions of them out there).

Two problems with that article: 1. Most superheroes don’t use/consume conventional energy sources, so the underlying basis of the article is flawed to begin with. 2. Examining how superheroes would impact “the real world” is a fundamentally flawed premise to begin with because superheroes don’t live in the real world, but rather a comic book world in which very little “real physics” play a role in anything that happens.

I dislike Shadowrun for mixing dopey fantasy elements into a cyberpunk setting. My appetite for “urban fantasy” is pretty limited to begin with, but any story that tries to inject Tolkienian fantasy elements (orcs, elves, dragons) into an “edgy” near-future setting where the focus is on crime in a sprawling ubran milieu is going to rub me the wrong way just on the basis of its central conceit. I strongly suspect, therefore, that Bright will not be my cup of tea.

Hmm. That seems to answer a different question. I’m not so much curious if it is worth watching even if one is unfamiliar with Shadowrun. I am curious if it is worth watching if one dislikes the very concept of Shadowrun.

Is it worth a watch if you aren’t a Shadowrun fan?

There is a recent article on io9 that examines the fan reaction to The Empire Strikes Back when it first came out. Fans were somewhat divided on that one too. Sequels can be a mixed blessing for a movie studio. I, however, was not as impressed with Empire as many were, and I am not one of those people whose opinion of it has changed over time. I am not among the multitudes who have elevated it to the top spot on their rankings of all the Star Wars movies. In fact, I still rank it far below A New Hope. But I feel confident that a decade from now, many of the people who are criticizing The Last Jedi now will speak of it glowingly, forgetting utterly the reasons why it disappointed them originally.

Rubber science just “works” (because it is magic after all), and the visual aesthetics are totally irrelevant to that. Therefore, the tech aesthetics get to convey other things in a movie. In Star Wars, part of the magic of its rubber science is that the tech functions on a reality-defying level while being “low tech” in appearance.

The French resistance during WWII was a partisan force. Starfleet is nothing at all like a small, loosely organized, woefully under-funded guerilla force. They were the Federation’s “space navy”, military from top to bottom, with civilian vessels integrated into non-combat roles where it made sense. The Enterprise, along with its mission, did not represent the primary function of Starfleet. In fact, its mission was highly specialized. Starfleet’s primary function was the defense of the Federation. I don’t know why “defense” is perceived as unmilitary by some folks here, but any organization created and mustered for combat operations is a military regardless of its interest—or lack thereof—in conquest.