zslane

Indeed. If this were not the case, something as “simple” as a compound turbolaser would not be able to blow up a planet with a single discharge.

TNG, and the series that followed, quietly retconned/rewrote quite a number of established elements in order to tell stories to a rather different audience (i.e., the casual sci-fi fan) who had no knowledge of or use for TOS canon. It’s one reason why I don’t particularly care for the Star Trek that Berman Built. It also seems that the massive shift in direction and tone, starting with TNG, has made fans forget that Starfleet was originally, first, and foremost a military entity. The Federation is the governing body, and Starfleet is its primary military arm. Just because Picard thought every aggressor could be dealt with rationally and diplomatically doesn’t mean Starfleet had ceased to serve a military function. If it had, then Wolf 359 could never have happened.

The only problem with DasBroot’s solution is that it is way too simple and straightforward for a 6E ability write-up. It would be perfectly suitable for 4E, however.

In TOS, I believe the replicators did all food and beverage preparation. Cooks were unnecessary. I am confused as to why they would introduce a regression there. The existence of replicator technology and nearly perfect AI (with complete access to all Federation databases) makes a lot of "old fashioned" jobs obsolete. Hell, even prostitution is a dead profession thanks to Holodeck technology. Aside from those performing mission tasks (which would include research for civilian scientists), there is really no reason for non-essential personnel (i.e., those necessary to operate the vessel, and those necessary to care for them, i.e., medically) to be on board. Sure, their dependents might be on board, but that doesn't help us figure out what they would do with all their free time. The ship itself certainly has no use for them.

"The modular bombing magazine, called the "clip" by the bomber's crew, would drop the bombs through sequenced electromagnetic plates in the clip, which propelled the bombs to "drop" in microgravity environments. The bombs would then be drawn magnetically to their targets." Sounds like a bit of "artificial microgravity" magic is also involved.

Bartenders serve a purely social function on board a vessel with replicator technology, so they are probably relatively rare. And you don't need that many teachers unless there are hundreds of children on board. If the ship is a research vessel, then a lot of civilian scientists might be on board. But this asks a more fundamental question: just how militarized are Starfleet vessels in this period? For all we know, a good percentage of the crew is civilian, helping to operate and manage all areas of the ship not directly related to weaponry.

This generation of rebels appear to very strongly believe in the virtues of self-sacrifice. They're deaths are intended, I think, to be seen as noble and honorable, rather than tragic. Snoke seems to have been a McGuffin in character form. Looking for anything deeper (or more developed) than that will only frustrate you. The mostly likely explanation is that the other disciples that went with Ben became the Knights of Ren. Rian Johnson has gone on record as saying that he sees Captain Phasma as the Star Wars equivalent to Kenny from South Park. She will appear to die in every movie, only to appear whole again in the next. She is not an important character per se; she is mostly just shtick personified.

Actually, clones, as a canonical (background) element of the franchise, go all the way back to the very first film. For nearly twenty years Lucas spoke of the "Clone Wars" as a central idea to the mythology, long before he ever inflicted the prequels upon the world. Your disdain/contempt for the prequels is completely justified IMO, but claiming that clones are guilty (of being a bad idea) by association is simply unfounded.

Good point, slikmar. I see no reason why the Raddus could not have executed its lightspeed ram maneuver remotely, or via on-board droid. Admiral Haldo did not need to be there to "pilot" the ship in any way. That felt like a note of false heroism to me. It remains to be seen how long Hux will be Kylo Ren's chief subordinate. Force-choking Hux for impudence seemed to come quite naturally to Kylo. I suspect Hux is only one failure away from being replaced by the next in the chain of command.

If you say so. However, I guarantee that few casual fans would have assumed that the ability to linger as a "Force ghost" would imply the ability of Force projection. In fact, if you surveyed audiences as they exited the theater, and asked, "Did you know a Jedi master could perform that Force Projection trick?", I'm fairly confident most would say, "No, but I'm not surprised. Jedi masters can obviously do whatever they want."

Ah, that's a good point. The bombs could be getting pulled towards the planet, with the Dreadnought simply caught in between. However, I didn't get the impression that any of that opening battle took place in atmosphere. Note that our own moon is often visible during the day and it does not pass through Earth's atmosphere, and being heard from the ground is sort of a meaningless observation when you consider the artifice of sound effects in Star Wars (e.g., ships make sound in/through the vacuum of space).

Regarding the bombing of the Dreadnought in the opening sequence, maybe the idea here is that those First Order Dreadnoughts are so massive that they create enough of a local gravity well to allow bombs to literally fall on them from a close enough distance.

I kind of liked this movie, but yes, I completely agree that it was poorly paced and too long, with whole sequences that were ultimately pointless and should have been edited out (or, rather, never put into the screenplay to begin with). Have they lost all sense of how to tell a tightly-scripted, well-paced, straightforward space opera adventure movie? Apparently so. Every Star Wars movie must now be a ponderous chore to sit through, with sparks of humor and poignancy and the obligatory scenes that get you in the feels (e.g., R2D2 playing back Leia's original message to Kenobi from A New Hope to motivate Luke). A number of things bugged me: 1. Luke calling his lightsaber a "laser sword". That's simply not lore-appropriate, dude. (You'd never hear Han call his blaster a "ray gun".) 2. Leia surviving open space and flying back to the ship with the Force. (More on this below) 3. The entire Canto Bight sequence. It was pointless and unnecessary. 4. Snoke being a one-dimensional cackling villain. He was clearly invented solely to be replaced by Kylo Ren. ("I can not be betrayed!" indeed...) 5. Too many plot strands. I feel like The Last Jedi could easily have been split into two movies. 6. Force powers pulled out of the writers' butts. While RPG and video game players may recognize some of these abilities, movie-goers will not, and it just feels like the writers are inventing whatever Force powers they need to get the characters out of whatever situations they are in. When Jedi can do pretty much anything, we're no longer surprised when they do. The wonder we used to feel towards Jedi and the Force is replaced by the apathetic realization that the Force is just an arbitrary plot device, and not a tightly constructed component of the milieu. 7. Rey not being revealed to be a clone. The mirror chamber seemed to set this up with a strong visual metaphor. I thought the clever reveal was going to be that she had no parents at all; that she was a clone. Since her parentage is clearly not a factor in her Force sensitivity, I feel this was perhaps a lost opportunity to really surprise the audience and bring in an old piece of (forgotten?) world-building and make it newly relevant. 8. Admiral Haldo dressed less like a top flagship officer and more like an Academy Awards attendee. I have a hard time believing that her hair and attire were regulation compliant. 9. Too much of the humor was snarky and openly self-aware. I enjoy a touch of humor, to keep things from going too dark, but this is not the tone I want from my Star Wars movies. Point of clarification, The Last Jedi was written and directed by Rian Johnson, not JJ Abrams.

That's a great idea, DasBroot. But I agree with Jagged that even if that concept was on the table at one time, the poor reception of The Inhumans likely swept it off the table quickly.

I agree that Fisk and Kilgrave were amazing villains. Kilgrave was especially effective as a villain. And while I personally felt he had to die, it was nevertheless a shame to lose him. I felt that the villains of Luke Cage were mostly lame and uninteresting; the stakes were just too small and inconsequential to get me to care about what was going on. And the less said about Iron Fist, the better. The main "villain" in Punisher is basically Corrupt Government Official #16 (Rawlins), which is a trope that I just feel is completely played out by now. It is only because I really like the cast and the quality of the writing (despite the paint-by-numbers plot) that I give Punisher a passing grade. So yes, I agree that nearly all superhero shows (not just Marvel's) suffer from the problem of having a bland or cheesy villain (season after season). But Marvel has had some truly standout villains they can feel good about.

I'm contending that players have a contemporary understanding of technology that includes communication that is orders of magnitude faster than travel, and that this understanding sets expectations for what should be normal in the far future. I'm contending that it would feel like an anachronistic step backwards to not carry the same model into the future. I see nothing controversial about the notion that players will implicitly assume the future will be more like the present than the distant past. The trajectory to the future doesn't double back through the past, but continues from the present. That is logical and natural, even if it turns out to be wrong when that future actually gets here (due to some cataclysmic event or surprising technological barrier we can't anticipate). The part where I think being "unimaginative" slips in is where a GM chooses to take an ancient model for empire-building and applies it to a far future space opera setting primarily because the anachronistic limitations that model imposes on the campaign makes his life easier as a campaign builder. Just like it is unimaginative to have all the alien cultures be monocultures, or to have 19th century military structure/culture dominate centuries later, etc.

I don't see why you couldn't have ansible relay stations that are vulnerable to attack or hacking. You can still have interesting dramatic consequences as the service is disrupted at inopportune times, whereby automatic re-routing of the ansible network is compromised by delicate financial or political circumstances, etc. There could also be signal degradation, just like our current cell technology. None of that requires you to buy into Pony Express time scales for the exchange of information over vast distances. That's a separate choice you make only if you expressly want your campaign to feel anachronistic. Look, I understand the reasoning behind Traveller's communication architecture. Miller wanted the game to feel anachronistic (some folks seem to be in denial about this). I'm just saying that it isn't the only--or even the most obvious or logical--way to build a space opera campaign in which rubber science drives many other aspects of everyday life. Moreover, Miller's choices in this area are a major reason why Traveller always felt "off" to players such as myself.

Yeah, I agree that this last season of AoS has the reek of a slashed production budget. But I think they're doing a pretty fine job given those constraints. The CW shows generally do a better job of squeezing production value out of a shoestring budget, but it is evident that none of that money goes towards hiring decent writers, which is a critical problem in my view. Yes, I think you're being too hard on Marvel (and Supergirl, shame on you). But you are definitely not being too hard on The Inhumans. Nor would you be unfairly harsh by calling Iron Fist a steaming pile as well. However, I think the overall high quality of Marvel's live action efforts so vastly overshadows their occasional failures, that it is unfair to pretend like those failures define Marvel on television.

I would expect a space opera campaign to impose communication glitches now and then, especially when it helps to complicate matters for the PCs. Star Trek used this trope a lot. It feels quite natural and congruent with our experience (and expectations) for communications technology today. Sure, you could also say that in the far future such technologies would have been perfected to the point where such glitches never happened, and most players would probably accept that. But at least the occasional glitch feels completely consistent and contemporary, rather than backwards and anachronistic. What is key, I think, is that as a society we frame our experience of a technology by the way it works 90% of the time, not by the minor problems it encounters the other 10% of the time.

In my view, Marvel live action shows are superior to DC live action shows to the same degree that the MCU is superior to the DCEU. For DC, Wonder Woman and Supergirl are the shining lights of their respective domains. Everything else is pretty much garbage (though Arrow and Flash did not start that way). And even though shows like Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter were perpetually ratings-challenged (after all, it's much tougher to shine on ABC than on the WB), they have enjoyed far better writing than is typical for the CW shows. Now to be fair, DC has always earned praise for its animated tv shows. And even though animation is clearly where their strengths lie, I give them tremendous credit for trying to do live action superheroes on tv. I like and admire and that they've not shied away from the source material's most iconic tropes (costumes, superhero names, secret identities, etc.), but given the generally low caliber of their writing teams, maybe they should stick to cartoons where the audience is less demanding.

Well, certainly no less advanced than the day-to-day experiences of society today. People today expect communications to be fast (nearly instantaneous) and travel to be (relatively) slow. I can engage in (more or less) instantaneous two-way communication with someone on my smartphone no matter where they are on the planet, whereas travelling someplace takes anywhere from minutes to nearly a day. If you extrapolate that to a far-future sci-fi society, that means that communications are more or less instantaneous no matter where the sender and receiver are in the galaxy, whereas travelling someplace might take anywhere from minutes to nearly a day. For things to feel natural, the overall rhythm of communications and travel needs to remain the same; after all, all you're really doing is substituting "galaxy" for "planet" (or "kingdom") as the primary unit of the adventure space. You can't run a space opera campaign taking place in the far future and step backwards from contemporary societal norms (and the technology that created those norms) without it feeling illogical and anachronistic. Of course, maybe anachronistic is what you're going for, and that's fine; but at least be honest about the fact that it is anachronistic (and probably illogical to anyone who sees our modern society as where "the future" begins, with huge steps backwards not being part of the equation). Yes, early space travel will impose lots of inconvenient (and dangerous) issues, but once your campaign steps into the realm of space opera with galactic empires, FTL, sentient AI, and all manner of other rubber science tropes, rejecting the ansible becomes an awkward contrivance, not a natural and logical model for the genre/setting.

I just find it hard to reconcile an RPG campaign that is supposed to take place in our distant future, but which is constrained by anachronisms drawn from our distant past. It is an ill fit. It's like asking us to believe that the Death Star runs on the power generated by slaves pulling on oars.

I don't believe Logan would have resonated with anyone--or seemed like something new/different/unexpected--had the character not already been well established from numerous superhero movies (which themselves followed the canonical superhero tropes). If Logan had come out before any of the X-Men movies, it wouldn't have had anything to be different from. From what I can tell, the New Mutants movie does not connect itself with any X-Men continuity, so it's not like it can be compared to any of the X-Men movies, or any superhero movie for that matter. It is simply a horror movie involving kids with strange abilities (oh, and the word "mutant" thrown in every once in a while).

So when Disney buys Warner Brothers, we'll finally get a decent DCU? Okay, who wants to help me put up the Kickstarter for that?

Playing with genre generally works in the comics because they already have all the superhero tropes well established before they start straying into other genres. This movie, on the other hand, is a horror film through and through, using horror tropes rather than superhero tropes to tell its story. This won't feel like experimentation within the "home genre" (of superheroes), it will just feel like a horror movie involving people with strange abilities.