zslane

YouTube is rife with "reviews" of the Infinity War trailer, and some of the reactions are of the, "Yeah, looks cool, but I'm not going crazy with anticipation for some reason." variety. In a way, I can totally understand that reaction, and I even think I know why people are feeling that way. Part of the problem with releasing 2-3 MCU movies per year, along with a constant stream of set photos and teasers and other online nonsense, is that there is no time to build anticipation in the hearts and minds of moviegoers. If you hadn't just seen Spider-Man in a movie a few months ago, you might be far more excited to see him again in the Infinity War trailer. But there's been no down time to build a craving for these characters. They suffer from over-exposure, and that denudes the excitement factor for each successive appearance they make in a film.

Yeah, Analyze provides raw data. Interpreting that data (in a useful manner) is something else entirely. Probably something more like Deduction with complementary KS rolls.

Yes, you could make an attack with an area the size of the universe, and you'd hit everything in it no matter what (due to the area). But the rules do not guarantee you'll hit your target hex, after all you could always roll an 18 right? Whether or not that matters (contextually) is a separate issue.

Yeah, one might even argue that in this context it is a +1/4 Advantage, rather than a Limitation...

The first half of the two-night, four-show crossover event was kind of fun. I'll pretty much watch anything with Melissa Benoist in it. I'll even put up with having to watch Dominic Purcell... Questions that came to mind while watching the first half of the two parter:

I find it a bit ironic that Teleport, UAO, Ranged, "Does not teleport 'armor & attached equipment' with target" (-1/4) serves to make the attack cheaper even though its effect is more devastating to the victim. Unless, I suppose, the target is being teleported into a large body of water, in which case that Limitation will probably save his or her life...

This is an oversimplification of both the game itself and any claims made for it by anyone who actually knows the game well (including Hero Games themselves). The system prides itself on giving you the tools to handle "anything" so long as you aren't trying to violate some of its intrinsic axioms. Some of those axioms are: There is no such thing as "always" (as in, "always hits") or "never" (as in, "never takes damage") in the game unless you define special boundaries that create equivalencies of such concepts for your campaign. Nobody can have more than 12 Phases in a Turn, and you can't "borrow" someone else's Phase. The Focus Limitation dictates that only the player/buyer determines the scope of its accessibility. And that can't be changed by an attack power. Only by GM fiat. The design axioms of the Hero System place concrete limits on what you can do with it, much to the frustration of some players who come from other games with a different set of design axioms. So let's not create false claims for the system in order to justify a proposed distortion of the rules.

The first couple of episodes of Legends were so bad I couldn't stomach the thought of watching another minute of it. Given the banter between the Legends characters during the CW crossover events I've seen, I feel I made the right decision. In fact, all of the CW superhero shows except Supergirl became unwatchable to me a couple of seasons ago. I don't regret giving up on any of them one bit. Agents of SHIELD, on the other hand, pretty much improved with every season, despite a few clunker episodes here and there and some concepts that really didn't make sense (e.g., the Darkhold).

The British series model is like reading a novella that might or might not ever get sequels. The American binge model is like a series of novellas (or graphic novels), written and released a year or so apart, and nobody knows how many volumes there will ultimately be. The old American broadcast television series is like a series of full-length novels, with a four-month gap between volumes, and again nobody knows how many volumes there will be. Which model you like most probably depends on whether you prefer short-form or long-form storytelling.

My head canon is that Sam merely sensed/intuited that the device could lead her to answers about what was going on with her and who she really was, and she was following it like an otherworldly GPS nav. Is anyone else tired of every single Super<whatever> movie and tv show riffing on the Donner crystals (and Fortresses of Solitude)? C'mon Hollywood, try something fresh and new, like Donner did!

Back in the day, a typical national advertising campaign lasted around 6 months, and so advertisers wanted a 6-month-long vehicle for delivering that campaign. But shows are now being made as complete blocks of story that viewers "binge", with no advertising involved. That flourishes today primarily because of the paradigm shift towards the subscription-only streaming model. The classic advertising campaign structure is slowly losing its influence over the shape of production, and consequently the 20+ episode season is slowly becoming obsolete.

Transform, at a high enough level, can be used to cover most situations, taking care of the "what happened" (army tanks break down), with special effect taking care of "how it happened" (massive internal parts failure).

Because even though that makes perfect rational sense, that would have derailed/delayed the course set for her by the writers for this season.

I think Stranger Things has demonstrated that a tight, engrossing story can be told in eight or nine episodes. No need for the 12+ episode structure established by HBO. Incidentally, it seems to me that such short episode runs really makes these shows more like classic mini-series from the 1970s, rather than full seasons of television (which used to span half a year when I was a kid). There's nothing wrong with that, it's just that calling eight episodes of anything a "season" just sounds bizarre to my ears.

Building characters is not unlike designing software. It is as much art as science, with many, many ways to accomplish the same thing using the "programming language" of the game. Which is why I fell in love with Champions the moment I first encountered it (back in 1982).

I'm sure if we really tried, we could reduce the powers list to only a few, each with dozens of official modifiers with which to construct complete abilities/spells/gadgets/whatever. E.g: Move, Damage, Protect, Change, Sense, Control, etc. Heck, I bet "Change" could cover 90% of the game all by itself; after all, doing damage is really just Changing someone's BODY/STUN scores, moving is really just Changing one's position in space, etc.

I'm surprised 6E doesn't have a completely deconstructed Move power that you then have to build into super running, super jumping, super swimming, and flight based on other modifiers. After all, players want to build everything for their game themselves with the RPG equivalent of quarks, right?

Yeah, I tended to agree with Ebert way more than Siskel as well.

I wasn't being sarcastic. Based on what you say above, I would not put you into the same category as the "general public" in terms of how you experience and process a movie. I would put you into the same category as most movie critics. Your cinematic experience passes through a much more critical lens than it does for most people. That's not a bad thing, mind you, it merely means that your feelings about a movie won't necessarily resonate with most folks who will like a movie if it is flashy and loud and full of action, regardless of its myriad structural flaws. That's why you and a hundred other critics will talk about how shitty a movie is, while the other 99.999% of the viewing public will react with, "What are you talking about? That movie was awesome!"

Again, I agree with Doc. If these spells are to have complicated dynamics according to degree of success, then creating a table/chart (for each such spell) that clearly describes what you get for each level of success will make using these spells a whole lot easier. The up-front design time will be substantial, but I don't think there is an easy way to turn it into a "system", i.e., an easy algorithm that produces valid combinations of advantages, limitations, DCs, etc., on the fly for you.

So we can assume, then, that The Orville's system works differently since they don't have transporter tech. One wonders how much more sophisticated their holodeck technology must be since they have to replace the functions normally handled by transporter tech (on Trek) with something else entirely.

I guess I was just curious if the Trek holodeck's functioning was ever described in detail in some officially licensed "Technical Manual" book or something. I'm guessing not.

You can have any combination of PD or ED. However, in 4E the minimum cost is 9 pts, so at minimum you'll have 6 points of Armor to distribute to PD and/or ED as you see fit.

Normally I wouldn't think about it because in the few episodes I've seen, Trek always stuck me in the virtual environment with the characters, and the artifice of the holodeck wasn't made apparent until the simulation was stopped. But in this last episode of The Orville, we watched a view of the simulation from the "control room", and we saw Alara just running in place while a portion of the corridor graphics moved past her. It forced the viewer (me) to thinkaboutit because the viewer (me) was suddenly madeawareofit.

Yeah, I have developed a soft spot for Alara. I like the episodes that focus on her too. So does the floor of a holodeck move so that you can physically run around the space? How does that work for multiple people who go off in different directions? And how does it deal with elevation change? Does the floor deform to create inclines so you feel like you are climbing? I never watched enough TNG to get a grasp on these technical details.