Scott Ruggels

D&D movie was not particularly woke in terms of the script, other than it was WOTC of a year or two ago. Casting however. .. (A Bit of BBC Stunt Casting) Script was extremely snappy. Made sense. VFX were adequate but uneven. Sets were very impressive. Lots of D&D Easter eggs. Displacer beasts moved like my cats when they fight.

Yes, thank you. Good luck with it. Thinking company stores and all that those entail. This will make the duty free shops for offworlders even more of a focus.

Did you say Traveller? Deets?

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/04/a-new-zealand-company-has-started-flying-a-rocket-powered-spaceplane/

When I started, first with the Fantasy Hero Playtest rules, and then with 1st edition FH< all magic was homebrew. Later on I gave the players guidance with sets of culturally specific Advantages and Limitations, to make magic from different lands work differently. At the time, everyone was so sick of AD&D and its class systems, that characters were Mystic knights, or Arcane swordsmen types, or magical thieves, or Holy men with huge area of effect spells. But as to Genre enforcement, I wasn't going to do much of that, especially when some armies had early firearms and explosives, and Dragons used the intelligence the creators granted them, Mages had spells that created black powder, which made it cheap and plentiful. hence the Pike & Shot armies. So it did not resemble anything Tolkien or D&D for that matter. It was it's own thing, but that was how the rest of us Did Fantasy back then. Pete emulated some certain books. I emulated none, but ran with a few ideas, and Bob ran an early Iron Age fantasy, like just out of the Classical period. Another GM used Ars Magica as background and philosophy, but the bones of his campaign were pure FH. I could still run that campaign today if I could find the misplaced notes, but currently I am running a No Magic campaign, taking place in a late classical period, for an appreciative group, and the rules are still 1st 3edition FH, with some simplification.

The problem with the metaverse, is that Zuckerberg';s vision is just a VR interface for the web we have already, and his version is primitive, especially when matched against VRChat, which has legs and user customized Avatars. I am not convinced that a VR interface for the web as we have it, would be efficient, or even desireable. As VRChat shows, it works great as a "social" environment, not so much an investigative environment.

Just like how VHS won over Beta. The worst, but most popular.

Worst, but also the most popular!!!😁. It’s like VHS winning the tech war all over again! Yaaay!

What has been learned from the DART Mission so far. https://www.space.com/dart-asteroid-impact-smashing-success-scientists-say

https://observer.com/2023/04/spacex-starship-orbital-launch-date/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/04/spacex-moves-starship-to-launch-site-and-liftoff-could-be-just-days-away/

Daniel Kwan, contributor to a number of WOTC and Paizo publications gives his overview of the WOTC Content Creator’s Summit. https://danielhkwan.substack.com/p/dnd-creator-summit

Looks like One D&D may be dead, in favor of incremental changes to 5e https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/12b3con/according_to_content_creators_at_the_dnd_summit/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=10 details to follow.

I had fun watching this one last night. Very convoluted plot, but fun.

No. 6e brings needless complexity. Just stick with FH 1e and the Bestiary and you8 should be fine.

Ben was a combat pilot, and then an Astronaut candidate, so the INT is good where it is.

Apparently not any more. I have been cruising r/rpgs on Reddit, and most of the chatter is about narrative focused games like Fate, Blades in the Dark, and the endless "Powered By The Apocalypse, games. Tyrrany by Theater Kids, over there. The exodus from 5e apparently went in different directions on Reddit. But I thought that this would be a nice reminder for folks to post here. I don't like to roll during the game, as it slows things down, and I lklike to keep my prep to a half hour to 45 minutes before the game, and maybe 20 minutes after to consolidate my notes. But before game 0, I'll spend months building out things.

The MEchanic of "Exploding dice" I am not a fan of, and I disliked my experiences with Savage Worlds. I tend to dislike narrative systems intensely in general.

https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2009/04/how-to-make-traveller-sandbox.html?m=1 The example is Traveller, but works well as basic advice for a sandbox style campaign. Additionally, you can tag player’s life path results to the map notes as well to give folks a deeper background, and ties to the location.

I would think that the "Flavor" of D&D is Vancian Magic, and the types of Monsters and opposition you go up against. Now I really dislike Vancian magic, and despair every time someone sets out to write D&D Spells in Hero, especially when there are a lot of other "literary" magic systems out there. But making the monsters could be an interesting design challenge that I see far fewer examples of. That being said, looking at those old modules to pull world building information might be the most valuable, who is where, what are the cultures like, what do they trade, and such would be quite useful.

Read it, and played it, with lead 54mm Soldiers, and these Matal cannon with spring slap fire breeches, suitable for firing a toothpick or a length of piano wire. Turns weren't quick, but it was fun turning the living room into a battlefield. That lead me into wanting to try Fletcher Pratt's Naval Wargame, but we never did.

I would have to disagree. The RP and "Characters" predate D&D The RP evolved from a modification of Napoleonics rules. Braunstein was a tabletop game that used miniature figures and a modified set of rules for Napoleonics miniatures. However, instead of playing as military generals, players took on the roles of mayors and other non-military figures in a small town. The game involved role-playing, social interaction, and elements of diplomacy, as players had to negotiate with each other to obtain supplies and achieve their goals. Braunstein is considered by many to be a precursor to the modern tabletop RPG, including Dungeons and Dragons, as it introduced many of the concepts and mechanics that would later become common in RPGs, such as player-driven storytelling, character development, and improvisation.

I enjoyed it. It had a lot of decent CGI and it was mixe3d in with miniature work. Very well done.