Scott Ruggels

IMO, Avengers: Infinity War was the High point of the MCU, with Avengers: End Game a close second. Since then, I've felt that the quality has declined precipitously, with most of the plots degenerate to some version of "The girl that is the key to everything". I am even less interested in the video representations of the "All New All Different Marvel", from 2015 or so. I wanted stories about the Marquee characters being heroes, rather than Sidekicks in their own stories, shown up by a more skilled or more powerful woman. For properties supposedly picked up by Disney to attract a male audience, when they already locked down the female audience with the princesses, and the cable shows, Hawkeye was the one that didn't hurt so bad, but, Moon Night.... Another subtle yet glaring problem, is that Male Heroes cannot hit female characters, and the fights, in general, are Bloodless. The perfection of the first two seasons of Neflix's Daredevil I don't see being able to get duplicated in any current MCU Property. Disney's influence is pervasive, and I am very close to walking away from the MCU, as I have completely from Star Wars. Cancelling Disney+ and picking up HULU to watch "The Orville" , or Paramount+ to get South Park, or Beavis & Butthead

I complained about the huge skills granularity, as well, and it made me a bif fearful about how one does Star Hero, unless one simplifies like Traveller hero. But your idea of breaking out tiny skills from 5,8, or 10 point skills is fascinating and would kind of help.

Isn't The Flash a DC property?

The plot sounds like a Decent Idea and I've seen similar on museum ships, as a large plexiglass sheet with the lines and circles painted it. The only problem I have is how does one account for ship movement around planets or other debris/objects that one could hide behind? (See: The Expanse). The Car Wars Idea sounds interesting, though it would be like having a game of Car Wars on the Largeest Walmart parking lot ever.

"....Next on Newspoint, we invite our regular Guest, Retired General Alexander McQuarry, to comment on the situation." Those News Appearances pay, and get one contacts within a major News Organization.

I loved the Orville. especially Second Season, However, going to HULU has blocked me, as I can't affrord another streaming service, and the Cheap option of Hulu has.... Commercials. (If Netflix starts showing commercials, I will cancel it probably.)

This was discussed at length earlier, and I did think it was probably the right direction to go, if one wants to keep Hero in print and on shelves. The downside to that is taking any sort of Paizo level of execution is prohibitively expensive, and anything less looks incompetent or cheap. In a perfect world, several slim volumes of focused genre books with a handful of supplements available at launch would be ideal. Unfortunately we have the world as it is (with it's currently shrinking economy). This may have to be the realm of 3rd Party Crowd Funding campaigns, with the expressed endorsement of Hero Games, before launch. I don't see Hero themselves in any position to fund or organize this, with the current level of staffing and budget they have now. So then, what would these look like? How narrow, or wide is the scope? How thin or fat are the books? How vague or explicit are the stat blocks? Is END particularly important for one genre, but can be ignored in another, or are they all need END stats kept close track of? Equipment as points or handed out? How many illustration's total? How many Diagrams total? With the rising Popularity of Games Workshop products (even with the various backlashes happening from their recent decisions), supporting play with maps and minis may be popular. I know that printing minis and terrain is one of the activities that are really driving the sale of 3D printers. I['d basically see this as a 100 page or less rulebook (Like JI and Espionage), with two or three 60 page or so supplements per book. Sure , use 6e to build the assets, but never publish point totals for the stat blocks (except maybe in an appendix), decent text layout, and full color illustrations (Painterly, rather than classic comic book. Even comic books don't resembles their 1980s forebears at all. Square bound, if not hardback. Licenses for wildly popular media properties are flatly unobtainable, and date quickly and are not worth pursuing. If one was to look at "longer tails" in terms of sales and interest, Might I suggest approaching Authors, to adapt their settings to a game book and supplements? Avoid the major publishers, and look for Amazon published authors that retain their own rights. There is a deep pool of inexpensive I.P among the self published authors, and a handy Amazon Rating of their quality beside the product. Just a thought.

Strict genre emulation for the rules. Narrative (storytelling) focus, and mechanics minimalism, all in a visually pleasing package. They, not always, but, are usually are so focused on a single genre, or aspect, that they adapt poorly to other genres or situations. THey are the opposite of the "universalism of Hero, and GURPS.

Watching it tomorrow with the new one, after I get back from my Brother's dinner.

Watched RRR on NEtflix,by the same director as Bahubali. A Tamil, Hindu and English language film about two revolutionaries in India in 1920. It's very entertaining, if typically over the top as most Subcontinental films are. But the cast was attractive, the Performances were good, and the cinematography was as refreshing as a glass of Iced tea on a hot day. For a 3 hour film, it felt speedy, but not rushed or packed. I noticed they didn't get the cars right for 1920 (most of them being 30's and 40's vehicles, but I did not expect India to have a large car collector culture. Very entertaining, though. Been watching the current season of "The Boys". A lot better than the previous season. I'm enjoying it.

We had a Gremlin until my m om killed it. Riding to school about 3/4 of a mile, listening to the Capricorn One soundtrack on my SONY Walkman (First Generation).

My preferred is 3-4th edition. The most fun I had as a player was the Fantasy Hero playtest. Followed closely to a couple of Aaron Allston con games. As a GM, it was running Fantasy Hero 1st edition and second, but back then the settings were deeply home brewed, relying on history, cheap and cheesy fantasy novels I bought from the College book store for the bus ride home, and long conversations with othe local GMs. those editions encouraged discounts on package deals to give players a deal, and to give set lists of spells and characteristics and powers to produce a member of some fantasy race, or job, or magic style. You would have points left over to individualize your character, and package disads didn’t count for halving. If I were to run Fantasy Hero for new players, I would go with the early editions and inform them that D&D emulation I would consider in very bad taste. there are far fewer pages in the early b editions of FH, and Danger International is a fun read. This is a lot more surmountable than 6th Edition. Those that say the play is the same are wrong. Movement is halved, and divorced from beloved 25mm hexes representing 6 feet or 2m on tan Chessex battle maps. Turn mode has been added for characters. Endurance costs are different, and while most powers have been made more granular, and proscribed, barrier has uselessly combined effects. It used to be Forcefield would transmit stun from an attack to a character, similar to armor or rPD, whereas nothing was transmitted through a force wall, unless it was blown through, like a brick wall or tank armor. It was very easy to conceptualize the differences mechanically and build to spec. Then Com was removed, and replaced with striking appearance for bad reasons. COM was the stat that generated so much roleplay. Comeliness was taken as positive attractiveness. You paid points the higher you went. Was Sue Storm more attractive than Mary Jane Watson? If you had two very attractive team members, that often generated a lot of non combat interactions. Negative attractiveness paid you using distinctive looks. Large humanoid made of orange rocks, gotta be The Thing. Then there was how growth and shrinking is handled now. It used to be you would buy X levels of growth, to get the size you wanted, then you would buy off the END with appropriate Disads like can’t go through single doors, and others. You then had a character, other people around the table understood as “large”, without the 6th edition hand waving, reducing a power to a mere special effect. When l first started playing Champions with the first edition, it was 200 points plus Disads. I would take fewer disads than the other characters, and while I didn’t hit as hard as the others, but I was often the last one standing. Now the point totals are astronomical, and Dis-er- “complications”, if I understand correctly, are a fixed amount for the campaign(?), so everyone is the same number of points(?). As such the current edition’s strict enforcement of balance and getting what one pays for has removed the previous editions’ mercantile transaction between players andnGM and have replaced it with a Tax audit interaction. As such the 6th edition reference rules read like a tax accountancy text book. Gone is the breezy information and sly humor of Bruce Harlick, or the cautioning notes l, the depth, and occasional dark humor of L. Douglas Garrett, or the confidence building good cheer of Aaron Allston. Champions Complete does not have the tax problem but it lost the organization of 4th edition and it could use a revised layout with no change to the text. Still, it has the aforementioned flaws of being a 6th edition rule set. D&D 5e acknowledged that there were imbalancing things in the game but those things could be compensated for (Fireball as a 3rd level spell). But 6th edition has little wiggle room and tends to over complicate builds. The skills are a prime example of that. I think I have already talked about the skill specialization where a 2-3rd edition character would have Doctor. A 6th edition character would have to take biology, anatomy, thoracic medicine, cardiology and would be a dandy heart surgeon, but not as useful setting bones or plugging bullet holes. The specificity also effects the cost of skill levels, and once again making the point costs astronomical, and character generation immensely slow, unless one buys Hero Designer which is like having to buy TurboTax to file your taxes. I expect some of you to come to the defense of 6th edition, and that’s fine, but it is to me, not fun. I may have to learn it, but it puts me to sleep. Champions Now, while inspired by 3rd Edition Champions, is a bit too modern , a bit too idiosyncratic, and too narrative focused, to feel like Champions of old. The wargame roots of the old game are gone. To me, it’s not Champions without a 12 segment speed clock. I see narrative is what you tell after the game, but what is most important is putting together a solid character personality because it should be characters that drive the plot, not the other way around. So if I wanted to teach new folks Hero, Duke may be the most correct, starting with second edition Champions. Scott - proud Grognard.

Paul Lidberg of Crunchy Frog Games has Passed Away. His wife just posted about it on Facebook. I was at their wedding years ago, because Paul gave me and Phil Morrisey a ton of illustration work for his various mini games. Paul and I hit it off. Even L. Douglas Garret did a bit of writing for Crunchy Frog Games. How he passed away, has not been specified, but A few of you grognards have probably run into him at conventions.

Okay, assume Hero for skill rolls and map combat. I am comfortable with that, though Mongoose 2e wasn’t bad. But for Starship combat, even going back to the beginning, it seemed that every group homebrewed their space combat rules, or adapted them from another source. Paul Gazis 8 Worlds campaign had a very involved system as Paul was a NASA engineer, but it was very lethal, as most ships had no defenses, and aerospace construction tended to be very light. So crew members were easily aerosolized by hyper velocity particles. We had to make new characters a lot. Years later, watching The Expanse, there was a bit of nostalgia seeing the projectiles perforate the Command space of the various ships. Paul was right. I cannot provide and details, as I was brought in as Infantry, but his website may have it as he still runs it occasionally. Doug Sharp and I experimented with the rules from Harpoon 2e, or 3e, but could not get the scale right to keep it all on the dining room table. There was something useful there, but we weren’t quite there to figure it out. ( and I was and am mathtarded). I had some thought of using Albedo 1e for space combat. I will have to check the rules again. It was supposedly realistic though the ships were a bit more durable, but if it was anything like the comics the game was based on, the crew would check their radar plot to get the speed and course of the opposing ship, make their ship tactics rolls (and hand them to the GM), launch a bunch of missiles, then sit back for the hours or days until the enemy missiles arrived, then your ship’s CWS, would roll to see how many incoming missiles were destroyed. Any missiles that got through, hit locations and damage was resolved, and players were informed if they needed to roll up a character or not. Again, fairly Expanse like. I have a lot of SF games on my gaming shelves, but not many have a decent, hard science, space combat system. Now, I do want a good, physics respecting, space combat system I can plug into a Traveller Hero game. But haven’t quite found a satisfactory one, yet. Did GDW’s Imperium work? I do want a map & Token system, but now I need it to work with Roll 20 or Tabletop Simulator, so thing can be played a bit quickly. I do not foresee easily rejoining a physical table any time soon.

After the Jackson Trilogy, the above costume looks so…. So… …bad. where did they get the plastic for that skull in the 12th Century?

Comparison of Tien Gong station on top, and the I.S.S. at the bottom. The Tien Gong resembles a lot of those 80's Traveller illustrations. The ISS is letting it all hang out. Even so, it took them a while to find the leak on the ISS, and the Tien Gogn hasn't yet lost it's New car smell, or the peelies off the screens. Scott

No, it's how they run a Soup Kitchen.

The setting in the movie was a Lucasfilm and ILM attempt to make a Tolkien-esque Fantasy, but was a bit spare, mostly wilderness locations, save fore places used for set piece action. It was one of Ron Howard’s first film directing gigs. Now while there was a minor Fantasy boom in the 80s with films like Conan, Beastmaster, and Ladyhawke, Willow underperformed and never had its promised sequel. For some of us gamers, the film was too light and too predictable. Madmartigan tonaly felt a bit mismatch for the rest of the characters. A 1980s slacker in the 12 Century. Unfortunately this was an often seen slaw in other movies as well, but in the successful films, the mismatch was used in comedies. So now, to add yet another piece of serial content to Disney+, Lucasfilm dives to the back of their vaults of their IPs and brings up this film. It looked interesting, and with the health problems that Val Kilmer has, there will be no roguish swashbuckler with an 80s attitude. With the LED environment technology, locations could look more artistic and less sparse. Lucasfilm always had a good crew of artists, so the costumes and props can easily surpass Wheel of Time, and Rings of Power, and can approach The Ring Trilogy, levels of fit and Polish. The problem is, that it is 2022, which means COVID protocols will rob about 30% of time and budget, and place restrictions on blocking, cinematography, and cast density. So while the locations may look a lot more lush, markets, cities, and armies will look sparse, or full of digital extras. The other problem is Disney and Lucasfilm as they are currently. The two weakness of the script for the latest Disney+ shows, are young writers who have little life experience or knowledge of history or things outside of school, and a company drive to push “The Message”. Because of this there is a high possibility that it will be unpleasantly “woke”. I have walked away from Star Wars, or any woke taunted properties, not because of the message, but because they prioritized the message above the story and entertainment. Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner could be considered woke, but it starred a top actor, and had a very sharp and well written script. Now I don’t expect this from the Willow show, I would hope it would be an entertaining fantasy, but that hope wilts in the expectation I have of how it will most probably appear. I will watch one episode and see If I am entertained and if there is anything I can mine for a Fantasy Hero campaign,but I may just cancel Disney+ and save some cash.

I remember that there was a Sourcebook for RPGs for the Original Willow film back in the day, that was written by Allen Varney? As I remember the book, it was thin, and had stat blocks for the Movie Characters (for which system, I forget), and had a lot of info on the various gods, and some description of a couple of kingdoms. I guess now they can or will flesh it out more? As for the original Movie, I was ambivalent, but the first use of "morphs" on film, was one of the moments where I could accept the magic as real.

Por ejemplo

https://www.youtube.com/c/Artifexian This channel has many items on the subject of worldbuilding. It is set on mostly Science Fiction and ome Fantasy, but that's generally what most of is play here, right? This may be useful so The link for the channel is on top, and an Example I will post below.

That was just about perfect.

It's a very simple, and fast little game. It was perfect for Highschool Lunch Adventures, at the time, and the point buy kind of lead us into Champions in my Junior / Senior Year.

I want to apologize if I came across as snarky or insulting. IT was not My intent. Honestly, my experience with watercraft, other than my Grandfather's Sailboat (all over the Chesapeake Bay), were all the WW2 Era Museum ships around the SF Bay Area (Liberty Ships, Victory Ships, Balao class Submarines, Battleships, Carriers, and Anti-Aircraft Boats). I have no experience with the modern Navy other than photos, and movies, so I am not aware of the physical requirements of electronic control systems. Though we are at the upper end of TL-8 in the U.S., I do imagine at some point that something like solid state computers (block of diamond or synthetic crystal grown for a specific material requirement), and Fiberoptic cable may be the norm at higher TL levels. Quantum computers, which are just coming on line now in Universities may be the Pro-sumer civilian machine by the end of the decade. I would assume that there would be easily removeable covers over the pipe ways and passages, so as to not snag Vacc Suits. Probably labelled and numbered, but otherwise fairly smooth, except for the Dzuss Fasteners on the corners. Exposed pipe and pipe hangars would rip and tear a vacc suit if the gravity plates went out.

Possibly, but without Champions, GURPS would probabvly resemble TFT more mechanically, and would probably NOT include Superheroes until much later, with a highly Kludgy system.... oh wait, that is GURPS Supers, today. NM. Seriously Not sure if Point Buy would have been as influential, But I did enjoy TFT quite a bit after fleeing from the strictures of AD&D.