Scott Ruggels

There probably was/ is a difference between the UK and US fandoms. in the U.S. before the internet there was a very active Fanzine scene, and most of those devoted to superheroes were much like later newsgroups and forums that consisted of plot speculation and linking events from various titles. This also often spilled into the letter columns of the various comic books. GRRM was a frequent letter writer to Marvel in his youth. The zine's often would specialize on a certain title like The Legion of Superheroes. I was active in Gaming zines in the early 80's, but many of those zines went back to the 1960's with many of the original members. There was a lot of continuity tabulation and plot theories about it. This is how people spent their time in the month between issues of their favorite comics.

Superman for All Seasons was a graphic novel that made me re-asses Superman as a character. The DCAU Superman shows, which came later, gave Superman a limited set of powers, supreme strength, but he showed restraint and intelligence. Most of those were very well written, and show an understanding of the character. The “World of Cardboard “ speech shows the level of writing that elevated the character:

“Chews his popcorn, and wipes his fingers on his Duke T-Shirt”.

there are two audiences for comic-: The fans and the general public. The fans adore the world building and the tight continuity. It’s adds greatly to their enjoyment of the property. The general audiences enjoy a good story, and the comic editor want to turn the general audience into fans. Discussions of the continuity are often what builds the fan community. As a working creatives, right limitations often help to produce better stories. In general, a superhero story is a hard magic system so it needs consistency and continuity, or the story is bad, like a lot of 1950’s Superman stories. There are good writers and bad writers, and the comics never paid well so you either got bad writers, good writers who were fans, and good but lazy writers hoping to get a job in Hollywood. So I do not think tight continuity is responsible for the decline of writing quality, but often a property is just at the end of its life cycle, and it either ceases publication, or it is rebooted.

L. Douglas Garret used the fictional Costa Diego as his 1980’s Merc combat setting And the Communist insurgency was the FRLN which I think stood for something But I forget.

Wow. That’s a take I haven’t heard often. Nor do I agree with it. I find a Lone Superhero fairly implausible and not that interesting.

Oh man, yes that was good, and Aang found his Buddhist solution to his end game dilemma, and I was supremely satisfied. Uncle Iroh is a treasure. Currently it’s one of the top shows on Netflix. Korra will be next. The creators are currently doing The Dragon Prince also on Netflix and there are a lot of tone similarities.

Agreed. There were a lot of short crossover episodes in that 1966-68 time frame.

I do not read or trust CBR. I occasionally poke Bounding InTo Comics, but frankly I have no interest in mainstream comics any more, as I am looking mostly at Manga and Indiegogo titles these days. I could care less if the big two went away now. I used to work in comics in the early 90’s. I had fun, and comic-con was fun. Apparently not any more. These days the media is too soft because they want to maintain Access, rather than ask difficult questions. So no, I do not read CBR.

Hey! I got Cats! A friend of my Sister in law had a surplus of kittens,, so I took two. Meet the ne members of the family. No names, yet, but thinking about it. The Little Girl: The even smaller, but more adventurous male.

I could do art, maybe. Not a lot of time for volunteer projects at the moment. Lockdown has had me surprisingly busy.

One of my favorite characters to play. Sorry XD. Explosive AOEs. Yaaay!

Why I don’t play magic users usually. Add levels, dex, skills,and knowledge skills, so my warrior remains fresh. XD.

Well, you could, but, the GM (me) would probably disallow it.

Upload (Amazon Prime). Software developer is fatally injured in a self driving car accident, and his consciousness is uploaded, by his girlfriend, into a “digital heaven”, that like any mmo, has glitches. Humorous, but deeper than the commercials portray. Waco (Netflix), a surprisingly even handed drama about the Branch Davidian stand-off. Based on two books by participants. Avatar:The Last Airbender (Netflix). I did not see this show in first run. So on a friend’s recommendation, I have started watching it. Surprisingly dense, and balanced story for a supposed kids show. Good for ideas for FH.

My weekends are taken up with a couple of games on Roll 20.net. There was a 5e game which became Savage Worlds. The other game is 5e D&D. During the week, no games yet, but I am using the time to produce scenery assets for Brennall’s TTS module. Interestingly, there are a few Herosystem games starting up soon.

Hero Creator will work in Win 10 if you just rag it onto a drive, rather then perform an install. Have used it occasionally until I bought HD.

Correct. Heromaker.exe was what came with 4e. It produced the most beautiful 3 column character sheets. I worked on it, but it’s mostly Nicky Robinson’s work.

Star lost was shown on Sunday afternoons on KRON TV, as was pre- Tom Baker Dr. Who, they were comparable effects wise, though Starlost always had the cheap and cheesey video. The ship itself you could tell was about 14 feet long, and video cameras of the time had severe depth of field issues. Unlike Dr. Who, Starlost was slow plodding and talky. The sets had minimalist dressing and the acting was uneven. Things had an unrehearsed, live TV feeling, but at least it wasn’t sports or community service programming.

I read far too much SF, and was a Geology nerd in school ( not much math in geology, and was fascinated by the concept of rocks telling stories), so I conceptually can’t accept non naturalistic geography. Savage Earth I can. Impact craters I can, just not the Flat earth, supported by four elephants on the back of a turtle sort of abstraction. In the words of another thread it breaks the immersion for me. If that’s your thing, though, play on.

Not your fault. No worries.

Dammit!! I am a bit frosted RL about just hearing about this. Steve and I were both members of Aaron Alston’ “Rogues Gallery”, Hero system APa back in the 90’s He later became editor when Aaron stepped down. I sugared a write up in RG of my favorite Champions character after, following on of Aaron’s prompts. The he Character was a military powered armored suit named Sgt. S. M. A. S. H. It stood for Suit, Man Amplification, Standard, Heavy. A member of two Bay Area based super team. He’s free to use this, as it is just an RPG character, nothing was ever registered, but I am miffed. That’s all.

Yes, absolutely. If a campaign is just Cartoon Fantasy, then my mental involvement is minimal until combat, and even then I might have a browser tab open and have to be verbally reminded that it is now my turn. However, a good and deep piece of world building gives me enough to lace my character tightly into the background and adds immersion. Immersion sparks much better role play. There is a vast difference between glib and clever. Smug GMs often confuse the two. Look how the Genie from Disney’s Aladdin has aged so Badly. It also manifests with players giving Characters joke names. I have strict “ no joke characters” rule, when I run. Definitely agree here. Lax or lazy GM there. With D&D Beyond, one can generate a new character in less than 30 minutes, so why allow “Gary, son of Harry, brother of Larry, who just died in a pit trap in the 13th level of this dungeon the party is in”? An old time GM of mine used to rip character sheets of dead characters to prevent duplication. He got complaints and stopped, eventually. The Dunning - Kruger effect. I know at least that there is a ton of stuff I know nothing about, especially anything dealing with accounting and and financial stuff, but I still have a love of trade and commerce subjects. However, if I have a player knows something about a subject then, I draft them to write up a system for the game. Hero players seem to often do this or they did in the past , and the pre-internet gaming alas used to have lots of these systems shared among the members. One should not allow one’s self to believe their ego, and conduct their games as if they were all knowing, and infallible gods.

For me and a few of my friends this is fun. I groove on world building. With lockdown, I am playing a lot more D&D online. This has me thinking about economics, commerce, and trade for a couple of campaigns, one for FH another for Star Hero. So there is a lot of discussion about such systems, because most of my friends prefer sandbox campaigns to narrative based ones.

not 34 months, but 3-4 months. My place isn't big enough for 34 months unless I fill my office with them.