Scott Ruggels

The trailer turned me off. Cassandra's take was the same as mine. What I said in The Discord got me a warning. But I will say it here as it is just my opinion. I will not go see another modern feminist power fantasy. Usually they have a lot of angry Mary Sues. The two main indicators of such movies are, all men are bad or incompetent, and the protagonists have limited if any flaws. Wonder Woman was not this as she dealt with her male colleagues as individuals, and she was mislead by her idealism, and inexperience with the world. This idealism was contrasted by Hypolita's cynicism , but it inspired those around Diana.

Bro-able if I can get a hotel or crash space.

ILet me know what you need explained, Duke. Glad to assist. But you can watch "Critical Roll" on your bigass TV, on the Internet, YouTube as a matter of fact.

As one of the Gun guys around here. I keep an eye out for interesting technology showing up at the trade shows. Here's one from a couple of days ago. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExciiPs4550 In more detail the way Ian and Karl do it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5u9k9qq2-o it's in 9mm Parabellum, but costs $5000.00 US so it's not something you would see Police getting issues (yet), But the massively reduced recoil and a Red dot may have several focused levels of range mod reduction, plus an ability to follow up fast, which may reduce the -2 penalty to follow up shots.

Time for a segue. Speaking of porn, a few folks objected to Matt Mercer's efforts in a discussion on an FB 5e D&D group, saying that Critical Roll resembled most people's D&D about as well as porn rese,bled real sex. That the search for the funny voice was a distraction from good role play and that Mercer kept shoving his boot up the ass of his players to keep things moving. My objection toMercer, though is his "Skill Challenge" is just a narrative tool to short hand results, based on desperate and flimsy justifications of rolls forced on the players by Matts use of the, dare I even call it, mechanic. My GM users it because he was inspired by Matt Mercer, and it resulted in a TPK. Not happy.. But in the end I'd rather play a game than watch a stream of one.

I will try to make DinDraCon. Where is it going to be if not San Ramon in 2021?

I will make an effort to be there, since I live in the area again.

I am of the same mind, ( coming from the illustrations side) but rather than Adventure modulesnfornFH, it was more of a race book for GMs. Good layout and organization is very necessary, especially these days.

The difficulty you may be missing, is print costs. Your friend made his adventure specifically as a PDF, with no concern given got print costs, or distribution. His project was a solo, fan created work. Hero has to plan that their projects, even though unprinted, are prepared for print, and legally covered. So that means some cost. So Hero generally limits their print output to two color. Four color printing with page bleeds is vastly more expensive in terms of labor costs, materials (coated paper), and full color, painted art, which often also needs longer deadlines. Your friend hopefully got permission for the publication rights for the art they used. That would be something Hero would have to pay for, that your friend might slip under the radar for.

Oh, my old Los Angeles apartment. Except the fridge is too large in the image. Half the height and put the sink and two gas burners on top of it. The shower and toilet had a wall between them and the main room, though, but that was pretty much it.

May have been. I was taking it from various samurai films.

There is a lot of “forcing” by Disney, before the creative differences occur. Marvel has been Disney since 2007-8. When the moved from their offices above Mercedes of Beverly Hills, to the newer offices on The Raleigh Studios Lot in Manhattan Beach but yes all those shuffles, and more were recounted on that Clownfish TV video.

Lordy no consistency in the Drakine. I think I would rather redraw them, and give them a more consistent appearance. Give them some decent and distinctive clothing at least. Having been in the trenches at Hero during the 3rd Wnd 4th edition days. It was more primitive than you think. A lot of the early books were hot waxed onto layout board to take to a photostat camera. DTP wasn’t a thing there until later. For Fantasy Hero I pulled an all nighter at their office doing spot illustrations to fill holes in pages, and the quality declined dramatically. (See the Wizard with multiple joints in his arm). Art was important, but they never had the money for a lot of it or layout. However, a PDF, can have all the painted color art one can desire (or pay for). I plan on doing my own, with my own art, as Fantasy Hero material.

Oh my god! This again. I worked on that damned game. The crew was Steve Peterson, Ken Zarifies, Nicky Robinson, her (soon to be ex) husband, Ray Greer, Bryce Nakagawa, and myself. It was for 386, and 486 machine gun it’s SVGA capability, and it was my first computer animation gig, out of college, and Lordy was that a labor intensive game. Bryce and I replaced another artist, who’s well drawn porn comic took off. We scrapped his character art, and Bryce took over interface and some backgrounds and I did character sprites and effects. It was a slog as the scale of the characters changed (smaller) and the animation catalogue increased. The test and convention builds worked well, but he bottleneck was the scripting system; and Steve could not get a handle on it, especially with the 3in. Disk based limits. Hardware was tiny back then. Only the character generator from that game made it out of that project. That became Heromakr.exe which shipped with the BigBlueBook.

He keeps the EP title as he had a lot of script/story input. However, Clownfish TV documented the many instances off Disney having creative differences with a lot of directors recently.

I would just prohibit mental paralysis in a Heroic campaign.

Back from the Holidays, So, reading back a bit,not just makes me more convinced that a crowd funded re-issue of the 2nd edition boxed set, with perhaps a new adventure added may work.. I don't think that Champions, as 6th edition is, is suitable for the modern, non literary gamer. Champions complete might work if pared way down in the verbiage and re-edited, but it lacks adventures. But this may be a broken record comment. Also the rise of morally gray, killer heroes in comics was a result of the demise of the comics code authority, and the influence of UK based writers brought it who had a decidedly different take on comics than the comics code savvy Americans.

There is an attitude that blossomed after the Movie "Heaven's Gate", cratered in 1980, taking the Western as a genre, and the studio that made it, United Artists, down with it. That attitude was stated as, " It is irresponsible to allow a single individual to control the investments of many other people. ". So the studios burdened directors with a bureaucracy, and financial oversight, so that the studio was insulated from the risks of an auteur. But during the 80s and 90's there were still small studios that allowed young directors to make a film, but with the limitation of a small, fixed budget, and a short schedule. It was in this environment that James Cameron proved himself. However with the media consolidation in the late 90's that venue closed down. What became from the media consolidation was a lack of competition, and a very risk averse attitude, so that only a guaranteed screenplay that would put butts in seats received the green light for production. in 2005 a book entitled Save The Cat was put out, that took the structured screenplay approach pioneered by Syd Field's screen writing books, and locked it down to stopwatch and per page precision. Save The Car gave a fairly fixed template to various genres, and soon people using this method saw notable box office success. Soon, most screenwriters adopted this method, and films after 2005-06 fell into that template. Notable non adopters of this method were Quentin Tarantino, and Martin Scorcese.. However, the risk averse studios preferred that approach, as it did put butts in seats reliably, for a while. But the audience eventually and instinctively figured out the sameness of the films and attendance slowly and steadily declined. That coupled with sequelitis, rising prices, and this new Sopranos show on HBO, meant that people were finding other things to do.. Marvel caught lightning in a bottle. They found the right scripts with the right person at the right time.. Before the Disney purchase they had moderate success with the Wesley Snipes Blade movies, but only after the Disney purchase were all the ingredients put together. Notice that Warners/DC have not been able to make consistently successful Superhero films until the past three years.But I will say that DC won't get their unified success until they get a audience approved Superman film. However the recent news of Warners brining inJ. J. Abrams to helm their superhero films is a grave mistake, as his track record on recent Star Trek, and Star Wars shows. Now it is true that with the massive lowering of costs in equipment, and the democratization of information due to the net (as well as massive software piracy) there has never been a better time for small independent productions to make crafted, personal vision films. Equipment size, cost, and power requirements have dramatically reduced crew sizes and the need for teamster semis carrying equipment. With talent and practice you can get that Hollywood look with 5 or 6 non-Union people with equipment that will fit in one van. The TouTube Channel Corridor Digital is a prime illustration.. The bottleneck, though, is distribution. Distributors know that Theater Owners are as risk averse as the studios are, and will only book films that put butts in seats..Small independent, or Art House theaters have their own distribution and elected genres, and the Cineplexes will only book a sure thing. If fame and fortune is not your thing, you can always release on YouTube, but big Hollywood is ossified and will continue to stumble along in its gigantic way, until it can't .Kecin Feige may continue to keep Marvel an excellent film franchise, and he may recover Star Wars, if his supervision of The Mandalorean is of any indication, but when a streaming service is 10-12 bucks a month, and a movie is 20 buck, once for 3 hours, the economics of the theater model don't look so good any more. Scott (who worked in Hollywood for a few years)

Sounds like a VPP to me, or some sort of variable DC< based on the character's strength.

Dramatic wind. A wind rises before the first segment of combat, and continues until the holder is stunned or knocked out. The wind will be just strung enough to draw out capes, tousle hair, and move leaves and/ or Cherry blossom petals through the scene. The wind has no effect at all on combat other than to be dramatic. Two users of this effect will harmonize to the same wind direction. Can be cancelled by any AOE darkness.

Just finished Season 2 of Netflix Lost in Space The show is well written, well relaxed and produced. Engaging characters, but the science is not rigorous. Still nice to look at and engaging.

Well , does a bomb fit the definition of a Weapon? Does a Western Electric Model 308 Telephone meet the definition? If you believe those 50’s and 60’s TV shows, it’s a near lethal bludgeoned. Does a Brick? I think that could be avoided be defining the weapons to strictly designed as melee and ranged weapons. (Though teleporting the bomb to one’s hands would make a great plot twist. How much time was on that timer?)

As soon as Division and Parentheses appear. Poof brain shuts down.

So do many San Franciscans...

Well Merry Christmas 2019, folks!