RDU Neil

If you want the full rules I suggest Champions Complete. A reasonable price and all the rules.

Man, it's almost like living on a volcano is a bad idea.

Best "wtf" photo I could find of the eruption so far:
 

 
How that yellow house with the green roof managed to not burn down, I have no idea.  Then again maybe it's gone by now.

My wife and I started watching the original Avatar: The Last Airbender over the weekend. Only three seasons, we got through one and a half, seeing what all the fuss is about. Very high quality kids show, clearly created by people who love wuxia and martial arts. I probably wouldn't watch it all if it was just up to me... it is pretty juvenile... but I can recognize high quality animation, characters, and story telling, even if I'm not the target audience.
 
Interestingly, it is only available if you can find a service that streams Nickelodeon. And the format is still 2007 era, SD. Supposedly the entire series (and the sequel Legend of Korra) are being released in June on remastered Blu-Ray... so that should look really nice, and maybe they will start to show up on more easily accessible streaming services like Netflix or Amazon.

"Soon I Will Be Invincible" by Austin Grossman. Absolutely hilarious, but at the same time, completely honest portrayal of comic book characters and stories. Excellent novel.

I thought you stamped your foot and this kicked off.

I really am hoping to see the nearly four hour director's cut that Coogler supposedly filmed. If Marvel doesn't release that, they are missing a huge opportunity.

Exactly. It completely lost me once it became clear there was nothing deeper to his plan... and the fact that it simply wouldn't work. As I posted before, they missed a perfect moment to have someone, anyone... someone quick witted and doesn't know when to keep their mouth shut (Spider-Man, Iron Man, Shuri, whoever) to just say just that. "Are yo crazy? Even if you do what you want, the population will rebound in fifty years. Maybe less? What does this gain you?"
 
Give Thanos a chance to confront whether he is REALLY trying to save the universe, or has just become obsessed with killing trillions in the name of balance. Let us see his cuckoo on full display.
 
That and that they so ham-fistedly tried to make Thanos some kind of sympathetic villain, and we were supposed to believe he actually loved Gamora (just so they could fridge another female character so a male character gets a dramatic story arc, which is traditionally a more DC move than Marvel) just pissed me off to no end.
 
Actualy, no... just disappointed me. What pisses me off is the masses of people actively calling this movie good, which requires a level of willful ignorance that I find appalling. Especially the critics. This is a movie that actually does fall back on all the tropes in such a way as to create a spectacle with no substance (as they tend to want to say about all comic book movies) yet they fail to actually call this one out.

To Hugh's point, you certainly could say, "No" to that kind of Batman... but based on a campaign where that level of Batman wouldn't fit. Not because of "right" source material vs. "wrong" source material. For example, if I was running a 30's Pulp style, costumed crime fighter type campaign, I'd probably request a toned down version of Doc Batshadow! to play closer to human, because that was the expected feel of the game... whereas a modern superteam on the level of Bronze Age Avengers who has NightBatHawk, then sure, the Batfleck could be a fine model.
 
It is the criteria for what is acceptable that we have to be clear about... and to me it is about "campaign expectations" rather than arguing over the correct source material interpretation. Usually the latter gets people talking past each other, rather than the former, which gets people agreeing one what they want the ultimate game play to be.

Deleted Scene From The Black Panther
 
 

That was how I came in too. And I was probably better off for it. I wasn't thinking about comic book superheroes at all, but was concentrating on a story that almost transcended its superhero roots and characters who were fascinating as characters as opposed to sets of powers. Notice that we very rarely talk about batles or superpowers as we discuss this film -- and we're on a gaming board?

I was spared by Thanos. 
 
Thanos, as portrayed in this movie, was an MORON!
 
Do you know how long it will take for the population to reach the same level it had before his "culling"?
 
50 years.
 
Even assuming he's right, all he's done is bought the universe an extra fifty fracking years!
 
Good job,   MORON!

Ok... I'm surprised none of you are pointing this out...
 
Thanos... take away his "personification of death" obsession, and give him and real and serious problem to which he takes a grand and psychopathic approach... but this makes no sense.
 
Thanos argues that the universe can't withstand unchecked life due to limited resources... and originally believes that wiping out half of all life just needs to happen to balance things out. Honestly, from a mortal and desperate POV, this could make sense.
 
BUT... then he goes on a quest to gain all the power to UTTERLY CHANGE REALITY however he wants... succeeds in gaining that power... and he still can't think of anything better to do that kill half of all life?  Oh... and never considers that half of all life will quickly double back to where it was before and keep going?
 
This whole concept suddenly makes no sense and Thanos' motivation is laughably stupid. I'm not saying that I wanted "lady Death" in the movie... that Starlin weirdness was quintessential '70s Marvel and can stay there... but they needed to give Thanos a more well thought out motivation, because once he got the stones, he could have just changed the rules of reality so life doesn't consume, or there are infinite resources, or whatever. He was omnipotent... and all he could think to do is kill half of everyone?
 
That and his killing of Gamora had zero impact. It lacked all verisimilitude that he actually cared for her. There was no development in that area, and in fact, any such scene was actually the opposite... psychologically torturing her at every instance.
 
The good Marvel movies leading up to this were about something... and more than comic book movies. Winter Soldier was about post 9-11 fear and control and was a classic political suspense thriller... Civil War was about the limits of friendship, repercussions of past acts, and was a great revenge flick... Black Panther was a Shakesperean tragedy about colonialism and isolationism, etc.
 
What was Infinity War about? Nothing, really. Just a guy trying to kill people and fights. As folks have pointed out, this was the "most comic booky" of all the Marvel movies... and that is why it fell flat. It wasn't ABOUT anything. It was all plot, zero story.
 
This was disappointing because Marvel has largely succeeded because they took comic book concepts and made actual movies with them... while DC fails because they just try to put comic books on the screen. The fact that Marvel was just building up to a DC movie... and it will require significant fan speculation and theory to explain why this movie was actually really good, instead of it being obvious... bleh.

And on that note: Did another advanced species exist on Earth before humans?

Both saddening and heartening. What these stories really make me consider is the ease of which history is lost. These were enormous, fully recorded events, well within the modern era, and almost no one knows about them. Humanities ability to lose the past always makes me wonder what else has happened that we just don't know about.

I think Hugh's analysis is excellent from a mathematical angle. I've played mainly Heroic since translating to 6th, and doing a flat translation (same stats from 5th into 6th) saw roughly a 20-25% increase in Stat cost. Not a big deal as points are points and can be adjusted to whatever the play group feels is right... but what we did notice was that with PCs able to get value for skill levels rather than just buying raw DEX, then we saw a proliferation of various skill levels on various maneuvers and actions... which we really liked. Instead of everyone being the same generic character, stat wise, characters started to be more varied in stats, and their skill levels reflected specific skills and actions they were good at, rather than being generally good at everything.
 
At least for us, this decoupling had an added benefit of freeing up characters to spend points on being good at their unique schticks, and that allowed for some cool differentiation in characters. That may be less universal of an outcome for some play groups, but I've enjoyed that change to builds that effected the over all feel of the game.

Black Lightning - It's refreshing to get an older superhero who is trying to protect his family and his community. The story telling is very good (it feels more like a Netflix Marvel production than a CW show), and there's not really much filler in the first season's 13 episodes. Thankfully, it's been renewed for another season. All episodes now available on Netflix.

So they're going to ban guns at the government meeting where members assert the right to bear arms to resist government tyranny.  Got it.

Something sobering.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-43948079

I'm always bummed that the scientists get the blame for all the bad stuff. Scientists are just trying to prove or disprove a theory. It is the engineers who actually put the science into practice and make bad stuff.
 

 
 

I'm always bummed that the scientists get the blame for all the bad stuff. Scientists are just trying to prove or disprove a theory. It is the engineers who actually put the science into practice and make bad stuff.
 

 
 

Amusingly enough, I read a short story years ago where Paste Pot Pete did market and sell his glue on late-night infomercials, under an assumed name.  I'll have to find the book it was in and re-read it to provide any details, but IIRC he was doing pretty well until he was recognized by a former associate (the Wizard?) who sicced the authorities on him. 
 
I also remember a brief aside in the comics where Peter Parker tried to sell his webbing formula, until the whole "breaks down after an hour" thing killed the deal.