Armory

On 2/17/2018 at 7:48 PM, zslane said:

 

That's not exactly a high bar to clear.

 

If Black Panther is as good as Winter Solider, I will be very pleased (with it) indeed.

I wouldn't put it that high, but it's close.  I consider Winter Soldier to be the cream of the crop.

2 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

It opened well because of the incredible hype and clever marketing (how do you get people to go to movies at the theater when they can see them at home in more comfort and equal quality?  Convince people its  Socially Relevant and a Historical Moment!),

Not difficult to do, when it actually is.  I don't understand the resistance to this idea, particularly from people who honestly would have no clue whether it is or isn't.  But I'm not here to convince anybody of anything.

I just came from the theater.  I've been trying to get my wife to see a Marvel movie with me in the theater but she's always resisted, until today.  We both loved it.  It does touch on a couple of social themes, it has a relatable villain, and it has ramifications for the wider MCU while still being a self-contained story.  I'll be seeing it again this week with some friends.

Interestingly, when I got home I happened on to the last 20 minutes of BvS.  Suddenly Black Panther seems even better.  I don't usually rank movies but without giving it much thought I'd say this one is easily in the Top Ten MCU offerings.

On 2/11/2018 at 2:34 PM, GM Joe said:

We just started S2 of Unreal. Pretty good stuff, but I'm not sure this will live up to the first season.

 

We haven't started on S2 yet.  S1 was a guilty pleasure of mine.

We watched the first four episodes of The Alienist.  So far so good.  It's quite dark.

I'm also trying to regain my Geek Card by finally watching Babylon 5.  I'm two episodes shy of completing the first season.  The effects didn't age well, of course, but that's not a big deal.  It seems to be starting to find its groove, so I'll give it another season.  In that way it reminds me of ST:TNG, in that the first few episodes weren't all that great, but then it hit a stride.

If this movie is indeed culturally significant (which I believe it is, since that's what people in the Black culture are telling me), it will be considered so regardless of box office.

LOL @ the "alt-press".  It's "alt" for a reason.  The worst thing about social media isn't the social media itself but the way the traditional media chases after it, giving wide voice to tiny, pathological mindsets as if they were representative of anything meaningful.

There's a line from the TV show Brockmire, when he asks a friend why the TV news is reporting about YouTube videos.  "Today's news is what was on the internet yesterday."

Very interesting, hearing about how people use PRE Attacks differently.  Lots of great perspectives on it.

I don't use PRE against PCs in our superhero game, I figure they're heroes and that kinda stuff just won't work on them.  I'd reconsider that if we were doing a fantasy campaign or the characters were noobs.

Generally, the players will whip out PRE Attacks on goons, and even then it's typically when it has become obvious to the bad guys that they're losing.  I tend to give all my henchmen a bit of PRE defense, because I figure a guy doesn't sign up to follow a supervillain unless he's a bit of a zealot himself.  I've had a couple of less-than-scrupulous characters use PRE Attacks on Normals.  But, again, I find the concept of PRE Attacks between supers to be silly except in extreme circumstances.  A surprise first encounter with a God-King qualifies, I think. 

I can't help but laugh at the concept of "sexual addiction therapy".  Come on.  Just keep it in your pants, it ain't something that requires weeks of in-patient counseling and workshops.  Just keep your effing pants zipped.

I concur with the prevailing sentiment on this thread, which is that:  sexual predators are bad, and the atmosphere in which accusations go unchallenged is a dangerous and scary one.

Ha!  When I first glanced at the thread title I thought it said "All your earths are belong to Van Halen"...

Today in 1876 the National League is officially formed with franchises in Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Hartford, Louisville, New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis. 

I don't even know what I did.

Yes, this happens to me all the time.  I have a fairly large text document crammed with story notes and plot ideas.  I've been running a group of four players for about 9 years.  They each started with one character, and now all but one of them has two.  So I have subplots and NPCs all over the place, and new ones pop into my head all the time.

In fact I've planned to run them against an Evil Universe version of themselves for years now.  I finally got to check that one off of my list over the last two gaming sessions, and it will continue next month. I've had these villains sitting around for at least five years, so I think had more fun debuting them than the players did fighting them.  

13 hours ago, Shadow7 said:

Just curious along the same lines, when you guys played with only two, was it purely a solo adventure campaign or did you add GMPC heroes to aid the player?

 

Shadow7

We each started with one hero and we took turns GMing, but it wasn't very long before we each had several PCs.  It was up to whichever one of us GMed as to which PCs the other would run, depending on which one(s) the GM cooked up a scenario for.  So the GM's PCs would serve as that game's NPC heroes.

Quote

 Personally, I think its the same as the difference between a team comic and a solo comic.  Take Captain America or Batman as a solo comic versus him in a team comic.  You get more story telling about the character in the solo comic than you do in the team comic.

 

dsatow

It's certainly more challenging with more players.  With just me and my friend, we grew up reading comics together so it was rare when one of us as GM could surprise the other with plot twists.  When I would plan the session it was pretty easy to predict how he would react to things.  With more players, the chances of somebody doing something completely out of left field increases exponentially, and as a GM I like that. 

That's how I started with Champions, me and my best friend back in '82.  We played like that for a couple of years.  At one point we pulled my then-wife into it but she wasn't a comic book fan nor a gamer so she was terrible.

It works pretty well, we had a ton o' fun.  I actually miss it sometimes, I haven't run a group with fewer than four players since the early '90s.

Man, that trailer is fun.  I still think her costume could stand more color, but it looks better on film that it did in that first pic.  Can't wait!

She's always in their ears and can see everywhere, and you mentioned they may never be face-to-face...Ethereal.

Or, more cyberpunk than anything else, since she's "jacked" into the system you could go minimalist and call her Jackie.

9 hours ago, zslane said:

I don't feel that the worst thing about the suit we're shown is its color scheme. To my eyes, it's the overall design, it's cut if you will. It's just not flattering or attractive. But then, maybe that initial green one is supposed to be some kind of Kree spacesuit, and her supersuit (the blue and red one) will look more appropriately superhero-ish.

That was my first thought, that she's wearing a Kree military uniform.

Mark me down as another Monica Rambeau fan.  Loved the costume and the character.

Some days you dream, some days it seems

There's nothing there at all.

You just seem older than yesterday

and you're waiting for tomorrow to call.

I draw to the curtains and one thing's for certain,

You're cozy in your little room.

The carpet's all paid for, God bless the TV,

Let's go shoot a hole in the moon.

Roy Rogers is riding tonight,

Returning to our silver screens.

Comic book characters never grow old,

Evergreen heroes whose stories are told.

Oh the great sequined cowboy who sings of the plains,

Of roundups, and rustlers, and home on the range.

Turn on the TV, shut out the lights,

Roy Rogers is riding tonight.

Nine o'clock mornings, five o'clock evenings,

I'd liven the pace if I could.

I'd rather have ham in my sandwich than cheese

But complaining wouldn't do any good.

Lay back in my arm chair, close eyes and think clear,

I can hear hoofbeats ahead.

Roy and Trigger have just hit the hilltop

While the wife and the kids are in bed.

Oh and Roy Rogers is riding tonight,

Returning to our silver screens.

Comic book characters never grow old,

Evergreen heroes whose stories are told.

Oh the great sequined cowboy who sings of the plains,

Of roundups and rustlers and home on the range

Turn on the TV, shut out the lights,

Roy Rogers is riding tonight.

I've not read much of her work (Left Hand of Darkness, Lathe of Heaven) but they were good.  I'll have to look up her bibliography and dig into some more.  RIP.

On 1/10/2018 at 12:35 AM, sinanju said:

I'm mainlining TRAVELERS on Netflix right now. I'm halfway through the second season. I really hope it gets picked up for a third season.

 

Time travelers from a horrible, apocalyptic future are downloaded into the minds of people in the (our) present--hundreds of years before their time--who were about to die. They take over their bodies and lives and work as teams to perform various missions that they hope will allow them to prevent the awful future, or at least improve it. It's a one-time, one-way trip. The nature of time travel generally prevents "do-overs" so if a mission fails, it fails. There's lots I could say about this series, but SPOILERS.

 

I really like this show.

My daughter turned us on to this show.  I'm typically uber-critical of time travel stories, but this one's pretty good.  We're looking forward to Season 3.

Recently I've discovered that MeTV is running The Wild Wild West.  That was one of my favorite shows growing up, I caught it in syndication.  I must say, parts of it hold up and parts of it don't, but it's sure fun to watch it again.

Speaking of Kansas, Carry on Wayward Son remains one of the best rock n' roll songs ever written.

My favorite acts tend to be those with bass players who influenced me.  Rush, Yes, KISS, and Elton John were early ones (Elton's bass player, the late Dee Murray, was woefully underrated).  Then I entered late-teen years and it was all about Scorpions, Judas Priest, AC/DC, Ratt, Dokken, Whitesnake, Skid Row...you get the idea.

I discovered Rush with 2112, I think I was 14.  I saw them live for the first time in 1979, then again in 1984, I remember they played the entire Grace Under Pressure album at that show.  I'd never seen a band do an entire new album like that.  Geddy's one of the reasons I became a bass player.

I suspect the guys will still work with other artists or do solo projects.

This is a great idea.  I tend to look at our sessions as episodes of the characters' TV show, rather than comic book issues, I don't know why I didn't think of this.  Thanks for the idea!

36 minutes ago, Hermit said:

 

In their defense, I think the high tech costume guy is straight from the comic books, though my BL Lore is weak

That could very well be, BL came along at the tail end of my regular comic reading, and I wasn't a big DC guy to begin with.  I don't know much about him at all.

Deleted

16 hours ago, Hermit said:

From what I understand, the Driving while Black moment was based on real incidents experienced by showrunner Salim Akil/Director himself.

Real incidents that happen all over the country, every day, so yeah, I'm sure it's happened to him too.

The "social commentary" is part and parcel of the world they're depicting.  That's what it's like.

Switching gears, I did enjoy the premiere.  The costume looked better in action than it does in still photos.  I was a little put off by the fact that he's got a high-tech costume guy, that's been done and done to death.  But otherwise I liked the characters, the writing, and the whole premise of the retired super reluctantly donning the mantle of hero again.