BarretWallace

"My days of not taking you seriously have just about reached their middle."

For my part, my experience of the MCU came to a satisfying close with Endgame. Essentially, I'm an outsider with respect to the post-Endgame stuff. Now, there may be perfectly good offerings available, but I feel like Marvel has barfed out a prodigious volume of content, and just to catch up would take more time than I'd care to spend at present. Maybe some day I'll dive back in, especially if they ever slow down a little. Maybe it's an age thing too. To use an eating metaphor, these days I'd rather savor each bite vs. wolf down every plate as fast as I can.

I reckon that AI is like any other technology in that it's having growing pains right now. Early GPS units didn't always provide the best navigation, for example. They also didn't usurp the work of actual artists, so yeah.

"It's got a wonderful defense mechanism. You don't dare kill it."

I've either never caught it, or had it and never knew it. I've been tested several times and came back negative each time.

Best of luck with everything, @Cancer. If I come up with any better words I'll send them. Sometimes we wrap up some life issues only to take on more, and I wish you (and your wife!) well. My wife and I are fortunate enough to still have our parents, and our own health is decent. As my mother in law is fond of saying, though, "You're day's coming!" For now I'll just enjoy each time with our parents as it comes. Somewhat more on topic, the projects currently in my hopper are: Star Wars fan fiction. This was originally inspired by characters I played in the old--err, classic--West End d6 roleplaying game. The characters and story have evolved tremendously since these stories began in high school. I have a fairly clear idea of the beginning and ending of the series, plus quite a bit in the middle. It takes place during the classic setting of the roleplaying game, i.e. between Star Wars (yes, I still call it that) and The Empire Strikes Back. This is the era I know best, and focusing here helps me avoid the headaches of choosing a head canon from the Expanded Universe (EU), EU 2.0 (post-sequel trilogy), and so on. It follows the story of a small band of Rebels doing their part in the struggle against the Empire. I might have some of the movie characters make small appearances--for example, Admiral Ackbar plays a peripheral role in a couple of stories--but that's about it. The core of the story is the crew of a little freighter. Jurassic Park fan fiction. Several fan fiction bits have started and fizzled. Most were blatant self-insertions. One was the story of a team of mercs sent to recover the shaving cream can dropped by Dennis Nedry. Another explored what might have happened if things didn't go south until after the park opened. As that became the plot of the Jurassic World movies, I will probably never revisit it. What I've got in mind now is a retrospective told by Tim Murphy. It begins at Alan Grant's funeral, where Tim decides to finally write down the events of that terrible weekend at Isla Nublar. The idea grew during a recent family trip to Hawaii, plus 2023 being the 30th anniversary of the movie. Maybe this one will die as the others did, but first I want to run with it a while. Scouting memoirs. I've been involved in the same Scout troop since age 11. I've got lots of stories to tell, and I'd like to write them down before they fade beyond recall. I have no idea how I'd organize all this, so I'm just going to write and see where it leads. Recon compilation. In college, we played a "Recon" campaign with US Special Forces soldiers using the Hero System 4E rules. We had such a blast that our main GM continued writing these characters for over 40 stories. I want to compile these into one whole, make one last round of edits, and then compile it into a final whole. Most likely it would be just an e-book, but if I can find a suitable printing service, a physical copy would be fun too. All of these projects took on more life when I discovered Scrivener software and started playing around with it. The way my brain works, Scrivener makes it a lot easier to keep disparate works organized into some kind of cohesive whole. Much better than managing dozens of Word files. It also allows great flexibility in organizing and compiling everything. Who knows how far any of this will go, but I look forward to the journey.

I hope to dial down other hobbies and spend more time writing. My biggest issue is clearing my schedule and brain to give writing the time and energy it needs. I will probably never publish anything, but might at least finish a project or two that have languished for decades.

Oh my.... (https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/putin-calls-trump-charges-political-persecution-1736c591?mod=hp_lead_pos5) If this isn't a classic example of the pot calling the kettle black, I'm not sure what is.

If I may salvage one sliver of optimism from this, if the snowfall is like last winter, at least we'll get precipitation in winter. It's been a very dry summer here.

I'm remembering a classic movie line: "It's a miracle these people ever got out of the 20th Century!" Yeah, now we just need to survive the 21st. One day at a time!

Ni!! I backed this high enough to get the "Fetchez la Vache" mini game, about which I am only somewhat embarrassed.

I'm getting there...slowly but surely, I'm getting there. Sometimes reality has to club me over the head multiple times (metaphorically speaking) before it truly sinks in. This situation was a doozy, but it is finally sinking in. My mind is sometimes more of a crock pot than a microwave in terms of how quickly it handles certain things. The game is about to enter a new phase, a new "season" if you will. Last session was given over to a group discussion of where we wanted to go. I'm guessing we will stick around the Moonsea region, and let's face it, the Sword Coast gets way too much attention. Regardless, I know that I have a good group of friends (in and out of game) to enjoy it with. A dubious honor of "Season 2" of our game is that I'm starting a new gaming notebook at the same time. I'm a little crazy about taking notes anyway, and this game resulted in an explosion of scribblings, quotes, pasting in pictures, and even minor dabblings back into cartography. That is a good sign!

I tried a couple of times to establish contact, but long story short, NG shut me down. The final "blow" came last Thursday when NG told me in no uncertain terms to butt out. I am not 100% innocent of wrongdoing in this whole thing, and I've tried to admit that as a step toward reconciliation. NG is having none of it. In his words, I didn't just reject the character, I rejected, betrayed, and sabotaged him personally. My arguments to the contrary are of no avail. Never thought I'd see the day when a friendship collapsed over a clash at the game table, but I'm guessing it's because said friendship was already weaker than I thought by the time the clash took place. Thank you all for your patience as I've tried to sort through this fiasco. I've finally accepted in my own head that we are not going to be friends again any time soon, if ever. I also got some feedback from the DM as part of my own mental "post mortem." At least our D&D group (sans NG) is back to rocketing along as joyously as ever. We just finished our first major story arc and are about to start another.

And here I thought WotC might have learned their lesson from the OGL debacle.

I am SO glad that our group is crazy enough to pick abilities to fit a concept vs. min/maxing.

That's my plan. I've been holding out hope that things might change, but I had to let it go. It hurts, yet it's a relief at the same time. One thing I've never lost sight of is that it's the character, not the player, than I had a problem with. I certainly don't blame NG for being affected by what's happened in his life. If a reconciliation does happen some day, I'll do my best to let it happen. If it doesn't, then I can still appreciate all the good times we had. Wherever his life leads him, I hope he finds peace.

Last night I tried calling NG. He didn't pick up, so I left a voice mail. That, as they say, is that. If he ever reaches out, it will be getting to know him all over again because I'm not sure I know him at all anymore.

Thank you all! Maybe NG just needs space...but if he had even said something basic like, "Not now, I need time" I'd hold off till he was ready. Instead I'm in limbo with only my imagination for a guide. We certainly have changed over time. I'm not the same person I was when we first met, and neither is NG. We haven't had very frequent contact for quite some time, though we are both middle aged men now, with our own lives. Still, we have each gone down our own paths. Maybe all this incident did was expose a rift that was already there but I didn't have the eyes to see. Perhaps our respective life paths have just taken us farther apart than I realized. Heh...as one example, there was a time when both NG and I were pretty hard-line Republicans. Both of us abandoned that mindset years ago. (That was also before the GOP became quite what it is today, but that's a whole other discussion). I don't feel entirely safe stopping by. If we last till middle age, we all accumulate some measure of mental baggage along the way. For the game conflict to elicit the kind of response I've gotten...well, I just want to keep some distance for the time being, until I get some sense of where he and I stand. If a conflict at the game table set him off, I want to scope out potential minefields more before I let my guard down enough to be around him. I am considering the phone call though. That's more personal than an email or FB chat, but still gives us both a margin of safety. If that also fails to begin a reconciliation, then I am finally prepared to lay this matter to rest and leave the initiative in NG's hands. And to say, "I'll miss you," 'cause I sure will if it comes to that. I know these things do happen, that friendships have an expiry date (I really like that phrasing, BTW). This is the first time I've had it happen with a friendship I never doubted would stand the test of time. We'll see how the next few weeks go. And yeah, my journal will continue to get a workout.

I wonder if I fired the proverbial "golden BB" (shooters of LBX-10s in Battletech will understand the term) at a longtime friendship. The shorter version: there's someone I've known since second or third grade. Recently I invited him to join our D&D group. The short version: it did not go well. The longer version (and apologies in advance, there's a good bit to the story): I invited this friend of mine to join our bi-weekly D&D group. Let's call him "new guy" or NG for short. NG's other gaming group had started puttering out by that point. Also, I knew that NG had some real-life issues that were hitting him kinda hard. I thought that enjoying some light-hearted fun around our table might do him some good. So, he introduces this character ("New Character" or NC) who, to put it politely, comes across as a raging @$$hole. NC introduced himself to the party by sneaking up on us and holding a blade at my dwarf's throat. Almost every word out of his mouth dripped with arrogance, condescension, and contempt for others. Highlights included calling the cleric "inferior" because he lacked Darkvision (kinda part and parcel with being human). He scoffed at the gnome wizard's player because he didn't choose magic missile. (Yes, this is unusual, but the wizard's player has been a friggin' genius at using spells creatively, and I like that he picks powers to fit a concept rather than maximize damage output). The half-elf rogue "had promise" in this character's words because of his Elvish half. Racist bigot, much? Our party's camp was attacked at night, and my dwarf went to retrieve the wizard, who was busy identifying some magic items we'd found. NC berated him for giving a sh*t about his friends, and berated the dwarf and the gnome for "not following the plan." As if someone died and made NC the leader...and I'm sorry, if I want to associate with racist bigots in a roleplaying game, I'll join a crew of, say, Gestapo clearing the Warsaw ghettos (that's a rhetorical statement, as I have no stomach for flagrant racism in any game; I would never actually play Gestapo-type characters). The dwarf reacted poorly to having a blade at his throat, and NC's relentless arrogance, condescension, and bigotry struck a nerve, so he started pushing back. He openly called NC an @$$hole when he spoke ill of the others. To the "inferior" comment, the dwarf replied, "So full of yourself." And so on. After a couple of sessions of this, NG decided to leave the group. To be fair, I can get carried away at the game table. The dwarf's anger was certainly fueled by some of my own. NC's behavior reminded me almost perfectly of many of the jackwagons who bullied me in my younger years. Still, I worked very hard to keep the conflict between characters, not players. In my attempts to talk to NG about this, I emphasized time and again that my problem was with the character, not the player, and I maintained strict distinction between the two. NG is having none of it. The incident is now over a month old and I haven't heard a peep from NG since early March. He hasn't responded to my messages via email or Book of Face. He won't engage in even limited ways, such as token "likes" on my comments to his Book of Face posts. The one thing I haven't tried yet is a phone call, and I'm not sure I trust him enough right now to visit his house. I've given other groups much greater reasons to reject me, and yet they haven't. What has me totally flummoxed is that a 40+year friendship appears to be on the ropes, maybe even over, because of a conflict between D&D characters. Clearly I've touched nerves that I didn't know were there. I thought the worst case scenario was that we might clash, cool off, and come to a mutual agreement that it wasn't meant to be. Instead, it's been a month and a half of silent treatment with no end in sight. I can see via Book of Face that NG appears to be engaging with everyone else normally, but is completely shutting me out. Kinda hard to make amends if I don't even know what the real problem is and if I never get any responses. I am quite capable of malice, but that was the farthest thing from my mind in this case. I meant it as nothing more than the dwarf standing up for himself and his friends. I know that I should let go of the whole thing, but that's proving a lot harder than I thought it would be. Our play styles are radically different, that much is clear, but something else is going on that I can't put a finger on. For the time being I've stopped reaching out. Maybe this is for good; too early to tell. If you made it this far, you get the gold star. I appreciate your patience.

[zorch] (can't seem to just delete the post)

I had "Alone Against the Flames" for ages as part of a Call of Cthulhu bundle. Last week I finally played through it for the first time. This is exactly the kind of product Hero System could use. Get me into a story right away. Guide me through the critical steps of building a character. Give me options, tell me when to roll dice, and help me resolve the rolls. Then and only then, once I've taken that first step, show me the depths of the rule system underlying what I just did. Hero System has a strength like no other rule system I've ever encountered, but I can easily see how it can rapidly overwhelm many prospective players and drive them to other pastures. When I was introduced to Hero System in the early-mid 1990s, I was fortunate enough to have GMs who held my hand (metaphorically speaking) until I understood the rules well enough to walk on my own. I didn't have to digest a multi-course meal's worth of game mechanics before even beginning to tell a story. I don't have that kind of patience anymore.

Although my Hero gaming is not what it once was, posts like this are a large part of why I still lurk and occasionally post on these forums. Disputes happen even in this community, but by and large they stay civil and mutually respectful. Posters also tend to show far more effort and articulate thinking than the average comment section on FB or a typical online news article. While there are many well-written posts, for me, this one is a recent stand-out. Thank you for putting in the time and effort it took to write it!

If I were to "fix" Hero somehow, I'd lower the entry barrier, or "energy of activation" as we call it in the chemistry world. Get me a starter set, something like Call of Cthulhu's "Alone Against [X]" series. Present me with a character and guide me through a short story. Help me learn the rules by fleshing them out bit by bit, pointing out what skill to roll to resolve the encounter, etc. Maybe have a few of these as ways to introduce Hero games in different genres. Have a list of skills, powers, and equipment with their point costs, and dive into the underlying math later. Maybe it's an age thing these days, but asking me to digest a massive chunk of game mechanics just to start play will result in a hard pass. D&D is a mechanical mess, but I can throw together a character in less than an hour with minimal guidance, and be slaying orcs soon thereafter. Hero is an excellent multi-drawer tool chest I can use to build anything, but to do that before I even start play is a turn-off. It's a shame, really. Had I devoted more time to finding and maintaining a Hero group, I would not need to learn a whole new system to play a whole new game; I'd just have to tweak the system I already know to fit that game. I do still enjoy these forums because of the...interesting individuals here, plus the generally respectful tone of discussions we tend to have. And dammit Old Man, now I can't get the image of that flying paladin out of my head.

Yeah, I started in 4E, and the transition to 5E had a very short learning curve. It was more bloated perhaps, like some things were codified that 4E had left nebulous. The jump from 5E to 6E was a lot more drastic. That didn't last terribly long before Hero Central (the post-college avenue for all my Hero System gaming) sadly died. Maybe if I'd given it more time*, 6E would have grown on me more. *This is predicated, of course, on finding a table (physical or virtual) to play the game with in the first place.

There have been quite a few low-priced game bundles put out recently, including an excellent one of Hero 6E books. Even for a Hero veteran like myself, the mechanics-heavy front end is a deterrent. I'm still tempted to buy the 6E bundle just because you can use it to build literally any game. It's just been so long since I've been part of a group that I don't know how effectively I can dust off those old cobwebs anymore. Strangely enough, I do still laugh at my first-ever Hero game, where I got to roll the dice that literally blew the head off my first character.