Posts made by Arkandel

@tiredewok Or, as some would call it, Mage: the Awakening.

In my opinion there are two things with any 'adventure'-based MU* which need to be addressed at a game-design level:

1. Who runs the adventures?
2. What do characters do while not adventuring?

The answer to (1) has to address facts such as that PrP-runners don't grow on trees, that timezones exist, etc.

The answer to (2) is where most sandbox games fail. It's actually harder to do this than to come up with "well, see, there are these orcs that need killing"-type answers for (1).

@lotherio That part sounds more like Takei being snarky about Shatner than anything! Although yes, Stewart is definitely in good shape - for his age. Even though there were scenes he couldn't bend his knees to examine someone closer, etc.

@derp I like it (although I haven't watched the latest episode). But man... it makes me sad to see Patrick Stewart age. He's still in good shape for his age but he's getting up there.

I noticed and brought the forum back up just now.

Its performance is degrading over time. I'm available to discuss solutions, but at some point the option to restore functionality on this instance will no longer be available.

Does your job suck now?

It used to be worse than that.

It makes me sad to talk with people who, in more than ten years in our industry, hadn't heard someone tell them they did a good job before.

My take on it was to cook my own food. There was some friction at first since we ended up making twice the effort but in the long run it simply worked better. My S.O. can eat what I make or make/order something else, and vice versa.

Granted that's because I am also a very boring eater who, once I find something I like, I can have the same meal over and over again for weeks at a time. I don't need variety. It's perfectly understandable others might not care for or tolerate that though.

@derp said in GMs and Players:

IIRC there was a game set in St. Petersburg that suffered from the same issue, though that one was shorter-lived.

I was in a Cabal with her at the time. When she found out my character wasn't meant to be romantically involved with hers... it did not go well.

I went to staff to complain. They did nothing. Staff designated to look into the issue literally came to the room we were both in and exchanged pleasantries and hugs with her.

So I left that MUSH. Following the incident when I tried to talk about it to people I knew their answer was "I don't want to get involved, you're both friends". Well, thanks I guess.

It's what it is. Years later everyone was up in arms about it, but at the time if you got in the way you were isolated and ignored - or at least that was my personal experience.

@coin It also managed very well (in my opinion) to avoid the 'comic book prose' of a direct conversion from the source material coming off as a bit forced. For example I found Watchmen to suffer from that a bit.

But The Batman somehow avoided doing that. It sounded seemed so cool.

I don't think I need spoilers for this as the scene is in the trailer, but the part at the end of the car chase with the Penguin was just fucking incredible. On its own it's easily on par with the 'oh shit' moments like Cap picking up Mjolnir, Thor's arrival in Wakanda, etc. Yet it was just a normal human dude walking out of a car.

Aside from that, it really shows just why Batman is a character who keeps getting all this creative effort through multiple generations poured into him.

His is a very flexible concept; it can be done in a campy way (Batman and Robin), it can lean on being quirky (Burton's vision), focus on his early days (Batman Returns) or his veteran days (Batfleck), have him be an action hero (Batman Returns) or more of a detective (Battinson).

In the comics they can put him in the JLA and have him fight cosmic menaces or keep him as a street level crusader and tell more intimate stories. They can even lean on his 'family', romantic stories...

Contrasting that with say, Superman, Wonder Woman or Flash shows the limitation. The range is different, shorter.

That said, Marvel is much more willing to take risks with their roster. Thor Ragnarok was much different than Thor: Dark World, for example. Spider-Man: No Way Home was a very solid movie that didn't just follow the beaten path set by its predecessors but actively built on top of that.

The Batman was a near well perfect film. I am not sure I'd change a minute of it.

Ominous, set in a decadent Gotham - that had character, always rainy, always miserable - with a foreboding music score throughout.

Team Edward did pretty fucking great, too. He was the goddamn Batman.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

@seraphim73 There are types of characters whose primary trait is, often times, used to hit others on the head with it.

So sometimes that trait is "I am fucking gorgeous!". But it has also often been "I am fucking deadly", "I am fucking mysterious", "I am fucking tall", or even in some cases "my player can use a thesaurus".

@l-b-heuschkel I don't think that's true. For example you can definitely find buff guys who aren't great looking online to use as models, rather than pick Chris Hemsworth for your warrior type of character.

There are lots of athletes (less well known ones, even), character actors with interesting features who don't look like supermodels, etc.

Isn't this kind of a natural consequence of every Hollywood-produced movie, TV series, etc having exceptionally attractive and/or charismatic actors playing every role?

There's next to no one who is ever average.

So we're kind of playing along to that paradigm.

As for comic books how many heroes and heroines aren't drawn to be absolutely gorgeous? It's not like you'll read an X-Men issue featuring Rogue and then go play her as a rather normal looking girl.

Ray Stevenson is Admiral Thrawn.

@wizz said in Good TV:

If I seem over the top in my criticism about it that's probably fair.

We all have our nerdrage-inducing pain points. I'm still angry with WoT.

It just really bothered me that for such a beloved character they often left directing in the hands of a goofball like Robert Rodriguez and made so many questionable or outright nonsensical choices in the writers' room. We have proof that they could have done better because they already did!

I agree with you on this. One of the issues I have overall with fandoms is when 'names' are hired who want to make the material their own. That almost always misfires. The material should be catered to, else controversial or nonsensical things happen.

I liked this show overall but I think it got bailed by the stuff we just discussed behind spoiler tags, else it'd have crashed hard.

On the other hand Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni basically bailed Star Wars between the two of them. After the third trilogy wrapped up and it was... not exactly on a high note I can't say I had much hope for it.

But they took it back to its roots and did a really good job of it overall; it looks, feels and smells like Firefly ought to - westerns meet space opera in a used, dusty world. And sometimes space wizards show up with laser swords. It's really fun stuff.

@lotherio One thing...

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