Posts made by Runescryer

They just closed the Adventure! Kickstarter, Estimated delivery of 2022.

Loving the current X-Men game I'm on, but it sent me back down the rabbit hole that is X-Men Evolution. Best iteration of the X-Men, hands down. And a fantastically written storyline. So, it got me thinking about the possibility of continuing the Earth-11052 story, with the end of Season 4 serving as the game's start point.

-Focused theme (mutants only, with a few humans)
-Focused, small, city grid; Bayville
-Huge Roster of characters, both heroes & villains
-Multiple 'Factions'; X-Men, Brotherhood, Morlocks, Purifiers, SHIELD, Citizens
-Lots of classic comics storylines still to be used; Phoenix Saga and Days of Futures Past hinted at in the final episode

Macross Frontier. Haven't seen Delta yet, but Frontier is my favorite in the Macross franchise. Here's the end of the theatrical movie based on the TV series (think of Doy You Remember Love in relation to SDF Macross). And it illustrates everything that I love about Frontier

-Best Itano Circus sequences in all of Macross
-Fantastic callbacks to SDF Macross
-Great intercuts between music/concert and action sequences
-Not just the best Idol singer in Macross, but the best 2 Idol singer of the franchise
-Amazing Mech designs; they turned a Monster/MAC II into a Variable Bomber!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0toVvhUZcg

I highly recommend my two current games. Not WoD ( I burned out on that scene a decade or two ago), but fairly accessible comics games.

X-Men Divergence: Limited scope (Mutant characters only), pre-made roster characters only, meshes into the current titles so it's easy to find the source material although not necessary. You don't have to be an expert on the X-folks, every character has a Background that is fairly self-explanatory and includes pre-existing RP connections and social relationships. Very friendly and VERY active player base (the game has been open for about 2 1/2 months and there's 725+ logged scenes). Even if you are a Marvel Loremaster, the game canon simplifies several decades of rather convoluted comics lore and plugs up some gaps that developed over the years. Applications are fast and generally have you on the grid in 30 minutes or so. I play Beast/Hank McCoy there.

xmendivergence.com

Shadows & SHIELDs: A Marvel Movie-adjacent game. If you've seen the movies up to Avengers, you're golden. The focus is SHIELD and the Avengers against HYDRA and other threats. With a bit of DC Comics thrown in, as well as Captain America & Red Skull being gender-swapped. It's more investigation and sneaky based than typical comics beat-em-ups. I play Iron Man/Tony Stark, and I'm getting more action out of the Stealth Armor than the 'regular' armors.

shadowsandshields.com

@arkandel Not to mention the vicious cycle of Supers MU's

@greenflashlight Actually, there's some very valid in-canon reasons for the rise of the First Order. Sure, it's explained in the books, rather than the movies, but it's all still canon,

After the Rebellion defeats the Empire and establishes the New Republic, the model the new government on a highly de-powered central government. Think the Articles of Confederation after the Revolutionary War. The New Republic has little real power other than to settle disputes between the member systems. And military power rests with the individual systems protecting themselves. So, suddenly, there's a huge rise in piracy and organized crime without centralized military and law enforcement powers.

Some people in the Core Systems start saying, "Hey...sure, the Empire wasn't perfect, but at least I wasn't having to pay protection money to thelocal mob and my shipments were fairly safe from piracy..." Thus, the First Order faction was born out of a call for renewed power to the central government and a desire for law and order over freedom.

For those who might be interested...

-Hank/Beast on X-Men Divergence (also Hank from wayyyy back in the day on Mutatis Mutandis

-Tony/Iron Man on Shadows & Shields

@lotherio There aren't any currently around that I'm aware of, but you might want to keep a lookout for Mutants & Masterminds 3rd Edition games. All the flexibility and granularity of Champions, with way less dice rolling and much faster combat.

@arkandel Same here. Good adaptation. I can understand the 'drawn out origin' complaints, but I can see why they're doing it.

1. More episodes=more money
2. Not every viewer is going to be comics nerd enough to understand the references without background.

@ganymede This actually sidetracts into a concept on The Orville that I found to be a very unique take: artificial intelligence developing emotions through creating sub routines to increase efficiency when with someone.

I'm slowly getting back into MUSHing myself. I found two good Ares-hosted games

Shadows & Shields: The theme is 'Marvel Comics Espionage' with the initial focus being SHIELD vs. HYDRA. I'm playing Tony Stark there. There's room for creative takes on characters (both Cap and Red Skull are females, with the Super-Soldier Formula only working on women), and you can pitch an OC.
http://shadowsandshields.com/

X-Men Divergence: Marvel game centered on the new mutant nation of Krakoa, a few months after the Genoshan Genocide. So, based around the recent events in the comics, but that's only a starting point where the game diverges. So far, only OC, but the staff does a good job of rostering characters and sometimes altering event & character histories from the comics so that the whole X-cannon fits together a bit smoother, not to mention condensed. Big playerbase and several active plots. I play Beast there.
http://xmendivergence.com/

I'm down for a Pugmire/Mau game. I can probably drag the wife into playing as well.

@carma Humans have an inherent need to fit everything into a recognizable category. It's a default setting for our brains.

So, this thread combined with a thread from another forum got me watching YouTube clips of the music from the main Macross series (Specifically SDF Macross, Macross Plus, and Macross Frontier). It's really amazing how well the J-Pop side of the series holds up over time. Not Minmay's songs in Robotech (Lancer's song holds up just fine), but the original songs from Minmay, Myung/Sharon Apple, Sheryl Nome & Ranka Lee.

@coin The Alex Ross portrait of Barak Obama as Superman was so iconic, DC created a Black Superman in 2009; Kalel, aka Calvin Ellis, Superman of Earth 23. Also, President of the United States.

@arkandel 'The Nearness of You'. Love that story as well. Plus 'In Dreams' and 'In Dreams, 2015'

Another great thing about Astro City: the characters are allowed to grow older and change. Seeing Astra (basically Franklin Richards) go from 9 years old when first introduced to a college graduate in 2015 and dealing with growing up in an intense media spotlight was great. And 'Lover's Quarrel' has a whole different feel when you read it as you're pushing 50...

My absolute favorite arc is 'The Tarnished Angel'. It's an ode to the pulp fiction origins of Superheroes, it's a fantastic noir story, and it's a prime example of how much a great character design contributes to and enhances the storytelling.

Okay, Netflix's new anime Yasuke just hit. Soul & Sword meets Mecha & Magic in a fantasy feudal Japan, centered around the legendary African Samurai, Yasuke. It's a fantastic mash-up of genres.

Trailer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijKAtzQY1wc&ab_channel=Netflix

Okay, setting aside the problems with Joss Wheedon for a moment...

The Nevers is turning out to be a rather good show. It's not all 'Victorian London superwomen', there are some men who have powers. More importantly, there's a good mystery at the core of the series, besides 'what's the source of the powers?'. Several factions at work, with the core group caught in the middle.

@faraday said in Good TV:

@groth said in Good TV:

In a world where Kanye West exists, is a black billionaire playboy really that unthinkable?

Not at all. I liked Connor Mason's character very much in Timeless as the eccentric billionaire inventor.

But I think it gets murkier when you have established properties. People come at it with expectations about the characters. There's more to Tony Stark than just "billionaire playboy". He has a backstory, which comes with a certain set of baggage.

For example, I didn't like it when RDM's Battlestar gender-swapped Starbuck. Not because I have anything against inclusion (on the contrary, I think it's vital), but because I had this "Dirk Benedict" image of this character etched in my head and it created a weird cognitive dissonance. I would much rather them have reimagined Sheba or Athena, or promoted a new character.

I get that it's different in comics, since there are already so many variants of characters. And that there's some marketing value in making a "female 007" versus a new and original spy character. At the end of the day, I applaud having more diversity. I just sometimes wonder if there's maybe a better way to get there.

Just my opinion, but it's sort of a 'chicken vs. egg' problem. You need to have diverse characters in order to encourage and attract diverse creators to make diverse characters that are more representative of diversity.

Example: the two iconic Black comic characters are, arguably, Luke Cage and Black Panther. But, both were created by White (Jewish) creators; Archie Goodwin and Jack Kirby, respectively. And at the time (late 60's/early 70's), Luke Cage and Black Panther sound and act like stereotypes. But, they inspired a generation of Black creators (Ta-Nehesi Coates, Christopher Priest, Dwayne McDuffy) who not only went on to make the characters more authentic and redefine them in the modern age, but also would create groundbreaking new characters like Static, and that increased the diversity of comics overall, bringing in more minority creative talents that created characters like Ms. Marvel and more.

@solstice said in [Good Anime]

• Puella Magi: Madoka Magicka - A subversion of the magical girl genre. If you've seen a single episode of Card-Captor Sakura or Sailor Moon, you'll have all the context you need to know what this show masterfully disassembles and creates dread and hopelessness in its place.
  

That farking evil muppet from Hell....

On the topic of 'subverting the Magical Girl genre'...
Yuki Yuna Is A Hero. For those that thought Madoka Magica was just too optimistic.

Now, happy time stuff...

Nyaruko: Crawling With Love: What you get when you combine a comedy harem anime with the Cthulhu mythos...No, seriously. Nyarlthotep is the main character, appearing as a silver-haired schoolgirl. Cthuga is a red-head vying with Nyaruko-chan for the affection of the male protagonist. And then there's Hastur-chan, the shota in yellow. Funny, self-aware hijinks (instead of the sweat-drop trope, it has an actual SAN loss gag), and far less tentacles than you would expect from the concept.

Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense. Noob gamer Kaede starts playing the VRMMO New World Online, but her hard-core gamer friend Risa can't join her on the first day, so Kaede creates her character, 'Maple', by herself. The title sort of fills in the blanks. Amazingly, Kaede starts breaking the game through her development choices, leading to hilarity in the game and frustration among the programmers and other gamers as they try to figure out how to stop the juggernaut that is Maple.

Tiger & Bunny. Another look at Western superheroes through the anime lens. In Stern Build City (Manhattan) Superheroes have corporate sponsorships and compete in a live-camera reality show called Hero TV that films them as they stop crimes and save civilians. A washed up hero named Wild Tiger gets new TV exposure as his sponsorship is bought out by a major corporation and he becomes the mentor to a new hero, Barnaby 'Bunny' Brooks Jr., who has the same power as Wild Tiger. It's a great take on both superheroes and reality TV. Plus, nearly all the sponsors are real companies (Amazon Japan, Bandai, SoftBank, Calbee...) even Pepsi got in on the action and had an animated commercial featuring 'their' sponsored superheroine for Pepsi Next.