Pyat reviews a super-people movie

There are some mild spoilers.

( Read more... )

The Best Game I've Played In

So, what was the best RPG game you were ever in, as a player?

This is a tough call. As I’ve noted elsewhere, enjoyment of a game is often reliant on the enthusiasm of the participants. So, a terrible GM running a broken game can still be remembered as The Best Thing Ever, if everyone had fun.

In addition, it has been a long time since I played in any game regularly. I think I was 18 or 19 when I started GMing almost exclusively. I can remember playing in fantastic games when I was 14 and 15 years old, but the details are fuzzy, and I really think I we were mostly just hanging out and drinking soda and being geeks.

Also, I want to stress that, aside from the epic badness of the Trinity game I mentioned in a previous entry, I’ve never been in a noticeably bad game. There have been games that didn’t gain any traction and got cancelled, or games that had dull sessions, but none were really bad.

Indeed, I have been in some very excellent games. thebitterguy ran a really engaging Buffy: The Vampire Slayer game, for example. ("Xena! We always knew it would come down to this...") mar2nee’s intermittent D&D game is very crunchy and fun, and it's awesome that her teenage kids play too. viktorhaag’s abortive Spirit of the Century showed a great deal of promise, what with the historical giant submarine and most awesome cooperative character generation setup.

That all said, I think I was most impressed with nottheterritory’s Mage: The Ascension game. He is an excellent gamemaster, with a good handle on plotting and character development. I really like the dramatic interactions he’d planned for the players. Similarly, his Star Trek game (using a system developed by eyebeams had some wonderful moments. The Klingon Opera mystery was fantastic, and the cultural details he came up with were quite memorable. The other players had a ton of fun, as well. nottheterritory is very good at spontaneous dramatics, and acting, which adds to the fun immensely.

He considers himself weak when it comes to adjudicating rules and combats, but the White Wolf system (and eyebeams system) are intuitive and smooth enough that this did not really present an issue, at least not to my recollection.

So, kudos to you, nottheterritory!

Myths and Legends!

I’m reading about megafauna that have become extinct within the span of history. Things like the Bahaman Great Owl, which lived in the forests of a single island. They were about three feet tall, and perhaps half of that height was leg. They couldn’t fly, and walked around the forest. They died out around 1600, when all the forests were cut down.

It’s believed they were the origin of the legends of the Chickcharnie, a sort of local wood goblin that had three toes, glowing eyes, and could turn it’s head round backwards.

That’s cool, I say!

Also, is anyone surprised that a species known as the "Hispaniolan Edible Rat" went extinct in the 1540s?