Hitdice's page

I CARRY MY FISTS IN MY HEART!!

I really, honestly, truly don't know whether to laugh or cry.

A sad day for all hominids. :(

Arnold also had a smaller rifle. Still heavy, but he's the strongest man alive. He lifted a truck!

Also, it's hilarious two of the actors became governors!

"Governators" is the correct title in their cases. :P

Love his art. Sad news.

What's a nadir, though? :P

Anyone else kind of creeped out out that Rose kissed Finn without his permission or nonverbal consent?

No, i wasn't creeped out by that. Honestly, I don't see that as a Star Wars relevant issue.

DM_aka_Dudemeister wrote:

Luke was meditating at the temple to become a powerful “Grey” Jedi?

This was my pet theory that I wanted to be true. Not so much that he was trying to become a Grey force user, but that he'd decided that a society which cares so much about balance would unbalance itself by only using one side of the force. Upon coming to this revelation, he'd help teach Rey to actually develop with both sides in harmony.

Who says he didn't? The example he offered Rey seemed a perfect balance of Obi Wan's "Here's a light saber, use the force, when you're old and beat to hell, occupy the bad guy so the younger generation can escape," and Anakin's self aggrandizing whininess. Having achieved such perfection, he transcended physical existence to become one with the Force. It's all right there in the movie! :P

(More seriously, we haven't yet seen how Rey is going to comprehend/understand/account for the dark side/light side dichotomy, but this movie has at least raised the issue.)

Probably the same movie the manga of Nausicaa and Akira were adapted from, I guess. And Appleseed for that matter.

I like the uncanny valley (we haven't seen the other side in the real world yet, it might just be a cliff) mien of Alita a lot. The CGI robot combat seemed to work better with not quite human choreographics.

I know, that's a lot to extrapolate from such a brief trailer, so sue me.

You know that calling something an attempt at Finnegans Wake is a compliment, not an insult, right?

SmiloDan wrote:

Kalshane wrote:

My concern with Invulnerability is it's ridiculously powerful in the hands of a BBEG. "You can't hurt the boss for 10 minutes unless you succeed on a Dispel Magic check (and he doesn't Counter your Dispel.)"

There are other ways to deal with BBEGs like that. Grapple, petrification, a bunch of hold person spells, etc.

"Oh, no, you've grabbed me, whatever should I do except continue to cast my spells with zero hindrance whatsoever?" Grapple doesn't do much unless you can forcibly move them somewhere they don't want to be. (And even then Misty Step or Dimension Door resolves that problem if it take you more than a round to get them there.)

Petrification or Hold Person might work, if you can get them to fail their save (remembering that a 1 is only an automatic failure on attack rolls in 5E) and they don't counterspell it.

I don't know, I'm running a 5E RotRL game and if I were to give special K that spell, it would probably result in a TPK.

The thing is, if you're dealing with a dick DM who really truly is looking for a TPK, that one spell in the hands of a BBEG is the least of your worries. I think it works badly from a PF perspective of building NPCs and PCs with the same mechanical function, but DnD5e doesn't work that way. It's a PC appropriate spell in 5e.

Re: spoiler.

It wasn’t recommended for any kind of campaign. It was recommended for shared campaigns - the examples given being a school, RPG club, local gaming store or library.

I thought it was interesting that “creating a shared campaign” was even a thing worthy of an appendix. I guess I’m pretty out of touch with how the game is played these days.

I don't mean to derail the thread, but do you feel out of touch because shared campaigns are so typical that the appendix is unnecessary, or because they're so rare that it's a waste of space?

Time to reach page 100: 7 years

Comics this month: 2

And one of them was two pages.

What if it's something that just happens, like when you take a strip of paper, put a twist in it and glue the two ends together, and BANG, mobius strip! But with hyperspatial/interplanar travel as a means of function.

Also, not to be patronizing, but plane doesn't mean infinite flat space with First World at the bottom and sky at the top in this context, it means pristine, natural, verdant ideal of whichever planet you happen to be on. Probably a lot more noticeable on Akiton than Castrovel. Just don't ask me about the Diaspora, I got no guesses on that one.

If you guys get the chance you should see the Syfy miniseries version of Dune. Stilgar, leader of the Fremen, is gloriously not at all hot.

And yes, like Hama, I was really only ever watching the series to see Poppy Drayton wiggle around in tight leather pants. Haven't watched a single episode of season two.

Enjoyed this weeks episode. I'm little confused about why they broadcast what was obviously the Halloween episode a week before Thanksgiving, but okay.

We also saw this with Worf, Geordi, Data, Kira, Dax, Tuvok, Torres, T'Pol, etc.

Don't forget that episode where Captain Kirk went back in time with Spock and said that his friend was obviously Chinese, his ears just looked so weird because his head was caught in an automated rice-picker.

I'm not being racist, Leonard Nimoy was from Boston. Harlan Ellison? Never heard of him, but the name sounds jewish.

John Adams never had the opportunity to watch The Orville in his life, but I'd like to return the conversation to the most recent episode.

I really liked it. My only issue was I felt that making the planet so similar to 21st century US was a bit heavy handed. "A Taste of Armageddon" from TOS was broadcast before lottery numbers were an issue with Vietnam enlistment, but no one watching was confused about its relevancy, no matter how futuristic the set design was.

I really liked that John's idiotic grind on the state was a plot point rather than just played for bro-laughs.

I really really liked how lysella assimilated the existence of an alien spaceship so quickly, and liked even more that she turned off the feed at the end of the episode, rather than mindlessly up-voting, in contrast to her inattentive down-vote at the beginning.

[i]The Orville[/] can stand shoulder to shoulder with name brand Star Trek; I thought this week was better than that TNG episode where Riker has illicit UFO sex with the nurse.

The whole speed of plot thing seems more an issue in later D&D and PF. In AD&D one turn (out of combat) was ten minutes, and a round was one minute, so it was built into the game mechanics that combat wasted (well, related to is a better term, I guess) dungeon exploration time. Nothing against PF, but it seems like speed of plot is built into 3.5/PF, if only because the combat rounds are so short that they don't really relate to actions outside of combat.

I could totally enjoy a story where Dani survived a bear attack in which her parents were killed, and the demon bear is a psychic manifestation of her childhood trauma. That would be rather awesome, actually. I'm just not convinced a Marvel movie can be that character driven, if you see what I mean.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be convinced.

Okay, sure, but that's all just typical state censorship stuff. I thought you were taking about some separate cultural incompatibility the way you emphasized the demon bear. I mean, just about any movie on earth might lose China because the state censors don't like something about it.

Why do you think there's some sort of chinese cultural incompatibility with the idea of a demon bear? They've got demons and they've got bears. I don't mean to sound dickish, but I can't see why it would possibly be an issue.

As drawn by Sienkiewicz, the demon bear was much, much bigger than your average bear. Kaiju big? Okay, but I doubt Godzilla or a Jaeger is going to show up to fight it in a New Mutants movie.

Dani's power is telepathic projection of a person's most deep seated fear. One of the earliest storylines was about things getting hallucinogenically screwy at Xavier's School because a Brood Queen was using Xavier's telepathy to manifest Dani's power without her knowledge, which lead her to consider suicide because she believed she was going crazy. (At least, that's what I remember from more than thirty years ago, forgive any errors.)

I doubt they'll include the Brood, but expecting this movie not to use horror genre motifs is like expecting a Superman movie not to feature super-strength or invulnerability.

knightnday wrote:

I imagine given that Seth is a rabid fan of Star Trek the fact that the pair were bad at infiltrating the Krill was a play on Star Trek constantly shoving the crew of the Enterprise into whatever situation of the week that they came across or that the Federation needed done, regardless of how inane it might be.

Eh. I can't speak to his rabid fandom or not, it just seemed like more 'dude-bros at playtime,' which is the only overarching theme I've found to the show so far. My point is, they were so amazingly bad at interacting with even a modicum of seriousness that they should have been searched and shot in short order- by the aliens who met them at the airlock.

Can I ask your opinion of episode 4? There was a lot of nerdy Star Trek parody stuff going on, but I thought that "dude-bros at playtime" became a non issue the instant Grayson and Kitan were arrested and shot. I like the way sharing meals has been used to illustrate functional multiculturalism in several episodes, as an example of a different overarching theme.

TOS. And James Doohan's son plays fricken' Scotty!

The script was servicable, although some of the lines were pretty clunky, especially all the exposition in the beginning.

You know what you'll never hear anyone say in any Star Trek series, ever?

"I know, I read the mission brief." :P

Uniforms and sets that find a design esthetic halfway between Enterprise and the Abramsverse? I would have preferred an reinterpretation of the Pike-era uniforms, but okay.

Holographic shipboard communication devices, even though we've only ever seen flatscreens in previous iterations of Trek? I can live with that.

A xeno-anthropologist who was orphaned in a Klingon attack but doesn't recognize a Klingon artifact? That's stupidest f%#&ing thing I've ever heard! It's bad writing which undercuts Michael Burnham's character on a very fundamental level, but whatever, she knows the Vulcan Nerve Pinch just to appeal to the nerd fanbase.

If this show were on broadcast, I'd DVR it, but it's not going to be the reason I subscribe to CBS All Access.

Snoke Trading Card

Very clear image of what he actually looks like. Unfortunately, no real resemblance to Ezra.

To be fair, Forest Whitaker didn't have a whole lot of resemblance to cgi Saw Gerrera. That said, I don't think they'd retread a Rebels character for such a central role in the new trilogy.

Jersey Burke wrote:

(which was defined by biologicals).

And one does not argue with the motives of gods.

Then the Gods underestimate PCs :D

Eh, Androids are androids and a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

But will note Bioroids from Appleseed are actually clones because they use human genomes to be created. They are essentially human despite how they were created.

The source of Android evolution can't have biological origin? Is that a deal breaker?

Android is way better.

Cause when an Android gets mad, we can call it 'roid rage.

'Roid rage works just as well with bioroids from Appleseed, just sayin'. ;)

My condolences. :(

Hitdice wrote:

Anyone who watches GoT and takes it as an endorsement of incest is getting it wrong. As wrong as taking Thorne's speech from season one, the Thenns attack on the farmstead and Arya's Frey pie as endorsement of cannibalism. It's just weird that you would think that.

You're allowed to your interpretation too. It's the neat thing about subjective opinions, none of them are truly right or wrong.

So, you're admitting that the show-runner's/author's pro-incest agenda that you were blathering about is your subjective interpretation, not something they're actually writing into the books or script?

'Cause that's what I'm saying.

I doubt GRRM sees the world in terms of D&D alignment, and I think it's facile to assume the fiction an author writes is indicative of their views on actions in the real world.

Anyone who watches GoT and takes it as an endorsement of incest is getting it wrong. As wrong as taking Thorne's speech from season one, the Thenns attack on the farmstead and Arya's Frey pie as endorsement of cannibalism. It's just weird that you would think that.

The Oracle said Belkar will stop breathing permanently, not that he'd die, exactly. My pet theory is, he'll get vamped and stay the exact same character because he was evil all along.

MannyGoblin wrote:

I was surprised that Jaime didn't get cut down...

I think the scene's intent was that Jaime, like Sansa, is a slow learner but he does learn. He finally saw through Cersei's bluff and manipulation.

And maybe, Jon Snow's politically inconvenient display of honesty and honor had an effect on Jaime. As well as Brienne's words to him.

It's funny, the series dropped my favorite scene of Jaime's slow, gradual, de-handed disillusionment (that's when he's looking at Loras thinking, "Kid, I used to be just like you, and BOY was I ever a f**king a**hole.") but it's been an interesting post Riverrun path to a schism in the twincest. Look, whatever, maybe that sentence was laden with jargon, it should make sense whether you've read the books, seen the TV series, or both.

I was..kind disappointed that he broke down like that. Basing the 'Do not trust me.' line on the word of a supposed seer?(As Baelish would have said it no doubt) It was tying things up nice and pat but I am imagining that he would be able to cast enough doubt on things.

It was an interesting performance by Aidan Gillen.

That speculation wouldn't happen to be by people who have seen Stay and assume they've discovered some lost key to Benioff's work, would it? 'Cause it's just a movie script he wrote earlier in his career. I watched it and I enjoyed, but I didn't feel like it revealed any GoT secrets.

Spell correct man, just, spell correct, you know?

Well, the Night King totally scattered Bran's murder (take it up with the english language, that's just the word for a bunch of crows) so the two of them seem to work on some parallel level of extrasensory perception equivalence. Or something.

I guess im just some sort of a@#hole, but I liked the banal road scenes that added a sense of travel and provided some exposition. I forgot the show even has it anymore.

I enjoyed the road scenes. It was like watching a superhero team get together for the first time or something. I loved the Torment vs. Hound:

I'm a little disappointed that Jorah never looked at Jon and said, "Served under my father? Do you, like, know a guy named Samwell Tarly? 'Cause that's the dude who cured me of the greyscale in Oldtown." And Jon would be all, "Omigod that's hilarious, I totally sent him there to study as a Maester, small Westeros, right?"

But the manly-man-theatre Longclaw exchange was cool enough.

I want to know one thing from last nights show.

** spoiler omitted **

I want to know:

I can feel the Jon and Dany fanfiction being typed.

I have a feeling they'll never confirm Rhaegar being Jon's dad. They'll want to get as much traction out of Dany's crush on Jon Snow as possible.

I want to see that flaming sword in action! NOW!

Also with a heart that cold, are we sure Cersei isn't all ready a wight?

To hell with the fan fiction, whats an annulment again?

Bronn was ice cold though. Made his morale check. Jamie needed to learn how to run away.

Sure, but have we ever seen Bronn be anything but ice cold? I mean, he looked a little emotional when all his gold spilled, but he kept on going.

After the Frey Thumb Pie (didn't brown the butter though) Serving Wench last season, I feel like Change the Sheets Chambermaid might look a little like Arya wearing a false face. At the door to Cersei's bedchamber.

I think there was a picture of that dagger in one of the books Sam was looking through, too, but wasn't it in King's Landing the last time we saw it? Or did Cat take it back north to the Aerie? Then again, if Littlefinger kept it, it could be at Winterfell right now.

Y'know, I hadn't really considered till now, but I would LOVE to see a duel to death between the Arya Stark, the Half-Trained Water Dancer and Jaime Lannister, the Handless Wonder. It sounds silly, but that could be an excellent fight.

archmagi1 wrote:

Wow Nym is a lot bigger than Ghost last time we saw him in s6e1.

Didn't she say "it isn't you" as the wolf turned and walked away?

I heard it as, "That isn't you," as in not in your character. Maybe Arya ended the episode with a moment of ecce lupus and decided that as glad as she is to hear that the Starks are once again in Winterfell, there's still a queen who needs to be assassinated in King's landing.

I mean, my pet theory is that Arya's going to show up in Winterfell and say, "Wait, Littlefinger's here? I'm totally murdering that guy! Relax sis, I can just wear his face around afterwards, the Knights of the Vale won't be a problem." I've been wrong before, though.

Yes, nuclear is less polluting than coal; how does that invalidate the premise of innovating better efficiency of solar/wind?