Murg7's page

Saw it. There are more plot holes than you can shake a stick at.

The new characters are terrible as usual. The old characters are either being sidelined (Chewbacca) or being forced to act completely out of character (Luke) in order to promote the new characters.

Star Wars used to be one of my favorite franchises but Disney has killed it for me. I won't be seeing the last episode because I just don't care what happens any more.

Oh well. There's plenty of sci-fi franchises out there that are still good so it's not the end of the world.

I really liked the film.

At first I did not realize the movie was switching through three different timelines, but by the middle of the film it was pretty obvious that's what was happening.

And Dunkirk was such a huge event, it's simply impossible to show everything that was going on. I've seen reviewers lament that Churchill was not shown, that the generals/admirals planning the evacuation were not shown, that the Germans were not shown, that Hitler's decision to stop the tanks was not shown, that British cabinet discussions about making peace with Hitler were not shown, that more civilians were not shown, ect, ect. If all those things had been shown it would be a 4 hour movie (and a lot more expensive to make).

As a history buff I really liked the authenticity and realism; rather than having digital animations of dogfights, they actually got some real World War 2 planes and had them flying over the English Channel - awesome! Some Dunkirk vets who saw the film said it was very realistic.

It's a powerful true story about ordinary people put in an extraordinary situation and I'm glad I saw it.

What's the future of the Democratic Party? It has no future unless it enacts immediate radical reforms.

To me the #1 reason why Clinton lost the election is she should NEVER have been the party's candidate in the first place! Why was she? Because she used backroom deals and party cronyism (the good ole boy system) to lock up the superdelegate vote.

Now ostensibly the whole point of a primary election is to make sure your party has the strongest candidate going into the general election. But when Clinton locked up the superdelegates it became mathematically extremely unlikely that anyone other than Clinton could win the nomination.

I'm not just talking in absolute terms, as each superdelegate vote is worth about 10,000 votes of rank-and-file Democrats. I'm also talking of the blatant voter suppression effect of locking up the superdelegates, as any rank-and-file Democrat considering voting for say, Bernie Sanders would have to do so knowing full well that the vote was HEAVILY stacked against them before the first rank-and-file Democrats had cast even a single ballot. This point was driven home time and time again in reporting by the largely pro-Clinton media in the run up to the actual balloting.

And so what was even the point of holding a primary at all, if a handful of out-of-touch party elites are determined to swing the results to the weakest candidate, damn constituent representation or democracy in the process!

To me the most shocking thing about the Democrat defeat was how little real introspection has been done on why it happened. We've all heard various vague platitudes from Democrat leaders and even in this thread about how the party needs to get more organized or reach out to people who have been alienated from the party, but very little specifics about how any of this could be accomplished.

Strikingly, not a single major Democrat leader is currently calling for the immediate and total abolition of the party's superdelegate system (although there has been some progress in increasing the number of pledged delegates, it's not enough). Until this is done, discussing any other reforms is rather pointless, as party elites can and will continue to lock up the primary vote and nominate weak candidates. These weak candidates WILL lose in general elections, and all the other talk of reforms in the world isn't going to change that.

This is probably the biggest electoral upset in modern American history.

What's funny is that my relatives are all pro-Democrat fanatics for some reason. They have actually gone out and torn down GOP signs in previous elections. This year one relative bragged about how he had gotten some Trump campaign funding solicitations in the mail, and he had mailed them back an empty envelope purely out of spite (so the Trump campaign would have to pay the back postage).

But the best part is my relatives actually all voted for Trump in the primaries. They thought they were sabotaging the Republican party by doing so, and thus ensuring Clinton's victory.

They probably were sabotaging the Republican party's ruling elite, but that ended up hurting Clinton much more than helping her. Because when Trump won the GOP primary the election essentially became an establishment vs anti-establishment contest.

Hillary's numerous Big Media, Big Business, and Big Hollywood backers (and my relatives) simply have no idea how many long-ignored voters have nothing but seething contempt for the Washington DC elite of both parties, and we've been waiting for a chance like this to come along for a long damn time. My whole life.

I had told my relatives that I had given up on the American political system. That I would never vote again (after one furtive protest vote for Kerry against Bush). That there was really no difference between the Dems and Repubs on the issues that I cared about. That it was a good-ole-boy system full of gerrymandering, superdelegates, and rules designed to make it impossible for a third party candidate ever to win high office in this country.

Then Trump unexpectedly came along and I had to tell my relatives I would actually vote one more time. Because a huge electoral upset had put an anti-establishment politician in play for the presidency, and I doubted this chance would ever come again.

Trump would lose of course, and America's ruling elite would get together to make sure another anti-establishment candidate would never rise. But I wouldn't be staying true to my beliefs if I sat out this probably once in a lifetime chance.

So imagine my surprise when Trump is doing so well. My pro-Clinton relatives who voted for Trump in the primaries but for Clinton in the actual election are probably having fits right now!

What actually happened during the Thrawn trilogy again? It has been 20+ years since I read it, but I remember it was set VERY recent after the first trilogy... and don't remember any real lasting effects. There was a luke cloned from his lost hand... I think an emperor clone maybe? Some Moff's still trying to restart the empire and failing... I remember luke wondering if Yoda even used a lightsaber as he'd never seen him with one... (/deletes prequels)

We still have a 30 year gap between old and new... what was there in that trilogy that would even be mentioned 30 years later? Is there any reason that we can't STILL consider that Canon in our heads? Impossible to really know till we see it I'm sure... but they would have to be pretty specific in order to completely negate things I suspect...

The Thrawn trilogy was one of the most popular, probably THE most popular part of the EU. Its success paved the way for the rest of the EU, some of which was good, some of which was OK, and some of which was terrible.

The basic plot:

Of course we won't know until the movie comes out, but the above plot does not sync well with what we know about episode 7.

This trailer made my day, it was so much better than the first one.

On the first trailer it introduced the new main characters Rey, Finn, BB8, and Kylo Ren all of whom I immediately disliked in the admittedly few seconds I saw them. There was no sign of our beloved characters from episode 6, no sign of any interesting plot (the main failings of episode 1-3), and the trailer music itself was jarring and annoying.

Trailer #2 makes me excited about the movie all over again. The scene with the crashed star destroyer? Awesome how it almost looks like a mountain at first, then as the camera pans across the desert you see it for what it is.

Then the characters from episode 6 were re-introduced, huzzah!

And then at the 60 second mark things really got awesome. The trailer music really synced well with the action going on at that point. The action clips themselves were great, I especially liked the scene with the stormtroopers in formation turning around to face the audience, almost as if to say, "We're back!"

Then having a dogfight inside the wreckage of the star destroyer from earlier in the trailer? Sure, why not!

So yeah, JJ Abrams I think is definitely going to wow us with the action scenes. I'm still worried about the plot, as his track record is much less impressive in that regard, and most of what we've seen and heard about the new characters so far worries me.

On other news sites, I've heard that the Empire has renamed itself to

I've run a homebrew low magic campaign and it was a lot of fun. It was set in a Bronze Age world but the PCs started off in a Stone Age society.

This was 3.5 edition, not pathfinder and I limited starting classes to:
rogue
barbarian
fighter
monk
CW or OA samurai
knight
scout
marshal
swashbuckler
ranger
paladin
ninja
crusader
swordsage
warblade
adept

So basically almost no magic.

The initial lack of equipment and spells meant that for the first few levels the PCs' tactical options were extremely limited. I compensated for this by designing early encounters that depended on skill checks, roleplaying, puzzles, and most especially by putting PCs in situations that they obviously could not solve through brute force alone - they would have to use their wits to survive in a harsh and primitive world.

It was our first time using E6, and it will be our last. E6 did not really work out for us. E6 does solve the "quadratic caster progression" problem, but it does so by essentially shutting down the level-up system just when quadratic caster progression usually starts to become an issue. Players like to get rewarded and feel like they are making constant progress. Once we hit level 6 that didn't happen anymore, instead everyone felt like we were just treading water.

Now I know some players love E6, so I will just say it's not for everyone. If you do try E6 and decide it's not for you, it won't be too hard to switch the campaign from E6 back to a "normal" experience progression -- that's what we ended up doing.

Other issues that will definitely come up with low magic:

1. Healing. Lack of magical healing will mean you'll want to come up with houserules for making nonmagical healing more effective.

2. The CR experience point award system starts to break down because it assumes the PCs have got spells and gear they can't get in a low magic setting. You'll have to award XP on a case by case basis.

3. With such a radical change in the rules there are going to be minor hiccups that require houserules. Example: Towards the end of my campaign it was pointed out that a single contagion spell could wipe out an entire city due to the lack of commonly available magical healing. So I had to change the contagion spell a bit.

4. Lack of magic means fewer tactical options in combat. To keep combat from getting stale you're really going to have to push dynamic, interesting combat situations. Battles where the terrain is a major factor. Battles that take place with uncommon enemy tactics. Battles that need to be completed within a certain time, or in a certain way (example: escort the ambassador to safety without him knowing that you're escorting him).

There's a lot of reasons why I thought low magic was fun:

1. It's a very different way of playing than most players are used to. Many players use magic as a crutch, an easy way to get out of critical thinking and problem solving. When you take that crutch away the campaign becomes more challenging, and everyone feels a bigger sense of accomplishment when obstacles are overcome. If players are confronted with the challenge of crossing a vast hostile desert, now rather than just teleporting across it, or using magic to create food and water, they actually have to carefully plan their expedition, and getting across that desert becomes an accomplishment rather than just an insignificant footnote in the journey.

2. No more "Christmas Tree effect" and no more "quadratic caster progression" effect.

3. What little magic there is in the campaign feels magical again. Like in Tolkein's low magic Lord of the Rings when the heroes get a magic item it's a major event and the item is treated with reverence. But in a standard magic campaign if the players got "Sting" they'd just toss it on the treasure pile as "oh, just another +2 sword."

The plot of my low magic campaign revolved around various tribes trying to gain possession of a magic dagger, and the PCs end up getting caught in the struggle. Wars end up being fought over that dagger. It was quite a switch from our usual high magic forgotten realms campaign, where magic daggers were a dime a dozen!

Good luck with your campaign!