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“ On this third planet from the star Sol, you will be a god among men. They are a flawed race. Rule them with strength, my son. That is where your greatness lies." - Jor-El - Smallville 2003

Jor-El: “In time he will become the supreme being on their planet, almost a god.”

Lara Lor-Van: “Then he will rule them? Reshape them into proper Kryptonian ways?”

Jor-El: “Perhaps.”

Man of Steel 1986

Jor-El and Lara being benevolent and kind aliens isn’t from the comics though. Jor-El was always aloof at best, Lara had barely any characterization beyond being sad to let Kal-El go. Even the version from the Silver age which basically tired Jor-El into a thinly veiled John Carter knock off was an arrogant jerk.

Byrne made the El’s out and out derisive and condescending about humanity; Post Rebirth Jor-El was flat out a villain albeit one manipulated into being one.

Various Elseworld’s El’s have said things more clearly villainous than what was said in S25.

The “good” version of the characters were mostly products of Brando and York’s performances in S:TM and S2 respectively.

It’s hard to feel like this is an insult to my fandom when it’s barely even connected to it.

Disney HAS hit $1 Billion with Lilo and Stitch's 1.035 Billion dollars to date. The "Marvel efforts" encapsulate no specific reason for this as not a single hollywood film other than Lilo and Stitch has broken the Billion dollar barrier.

And the big fun one: have been planning a special V:tM LARP one shot to celebrate one of our players turning 50. Bringing in some old friends we’ve not played with in years and making a big party of it.

This ended up being an awful lot of fun.

The player this was designed around had mentioned that they missed the feel of a Vampire LARP but didn't want to pay money and register with one of the LARP orgs to scratch that itch. Knowing it was their 50th this year (and my 45th) I invited a bunch of LARP friends and Tabletop friends that we'd both spent the last decades playing with and started building out a Chronicle fit for a one shot.

I wanted to play with VTM 5e's strata of player character ages to tell a story about entering Middle Age focusing on the middle group of Ancilla Vampires. With the Elders all being called off to fight in the Gehenna War and the Neonates are champing at the bit to acquire power, the squeeze around the Ancilla made for a perfect aging Gen X metaphor.

The central conceit was that a group of Ancilla Kindred arrive for the Summer Court and find themselves trapped in the venue confronted with the machinations of a mad Prince trying to hand pick his successor before accepting the call of the Beckoning and leaving to join the Gehenna War.

One of our players got us a great location and we played in a Planetarium for about six hours. Of our 20 or so invitees we had 10 who actually showed up and a great time was had by all.

Current tracking is estimating it closes at 680, which is more than Man of Steel made. More is certainly not "WELL SHORT". Even if it stopped earning today, in excess of 555M, it's not "WELL SHORT" of Man of Steel's 670. It's just 115 Short currently.

But you want to play studio mogul, let's go.

There are sources that claim the marketing budget was 200M, there is no confirmed number from the studio. If we assume that top end to be correct, and if we assume that the highest suggested production budget of 360 was correct then the total buyoff for the film to hit profit is $560M.

The 160M in tax rebates from the state of Georgia drop that to 400M.

The 140M in licensing and brand deals drops that to 260M

260M with a 50%/50% theatrical split (which is less than the actual split) means the film hit profit after 520M earned.

So with those most commonly guessed numbers - the film is currently at 17M profit. While still in theaters.

Director James Gunn has claimed that the 360M reportedly overblown by 110M. If HIS numbers are correct - then the film is sitting at 72.5M in profit.

For it to not be near profitability the P&G budget would have to be something more like 250 and no one is claiming that figure. It certainly LOOKS to not be at profitability if you ignore ancillary profit streams.

And this is ALL before the network and streaming media buy, Primary Theatrical Streaming, or home media.

One other thought:

** spoiler omitted **

Just wanted to add:

I playtested Exalted 1e many moons ago. They didn't listen to most of our feedback. It was still a great game but... yeah, houserules help a lot.

We played it pretty extensively from 01 - 07, and it worked well when we were still in the habit of Storyteller system rules, but once you get away from rolling for your attack more than once and applying bonuses both before and after the roll it begins to feel more and more cumbersome to go back.

Looking back through each edition to figure out some simple hotfixes has me really curious what led them to put in place so many fixes for the 1e problems and then build an entirely bespoke (or copy from Scion that is) initiative system that creates an entire host of new problems.

Over a year since I last checked in with this thread, and I find myself coming to the Paizo board less and less. In the last year so many of my longstanding Kickstarters and projects I’ve been following have finally fulfilled and that is an awesome feeling, but it has also been a famine year for game play.

Let me start by saying I am aware that in many ways my group is a unicorn. Stable groups that stay together with mostly the same players for almost 20 years, while maintaining a weekly schedule is a rarity among rarities. It’s been a bounty for all these years.

This year, however, one of our players took a job teaching that would limit his time considerably - he’d basically only have the weekends with his wife. So we did the supportive thing and put all of our games on hold and decided to play some short games in the interim with the players we had. Only, we barely did that.

From January to May we had three sessions where it turned out our missing player was able to drop in, but beyond that we had a session zero and three sessions of Call of Cthulhu in four and a half months.

Just as we were back to full strength at the end of the semester - the married couple in our group informed us all that the rigors of a weekly game were wearing on them and they needed to step away or adjust the way they interacted with game for a little while

We discussed as a group and agreed to something more encounter based and less focused on detailed plot and that we would play once a month.

We’re diving back into my homebrew setting for PF2 that we ran throughout the pandemic, which is nice, and I am excited to return to that world. The downside though is that this is a radical and sudden change from the way we’d been operating, and we had three games running when it happened - so it took the wind out of both GM’s sails.

We’ll get used to it, obviously. Maybe weekly games for 20 years is an embarrassment of riches, but that doesn’t make it less affecting when it changes.

The good of the last year: ran a few sessions of Shadowdark and LOVED it.

Spent the better part of the last few months editing a document that is a House Ruled version of Exalted using 2e, 3e and Exalted Essence rules to plug playability and quality of life holes in Exalted First Edition

And the big fun one: have been planning a special V:tM LARP one shot to celebrate one of our players turning 50. Bringing in some old friends we’ve not played with in years and making a big party of it.

It’s still a journey.

I mean, you still have to email them to cancel your subscription. Even barring a recent FTC Rule in the US, it's just pretty anti-consumer to put barriers to stopping automatic charges to a card.

I'm not in agreement about the need for a PDF only subscription or a common PDF release date - but the above statement dovetails with one of the things I would love to see added to the subscription process.

It should be easier to cancel subs and it should be easier to pause subscriptions or skip books. Particularly if Remastered reprints like the upcoming Guns & Gears is going to be a pattern.

Cancelling my sub to not get a reprint of a book I already own and then resubscribing to get the next book feels like it could be streamlined.

I’m almost more concerned about the idea of a pending charge on my debit card for the last 12 days.

This happened once before with a Paizo order and my bank just cancelled the hold charge and blocked the second attempt when Paizo went to reauth.

Finally did it.

Ripped the bandaid off and played out a session featuring the Exaltation of three of our characters for the Exalted campaign. It had been quite a long time since I'd stepped into the world of creation, and in the interim my expectations had grown quite high.

Exalted 1e was my favorite game of all time, and after so much time away and disappointment with the system for 2e and shock at 3e I was worried that maybe it wouldn't work

To my delight it was like slipping on a perfectly worn hoodie, going home again is possible.

Wrapping up Hunter: The Vigil took a little longer than planned due to some player choices.

The plan moving out of that was to sit back and let the other GM's at the table run alternating games while I did some worldbuilding in Exalted for our eventual Essence campaign.

Then there was a system shock issue with our Mythos campaign (not in CoC) and some players are focused on a cross country move so the hat got handed back very quickly and Exalted Essence is firing up this weekend.

Meanwhile playing Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition has been a blast so far. So much so that I'm wondering if this iteration of the old Storyteller system is actually smoother than the Storytelling system of Chronicles of Darkness. I would have said no before playing this.

I would have also said that Requiem has better player options until really digging into Masquerade V5.

maybe that's why poor customer service brews conspiracy theories

I'm really hesitant to call Paizo's customer service "poor" they're by leaps and bounds more involved and organized than any other TTRPG's CS departments.

They do know what Baylen is going after.

There is an arc of stories in The Clone Wars called The Mortis Arc, it ties in heavily to the world between worlds where Ahsoka faced Anakin. Baylen is standing on a statue of one of the mythical Force deities presented in that story.

I don't want to spoil too much, you should definitely check it out.

Different systems they need access to. It’s less like a physical key and more like an MFA token, but in this case featuring high end encryption

They're code cylinders. Security Access keys basically.

Blame Tristan for me refusing to not yield.

No dude, blame your incessant need to have the last word that you exhibit up and down this section of the forum.

The Meta narrative defines Asgardians as advanced aliens who are perceived by some cultures as gods. They are both. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Their existence in the narrative however, has no bearing on the actions of the character of Ritson because he is WITHIN the narrative and not AWARE of the narrative.

To be honest, it doesn’t really bother me all that much, other than a vague feeling of sadness at how the mighty have fallen.

What does that even mean?

I’ve got my Blu-ray copies of the original series and Next Generation to make up for the loss.

So you can go watch the time the did a Noir episode, or the time they die a Sherlock Holmes episode; or the time they did a Robin Hood episode, or the time they did a western episode, or the times they did a procedural, or the times they did a trial, or the time they did an episode where they interpreted any existing genre into their episodic format.

That’s the exact same thing they’re doing on SNW

Wait are you suggesting that a reactionary policy from a United States President is based in some part on the actions of someone who called himself a God Butcher?

Like dude woke up and said “we’ll hunt down the aliens, except those people because the God Butcher said they were gods”

dirtypool wrote:

I think the real question is, does the company really need to amend their entire release workflow so as to not bum someone out?

Because it is not one person.

The number of people who have a negative emotional response to a shipping practice is immaterial to the point that the shipping practice doesn't need to be built around emotional responses.

A surprising number of people in this thread seem to have a para-social investment with the billing and shipping methods of this company

It's a shipping method, it can't invest back.

As a subscriber I have received my pdf early in the advance cycle, and I have received my pdf late in the advance cycle. I've even once received my pdf after the book was available on store shelves to the general public.

I get that this can feel frustrating to the people effected negatively by it, but I don't think that a company (any company not just Paizo) should adjust their shipping and release scheme based on what "feels good" to any specific set of customers.

Allowing Spock to have such a deep glimpse of his human side, and setting him up for a relationship with Chapel whom we know is going to marry another man gives a reason for Nimoy Spock to so fiercely cling to his Vulcan identity in TOS. It allows them to move Peck Spock to the Where No Man Has Gone Before starting point so that Kirk and Bones can draw him toward the balanced Spock he grows to become.

It also gives the dissolution of the Spock and T’Pring relationship a deeper meaning. She was not as we saw in Amok Time, a calculating opportunist attempting to move upward in Vulcan society with Stonn, she was someone who truly cared for Spock and was hurt by him deeply.

As much as I love a race that evolves beyond physical form, I was thinking the idea of a race on a moon in the Vulcan system that disappeared without a trace might be a series of early hints about the Romulan diaspora.

I think you're reading more into what both I and The Raven Black said.

We're talking about how PF2 narrows the gulf between optimizers and non optimizers, that's all.

Why would wolves ever attack like this? They wouldn't. Neither if basing tactics on slim knowledge of real wolf tactics nor on just logical tactics based on the wolves' goals.

Firstly, because this is a game and the Pack Attack is one of their pre-statted actions that appears in their Bestiary entry.

Secondly, because surrounding opponents is a documented tactic of real life wolf packs.

The gap between a character built for fun and one built for mechanical optimisation is orders of magnitude lower in PF2.

It is quite feasible to have both adventure side by side.

This. This right here is why I prefer PF2. Players who want to let the narrative of the story shape how they build without focusing on the quest for the best mathematical synergies and players who want to optimize can play in the same campaign without the former getting left behind by the latter.

I know it's the official title now, but I so seldom remember to call the stuff Onyx Path is putting out by the name Chronicles. Spent too long calling it the New WoD I guess.

What was the Chronicles game that really clicked with you?

To begin at the beginning with the system journey approach - my pathway from entry to the Paizo community is maybe a little different than some. While my first attempt at play was in 2nd Edition AD&D - that experience lasted maybe three sessions and didn't really do much to excite me about playing RPG's.

I got my real start in the hobby a year later with West End Game's D6 Star Wars - which was (at the time) a less rules heavy system than D&D that allowed more focus on character and narrative due to a more simplistic and uniform die resolution system. When I graduated high school, I figured I was done with Tabletop gaming and left the hobby behind.

In 2001/2002 I was brought back into the fold by a group of friends who were playing Exalted First Edition and needed a player to step in to replace an outgoing player. I was recruited, joined that group, and have remained an active member of the communities of gamers ever since.

White Wolf's Exalted was based on the Storyteller System used for Vampire: The Masquerade and other such games and was very narratively focused while providing a bit of crunch - and it wasn't long before the launch of Vampire: The Requiem brought along the new Storytelling System which was a much more streamlined mechanical approach to the World of Darkness games. This became a favorite system, ultimately leading to one of my absolute favorite games: Hunter: The Vigil

The groups I played with spent a lot of time playing in that system or in trying things like Cinematic Unisystem, Gurps, Deadlands, WEG Star Wars and D20 Star Wars; Decipher's Star Trek. We never circled back to D&D proper until 4th Edition and while we found it enjoyable to play for the first several months - it quickly lost its luster and we switched to Pathfinder almost immediately once it dropped.

This worked out well for some of the players in group, but not much for me. I'd spent so much time running games set in worlds, settings and systems that leant themselves so easily to a sandbox that 3.X encounter based design felt like a shackle.

The feeling of complexity and the necessity of system mastery in 3.X and PF1 I think simply comes from the wealth of options and the synergies that exist within them being so robustly presented. I know there are many like me who came to 3.X or PF in my case AFTER it was already sort of fully formed. It's easy to forget that 3.5 came out with a HOST of options from 3.0 having already been published and then caught on bigger than its prior edition had. Paizo dropped PF1 and then launched a rather quick option release to get those 3.X options back into play.

For narratively focused players less interested in created the perfect feat synergy - this could feel a bit overwhelming, and did in my case. I continued to prefer more narrative focused games like White Wolf products or Fantasy Flights Narrative Dice offerings. 5e didn't quite fit the bill for me either because it ejected a lot of the uniqueness of the game in favor of a universal simplicity.

PF2 dropped and honestly the first time I've felt a D20 system suits my needs as both a player and GM by being balanced enough from class to class while still providing options to players.

Throughout the pandemic my table played a lot of PF2 and a lot of Vampire: The Requiem. I took a six month hiatus from game when my kid was born, and while I was away Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition came out.

I rejoined my table and we dove right into Hunter.

Now we stand on the edge of Exalted: Essence coming out, a streamlined version of the 3rd edition of the game that brought me back into the hobby, more than that it is about to be the 20th anniversary of the launch of the last epic campaign we ran in that game system… so a return to Creation is already in the works

With the original version of this thread now wilting away, it feels like a good time for a clean slate.

This is a place to discuss the journey each of us has gone on and is going on throughout the hobby. Tell us how you got started in tabletop Roleplaying games, tell us what games you’ve played, tell us what games you’re excited to try next, tell us what your favorite die type is. Anything that celebrates the diversity of the hobby and your personal experience is more than welcome.

This is not a place to edition war, or to compare the systems others bring up to your preferred system. All views are welcome but I would prefer it not devolve into a constant focus on one system.

I'm disgusted by the concept, not the response.

The response WAS the concept.

If you experience revulsion at that concept, then you might just be too much of a shrinking violet for public forums.

Their claim is no different than saying that all cats should be called dogs because calling them cats is somehow disparaging and insulting.

No it is QUITE different than that. Their claim was that you were classifying the TTRPG's they like as not actually being TTRPG's. You suggested that them calling you out for disparaging what they like is "disgusting."

Further, they are the ones who are saying that I'm being rude because of reasons that are despicable, and yet it's rude for me to tell them off for it?

Their claim that you were being dismissive of the games they enjoy is despicable? Dude grow up.

The idea that classifying things into groups is disparaging towards one of the groups is just ridiculous. That is the idea I call sick minded.

Except that is what you ARE doing. Classifying TTRPG's into two groups. The ones you like which you claim ARE TTRPG's and the ones you don't like which you claim ARE NOT.

The idea that it is somehow "sick" to believe that was what you were doing is just not a normal way of looking at things.

There's a reason cats are not called dogs, and it's not to disparage dogs or cats. And reason we don't call card games board games, and it's not to mark one as inferior.

The games they were discussing are called Tabletop Roleplaying Games, the only one claiming they are in fact NOT TTRPG'S is you. You are not an authority that determines classification for the hobby. Therefore their claims about your behavior are correct.

The entire concept that classification is an insult is evil.

Now it's evil?

If that is evil then:

Intentionally misleading people by claiming to hold a baccalaureate degree that you never earned is evil.

I didn't disparage anything. I called it sick minded to consider classifying things a disparagement. It actually disgusts me that someone would consider it a disparagement.

Saying that you are disgusted by someones innocuous response to what YOU said to them is rude.

Are you forgetting where you challenged all of the systems we posted about by demanding that we explain why they were better than D20 which is “the perfect system”

I didn’t

If a guy can't tell the difference between ash trees and oak trees, thinking they are the same, is it a lie if he claims to have a bunch of oak trees but when you get there, the trees are all ash? Certainly it turns out to be an untrue statement, but simply because the guy couldn't tell the difference.

That’s cute but it’s a poor analogy for what you do. The reality of you is more like a property owner saying they have oak trees on their property, and you having never visited their property and only looking at a Google earth satellite view boldly declare that they are wrong about what trees they have. When pressed for evidence you respond about the total percentage of trees you personally planted last Arbor Day.

I wouldn’t be sad if Gunn’s pal Michael Rosenbaum got another bite at the apple. I was also a fan of Cryer’s Lex