Recent content by ART!

Colossus: The Forbin Project is something I somehow didn't see until a few years ago and, if one can get past the '70s sexism, it definitely deserves to be on this list. I agree that Silent Running is over-rated. It has moments, but overall iI find it overly sullen, and it has the pacing...

Phase Four is one of those movies that left an impression on me when I caught on tv as a kid, but have never seen since. I really need to remedy that!

I can see how making characters can get you excited about playing characters, and would also increase your knowledge of a game. I lean towards "making characters" not being play, but it can contribute to play or make play better. Of course, if you use your excitement or knowledge of the game to...

Arguably relevant: for me, learning to play is part of the experience of playing the game. For some/many people, having to learn a game can be a deterrent to playing, or they kind of fight the learning process. I'm a slow learner of new games, but I like the process of learning - I guess because...

A piece of general advice - from the same teacher - for a trap creatives often fall into: "You don't have to run down the street yelling 'Stinky fish! Stinky fish!'; if the fish stinks, people will know". Meaning, don't begin conversations about your work with apologies or conditional...

The teacher of a creative writing class I took addressed this by saying "the river of creativity does not stop flowing". If you're creative enough to be creating things, you're creative enough to keep creating things. New ideas will come. Don't be too precious about your ideas. This might not...

For All Mankind is one of my favorite shows of the past few years. I especially like the first couple seasons, where it's the '70s and then the '80s. That's partly nostalgia for me, partly that in the storyline of the show that's when things were more seat-of-your-pants - when the series gets...

Whoever publishes the next SW ttrpg should, IMHPO, make it the most user-friendly game ever devised. It's SW - keep it simple, fun, and easily digestible.

And you exit highways via a "slip road" (according to my vaguely British-sounding "English (UK)" Google Maps voice assistant thingy). Bananas.

Heck, even just 50 years ago - or less. I'm reading Factfulness right now, by Hans Rosling, and it's about misconceptions we have about how bad things are.

My view is that Tolkien was a truly great writer, but a bad novelist - which is fine, because he had no interest in writing a novel; in a lot of ways, he wanted to write what you're describing.

If only the young, misunderstood Balrogs knew that the nerdy Mithril Science teacher gets them - she was them, in her Maiar youth. More's the pity. I think Rings of Power did an...okay? job with Tom. I wasn't annoyed by how he was used, written, or played - but I wasn't in love with it, either...

Aside from the value, return on the dollar, etc., short of some truly global collapse/catastrophe, humans are not going to stop exploring space. Exploring is just one of the things we do.

I made the mistake of running a thri-kreen fighter weapon master (using 5.5E's weapon masteries/properties) with the two-weapon fighting style. I mean, I learned a lot - mostly that I will never do that again. Too complicated - I had to make a combat flow-chart for that guy. That said, he...

We watched the first episode of the recent tv series adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo, on PBS. It has a good lead actor, and the production looks very good, but the rest is very by-the-numbers. It feels choppy in places, and does this annoying thing of - multiple times - showing us...