Recent content by Benjamin Olson

I'm excited, I just wish I knew for what. It's not Kelvin, it doesn't sound like a film outing for any established television cast. So another reboot? Or an original ensemble of characters? The filmmakers definitely succeeded on making an ensemble of original characters work in an established...

I mean ideas get into people's heads all sorts of ways, but I think if the two are connected it's because the origin source for both is likely that so many plays of Shakespeare (of which both Stoppard and Kurosowa were obviously avid fans) involve a secondary cast of (usually menial) characters...

I think the most useful high level adventure(s) would be ones built around achieving whatever long term character goals are most common, since many tables would be going into a high level adventure with characters looking at least vaguely towards some sort of retirement. Obviously the ideal...

My only changes would be prefacing it with a note to the DM that "In this room the player character meet STRAHD, read this aloud:", and cutting down on read aloud text elsewhere in the module. I agree it's not good as a typical standard for how to present a room, but it's okay to have a...

There was an infamous student at my college who allegedly had some sort of breakdown in a Classics class because other people were making light of the plight of the Pompeiians. I'm not sure it really happened as the legend has been told to me, with yelling and tears, but it 100% fit her...

D&D Honor Among Thieves would easily be my favorite, so I hope it's not cheating, then again TTRPGs do get into the slippery slope edge of what is "based on a game". Legend of Vox Machina is very much derived from their D&D actual play, but the storyline and (to a lesser extent) characters has...

Given that the series naturally ends with Pike leaving the Enterprise and the existing ensemble (partially) dissolving, but his character arc has a major foretold event to resolve which takes place later, and a TOS episode to tie into to really tie everything up I expect a series finale full of...

The opening day screening I went to of this well-promoted, well-reviewed, big budget film was at was in a giant theater but I was literally the only person in the room, which boads very poorly for the movie industry as we know it. A lot of the movies I see these days I'm the only one in the...

The Strange New Worlds season three finale specified that they were firing both ships' phasers in tandem at that space magic-infused stele on Skygowan to match the energy output of a star, yet we got no plasma holocaust at all. Now the episode just feels half-baked for one more reason. To be...

Fundamentally its just a joke about how stupid the end of St. Elsewhere was. Endings that recontextualize a whole series, season or whatever as a dream or such are frustrating, because being a tv show is already sufficient abstraction from reality; just have a narrative and stick with it...

This particular film franchise seems hellbent on wildly miscasting as many voice roles as possible. It's like the filmmakers set it out as a challenge for themselves. Which is not to say that much of the voice talent in the first one didn't do a good job, but whatever success they had in their...

Cool! I'm particularly impressed by the inclusion of optional cards to print out for monsters/enemy stat blocks. Flipping between four different monster manual pages for one combat is my number one pet peeve about running D&D combat, and slick cards for monster stats was the one fancy add-on...

Well the market leader is WotC, who seemingly have a suitable marketing budget to promote about three "big dumb campaign" type books a year, which then quickly get read and reviewed by influencer types who haven't actually tried to run them, make most their sales before many people have actually...

Not only is the chance of a payoff for all this accounting busy work low, but whatever gameplay fun there is to be had from roleplaying not having these mundane supplies can be equally reached by all manner of "you lost your stuff" scenarios. I'm very happy to play out a specific survival...

I think it averages an even split for me when running online, because I usually have battlemaps, tokens, and character art prepped for everything. For in person games I usuaully do a fraction as much of that sort of stuff, so typically I'm spending maybe half as much time on prep. It's hard to...