Recent content by jian

It depends on the game, but I think many campaigns benefit from the players having had input into the setting initially and continuing to do so during its course.

Finally saw it. It’s really good, a great example of a film that’s more than the sum of its parts. In no particular order: Brosnahan gives us, finally, the definitive version of Lois Lane on screen. The interview scene, as painful as it is, is a perfect character establishing scene for her. Ma...

There are some clear examples of advancement in superhero comics but they’re mostly to do with growing up. Nightwing is a better fighter, detective, and leader than Robin. The O5 X-men are all notably more powerful or accomplished than their teenage selves. That sort of thing. But otherwise...

As with any campaign, I think discussion with everyone about what sort of campaign you want, who the PCs are, and what they do, pays huge dividends. Focusing the campaign early so everyone knows where you sit in the superhero spectrum is pretty important. And finally, variety in what the PCs...

The DCAU is a very specific take on the DC universe and it’s pretty fun, I’m a big fan (mainly the Justice League stuff where Dwayne McDuffie could do some decent worldbuilding and character development), but I can see it’s a very specific take and it’s not really much like the comics at any...

As a representation of Batman, of the DC universe, or both? Solid grounds for both.

A fairly popular opinion, that. I don’t agree, but it is rather popular.

Yeah, honestly Timm was being pretty skeevy with that. I think my DCAU OTP there is Bruce-Diana, that had a lot of potential. Dick gets a lot of his subplots cut out in BTAS because he goes to becoming Nightwing without much explanation or character development and without any of his Teen...

Oh, that’s an interesting one. It was in the 90s/00s and some Batfam members didn’t exist then, but we still get Alfred, Dick, Barbara, and Tim. Ace appears later (in BB). Jason’s still dead. Who else should be around?

Speaking as someone who got very firmly sorted into Ravenclaw* at 12 and stayed there until I was at least 25*, and who therefore got You’re Clever Or You’re Nothing as a foundational Aspect for many years until I scrubbed it off my soul (still there, though), I’d say it’s an utterly terrible...

I haven’t listened to audiobooks for a while (basically because I don’t have an hour long commute to work every day now) but I tended to find fiction less satisfying that way as a reading experience, because I’d miss bits and have to go back, but found it pretty great as a background/mood...

Also read The Raven Scholar this week. It’s beautifully written, with some lovely character detail and worldbuilding, especially in the Trials, but ultimately disappointing - I found the common character thread of convenient (for the Big Bad) selfishness annoying. There’s an essentially cynical...

Finished The Incandescent by Emily Tesh (Some Desperate Glory), which is basically a reflection on adolescence set at a more realistic version of Hogwarts (drawing on Tesh’s own experience as a classics teacher). It’s pretty good, especially as an insight into how adolescent trauma can affect...

He did work on it but the book we have is not any version of the book he wrote at any one time, and isn’t a book he wrote at all, since more than half of it is not his words. No, sorry, necromancy. At best it’s necromancy in good faith, if you like.

Mmm, that is a highly debatable contention at best, honestly. Certainly Tolkien wanted to publish some version of the Simarillion at various times - the first as early as 1937, before even the Lord of the Rings - but it was rejected twice and he shelved it and worked on LotR instead. He then...