Recent content by Mallus

Was the OceanGate sub implosion badly written?

D&D is heavily inspired by pulp adventure stories about larger-than-life protagonists. Proto-superheroes, if you will. I expect D&D PCs to be like that.

It was nice of Noah Hawley to make a great hour long Alien movie inside of his fascinating science fiction series set in the Alien universe.

I got it and I’m in Philly!

Am I alone in not understanding this framing? Do I need more coffee?

We started our current 5e 2024 campaign at 3rd level because it fit the story better. We started our old 5e campaign at 1st. It's all good. Except when the PCs start setting random things on fire...

The show wants us to ask, “Who are the aliens/monsters on Earth, the xenomorphs or the various posthumans?”. So the show has been blurring the lines between them. I think that explains why Wendy can go mano a mano against a xenomorph and win. Consider the latest episode: Nibs leaps across a...

Probably because the vast majority of fantasy and science fiction stories treat nonhuman characters as people. It’s why they work as characters. To paraphrase Sting, the Horta love their children, too.

Right now, a nonfiction horror saga about the Dust Bowl.

Wait, the Inquisition is bad?!

I come from a community that got bored with evil mortal races by the late 1980s. Well, my college DM and I did at any rate. Seemed to be going around though, considering some of the official 2e publications, or 1e, since playable Drow were introduced in the original Unearthed Arcana. Also, not...

And artists like Hawley dedicated to running at that line with reckless abandon. You can almost imagine the exact moment he hit on Peter Pan as his way into the Alien mythos (or franchise, whatever), his synapses lighting like lightning, the snap decision to include a character reading from...

It’s a reference to the Maginot Line, a series of military fortifications the French built along their border prior to WWII to prevent Germany from invading. Spolier: didn’t work.

About as subtle as naming the ship the Maginot.

I don’t think Kirk was feeling remorse, exactly. Or not just remorse. More like identification. They started out as explorers, the best and the brightest. Kirk was contemplating how many hard command decisions like the one he just made turned them into the scavengers.