Recent content by Paul Farquhar

I ain’t never seen a horse fly.

I think this is changed from the original. I haven’t looked at it for a long time, but it had a wilderness hex map with a bunch of encounters. The ghost would appear when the party approached within a few miles of the pyramid and point the party in the right direction. They didn’t need to follow...

Maybe. I wouldn’t claim to “get” King, and have never enjoyed his work. My personal impression is he wallows in misery and the awfulness of humanity without offering any hope.

"The size of a piece of paper" :unsure:

And that relates to archetypes how? The AC arms race has been an issue at high levels since 1st edition. It's built into the hit resolution system. If you want to fix it it's "roll to hit" that you need to change, powers and archetypes are a sideshow. Or just use the 1st edition solution...

Yeah, I was resistant to it at first, because it was too radically different to what I was used to. As I got older I realised that my conservatism was a mistake, and like Eberron (mostly, I'm not a fan of entrenched nobility as rulers), especially the logic of considering the impact of magic on...

You can make higher levels tougher by using higher than suggested CR enemies. Or getting some less skilled players. The difficulty bar is intentionally set low because "everyone dies" doesn't make for a satisfying narrative. I don't see the connection between archetypes and game difficulty.

Good design is predicated on having a clear objective.

Why? What problem are you trying to fix? Without knowing what you are trying to achieve, The only comment I can make is “if it ain’t broke don’t try and fix it”.

A good superhero (and other genre movie/TV show) is all about the subtext. Thunderbolts isn’t about a bunch of underpowered heroes fighting an overpowered villain. It’s an allegory for depression, and shows traumatised people supporting each other. The problem with Man of Steal was its subtext...

Yeah, there were a couple of external shuttle shots. They did cut away from showing the shuttle leaving the Enterprise, but we have seen that before. Personally, I think limited budgets encourage creativity. Throw too much money at a thing and you end up with a lot more FX shots and a lot less...

And none of Conan’s injuries are ever life changing, which most of them should have been if we were being realistic. That is if he survived the infection in an age without antibiotics. In the Hawkeye TV series Clint is dealing with the life changing injuries he has received through...

Which is the biggest unreality of all. The real world doesn’t fit into nice neat narratives where things happen for a reason. Barry goes for a walk and a tree falls on them. The end.

And what’s the point of the story? Entertainment. It doesn’t really have anything to say about the real world. He just wants us to look at pain, suffering and trauma and be entertained by it. That seems pretty pornographic to me.

Voyager did it. I suppose TNG did it too, although being Picard he was more infiltrate the bad guys rather than phaser them in a vest. Janeway is never happier than when she is running around with a big gun.