Recent content by Thomas Shey

That doesn't mean they'll keep redoing the gear constantly.

It depends on how important consistency of expression of the former is to you. Truth is, most longtime supers tend to not be quite the same from writer to writer, and with the higher powered ones like you name, not even within one writer. There's a lot of "we're not going to use this power...

Smith had a very black and white view of alien evil sometimes. He always leaned into that. You saw it regularly throughout the Skylark books.

I will point out she's presented as the most powerful of the female mutants, at least in potential, however. You could take that tact in an update of the story too, of course; Kimball and Clarissa as the strongest of the Lensmen. Well, they're intertwined, of course. Though technically her...

You'd be surprised at how many people's reaction is "We've seen this before" when encountering an older work that inspired a later one. I hit it when introducing people to 50's SF movies with some frequency, over and above the technical expectations.

Female superheroes who who were not sidekicks of or adjacent to male heroes (Batgirl, Supergirl, Hawkgirl) were actually pretty rare at DC in the 60's once you get away from Wonder Woman. There was a female human Green Lantern late in the day, and some alien ones of some significance (Katma Tui...

I think you've forgotten what an important plot element Clarissa's position as the first female Lensman and the whole breeding experiment part of the process. Among other things it has impact how, if at all, you plan to engage with the whole "Children of the Lens" part of the storyline.

Well, to some degree both, but I was primarily thinking in terms of other games. Even though even back then it was the biggest fish in the pond, TSR tended to acknowledge there were other fish; note that Dragon use to do reviews of other games. I believe in part it was because the D20...

As I've noted before, I spent enough effort over enough time I'm fairly comfortable making a generality here, though not a universal. Other people can feel free to ignore me as they wish. The fact I say it was more common in no way implies it was universal.

Its less about gamism than the fact modern gamers--and again, I think this trend started a long time ago now--have leaned into genre emulation rather than the kind of simulationism that Micah cares about. (I know certain circles consider that the same thing but I'm not one of them).

Which is why it can afford to largely ignore the rest of the hobby. It used to be more intertwined with it back before 3e, probably because it wasn't assumed it was going to cover all ground (even though TSR had other games in other genres).

Sure. Its the question of what you decide to keep and get rid of that's the question. Do you toss the whole Red Lensman thing out completely, or have her distinct for some other reason? There's other elements that raise those sorts of questions, too.

Little bit of both. While not as bad as some of his cohort, Smith's handling of women was--not ideal. And I'm not sure we ever saw a non-white person among his human characters (though maybe he just didn't describe them in enough physical detail for it to show). (And as others have mentioned...

i saw the hobby as a whole moving away from sim well before the 3e era. I won't speak of D&D specifically here because I wasn't involved in the period of the two AD&Ds much, but D&D lived in less of a vacuum disconnected from the rest of the hobby in the 80's and 90's than it does now, if anything.

They'd have to decide what to do with the period-piece elements. Same problem Skylark has (though maybe even worse there).