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As much as I dislike that sort of thing, I think it's actually unfair to label The Last Samurai as one of those movies. (well, aside from the lame final scene, maybe) Cruise's character is the one who's saved from himself - he doesn't become a better samurai than the Japanese and rescue them...

Belkar cracks me up, but it bugs me every time I see him kicking butt in combat, because it just doesn't make sense within the D&D ruleset. For some reason - maybe because I got a chance to see a dual-wielding halfling ranger in play not too long ago, in RL - he's the only character in OotS my...

Like jonesy said, it's kind of hard to give detailed answers without spoilers. What people call various magic users seems to largely be a cultural thing - in the end, everyone (or virtually everyone) who uses magic does so by accessing the power of the Warrens. (regardless of whether they're a...

I think it was sort of clear his point was that it was a "laughingstock as a military force", not that all paramilitary forces are inherently laughable, even in the roles they're actually designed for. Regardless... The problems with the logic behind Starfleet stem from the same source as many...

...except that, on the show, they don't. They sometimes lose shields, and the ship is fine, aside from light damage. Other times, they're badly torn up, but only rarely do they lose all power to other vital systems. The shields are not generated on the fly, they appear to rely on their own...

Not really. If you have the ability to disassemble matter all the way down to sub-atomic particles, and then put it back together exactly as it was, you must have already resolved all other issues relating to measurement and positioning, and they're at that point trivial. And while I have no...

Nah, he's actually right about that. MIT students and grads are actually kinda snobby about using a different format, one similar to the way software releases get labeled (1.0, 1.02, etc.) and IIRC not referring to the courses by anything someone not "inside" could recognize, if they can help...

So making sure all those individual organs, blood vessels, capillaries, cells, molecules and atoms within a person stay aligned the way they're supposed to doesn't require precision? According to the ST background material, transporters are accurate all the way down to the quantum state of the...

... which makes so much sense in a setting with transporters. :) I usually try not to nitpick sci-fi shows, but anything with an associated "Technical Manual" has it coming. I think they designed the bridge placement (and kept it throughout the various series) like that for two reasons: Looks...

We don't know if the fence is always on, or whether it triggers when someone walks through. If the latter's the case, then there's a sensor of some kind, and it might be calibrated to only go off for animals or objects over a certain mass. This might work in any number of ways which are...

1. "Patch" claimed that the security system was not working. Pushing him into it was not murder, it was calling his bluff. If nothing happend, fine - but if he fried, it was what he had coming for trying to get someone else killed by walking into a trap. 2. I have no problem with Jack's...

Will Wright's style of game design doesn't appeal to me at all. His games - especially the later ones - have hardly any content, and despite all his talk about open-ended gameplay, they're incredibly shallow and limiting. He likes to talk about people creating their own stories - hundreds of...

It depends on the type of game I'm running - but in a "standard" D&D game, I effectively don't allow it. I say effectively, because as a DM I reserve the right (since I don't like that sort of thing in a high-fantasy heroic game, and most if not all people I play with don't either) to squash any...

Nope, not even remotely balanced. When the guidelines for determining CR and ECL value a hit die of Fey the same as a hit die of Outsider, it's pretty obvious something is wrong. And dragons being "special" was one of the biggest mistakes the designers of 3E ever made. You have to be out of...

Writing a lot about the rules does not automatically make someone good at it. Perhaps I haven't read enough of his stuff, but what I have failed to impress me...

Lots of stuff by Mike Mearls - in fact, by many of the people working at WotC - makes me cringe. It does not, however, surprise me. I used to think that the key requirement for being a Professional RPG Writer was a rock-solid understanding of gaming systems, but it isn't. (I still think that...

Elaborate, please? Too weak, too strong, too...?

A well staged failed public assassination attempt could very well be just what a trailing politician might need in order to win the election. Of course, it could be spun by the oppossition to suggest that the mob ties his father had possibly extend to Nathan as well, but less than two weeks...

Depending on how long Matt was out (since the police only got there as he was coming around) she could have had enough time to retrieve it.

That's easily enough solved if, like a real twin, she doesn't have the same fingerprints as her "sister". She has a tattoo her other half doesn't have, after all, so it's not that huge a stretch - it's clearly something more than just two minds in the same body. Beyond that - it's a hotel...