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Many threads benefit from a perfect Ambrose Bierce moment. This is one.

I often quote Roger Ebert’s line “It’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it’s about it.” Moses and settings I’m interested can both get my attention, but what makes or breaks a sale for me is what the game does with them - what do we get to do in play, and what don’t we. As an example: A...

Mars does have high-speed winds. the Martian got that part, among others, very right https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/the-fact-and-fiction-of-martian-dust-storms/

That, and changes to every tissue and organ in the body. The challenges for long-term life in space keep mounting as we get more experience with shorter terms.

Underland is here waiting for me. Read in the last few weeks: A City on Mars: Can we settle space, should we settle space, and have we really thought this through? by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith. This is one of those rare books where you really do miss something significant in the audio version...

I think I have to go with the deep field view for total grandeur, but it’s all marvelous.

She is by far the most gorgeous cat I’ve ever lived around. She and her brother Moonrise are constant delights, and do a lot to help me get through bad times.

@pemerton : I haven’t gotten to all the details in QW yet, but in HQ2, there were often prominent NPCs with a few abilities spelled out and sometimes scored, and likewise for prominent elements of the scene like artifacts, long-term environmental excitement, and soon. You’d start with those and...

Sure, with the note that I know the first of your examples pretty well but the second effectively barely at all. Some things about Cortex fall through holes in my head and so not stick. Also, Sunset says hi; she’s nuzzling my hand and the phone vigorously ( ). Pardon any typos. Things in QW...

No no, you fool! Reread it gently and relaxedly, not furiously! :)

The abstract resistance is one of my all-time favorite things ever in RPG mechanics, and one that spoils nearly every alternative approach for me. It gives me liberty to consider complex scenes in much more detail before summing them up. I am such a slavering fan about it.

It’s worth seeing David Cronenberg’s film version of Naked Lunch, which combines material from the novel with Burroughs’ own life. “It’s a literary high. A Kafkaesque high. It makes you feel like a bug.” Ultraviolet Grasslands has a huge Michael Moorcock streak in it.

It’s not an exclusive I. :)

Well, @Marc Radle. If you’re going to be that way, I may have to do these things.

And in the meantime, Hamlet’s Hit Points is just sitting there.

I guess the obvious response to all f this is “So what?” Most people don’t buy any RPG. The question is whether there’s enough interested people to make this viable, and there’s evidence that it is. Regency-era RPGs and supplements have sold decently this last decade. The kind of fantasy this...

Pineapples are way more ductile than most people know. C.S. Lewis, “Learning in War-Time”: Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right. But humanity long ago chose to...