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  1. Thomas Shey

    What is "railroading" to you (as a player)?

    I'm just saying I'd think whether you want to be telling people who play different than you and have different priorities that you don't think they're playing an RPG when you're describing playstyles that have been in the hobby for a half century. I realize you said "doesn't feel like it to...
  2. Thomas Shey

    What is "railroading" to you (as a player)?

    I have to just note that there are plenty of people who, effectively, play RPGs as single-character board games where they get to define the character associate with the play piece and sometimes have discussions in character. The line you're drawing here is crossed back and forth all the time...
  3. Thomas Shey

    Let's Talk About Metacurrency

    That's one way, but its not close to a primary source, because you'd get one Hero Point out of it, and you're going to need more than that. And no, I don't have any sign that sudden-death takedowns are an intended result of M&M, and its one of the few games I was involved in extensively enough...
  4. Thomas Shey

    Let's Talk About Metacurrency

    Sometimes the desires we have are strings that don't meet in the middle. But I just wanted to note that if you want someone to be able to play Batman as he's commonly depicted, you have to let something go here. True superhero settings (as contrast with people-with-powers settings) have some...
  5. Thomas Shey

    Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

    Good gods either Frontier, Discord, or both were being big jerks tonight.
  6. Thomas Shey

    Let's Talk About Metacurrency

    That's really more of a people-with-powers setting. You can do that with some systems, but its not going to look much like a superhero setting at all, other than the fact powers are present.
  7. Thomas Shey

    Let's Talk About Metacurrency

    I have to point out that's back to something you've been on the other side of in other threads: "You can't play this kind of character unless you're as smart as he is" which is in practice "You can't play him unless you're also a strategic and logistical genius."
  8. Thomas Shey

    Let's Talk About Metacurrency

    Like I said, the way the damage save system works, you'd just have supers that folded up ridiculously frequently on a first shot without Hero Points, because the D20 roll has so much swing in it. and the categories are so broad. Something like Champions can get by without use of metacurrency...
  9. Thomas Shey

    Let's Talk About Metacurrency

    Its not been infrequent for it to not even be close. So at that point, you've got mostly people in setting making guesses that aren't particularly well founded. The Spider-Man note has hardly been a unique situation.
  10. Thomas Shey

    Trailer Lanterns | Official Teaser | HBO Max

    And during the interim period they had people like Jessica Cruz and Jo Mullein (and Jade far as that goes). Let's not act like those weren't changes; they just changed again. DC is conservative and tends to revert to the mean on their characters over time, but acting like things never change...
  11. Thomas Shey

    Let's Talk About Metacurrency

    I think that's a pretty big overstatement with M&M at least. Pull the metacurrency out of it and the damage/effect system would break right quick (because it would be too linear).
  12. Thomas Shey

    Let's Talk About Metacurrency

    If there's no consistency, I'm not really sure I see how relevant any fictional measurement matters. At that point its just color commentary.
  13. Thomas Shey

    Let's Talk About Metacurrency

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

    Let's Talk About Metacurrency

    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...
  15. Thomas Shey

    Trailer Lanterns | Official Teaser | HBO Max

    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.
  16. Thomas Shey

    Trailer Lanterns | Official Teaser | HBO Max

    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...
  17. Thomas Shey

    Trailer Lanterns | Official Teaser | HBO Max

    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.
  18. Thomas Shey

    Trailer Lanterns | Official Teaser | HBO Max

    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...
  19. Thomas Shey

    Trailer Lanterns | Official Teaser | HBO Max

    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.
  20. Thomas Shey

    Let's Talk About Metacurrency

    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...
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