Duckman

Apparently I missed it in the COVID mess and it is now popular out here in the midwest... Anyone familiar with it and able to give me a comparison to other games I might know?

Unless you are talking about speeds approaching c no spaceship would have a maximum velocity... My impression is that everything in the combat arena is going to be at local speeds anyway... A few km/s kinda being the max. If the combat zones are 300,000 km across then I have misunderstood.

Thanks, that is an excellent summary and enough to make me join the discord for more discussion. I actually wrote a turn-based tracker as an assistant for pen-and-paper (based on converting the old ICE Spacemaster to true 6D) 25 years ago. Seeing it realized as a real-time sim is awesome.

@JustjokinI know you are playing this... Interested in reviews... Is it true 3D? The feature-set sounds nice but I despise space combat that does not recognize true 3D... Curious what you have to say.

Ok, to be fair, Betty was 2 weeks shy of 100 and Madden was an NFL lineman in the concussion era and he was 85. Those are really respectable tenures for both of them.

So I mentioned this conversation to my wife (who writes professionally and has connections in Hollywood). She mentioned issues with the process in Hollywood that actually explain why they would buy a property and use so little of it. It's about steps and the order they happen in. First, one writer gets the idea to produce a screenplay and sell the idea. Since people talk, this is the point at which he has to buy the idea since waiting until people are lined up on it means the price goes up. Then, because Hollywood is still largely a patriarchy who all need to pee on things to show their ownership/contribution the script passes through many hands and rewrites, each of which results in drift from the original property whether motivated by marketability, reducing production costs or just the need to put their own unique stamp on things. At the end of the process things have changed because marketing and producers have weighed in to say they don't want a CW-like YA property, they want something more adult and the producers have said they don't want to spend budget on this set or that special effect or what not... So in the end something that was intended as a faithful interpretation comes out as... What we end up seeing in this or _I, Robot_ or what have you. I dunno how bad the patriarchy still is but the process is probably still pretty accurate.

Don't get me wrong, the game is great but the community sucks rocks (I mean so bad they make the Blood Bowl league community look like sweet little puppies) and I didn't see anything new about the game itself... Is there any reason to move to this over continuing to play WG:RD?

Normally I would agree with this but isn't the WoT adaptation a more mature adaptation/interpretation? I mean, I understand why they made the choice for the show but as a departure from the books doesn't it make the series *less* YA-friendly? (I have not been watching so that is a legitimate question.)

I think you are missing my point. It's not a question of why make a show. The show in and of itself is fine. The question is why pay to use the name. You remember the Will Smith "I, Robot" movie? They paid a bunch of money for the rights to use "three laws of robotics". the name "I, Robot" and I would have to go look up the IMDB entry to see how many names they used (Dr. Calvin - yes, R. Daneel Olivaw - no, etc.)... They made it an action film with essentially zero commonality with Azimov beyond that. Why spend the money for the name if it does not matter? What are you gaining that is worth the licensing?

I don't disagree with what you're saying here. I'm asking where in that calculus is there any benefit to Amazon? Why would Amazon license the WoT name if they a) aren't interested in the existing fanbase, b) won't see addition profit from someone watching the show and then buying the books because they liked it. At that point why pay licensing instead of naming the main character Joe and writing the same show? I mean, what I am hearing is that without the names you would not really recognize it since they changed the ages, changed the path, changed the main points of contention, etc. At that point all you are paying for is the names and what do you gain from that aside from pissing of people like BroG and me?

So what are the changes? The engine looks the same. The units look the same. The community will be the same trash edgelords that are in WG:RD chat all day. Why would I invest more money?

The part I don't get is why pay for name recognition if the product you put out is going to piss of the people who are the core fans of the property? You'd be better off using a different name and writing the same story so that people can give it a chance on its own merits and not be roasting you over an open fire in the reviews. Because of the name I will never watch it. I'd generally give a fantasy series a chance though and would watch it if it was something that I was not counting on butchering my memories. Do they really get that much free advertising from the name that it is worth the costs?

This is false. The Crossbow is the implement. The bolt does the 1d10. Conclusion: Your soul is 1SP per 20.

So, is Div. 2 defunct? It's been 5 week since we rolled and Rhuell and kb10r have not managed to get their match in...

Thank you. This is what I think about first every time I see this thread.

YA can be a best seller.

Remember... When the first 5 books were publish they were shelved with Eddings and Brooks. It was marketed as a YA fantasy coming of age story for Rand (and to some extent the whole ensemble). Even today Amazon marks The Eye of the World as aimed at 12-17 year-olds, the classic definition of YA. I don't know what they did with the series after Jordan called Kings-X in the middle of The Fires of Heaven and scrapped his entire setting and planned character development. I also cannot speak for the TV series since you argue that they threw out the coming of age stuff for more adult topics (again, not that this surprises me).

It was formulaic when it was originally written as well but at least back then it was written passably well for YA fantasy. The problem is that it was originally plotted and written as a 6-book series apparently (I would have guessed 5 personally) and when they approached the end they decided to "just keep writing" which kinda ruins any plotting you had. For the first 4.5 books the universe was consistent and it was a typical "coming of age" YA fantasy with character faux pas and growth and everything. Apparently that was thrown out for more adult characters... The problem is that it also means that half to two-thirds of the material that was actually plotted was also thrown out if that was the case (and that would not surprise me). I had considered giving this one a try as I basically feel that GRR Martin can't write to save his life but that the actors who actually had to find some character motivation managed to save it when they brought it to screen (at least improve it depending on how you felt about the red wedding and other such events). I figured I might at least enjoy some of it the way I did with GoT but it sounds like even that was failed based on editorial choices.

@Falcon64I'm going to say tentatively Saturday if that works for you. I'll try to get you details in a DM this morning.

@WreckingBallI'll see what I can do to free up some time tomorrow evening. I should know by noon, probably be aiming for sometime after dinner.

Thanks to @Swensos83for an amusing match. I hope he was able to enjoy it in spite of the dice... I thought you all were kidding about how badly the dice hated him but I swear he must wake up every morning and pee in Nuffle's Cheerios. I had two outright kills (at least one was a Journeyman) and his own dice were equally unfriendly to him.

Sorry, @Swensos83, life has been busy. What does your weekend look like?

@Swensos83Looking forward, you and I have drawn each other for week 4. I'm available Monday if things roll and then I am busy until Thursday/Friday. Let me know what kind of availability you have. I am eastern so starting later than about 8p Pacific is hard for me.

Looks like Div. 2 Day 3 is ready to be rolled but appears that the folks in power are out having fun without us?