…ewwwwwww!
All Aboard The Random Stuff Express
I’m still lovin’ me some Heroes this season, but the writers/producer need to learn three lessons: (1) If you kill somebody, at least let them stay dead awhile (preferably all/most of a season) before you bring them back. Sylar should have not appeared this season. (2) You don’t need to threaten world destruction every season. (3) If you’re gonna bring in new heroes, make them interesting and feature them more.
I’m going to try to set aside some time this weekend for writing, now that the game/writing room is set up. I’ll most likely divide my time between a rules free RPG setting, a rules free adventure and the chartacters for my Dundracon TOON game.
Speaking of writing, I fully plan on putting On The Road With Violet: The Expanded Directors Cut on this very LJ sometime early in 2008. Mind you, this will be an expansion of already posted Violet entries and will run concurrently with new Violet entries.
I’ve been reading stuff about D&D 4th Edition recently and I have to say that I’m not impressed or interested in it. As for the lack of a D&D Compatible/D20 deal for the system, which would allow other companies to do what they did for/to D&D 3rd Edition, I can’t say as I think it’s a bad idea. Go on, tiny little RPG companies, and use the OGL…or better yet, hook up with a good offshoot like True20 or somesuch.
Gotta go to work. More bloggity blog blog blog later.
The Dociverse Blog 
I do think D&D 4th will be a substantial improvement over 3rd — simpler to build with, with more balanced classes/feats, if probably not that much less complicated to actually play except for the GM (though having different rules for monsters than PC types doesn’t exactly fill me with glee — I’d guess they’ll let you mix and match,though). (good signs I’ve seen: Perception as a single skill, all classes having per-day and per-encounter abilities, indication of dropping prestige classes, distinction between class features and smaller feats, the example feats posted (including a playable Toughness feat), no level adjustment races, more dynamic enounters as a default (though good GMs have been doing that anyway, even if they didn’t have CR rules for it). Mixed/bad signs: weapons for mages, more abstract (not actually like PC builds) monsters, others of the example feats (a “shape spell” style feat that relied on wisdom? How does that work?), the spectre of them going to a subscription model with more and more content online.
I knew they were OGLing the new system, and were unhappy with how “D20” played out, but where’s the skinny on having no “D20” trademark at all?
One of these days I have to share some of my TOON! character ideas with you.
Like Soupy Snails, a slug who came out of his shell.
Or Hawthorne, the Clinically Depressed Hamster.
Hell, they didn’t even let us think Bennet was gonna stay dead for an EPISODE. I was hoping he’d show up at some point with an eyepatch, as that would have been awesome.
It’s a problem when the writers need to show the audience how clever they are, rather than retaining mystery. Then again, if he had turned up later without explanation, I could see a lot of the standard television audience getting lost.
I would have preferred a different explanation for Adam being in the past than time travel at 1 second/second. Much more paradoxically fun if he had convinced Peter Petrelli to take him back in time to be Takeo Kenzai, although it would have lost much of the audience (I lot of people lack the capability to engage with time-travel stories). Now the only problem is explaining why Takeo Kenzai was the only apparent “hero” back then – unless they are all his descendants (and that’s the genetic link Mohinder is really looking for).
1) Congrats on the game/writing room!
2) *sigh* DunDraCon. Maybe next year for me.
3) Um. I’m really happy with “Violet” at the level of detail it is. Just thought I’d mention. An Expanded Director’s Cut doesn’t send me.
(tosses a pair of coppers into Wakko’s hat)