Whipporwill

I am left no choice but to post this link.

This thread needs more Deborah Kerr.

The online reaction to Firefly among science fiction fans was pretty dire. People sneered at it for its bizarre aesthetic and its refusal to contain any science whatsoever. It was only after the cancellation that people started acting like they had enjoyed it.

Screw Star Wars. Too much Star Wars crap on the market already. Let's have some original ... Oh, who am I kidding. No one wants original ideas. Publishers won't fund them and gamers won't buy them. It's all about franchises and milking the morons. What's the Final Fantasy count at now? Thirteen?

Kate Gosselin and the octomom are extreme outliers. The fertility rate in the US is almost exactly two children per woman. ALL the population growth in the US comes from immigration. Industrialized countries experience very low fertility rates, often below replacement levels. As countries industrialize, their fertility rate drops. World population is predicted to peak around 2050-2070 at 8-9 billion.

And criminals are used to having people not trust them, so clearly I cannot choose the goblet in front of you.

If the odds of Divine intervention are low enough, that too must be impossible.

Christ, what an imagination I've got.

I'm tired of boring old crates. Amphorae FTW!

The characters, story, and setting of Dungeon Siege can be summed up as "You! Go there!" without much loss of detail. I had a point, but I've forgotten it.

Fans of literature may not clamor for "good grammar" but they certainly do clamor for all sorts of stuff. I would say that if fans clamor for it then it's NOT really a core principle of RPG-making, since those are mostly taken for granted. The people clamoring for turn-based RPGs are more equivalent to Potter fans that wanted Harry and Hermione to get it on. Not so much core principles as people wanting to see what they like and getting upset when the author has a different idea. Come to think of it, us getting upset about Obsidian making a dungeoncrawl is the same thing. It's not that any core principles are being violated, it's just something we don't want.

What bizarre, out of left field IP will Obsidian announce next? Who hasn't been hankering for an Avonlea RPG?

The rainy season usually lasts from December through February, occasionally beginning in November or lasting through March. Rain is very rare outside this period, although July and August may feature occasional light showers. Santa Ana winds are hot, dry winds that blow down from the desert and make everyone miserable. Crime and disorder are reputed to spike during these winds. The desert, by the way, is the Mojave (Mo HA vee) Desert. There are none of these, but there are plenty of Joshua trees and creosote bushes.

In fact, I walked out of Saving Private Ryan after about twenty minutes because I found it so ham-handed that I couldn't take it seriously. But I don't mistake my personal failure to connect with the movie for evidence that the movie is worthless. Going on about private Ryan simply shows that you missed my point, which was that different movies attempt to do different things, not that Black Hawk Down should have been like The Hurt Locker. They're both fine movies. I suppose Saving Private Ryan is a fine movie too; certainly lots of people thought highly of it. By the way, fiction is not required to be strictly realistic. The Godfather is not a realistic portrayal of the Mafia, Apocalypse Now had nothing to do with the war in which it was purportedly set, and Avatar ...

I watched The Hurt Locker last night -- instead of the Oscar telecast, ironically enough -- and while I won't go so far as to say that it's better than the other nominees (most of which I haven't seen) I will say that it was a very good movie. Complaining that it isn't like Black Hawk Down is like complaining that 2001 isn't like Star Wars. It's not meant to be. The film is a character study of Sgt. James. It's about who he is as a person and a soldier, how he's suited for his job, how he's not suited for his job, and why he does his job in the first place. By the end of the film we have a complete picture of a fairly complex guy. We never receive this kind of portrait of anyone in Black Hawk Down, indeed, most of the characters remain ciphers throughout. Now, I could turn around and say that makes The Hurt Locker a better movie, but it really just makes it a different movie.