Captain America was a Solid Movie

Went with friend over the weekend to see the latest Marvel movie. Completely enjoyed it.

Despite some waffling on the part of the people behind the movie (who for some perverse reason refused to openly embraced the American values of their title character), things still turned out very well indeed.

Indeed in a bit of irony, their attempt to downplay patriotism really only highlighted it. Having been raised by a member of the Greatest Generation, I'm familar with some of their traits. Understatement, deeds instead of words, and doing the right thing flowed naturally while lofty speeches were left to generals and Politicians.

At times they claimed that they were making a movie not about an American, but about a good man. They forgot to mention that he was a good man because of his American values. This may have been intentional, so as to not damage their future in the very left wing Hollywood. If so, good job.  If that wasn't the case and they really were attempting to remove America from Captain America, one can only be amused at their failure.

On other matters, they used the World War III German 'future weapons' look very effectively. Chris Evans was perfect in the role, and I never once saw the human torch. Hayley Atwell was amazing as Peggy Carter, and was one of the few superhero romances I've believed in while watching a film.

I give it a strong thumbs up.

Too Little Time, Too Much Work

Been very busy of late, and what free time I have has been going into finishing up Age of Heroes for printing and working on the Claymore Campaign Supplement.

On the core rules front- my wonderful editors (my wife and an old friend) are just about caught up with me on their proof reading. Massive pain that and I doubt it will ever be 100%. But it should be good enough for us to use without it being instantly too painful to continue.

Lots of work, and I'm really not very good at this. It's why it's taken so long to do it. But if I don't do it now, it may never get done. So it's time for doing.

Currently at 142 pages in the proof-reading. About another 30 already written pages to go. Need to finish up two more sections.

Currently on the magic item creation part. This should be short as I don't intend this to be a major part of the game. For one thing, it really won't allow the creation of permanent items. Few things can more quicky ruin a setting than unrestricted creation of magic items. Cost and rarity of materials are no real control of this problem.

On the Claymore front, all the key rules are in place, and we play-tested it a little this last weekend. Went quite well with mid-level characters. This weekend we'll see how it does with high level ones.

Quite happy with the write ups of the primary monster from the series and one of the series characters. I'd post them but since no one has the rules it's rather pointless to.

Talking about the weather...

Currently typing up the rules for weather. Something that most games never concern themselves with although there was a time that they did (some favor of Rolemaster was the last time I think I encountered it myself- maybe their Middle Earth supplements).

It's a impossible subject. Way too many influences to make a short *and* good simulation of the subject. So like most of this section of the rules I'm going for an example and favor. It should work fine. Robust enough that it can easily be expanded if needed, and solid enough that it can work for a whole region of the world.

Based it all on Kansas City, because it is the center of the universe and all.

Age of Heroes: and on to the boring stuff....

With only a couple of minor details, I've finished the layout and updates for the main rules for Age of Heroes. That is character generation, combat and the magic section. Those must make up 99% of  typical rule use.

The remainder is what I've always thought of as the boring stuff. Travel time, determining when characters naturally die, herbal lists, travel times, sample bestiary, doing the layout for the character generation example, etc.

It will be a bit of hump to get over, but it's going well so far.

The Endless Search for a Game System

Saw this article over on the the RPG Blog II. I respond there, but thought I'd put my reaction with just a bit of expansion here as well.

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I agree and disagree.

I agree in that once you find a system that matches your needs- just stay with it.

I agree in that if you don't find a system that matches yours needs- create your own, in whole or as house ruled modification. Then just stay with it.

A different system is only required if the needs change. Most often some changes in your existing choice can meet those new needs just fine. I haven't changed game systems in 30 years save for version updates.

I disagree however that this is possible for most people. That's because they keep picking poor systems, but they never realize it. Dissatisfaction  builds, and off they going looking for a new game.