The stat inflation may mirror the overall power inflation as the Star Wars movies go along.

In the original trilogy, and to some extent Rogue One, characters are regular mortals. There was probably some power inflation in the EU novels, though I don't have any good examples (I didn't read that many of the EU books, because most of them were trash).

The prequels and the sequel trilogy turned Jedi into superheroes and worse, but WEG was officially out of the picture by then. Fans have tried to add onto D6 to take it there, but IMHO the system breaks when you try to do that.

Andromeda is pulpy sci fi fun for the first two seasons, then the original showrunner got kicked out and the rest is not very good.

As for the Hercules & Xena RPG, I believe there was also a Dragonball Z RPG that used the same offshoot of WEG D6. Not sure if that game had any useful goodies you could borrow, I've never actually read it.

I just picked up Until Dawn for the PS4. It's essentially a teen horror movie in video game form, cast with digital versions of various actors including Hayden Panettiere, Brett Dalton, Rami Malek and Peter Stormare.

The gameplay is pretty basic, mostly walking around exploring and finding clues, combined with quicktime events at dramatic moments. There are choices you can make along the way that have repercussions later on, and there are multiple possible endings. The nice thing about the branching storylines is that the game makes these explicit, with a "butterfly effect" graphic that appears, and a screen in which you can review the various decision/success/failure points and the effect that they had on the current game, which should make it easy to replay for different results.

I picked it up used for $20, and for that price I am happy with it. The graphics are nice, with good likenesses of the actors, certainly better than recent wrestling games for instance. So far the storyline is decent, and the horror is a blend of creepy tension and scenery, with some action, jump scares, and gore.

Quote from: Lurkndog on October 04, 2020, 02:12:44 PM

I could also see some kind of "Spice Lord" class giving the player a Sandworm Rider feat that provides pluses to attracting the sandworm and steering it.

I’m not sure if feats fit into the OSR style specified by the OP, but a fighter or ranger variant that has that as a class ability could work. Or maybe a kit, though, those are from 2e, so I’m not sure they fit into the OSR either, unless 2e is considered old-school enough (depends on the DM, I suppose). “Sandrider” might be a more appropriate name for the class/kit, though, since that’s what they’re called in the books. “Spice Lord” sounds more like a thief variant class specialized in spice smuggling, which could work too.

My thought was that the "Spice Lord" would be a premiere class that became available once your character takes the spice and gets the blue eyes, etc. As I recall, the spice also unlocks some mystical abilities for all its users, not just Paul Atreides. "Spice User" is probably more accurate, but not as amusing.

I can't help but think this is going to kill cinema in the U.S., at least. It's been limping along ever since the dawn of VHS, and bleeding out slowly but steadily.

I don't think this will kill moviegoing, but it has certainly set it back.

The movie industry should have been pushing to get people back in theaters, even if at limited capacity with social distancing. Or, hell, do drive in in the parking lot. Instead they pulled back, and made it worse. Now the theater chains are suspending operations, and the studios are sitting on millions of dollars worth of debt from movies they aren't releasing, and they're screwing up the release schedule for 2021 already too.

They will be able to rebuild, but it will be harder now, and take longer.

I haven't noticed people hating on the concept of alternate history, though it can certainly be done poorly.
Some potential points of failure are:

1) The alternate history is poorly researched, such that players who have done even light reading reading on the subject find it to be just grossly wrong. Ideally, reading up on the subject era should pull players in deeper and inspire character concepts and adventure seeds.

2) It is unclear where the alternate history is departing from actual history. This can be because the historical period is one that players are unlikely to be familiar with, or because the author has not communicated the point of departure clearly, or because there are multiple points of departure whose effects are complicated and/or arbitrary. In all cases, the effect is that the GM frequently interrupts players with "you can't do that" or "it doesn't work that way."

3) The GM plans to use a historical event as a surprise pivotal event, and the players discover the event before it happens in game. For example, in a pirate game I ran, my players did some reading and quickly discovered that Port Royal would be hit by a massive earthquake in 1692. It wasn't a game breaker, but nobody bought a house in Port Royal.

4) The GM puts way too much of their own personal politics into the game, and turns it into either a screed, an indictment of the players, or a fairy tale.

5) The GM uses history, either actual or alternate, to railroad the players or push them onto the sidelines. The campaign should not end with "you all die, but at least you gave the real heroes some pluses."

In a lot of cases, just setting the rules out for the players at the start of the campaign will do a lot to avoid these problems.

For instance, when I ran my pirate game, with African-American players among the party, I knew that the issue of slavery could threaten to derail our fun on the high seas. I told the party up front that yes, historically, slavery existed, but nobody was allowed to be a slave owner, and I wasn't going to bring it up or make it a primary theme of the game. This was an acceptable compromise.

Here's Part 2 in the series

Wow. I was expecting to encounter at least one game I had seen or bought on speculation, but I've barely even heard of any of these.
Was there such a thing as regional game distribution back in the day? I guess I'm just used to getting word of mouth via the internet.

That being said, other than homebrews, what's the most obscure forgotten game you ever played, other than homebrews?

I did play Phoenix Command once in the 90's, with a GM from my HERO system group who was fixated on The Terminator. To his credit, he knew the byzantine system well enough to walk us through it in a reasonable amount of time.

Looking back on it now, I would describe it as "very tacticool."