Older versions of DnD never gave one shit about so called Balance.

Look at the wandering monster tables, while adventuring through the Mountains you encounter (rolls dice) 1d6 Dragons.

Eh. Basic D&D explicitly ties dungeon level to monster difficulty. I don't think AD&D spells it out like that, but the general idea for a long time has been dungeons with level appropriate difficulty, and when you "graduate" to hexcrawl, the encounters get a bit more wild, wooly and unpredictable.

My Dark Sun copy came in the mail today.
The binding looks good, can't tell how the spine will hold up until I've broken it in.
The pages are nice and thick, not flimsy at all.
The inside pages have a white border around them, but considering it's a POD job from scans, I'm not bothered. From a quick flip through, the printing is clear and no errors, smudges, blurring that I can see.
The maps are all broken up into pages, but whadayagondo? I didn't expect them to print out the fold out maps seperatley.

I'm very pleased and can't wait to get my Ravenloft.

*edit*
The scans of the flip books are a little less neat. There's obvious scan elements, like a futzy white background. They're still clear, legible and useable. It's just a lot more noticeable that they are scans.

Twitter trolls suck. I think that's pretty self-evident.

Regarding Kathleen Kennedy,

Quote from: KingCheops on Today at 10:59:27 AM

Creatively it seems pretty clear to me that Filoni was the heir.  Lucas might have meant Kennedy to handle the business side of things to keep him free to be creative.  However, toss Kennedy into the also woke Disney and suddenly her stupid politics are being green lit -- especially given that Filoni hasn't done anything bigger than Clone Wars at the point Kennedy is producing the Sequel Trilogy.

If they're smart, and Favreau is willing to do it, just turn the whole thing over to Favreau and Filoni.  Filoni can apprentice under one of the better pop culture director/producers and get the missing pieces.  In the meantime Favreau does for Star Wars what he did for Marvel.

Personally, I didn't care for either the prequel trilogy or the sequel trilogy. After the original trilogy, my favorite Star Wars material so far has been Rogue One and The Mandalorian -- both of which were produced under Kennedy. That's not a great hit rate -- but it's a better hit rate compared to the period before Kennedy from 1984 to 2012, when there was nothing produced for Star Wars that I liked.

I liked Solo and Rogue One well enough. I did not like the sequel trilogy to the point where I have not and do not plan to watch Rise of Skywalker.
The Prequels have been beaten to death, ressurected and beaten down some more. Suffice to say, I liked the idea of the prequels, but the execution was not so hot.

Financially, it seems to me that she has been overseeing a big increase in production and profits for the franchise. Compared to the period of 1984 to 2012, it seems like there has been a major step up in production of mostly-profitable new Star Wars films as well as television series and other material. While Feige had greater success with the MCU - that was unprecedented. Prior to the MCU, Feige produced the Daredevil, Elektra, the Hulk, and the Fantastic Four movies - which were both critical and financial failures. Lots of other popular franchises have had much less financial success than Star Wars over the last decade.

The Michael Bay Transformers series was wildly profitable. I thought they stunk to high heaven and stopped watching them at #3. And the only reason I slogged through to 3 is because I'm a rabid Transformers fan and hoped beyond hope that the series would stop sucking. (I really liked Bumblebee, but the bar was so low by then anything was better than Bayformers nonsense)

I think the success of The Mandalorian was owed in large part to Jon Favreau, and Disney/Lucasfilm/Kennedy are in the process of shooting themselves in the foot over it's success.

A sample of the woke harassment Giana Carano endured when she wouldn't bend the knee.

I just treat it like AD&D Monster Level - a very rough guide to threat level, not something to build encounters with (late 4e was the only D&D version where 'encounter building' worked). I prefer status quo sandboxing with a big PC group who know when to run!

Oh, I do use BTB XP in my current game, so Challenge determines XP rewards if you beat the monster.

Now you've done it!

https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/how-do-you-handle-retreat/new/#new

Quote from: oggsmash on February 23, 2021, 03:15:03 PM

Quote from: Greywolf76 on February 23, 2021, 03:02:53 PM

I'm pretty sure that George Lucas is thinking to himself... "Was it all worth it? What have I done?"

(But, then again, he's 4.05 billion dollars richer, so he may not give it a damn... lol!)

 
  I dont know how much artistic pain he feels.  I do think he is probably scratching his head as to why the same company that was SO CAREFUL with marvel and its movies, let a lady take charge of Star wars who seems to not know how to do jack shit beyond get Stephen Spielberg coffee and promote here social justice bullshit.   Its a very, very, very expensive mistake for disney.  I guess the old saying too much easy success is part of the problem for people in long term success.

If rumors are to be believed, and given his presence on the setting of the Mandalorian (and the reverence given by Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni to him) I believe he is disappointed, to say the least.

The strangest thing is that before selling Lucasfilm to Disney in October, 2012 he had made KK co-chair of Lucasfilm. That's why she was promoted to president after Disney bought the company. Now, why on Earth he chose her as his co-chair I guess we'll never know, since it's very obvious she is one of me most incompetent and hated persons in Hollywood today.

Marvel Studios, however, is a different kind of animal thanks to Kevin Feige's expertise and competence as Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Studios. And it's very clear that KK is no Feige. Quite the contrary.

To make a guess, from what I've seen in interviews and articles, KK is competent enough to keep around, sign papers, hire actors, that kinda work, but putting in charge of Lucasfilm was way out of her capabilities. Plus she seems to be... let's put this nicely, not a very creative person. More of a middle manager type. Which is fine. Companies need middle managers.
Why Lucas chose her? I suspect he was tired of the fan backlash over the prequels, and just wanted out. KK was there, set up and ready to move into the spot, so he chose the first warm body, and not out of any creative merit.

Like a lot of middle management mentality, she wanted to justify her job and value, and so she latched onto the progressive "social justice" garbage. "The Force is Female" instead of actually telling good stories with the property, she's "empowering minorites" and other such bullshit.
[/speculation]

Quote from: Greywolf76 on February 23, 2021, 03:02:53 PM

I'm pretty sure that George Lucas is thinking to himself... "Was it all worth it? What have I done?"

(But, then again, he's 4.05 billion dollars richer, so he may not give it a damn... lol!)

 
  I dont know how much artistic pain he feels.  I do think he is probably scratching his head as to why the same company that was SO CAREFUL with marvel and its movies, let a lady take charge of Star wars who seems to not know how to do jack shit beyond get Stephen Spielberg coffee and promote here social justice bullshit.   Its a very, very, very expensive mistake for disney.  I guess the old saying too much easy success is part of the problem for people in long term success.

Didn't Lucas pick Kennedy to run the franchise after the sale?

I've tried using CR with Pathfinder, 4e and 5e, and so far, I wind up ignoring it or trying to reverse-engineer it to make sense to me.
My usual stumbling point is that the system assumes a party of X characters and one monster as it's base value. And I rarely use just one monster in an encounter. So I'm almost always having to apply some kind of modifier.

Anybody like it? Using it sucessfully?