Didn't something like that happen with one of the Batman films? Not that specifically, but that the accounting and profit sharing was set up so that some rights holders were definitely gonna get nothin'.

They'd check to see if had a National Review subscription, but beyond that, he's in.

I was stoked to see the Spitfire Grill reference. I should really watch that again to make final judgement on the joy I remember having in watching it and the general disdain it seems to have acquired.

Nope. You have nicely painted up some categories, but I don't think you got anything to put in 'em much less a consensus on their forms.

You are correct but also wrong.

I really did read that and think of someone who wakes up in the morning and has to brush the wicked supernatural mists away from her face before putting on a voice distorting jet-black pot helm.

Yeah, I spent a lot of time studying Technical Communication and while I tried to be forgiving (given that I'm not exactly keeping sharp with it at work these days) I just couldn't get past my building rage.

Agent Nice Line Read, Velma

Ugh, the 5th edition of Shadowrun also just came out.

I love the bizarre Westwing reference in that. And that we get to hear illustrators talking - I had no idea how National Geographic an experience that would be until I realized how often the conversation would be broken up by 'Hey, that's a great (or shitty) drawing!' they're like people who play guitar in a…

The actual story was out and about. I don't think Shakespeare was really introducing it to the public as a whole, so I don't know how much mystery there would have been. But that just makes the anachronisms stranger.

For the time period it would have been very common in Northern kingdoms for the oldest surviving brother to inherit, but very little about Shakespeare's Hamlet makes sense in terms of the original legend.

They have never ever seemed to me to be reasonably grown-up 30-ish year olds, but they have always demonstrated some basic competencies created by their various forms of broken-ness.

I have to give a tie to a Dwarven Jungle Druid from FR modeled on Queeqeg with a shot of Hunter S Thompson. I don't know if had any possessions other than a harpoon. Everyone was glowing with bling and he invested it all in tattoos (and other 'life-style' accouterments) and wild-shape murdered whole wings of our…

It is not. AD&D is actually a super clear model for the current edition.

I'm not playing it - in all probability - but I am mining the shit out of it for concepts, flavor, and discrete class mechanics.

You can play with friendly strangers at a comic shop. As unappealing as that sounds the down 'home' appeal of such establishments really lowers the stakes.

Fair enough, I did not mean to overstate your stance.

God, I hate the term low fantasy - unnecessary and nonsensical. It's the worst sort of amateur critic cludge with a side helping of reflexive dualism. And not only is it bad on its own the level of confusion it creates ends up degrading the usefulness of high fantasy which is actually a category with some merit.

That's a common perception, but a problematic one both for game-play reasons and if you want to emulate the heroic vocabulary of, say, Conan (where wizards are your Conan counter not your Conan solution) or Achilles (where a high level fighter can scythe down whole battlefields and wrestle rivers).