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[Orange Wizard]

New Star Trek movies are pretty shit all round tbh, I mean they're decent space sci-fi action in a vacuum but unlike space Star Trek is not a vacuum and the reboot is very different in, like, everything, except ip

[penguinofhonor]

Who's calling the new Star Trek movies progressive? I haven't heard anything like that, but I've seen plenty of people call them sexist. Especially after the second one, when they introduced a hot blonde love interest so they could have her strip down to her underwear on camera at one point. Even ignoring any sexism, that felt like an awkward locker room scene pulled from a high school comedy. Completely out of place in Star Trek.

The next one is looking like it's going to continue the trend, at least if you're going by that trailer where Kirk explains to Spock how crazy Earth women are.

[Tack]

Yeah did a pathfinder murder mystery and the paladin just detect evil pinged the villain straight up.

[Neonivek]

New Star Trek movies are pretty shit all round tbh, I mean they're decent space sci-fi action in a vacuum but unlike space Star Trek is not a vacuum and the reboot is very different in, like, everything, except ip

I have a lot of issues with the show in general... One is that these are the "Teenie Bopper" versions of iconic characters... The second is that the movie is an action movie first and a smart movie second. Which yes movies can be action and smart... but in this series case Action and Smart fight for dominance and action always wins.

Like the sexism and racism... believe it or not I am kind of fine with because I expected it (though Kahn was a step too far). It is very common for movies today to have faux-progressivism but never follow through (How to Train Your Dragon being a HUGE one with Astrid). In fact the only time I am annoyed by it is whenever someone touts it is progressive.

Yeah did a pathfinder murder mystery and the paladin just detect evil pinged the villain straight up.

Here is what you do... 1) Don't make the evil guy the murderer, 2) Give him a way to disguise his alignment, 3) Make "he is evil" Not a valid excuse for arresting him, 4) Give multiple evil characters

Murder mysteries aren't impossible to deal with in Pathfinder... But yeah they can be a pain as the VERY first thing you have to do is go over every single spell available and find a easy way the villain isn't instantly ousted by it.

And before you go "Well aren't you just making the characters useless?". Well in real life... there are murderers who go through painstaking effort to circumvent modern surveillance and forensics. If you transplanted that same murderer into a magical realm, yeah they would learn every single way this could occur as well.

and believe it or not the majority of spells (outside very high level ones where you would NEED magical interference to counter) can be circumvented in rather easy ways. Speak to dead for example can be countered by both destroying the body, hiding the body, Having a proxy do it, having a trap do it, poison them, or just by having the person not see their murderer.

Now a decent idea is to have these spells not work... a better idea is to have them come up with some sort of clue.

-

A good way to handle a mystery is just to treat it like a proper Call of Cthulhu mystery

There is a solution the players must find and in order to do so they need to gather clues from multiple sources. Yet give them enough sources that they can find the solution without needing to find all the available clues (allowing them to fail to find some, not need to come up with all possible avenues, and not punish exploration)

[Orange Wizard]

Meteor Swarm is a pretty good way of solving murder mysteries, if in lieu of "solve" you're willing to accept "the villain is probably dead now"

[Neonivek]

Meteor Swarm is a pretty good way of solving murder mysteries, if in lieu of "solve" you're willing to accept "the villain is probably dead now"

If you can cast Meteor Swarm there is no excuse why you shouldn't be able to magic the solution up.

[Tack]

He was a justice.
He explained his evil away by saying "sometimes I need to condone uncivil things in order to see the law is followed"
I still staked him out anyway, and was proven right by nightfall.
As I suppose we would have been regardless as that was where the clues led.

The pathfinder API's can be... Unimaginative... At times.

[Orange Wizard]

Meteor Swarm is a pretty good way of solving murder mysteries, if in lieu of "solve" you're willing to accept "the villain is probably dead now"

If you can cast Meteor Swarm there is no excuse why you shouldn't be able to magic the solution up.

I took Evocation Focus

[Reelya]

He was a justice.
He explained his evil away by saying "sometimes I need to condone uncivil things in order to see the law is followed"
I still staked him out anyway, and was proven right by nightfall.
As I suppose we would have been regardless as that was where the clues led.

The pathfinder API's can be... Unimaginative... At times.

Presumably that character is Lawful Evil. But it might have been more clever to make them Lawful Neutral.

"Neutral" on the good/evil axis should mean a balance of actions. If we say that a neutral persons can never commit murder, because murder is an Evil Act, then we'd have to say the neutral person can also never do anything to help anyone either - since that's a good act. And that's just broken from the roleplaying point of view. Someone who always chooses to do ambivalent things is just not believable.

[Strife26]

That'd be a fun character restriction, absolutely nothing that's anywhere but the center of the karma bar.

[Egan_BW]

https://youtu.be/k8ws_APXilE

[Neonivek]

Also here are two things I think fiction needs to stop doing

1) Destroying the Statue of Liberty
and
2) Beheading the Lincheon Memorial

[Max™]

Lincheon?

I was very very confused wondering if this was supposed to be "Lin Cheon" or actually "Lincheon" before I figured out Lincoln was probably what I should have gone straight for.

I was watching today's episode of Steven Universe and the part that almost made me cry was somewhat of a minor line "I guess you didn't need me"

The writers are good at tossing those in, I'm a grown-ass man, full beard, but I can't get through the "No, you say it to my face, tell me you don't wanna be my friend... and I'll just go back to having no friends like before." without misting up.

[Neonivek]

I think I found a storyline that makes me groan everytime I see it pop up.

'character' needs to sacrifice themselves in order save the world (well... USUALLY the world)

Now it isn't that I can't see this plotline working out OR that I haven't seen this story done well either.

It is that those storylines almost always without freeken fail subvert the whole story. In fact the two times I've seen this well done (One Persona game, one fatal frame game) the whole sacrifice being required is a twist. Yet I've never seen a game pull it off with it being known from the very start.

In fact DOUBLE FREEKEN bonus to the Fatal Frame series because they show exactly what happens when a character actually goes against the sacrifice and it is never good (and because Fatal Frame is a good series... the reason they fail is... understandable and in a brighter story would often be THE reason they no longer need a sacrifice)

And don't get me wrong subverting the sacrifice still could make for a compelling story. Yet they are always aware that the sacrifice isn't REALLY going to happen and water down the story because of it...

You don't get the character trying to live whatever life they have left, crying that they won't experience it, and you get "Why sacrifice yourself at all that is stupid" instead of possibly building a relationship to the point where they make the irrational decision not to do it.

Writers when you do the whole "Sacrifice yourself to save the world" plotline and you are planning on having the sacrifice not happen... pretend for a moment that yes the sacrifice is happening. Don't do what FF10 does.

[Harry Baldman]

My favorite take on human sacrifice as a method of staving off the apocalypse is The Wicker Man.

Though that does bring to mind Life Is Strange as well. You ever check that out, Neon? Not the kind of storyline you mean, really, but with certain common elements.