Beast Wars is my GOAT Transformer series. I figured it was nostalgia, but I rewatched during the pandemic and it honestly held up better than I remember. Even the weird early digital animation is impressive in context. So many interesting characters and motivations, too. And the sweetest extra on top is Megatron’s dialogue. Yeeeeess!

I prefer 2 to 1, primarily because the choices are not as blatantly good/evil and it feels like they have more impact. I also think the character creation and items are more fleshed out. Just a shame it didn’t get the polish it deserved at launch. 1 definitely feels more “Star Wars”-y, though.

Shelton Benjamin and Lashley are both free agents right now. Not to mention Hobbes would be a great addition.

Between this report and him trying to claim the series got confused about kayfabe yesterday, it’s gotta get nasty. I’ve already read a lot from various books, so I’m curious how much new info they have.

Holy shit

“I’ll take “Least Surprising Revelations” for $1000, Alex.” Can’t imagine what was being piped directly into his ears for years.

The pop would be earth-shattering. And damn, have I missed her music.

If that’s how he feels, glad for him. It is true in a lot of respects. I think my view is that they pushed an unpopular star, but then refused to give him the tools to increase his popularity. Disappointing, boring matches, bland foreign heel gimmick. Just cheap heat that went nowhere. In short, the same problem with a lot of Vince’s WWE: settling for fine and appeasing Vince when they could’ve tried something new and it could’ve been great.

That’s a bummer. He was going wild and I think he added a lot to the match. Hopefully it is minor and he just needs a bit of time

Sweetened, doesn’t particularly matter with what. Though I think my favorite has been a honey/citron/ginger tea from Costco. No caffeine, but the flavor was immaculate.

Obviously you have a lot of possibilities with a villain who is being deliberately portrayed as unhinged. I think the line you need to walk is between making it honest and ruining the fun. One thought that came to mind was the reset. If the bbeg is on the back foot and it looks like the PCs got it, have the bbeg throw a tantrum and wish to try again. Everyone’s HP resets, and maybe he had a few new special abilities to counteract the offensive moves that they first tried. Not to mention, this also goes back to a time when the bbeg has a wish spell. This makes it like a boss fight with multiple health bars, but there are some players who don’t like this type of encounter vehemently and it can feel cheap. I wouldn’t do more than 3 “rounds.” If you party is really tactical, you might also entice them with new weaknesses that are telegraphed or maybe an environmental assistance.

Another idea that came to mind would be wishing they already won. Then you flash forward to the PCs about to be executed in some theatrical way, turning the encounter into a 007 escape that leads directly into the real boss fight. Maybe there are some low level horde waves, some skill checks, some absurd monologuing.

Best of luck!

Important clarification: is this the end of the campaign?

I’ve only ever interacted through the instance through Lemmy, which did cause some issues early on, but I haven’t noticed anything lately. I’ll follow the new .zip one, that’s what my vote would be.

That’s a wild question, cause for me and most of the people I know, a fantasy version of myself with double my income would mean not worrying about groceries, maybe a short trip out of the country once a year, being able to pay off debts, and affording some medical procedures that we’ve been putting off. Maybe saving some money so my kid isn’t homeless in a few decades. Not some life of leisure.

To answer your question, though, it would be categorically worse.

If I had to bet, TKO is playing both sides and will ultimately commit to whatever the numbers point to. Given the amount of shit that happened in January, there’s a ton of time until WM. When push comes to shove, I’m sure we will get new reports that X or Y was “the plan from the beginning.”

To quote one Mr. Seth Rollins, burn it down.

Friendly reminder that you don’t need to buy WotC/Hasbro products to play 5e. The 5e publishing ecosystem is pretty strong and there are lots of options so that you don’t have to get rid of your old books. Level Up Advanced 5e has free PDFs online of their whole books, but the books are fantastic quality. Tales of the Valiant is coming soon, and there is a huge catalog of Kobold Press content before that. And then there are hundreds of smaller presses that also support the ruleset. I haven’t gotten any WotC products in years even before the OGL, mainly because quality seemed to be taking a turn, but there is still great content out there.

100%. Given how close Vince got to top stars and how much sway he had over other execs and upper level staff, there is a hell of a lot of possibly poisonous apples in that bunch. As good as getting Vince out is/will be, that will be wasted if they clamp down and smother any future investigations. There is no way everyone left is clean.

If you want to bend backward to accommodate this player, you can. Give them a reason to behave that way. Make the other PCs know and understand. For example, in Dark Sun, magic saps the natural world of life and cruel, terrible things happen when magic is cast. Maybe the knife-wizard knows this. Let the spells be dangerous to other people and the environment, but not the party. Have the others in character ask/beg the caster to use a spell, especially if this matters. You can help balance encounters around whether or not they will need to dip into this costly magic.

I’ve dealt with a crossbow wizard before and, tbh, it is easier to have them just face the repercussions of their choices. Granted, that was a one-shot with close friends, but you do what you think is best.

Quick Edit: it might be worth talking about how ttrpgs are a collaborative game and that players should be working together to their goals, while they seem to be dedicated to playing not only suboptimally (which imo isn’t a problem) but they are playing in a way that is actively disruptive. Perhaps not as bad as actively attacking teammates or the like, but this would ruin my fun. I don’t want to play games with people like that.

I’ve read two books and listened to 6 hours of podcasts detailing how absolutely horrible Vince has been, and he still SOMEHOW is worse than I’ve conceived. Absolutely disgusting human being, and shame on/charges for everyone who has known and covered for him.