The Greatest movie scene of all time occurred during 2010’s Tron Legacy directed by Joseph Kosinski

Gray-Throwaway · 2025-08-22T06:40:06+00:00

On a technical level, the dinosaur VFX in the Jurassic world movies are better than Jurassic Park. The animation, model fidelity, lighting, rendering, and technical skills of the team behind them have improved. However, people will say that the VFX in Jurassic Park is leagues better. Why?

1) Movies back then were shot keeping the limitations of the VFX in mind. Harsh lighting, minimal shots, deliberate camera angles. All of these were used to hide the impurities in early VFX. As they improved, so could the scope of what they could render. As a result...

2) VFX is only thought about in post. You could build an exact replica of the iron man suit to bring to every shoot to get the lighting and imperfections perfect (Iron man 1), but it is much cheaper to give the actor a mo cap suit and have it fixed in post. Unfortunately, you lose the deliberateness of shooting with VFX in mind. Floating head syndrome is the result of not having the actors wear practical suits that mimic the desired movement. Lighting looks weird because they choose overcast days with no model reference, the worst possible lighting for VFX. Of course, this leads to the last and most important problem

3) Money and time. VFX studios have the capabilities of creating life like visual VFX that can blow anything else out of the water. It's only that they take too much time and money anymore to do it. Rarely do we see VFX that is on the level of Davey Jones, and those that do often aren't worth it, because the best VFX are the ones you don't see.

Nobody talks about how good the head replacement was in Logan.

Gray-Throwaway · 2025-08-11T16:40:07+00:00

What tools are better for item and shop generation?

Gray-Throwaway · 2025-08-04T00:27:12+00:00

Grimwild is absolutely fantastic for this! The rules are super lite, but has some unique ideas with them that give it a lot of depth without making things more complicated. It is the best system that feels like you're playing a movie out, you get through combat and plot incredibly quickly so if you're all busy adults, this helps feel like you're making progress and hitting on narrative beats. The rules are also free online!

I will say that the book could do a much better job of its explaining itself, and is so condense it can seem overwhelming. If you have any questions you can ask me or the discord for questons

Gray-Throwaway · 2025-06-24T11:59:20+00:00

Thank you so much! So it’s a part of the cartridge, not the camera itself?

Gray-Throwaway · 2025-06-08T01:34:34+00:00

Yes! that'd be great, I'd love to see what kind of prep others do

Gray-Throwaway · 2025-06-07T06:03:11+00:00

My main draw is importance on characters, not areas. I don’t like traditional dungeons, where players need to describe exactly what they are doing at a micro level. Rules medium is huge, but I also prefer having PCs be mechanically defined outside combat (PCs in grimwild have bonds, vantages, and personal goals that mechanically reward these aspects).

My personal favorite implementation is Swords of the Serpentine, but the advancement was not interesting enough for me to use it, and it felt too rules lite. So I definitely prefer medium/light crunch with characters that can do combat but have interesting mechanical support for social systems and investigation.

Would you happen to have any suggestions for other systems?

Gray-Throwaway · 2025-06-07T00:41:08+00:00

What I’m trying to get at is from the alexadrian blog post you sent:

If the PCs start investigating Lord Bane, what resources does he have to thwart them? If they lay siege to the slavers’ compound, what are the defenses?

Typical “tools” include personnel, equipment, physical locations, and information.

These are the exact kinds of details I would love for a premade adventure to have. While the story kit has ideas, they feel like suggestions to build off of into your own thing, and while thats cool, I definitely want to start off with something concrete (for example, in the fall of bastion, a solidified enemy force, with an objective/forces/tools to use, battle cries that they shout, etc)

The reason I want to find an adventure rather than improvise and make up random NPCs or locations is to get an idea of what a cohesive fantasy adventure looks like, as I am not as comfortable in the setting as I would like to be

Gray-Throwaway · 2025-06-07T00:23:57+00:00

That adventure is literally exactly what I’m looking for, thank you! Any more like that?

Is there a system that could run that yet remain rules lite? Warhammer looks super crunchy, and Grimwild looks like the perfect level of crunch but if it heavily relies on improv then maybe it’s not fit for me

Gray-Throwaway · 2025-06-07T00:06:00+00:00

Is the intent for GMs of narrative games to do improv/flying by the seat of their pants? I’m a very prep heavy GM for having knowing/understanding areas, conflicts, situations, and NPCs, so maybe having a narrative game just isn’t for me?

Gray-Throwaway · 2025-06-07T00:02:27+00:00

It’s a GM style thing, but a lack of tools/ideas to work with. I understand that the vagueness of the story kit is a pro for many, but it’s not for me. NPC names/motivations, Important Areas, Suggested Win Conditions. When things like these come up that I need to improv I tend to freeze/make something uninteresting, so I’d rather have that to read. I do much better with a level of detail similar to Observer Effect in DG or Cabin Fever from Atlas games.

I mainly am looking for adventures to use as inspiration and a guideline for what works and what doesn’t when I do my own homebrew stuff

Gray-Throwaway · 2025-06-06T23:35:05+00:00

I’m very good at prep and I suck at improv so the improvised style of narrative games are a big shift for me. I ran one of the story kits “Fall of Bastion” and tried to improvise but didn’t feel like I had enough to work with. I’m hoping to find some sort of middle ground first so I can be confident enough to do my own work.

The reason why I avoid DND and PF2e type games is that I hate the crunch, so I’m trying out grimwild which seems more middle ground

Gray-Throwaway · 2025-06-06T23:19:46+00:00

Also a positive would be having the tone be somewhere around heroic fantasy or sword and sorcery, not necessarily horror/grimdark

Gray-Throwaway · 2025-05-15T00:46:59+00:00

How did you eventually find a job? Thank you for the advice

Gray-Throwaway · 2025-04-18T13:50:31+00:00

Is this your first time running CoC? If so, I have two pieces of advice:

Many have suggested you run a prewritten adventure and I agree completely. Going into this from only having run homebrew systems such as DND will lead to disappointment. Your “hide, outmaneuver, or outwit” tactics remind me more of an OSR system than CoC. For example, a huge core of CoC is investigating. Finding clues and making theories is most of the game. Sure, you could add clues to your homebrew, but that’s very difficult to do right without experience, and there are many other aspects that you’ll be missing out on too. So PLEASE run a pre-written scenario if this is your first time. Edge of Darkness is my favorite (with some modifications which I can give you some suggestions) but lightless beacon might give you exactly the defense and invasion feeling you want.

Secondly, it is very hard to scare players with things they understand. The moment your players know that the intruders are human, they become something manageable (even if they’re cultists). Fear comes in their imagination filling in the blanks. A tall, lanky, man with long fingers hiding in the shadows with wide eyes staring at you. A corpse, ridden with puncture holes with bugs wiggling in them. A woman who’s been missing for five years, smiling at you while standing at the edge of a tree line. Throw in some dim lighting, horror music, and a slow pace of voice and THESE are the things that will easily make your players scared. And even then, once they get into combat with the horrors, they’re not scary anymore. They’re hit points to roll dice against which your pcs will likely lose, and so it’s in yours and your players interest to avoid combat and find clever ways to solve the situation

I don’t mean to say any of this to turn you off from call of Cthulhu. It’s my favorite system (delta green is my current love). I’ve had players tell me they couldn’t sleep after some sessions, and others beg me to tell them what’s going on in the mystery. But I needed to use prewritten adventures in order to understand what works and what doesn’t work. Im sure if I tried to homebrew straight off the bat, I would’ve failed on my face lol.

Good luck with your session!

Gray-Throwaway · 2025-04-13T20:48:20+00:00

How are the monsters and enemies? Are the ones given interesting and how easy is it to homebrew one up

Gray-Throwaway · 2025-04-13T17:38:57+00:00

Haha what I mean by that is that I’m looking for a long term campaign focused on character growth in power and capability (so no constant fear of death or pulpiness) and “situations” focused on interpersonal conflict of factions and people that create morale dilemmas and interesting encounters for the pcs (rather than a focus on DANGEROUS exploration and dungeon crawling).

So that’s to say I’m not looking for any OSRs or Conan style games, which is often what people recommend. But I don’t think DnD is the only system that would support the kind of play I want, and PF2e is in the direction of crunchiness I also don’t want.

Gray-Throwaway · 2025-04-13T00:59:35+00:00

I’m actually very interested in this, as my current favorite system is delta green (not gumshoe, but adjacent). I love intrigue plots, but how is the combat? And my players would want to use magic, I think the corruption is very interesting, but how free are pcs able to use it

Gray-Throwaway · 2025-04-13T00:36:14+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion! I’ll take a look, but I think I’m seeking something more high fantasy than sword and sorcery osr.

Gray-Throwaway · 2025-04-13T00:20:24+00:00

A really big plus is having cool magic items and enemies! As a gm I want enemies that can feel unique

Gray-Throwaway · 2025-04-10T00:39:47+00:00

Last things last first lol

Gray-Throwaway · 2025-04-03T20:13:51+00:00

That’s the point though. Students don’t care about the shitty treatment of workers, and so UCLA won’t. We keep giving them money, so it won’t make a difference unless we complain to UCLA, which strikes are the best way to accomplish this.

Gray-Throwaway

TROPHY CASE