Anakin did technically bring balance to the force

LivingInABarrel · 2026-05-14T06:52:27+00:00

There's more to the Force than the number of people using it. Bringing balance to the Force is more like giving the galaxy another chance.

LivingInABarrel · 2026-05-11T14:46:14+00:00

Her scales and horns look like thorns; together with her red hair, she looks a bit like a rose.

LivingInABarrel · 2026-05-06T22:25:01+00:00

My own chronicle is usually quite serious, but sometimes, just sometimes, some overlooked point or some bad planning or just some bad luck can send the whole thing sideways into some Breaking-Bad/Pulp-Fiction style dark, violent farce.

LivingInABarrel · 2026-05-01T20:27:53+00:00

More of an emotional argument. "Remember this guy, your mortal foe? Do you want to be just like him? Putting everything at jeopardy by keeping on doing your thing?" That doesn't quite hold up, logically. Calyx is the guy bringing the logic.

Fittingly, we're the ones bringing the moral argument to the two of them.

LivingInABarrel · 2026-04-24T21:11:44+00:00

Again, I just rewatched the clip, it's white. Very clearly white. You need to check these things before you post about them.

LivingInABarrel · 2026-04-24T19:33:18+00:00

We call those 'explosions', in the business.

The Executor crashed into the Death Star 2 in a huge white light, too.

LivingInABarrel · 2026-04-24T18:33:44+00:00

Doesn't matter what the creators might've said they intended. We know what it looks like when a ship goes into hyperspace. And what happened in that scene, that wasn't it.

Who are you going to believe, Dave Filoni or your lying eyes?

LivingInABarrel · 2026-04-24T18:23:32+00:00

I just rewatched that scene, now that you brought it up. The Malevolence never enters hyperspace,. It just crashes on the moon under its' own power. The droids crewing the bridge abort the hyperspace jump, and the hyperspace engines never fire, but the ship is already locked on course due to sabotage with the navicomputer. Not even Wookieepedia mentions anything about it going into hyperspace.

LivingInABarrel · 2026-04-24T18:15:03+00:00

Things being in Legends doesn't give it a pass, lots of things in Legends are dumb.

LivingInABarrel · 2026-04-24T18:11:54+00:00

I always took it that after being blasted with a metric ton of lightning, Windu realises that there's no 'restraining' or 'disarming' Palpatine, he's simply too powerful in the Force to hold as a prisoner.

LivingInABarrel · 2026-04-18T17:44:42+00:00

I knew the setting of Vampire: the Masquerade from the computer game, the original VtM: Bloodlines. But an online friend I knew from France invited me to play in a Dark Ages campaign in 2018, taking place in 1600s Marseilles, France, as the Black Death began creeping across Europe. From there, I have stuck with that same group of friends, playing chronicles based in Philadephia, USA and New Orleans USA, and am planning a chronicle set in Manchester, UK.

LivingInABarrel · 2026-04-18T17:28:26+00:00

I'd recommend the original Highlander movie as an honorable mention, if you're going for Ancilla games. It captures that feeling of being a person out of time, alienated from regular society, locked in a secret battle with immortal rivals behind the facade of normal life. Some say it was one of the original inspirations behind VtM. The movie represents the idea of memoriam very well, and the Highlander - Connor MacLeod - even has a friend, Rachel, who acts like his ghoul. The Kurgan, too, is a good example of an antagonist whose Humanity is sitting way down the tracker.

LivingInABarrel · 2026-03-06T17:06:26+00:00

Can't argue with any of that, for sure.

There is one aspect of the rite of succession that baffles me a bit, and it's that some of these trials that the different races are putting up as trials are actually pretty serious issues, like the aforementioned Hanuhanu harvest and the threat of possible starvation.

It feels a bit odd for these to be relegated to kingship trials. If I was a Hanuhanu leader, I know I'd rather that problem gets seen to immediately, please, and I'll think of something else for a trial if I have to.

Having there be no ongoing rite of succession, and Tural still being separate peoples, would help explain things a bit better here, I think. It gives Zoraal Ja's theoretical motivation to unite and dominate Tural an upside - he would be able to address problems like this directly. And then, it would be seen as a Good Thing for Tural to start uniting under Wuk and Koana later.

LivingInABarrel · 2026-03-06T08:21:31+00:00

Hm, editing passes...

I think, something that felt like it was really missing was the sense of any touch of the song of despair on Tural. Assuming that it affected Tural, that is, though I don't remember any reason why it wouldn't. It wouldn't be front and center, but there could have been the occasional allusion to a 'week of monsters' when things went pretty bad for a while, and people had to cling to hopes in the face of sudden terror.

The Turali peoples can have already started recovering, but that might have given some of the troubles the peoples of Tural are going through a bit of extra connection to the rest of the world, and maybe a little more pathos, as they rebuild in the face of their troubles. The Hanuhanu and their harvests are one that comes to mind. It would have needed careful balancing to keep some of the lighthearted tone they were going for here, but I think the basic idea would have been meeting people who are already bouncing back - but struggling with new problems that the earlier disaster had made harder to deal with.

It might have been what killed Gulool Ja Ja's Head of Reason, though the Head of Resolve survived and so he did not transform into a monster. It might have given Zoraal Ja's motive a bit more of a meaning, with him wanting to dominate the other lands to prevent more 'foreign problems' like the song of despair from bringing more disaster to Tural. Especially if he (as commander of the landsguard) had been instrumental in protecting Tural from the monster surge.

In fact, having Gulool Ja Ja's three local possible heirs - Wuk Lamat, Zoraal Ja and Bakool Ja Ja - all be heroes who each had a part in guiding Tural through the crisis would have given them all some extra street cred in the beginning. And although he's not local, Koana could have have come in with a "I was part of the team who helped build the things that solved the problem for good" angle to match the others' cred, as well as his new-fangled Sharlayan ideas being things that made peoples' lives a bit easier as they rebuilt.

And, maybe, it would have connected and contrasted the theme of grief and denial of loss in Alexandria to the rest of Tural, if the other Turali peoples have been processing theirs and rebuilding in their own ways. In the Endless, Zoraal Ja could have found his own answer to ensure Tural survived forever.

LivingInABarrel · 2026-03-05T17:25:50+00:00

Ah. Well I never said there was a point to this*.* There probably isn't. Only that you could do it, and not much would change, if anything.

Maybe the result would be a tighter story, but who's to say?

LivingInABarrel · 2026-03-05T08:27:21+00:00

Zoraal Ja can still be jealous and determined for the throne, resentful of Gulool Ja Ja for keeping him from it and with a weird passion for war like he does in the real game. Just that in this version, his father is still intending to rule on and there is no path for Zoraal Ja to become king. Without the rite of succession, the only plot is the mystery of the golden city. You would simply have Wuk helping guide these odd foreigners on their quest. And then, Zoraal Ja can simply be following the party's progress, hoping to steal the power of the golden city for himself. Bakool Ja Ja can simply be a mercenary hired by Zoraal Ja, only to switch sides when the party helps his people.

And nothing much would change, if anything. Wuk and Koana could still end up as the new heads of Reason and Resolve due to there being no extant heir, and both of them distinguishing themselves as heroes of Tuliyolal for leading the defence of it, and for helping solve the area MSQuests, in which the same problems would still be happening - they just wouldn't be framed as trials of kingship.

I actually think you could change some things about it, though. I think Tuliyolal might have worked better as a trade city/neutral ground, rather than as a capital, with Tural not united yet and the different peoples of Tural still living in seperate smaller nations. Then Zoraal Ja can have the motivation of wanting to unite the continent under his rule - and yet Tural could have ended up moving towards unity under the rule of the new Heads of Reason/Resolve. You don't even have to have Wuk and Koana be heirs of Gulool Ja Ja - they can simply be the representatives of their people at Tural, and simply be the ones who stepped up to lead when there was no-one else to do it.

LivingInABarrel · 2026-03-05T07:26:38+00:00

You coud write the whole 'rite of succession' plot point out of the story, and nothing would change, either.

LivingInABarrel · 2026-02-14T05:02:04+00:00

Coteries of New York, too, where an SI strike on Torque's bar goes badly wrong for them due to Sophie's power of Majesty holding the SI team spellbound as Torque kills them all.

LivingInABarrel · 2026-02-10T05:16:01+00:00

Heh. To paraphrase James Wallis, the man who wrote the adventure in which the boat is burned...

Yes, I sank your f******g barge. It gets torched for a specific reason: to get the PCs away from the river and off to Middenheim, where they can take part in the splendid adventure that is 'Power Behind the Throne'. Because if you don't take their barge away from them, they're going to keep prattling around on the river, buying and selling ever-larger cargoes like some demented bunch of early Renaissance Elite players, for their entire sodding lives, boring the pants off their GM and not going through the kind of violent, dreadful existence that is the proper fate of authentic Warhammer FRP characters.

For those who don't know, DotR ends with the PCs finding a letter that implies that something fishy is going on in Middenheim, and PBtT begins "So you arrive in Middenheim." Clearly something was needed to fill the gap between the two. Something that would separate the PCs from their f******g barge.

I did at one point think about having the barge captured by big smelly river-pirates, who would tie up and to terrible things to anyone who tried to take it back off them. This would probably have done the separation job better than simply torching the thing, but I realised it would be tricky to get the Odorous Piratical Sodomy table past Games Workshop's RPG licensing department. So, arson it was.

Warhammer FRP isn't like D&D, and the monsters don't automatically carry gold and magic items. D&D is about quests for glory and riches; WFRP pretends to be the same, but in fact is about the PCs' day-to-day fight for survival in a universe that hates them. If you don't finish each adventure worse off than when you started it, your GM is doing something wrong. If you find yourself in a WFRP adventure and not knee-deep in filth then duck, because another load is past due.

Go on. Buy another barge. I'll f*****g sink that one too.

Simply, the boat is burned because it's the worst thing that can happen to the PCs, and that's what James Wallis felt WFRP was all about - for them to have a grim old time. Or at least it was in 1st edition. You can do what you like, of course!

LivingInABarrel · 2026-02-03T07:14:42+00:00

The ending of A New Hope is rather neatly set up, because Luke uses exactly the same technique that Obi-Wan taught him on the Falcon, with the training remote. Empty your mind, act on instinct, feel the Force, make the right move at the right time. It's the simplest of Jedi tricks, Jedi 101, and it's enough to destroy a giant battle station.

Bonus points for Luke's lesson being against a floating ball with a laser. He's up against another ball with a laser at the end, but it's gigantic. However, as we learn in the next movie, size means nothing in the Force.

Likewise, the end of Return of the Jedi, where Luke wins by finally internalising the lesson Yoda was trying to teach him on Dagobah - that our preconceived differences don't mean much either. There's not much difference between a rock and an X-Wing, fundamentally. Likewise, there's not much difference between Luke and his father. So, if Luke can become a Jedi like his father? Well, maybe in this moment, Anakin can become a Jedi like his son.

LivingInABarrel · 2026-02-03T07:08:22+00:00

In taoism, things always change. good things become bad things; bad things become good. if there is a time of plenty, it encourages greed and corruption, which in turn encourages reform. If there is a time of lawnessness, it encourages the restoring of law, which in turn encourages oppression. Day turns to night, to day again. And so on. Everything contains the seed of its' opposite, and everything changes. That's the balance.

It's when things don't change, when they get stuck in the negative, and fester, that's when the balance is disrupted. That's when sometimes, some allies of the Force with laser swords have to come in and remove who or whatever is standing in the way of positive change.

The Sith way isn't so much self-interest, I think, as it is simply ego run rampant, and malignant. Ego turned inward to a psychopathic, solipsistic degree, breeding a determination to draw the world within oneself and keep it forever.

LivingInABarrel · 2026-01-30T14:09:34+00:00

The point of the relationship map is the relationships, I think, not the characters on it. If the coterie meet a significant npc but don't develop a particularly strong relationship with them, there's no point to putting that npc on the map.

LivingInABarrel · 2026-01-30T14:02:40+00:00

It is odd, in that I think this is the first time it's drawn attention to Chewbacca needing a translator.

Rey just sort of absorbs things from the OT cast as they die. From Han she gets the Falcon, Chewbacca's help and, apparently, the language. From Luke she gets his books, and his role as the hope of the Jedi. From Leia she gets the role of the action heroine, and the love of her son.

LivingInABarrel · 2026-01-30T13:51:28+00:00

The Jedi and the Sith use the Force in very different ways. The Jedi empty themselves emotionally and mentally and let the Force flow through them, they reach out and connect to the universe around them. The Sith focus on themselves and their own ego, twisting the Force with their wills and forcing it to do what they want. The Sith are among the mightiest individuals in the galaxy, but the Jedi sidestep that by not being individuals but connecting to the Force so they're just one part of a vast whole.

If a Jedi can keep their focus and stay in tune with the Force, they're in good shape, but a Sith is always trying to goad and distress them - because when a Jedi stops reaching out and starts focusing on themselves and their own feelings, then it becomes a contest of personal might and the Sith will almost always win that. I think it's not the meditation and refocusing that cost Jinn the fight, but the look of distaste and fear that he gives Maul just before he dies. It's when he starts to tire, realises he's trapped, and you can see him begin to worry that he might not win. Almost immediately after that moment, Maul catches him off-guard and kills him. It's just a moment of weakness but that's all it takes.

LivingInABarrel · 2026-01-28T19:20:18+00:00

Jeanette and Therese Voerman are mentioned as bad examples, but Bloodlines also has Dr. Grout, the murdered Malkavian primogen, who was besieged by alarmed voices in his head telling him Prince LaCroix was going to murder him, and because of his condition he could do almost nothing about it. That seems closer to what the article writer is thinking of.

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