The Campaign Builder's Guild

Quote from: NomadicLet's please get back on topic. We can argue semantics all day about this but it is getting more and more off topic. The OP was a quickly thought up example and tearing it apart for loopholes is a bit silly. :P

I don't think it's entirely semantics of a quick example.

The temptation to take away some (or all) of the PCs rules-given power to pull off a certain situation is very real for the DM. In your example it was denying the PCs any Perception checks to prevent the murderer of the girl, in another example it may be delaying initiative checks by one round to make sure the PCs can't prevent the killing of innocents/trap activation/etc, while in yet another example it may be denying the PCs any Insight checks to find out the noble's lying to them.

While doing such a thing may be an easy and quick way to set up a certain situation, it's a dangerous pitfall that often comes back to bite you later.

Quote from: Nomadic[...] It just becomes more likely if the PCs are lazy or think they can protect her. [...]

in the PCs own campsite[/i], why on earth do you think the players would think they'd have a chance to notice another PC being killed at night? :huh:

A possible dialog between the players and the GM after such an event is imho much more likely to go like
[ooc]"Oh fine, the BBEG can walk right up into our camp and kill the girl without Mr "I don't need to sleep and have Perception +29" Elven Ranger here even noticing it? Great, how are we supposed to protect us from such an enemy? Why don't you just CdG everyone as we apparently can't do anything against it anyway!"[/ooc]
rather than
[ooc]"That was really immersive. We'll surely kill that bastard!"[/ooc]
;)

Also, depending on the game system you may even be outright breaking several rules that would have allowed the PCs to intervene or at least notice/react to the intrusion of their campsite. I really don't think that it's a good idea to undermine the players' trust in the rules in such a way as it may lead to frustration and resignation ("we can't do anything about it, Plot ex Machina"). If the players fail to set up a nightwatch or neglect their protection in a hostile environment and additionally rolled extremely bad for their Perception checks and the assassin abducted the girl, killed her, and later returned the body, then it's a whole different story because then it played out in accordance to the rules and wasn't superimposed on the PCs. But the situation as described in the OP does not add to the game, quite the contrary imho.

Quote from: Polycarp[...] What do you feel about uncertain awards like this?  Do you prefer that character advancement should be straightforward, with no chance involved?  Tell me about your opinions on the matter.

There's this saying... "any element of randomness favors the underdog - which are usually the monsters and not the PCs". And I think that this saying applies here, too.

A barbarian that rolls a "1" for hit points for four levels in a row may become so weak that instead of an addition to the part he becomes a liability. Not only would this likely diminish the enjoyment of the barbarian's player, but it could also negatively affect the enjoyment of other players (e.g. the cleric that needs to keep a special eye on the barbarian during the whole combat and thus is severely limited in his own freedom of actions).

Imho players are subject to enough randomness from the combat/skill rules and there is no need to further enforce even more randomness the players can't control. After all, your suggestion would be roughly equal to roll for skillpoints in DnD as we roll for hitpoints - something which probably no player would willingly accept.

It is true that even with uncertain advancement mechanics the advancement rate should still approach a certain average, but the chances are that a streak of bad dice luck can overly frustrate a player and make him not want to play the character any longer. This is especially true if the below-average (or "missed" or "lost") advancement cannot be compensated for by above-average advancement later on. In DnD you can always roll maximum hitpoints whenever you gain a level, just as you can roll a 1 for hitpoints, so eventually you can perhaps compensate the four "1"s you rolled earlier.

The old TBE system was an imho very bad specimen of an uncertain advancement mechanic. The basics were like this: the system is based on levels, and at each level you gained a certain number of marks you could place on your skills. For each mark, you could make a roll - if the roll of your dice was higher than your skill rank you gained another rank. The problem was: if you failed that roll, that single chance of advancement was gone for good - and that meant that a series of bad dice rolls would leave the character permanently weaker than he should be.

Quote from: PhoenixWhen designing a campaign (not the setting), how do you organize your notes? Or do you use notes at all, or just ad hoc everything?

Do you like handwritten notebooks, Word Docs, Powerpoint, or is there another method that works well. Is there a good program that works to keep your adventure threads organized?

Microsoft Office OneNote and Freemind is (almost) everything I need. ;-) When away from my computers (or not in the mood of staring at a display) I revert back to handwritten notes that I translate into digital format with the two mentioned programs later on.

Quote from: Elemental_ElfMy players did something horrible once... [...]

WTF?! I mean... seriously... come on! :huh:

If I had been the GM I'd have nonchalantly taken their character sheets, ripped them to pieces and told them to GTFO of my home (or pick up my stuff and leave). I'd seriously not bother wasting my time with freaks wanting to play out some perverted torture fantasies - and I'd tell that any player right into the face if he pulled such a stunt at my table.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
--Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146

I wouldn't have bothered with dishing out some sort of (in that situation absolutely irrelevant) ingame punishment - I'd have ended the campaign right there and refused to do any DMing for them again. Congratulations, your players have finally completed their long journey to the Dark Side (tm). *shudder*

You ask, why I would react that harshly to such ingame actions? Because stuff like this completely sucks the fun for me out of the game. While I'm not objected to run "Evil" campaigns (at least in theory, so far none of my players had the balls to try it...) I don't want to merely provide a stage for people to live out some wierd torture and maiming fantasies. Just as not every actor is comfortable or willing to impersonate a mass murderer, torturer, or rapist I am not comfortable with such characters in my campaign.

And because I know how much such actions/descriptions suck if you're not comfortable with them, I abstain from using them myself as the DM. Instead of describing in utter detail how a person was tortured to death I simply say "and you realize that the poor victim must have suffered through hours of pain and agony before finally succumbing to his wounds". That's imho enough to allow the players to get involved emotionally, without grossing them out.

Addendum:
The situation described in the OP also throws up a very problematic situation: if the villain knows that the PCs oppose him, and he can get that close to them that easily, why the heck doesn't he simply kill them off? Why does he allow them to live any longer and possibly thwart any of his plans? The "stupid villain" trope strikes again?

Further, it would induce a feeling of complete powerlessness in the players, as they've just been given the proof that they are opposing a force that can readily and easily finish them off without breaking a sweat and there is nothing their characters can do about it. Why should they continue fighting their fight against this all powerful and (supposedly) all knowing villain?

As for the "random" aspects of your ideas, I'd strongly suggest looking at Procedural generation. So instead of having to create dozens/hundreds/thousands of

names*towns*plots*nations*religions*kingdoms*...

by yourself and mix it together with a random generator, you create algorithms that can generate these things based on seeded input. This'd have the additional benefit that you could easily recreate especially good creations by simply saving the seed used by the algorithm.

A very impressive example of what procedural generation is capable of can be seen with this work-in-progress: Infinity - Quest for Earth.

Regarding the other stuff: I'd take a look at how "serious" applications organize their things. Using structures like trees or mindmaps, and how these could be applied to game mechanics. Anyway, good luck with your project. :)

Quote from: Stargate525I'm agreeing with Ish, you seem to be under a heavy bit of 'they changed it now it sucks' philosophy.

Why should I repeat my bashings and criticism of TNG and (especially) VOY when the "discussion" was about STXI? I have criticized and I did bash and flame the irregularities and logical errors in the other ST shows and movies - but that has next to no bearing on the topic.

Can you quote one - and only one - other ST movie in which the same technology changes the way it functions and its application's consequences so drastically during the run time of the movie? I dare you, give me just one example that equals the sudden change from "world devouring superweapon" to "interstellar speed bump" that occured in STXI regarding the black holes.

Quote from: Stargate525[...] your ridiculous velocity you're spouting [...]

Watch the film and pay attention to the scene when they are announcing how far away from the platform they are.

Quote from: Ishmayl[...] Thus, saying "this cannot happen because this is how black holes are supposed to work" is exactly the same as, sixty years ago, saying "There are no other planets in our galaxy other than those in our solar system." [...]

First, care to quote any sources for the later part of your statement? Second, care to show any source that the event horizon of a black hole can possibly - in any way - take the shape of a flat circle as it was shown in the movie instead of being a sphere?

Further, the fact that basically any known object would ultimately be completely destroyed (probably even before reaching the black hole's event horizon) is just an logical application of the laws of gravitation you and I can experience every moment of our life. The effect that causes that is known as Spaghettification and can be verified by scientists on earth - it even occurs for every one of us (although at such a small scale it's irrelevant). That's not speculation or theory, that's hard cold logical fact.

Quote from: Ishmayl[...] You said (and I quote):

Quote from: Ishmayl[...] I'm done with this.

Yeah, me too. :-/

Quote from: XXsiriusXXI hate to nitpick here, but your logic on the construction of DS9 is faulty. DS9 is the UFP designation for Terok Nor, a Cardassian built spacestaion. Terok Nor isn't a singlur station, but one of what seems to be a class of staions as shown by Empok Nor, a sister staiton. Terok Nor has nothing to do with the Federation until the beginning of DS9.

Here is the Memory Alpha page for DS9  DS9

Problem is: the "new" Enterprise has been built based upon reverse engineered data from the Kelvin's scans of the Narada. This is the supposed reason why the "new" Enterprise is tremendously more advanced than the TOS Enterprise. Additionally, caused by Nero's mayhem, the UFP will likely take up a much more direct and interventionalist stance regarding military assault of defenseless worlds. This will likely lead to military intervention when Cardassia occupies Bajor, which in turn will lead to a defeated Cardassia because of the UFP's more advanced ships.

According to the 2nd law of thermodynamics the entropy in a isolated system can only increase. There simply is no way that "only" the UFP and the officers of the Enterprise changed while the rest of the universe stays the same. Such an outlook is hopelessly naive. The changes brought around by the new movie will have unforeseen sideeffects and consequences which invalidate everything we know about the Star Trek universe.

Perhaps the Romulans and the UFP become allies and eradicate the Klingons. Perhaps the Bajoran Wormhole is discovered centuries earlier and the Dominion is destroyed before it becomes as powerful as it did in the DS9 show. We don't know - we only know that it's mathematically basically impossible for any event from TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY to occur as we know.

[spoiler]

Quote from: Stargate525composition and thickness have nothing to do with each other. You can shovel off 50% of out atmosphere, and it'll be the same general composition as long as you shovel it off equally.

A thinner atmosphere would provide different scattering effects which would lead to a different coloration.

Quote from: Stargate525Sorry bud, but Structural Integrity Fields throw this all right out the window. And by 'slightest problems' you mean large spatial disturbances and general power failure, then yes. I would hardly call that slight, but whatever.

Curiously, in the movie there was not a single mentioning of such fields, while you basically can't watch a TNG episode without the structural integrity failing. And considering that the Kelvin and Enterprise are put through some heavy punishment I find that very interesting, possibly even leading to the conclusion that there are no such fields (yet).

Quote from: Stargate525And considering the fact that birds of prey can land completely unassisted, It's not a terrible stretch to assume that a Constitution can stand Earth gravity when completely shut off, unmoving, and propped up.

Perhaps because BoP were designed for atmospheric flight and landing? Think of the VOY episode where the ship is landed for the first time - iirc Janeway says that the Intrepid class is one of the few Federation ships designed for atmospheric flight and landing.

Quote from: Stargate525Oh, confirmed eh? Have we been able to play with a black hole that I didn't know about?

So you don't believe in mathematics?

Quote from: Stargate525I would LOVE to see this done in a movie and still retain any sense of drama or interest. Further, don't those effects only matter when looking from a black hole outwards? If that is the case, this hardly ever occurs.

Why would this hardly ever occur? These are the effects that are visible from outside the black hole.

Quote from: Stargate525Not true. You seem to be under the impression that a black hole with the mass of vulcan would somehow destroy everything like some uber destruct-o-matic. This is not the case, considering it has exactly the same gravitational field as vulcan did in regards to every other body around it. That black hole will just keep orbiting Vulcan's sun for quite some time.

Then how comes you don't see any lingering after effect after Vulcan is destroyed? No lensing effects? Not even the mysterious "space lightnings" that seem to accompany any red matter created black hole.

Quote from: Stargate525The argument still stands that there could very well be such facilities in there. We don't see bedrooms, toilets, lounges, or the majority of the bridge either, so why aren't you complaining those aren't there too? Frankly, it didn't need to be in the movie, so it wasn't.

Hmm. Cargo bays are supported by life support... The space to which you refer acts as a shuttle bay, has a gigantic-ass door leading to vacuum, I can't really see what else it could be, because IT WORKS AS A BLOODY CARGO AREA.

And who said anything about highly efficient?

Ask yourself: If I was an engineer building a mining ship, would I prioritize style or efficiency? Efficiency will generate more value with each mining run, while style will only increase the construction, build, and operation costs.

Quote from: Stargate525...Because that's not the way they decided to do it?

Which is, frankly, suboptimal borderlining outright stupid. Deceiving the audience in such a way can work in a horror/mystery movie, but not in a simple and straightforward SciFi movie. No matter what they say, the movie clearly shows that Delta Vega is in the Vulcan system. What's next? A moon called "Yellow rubber duck moon" orbiting Qo'noS?

Quote from: Stargate525If he had stayed in his pod he would have been in no danger. The thing was obviously emitting a distress signal, and he was on an inhabited planet.

And who would have picked up that distress signal? The guys in the Federation Outpost obviously didn't care, as they didn't show any sort of (re)action even after the time it too Kirk to

a) wake up
b) meet the monsters
c) run away from the monsters
d) get saved by Prime Spock
e) get a heads up on the current situation
f) walk/climb the rest of the 14 miles towards the outpost

Further, who says that the beasties would have let him alone in the capsule. These things look like they'd eat advanced dire bears for breakfast - I don't think a tiny escape pod would be much of an obstacle for them.

Quote from: Stargate525UFP hasn't been fancy pants goody-two-shoes since about the middle of DS9. Not a lethal environment. He can breathe, he can walk around, etcetera.

But this is not DS9. DS9 will likely never been built, anyways.

And not a lethal environment? Really, with predators like these that's pretty much given a lethal environment. Or wouldn't you think the shark basin in a zoo wasn't dangerous?

Quote from: Stargate525So you wanted them kissing and caressing each other MORE? When he is her teacher? The thing is kept hidden for a reason.

No, I wanted some scenes leading the audience towards that scene. Perhaps the two sitting with each other while eating, or meeting to do sports, or stuff like that.

Quote from: Stargate525Don't remember that, so I can't comment, but I think I would have remembered wall panels flying off and heading for the back of the ship. Remember, if they fall to the ground or behave normally, it's shaking itself apart, not getting ripped apart.

Stuff didn't fall off, the walls and ceiling were showing cracks and tear marks from the gravity. I'd think that the moment some reinforced steel or whatever is cracked open by gravity, that there would be at least some effect on the crew - but there was nothing. And I ask you: why? If some sort of dampener field was still holding, where are the cracks and tears coming from?

Quote from: Stargate525*sigh* Many problems with this...

Problem 1: The Narada is in geosynch orbit, but not way out there. The mining cable is not several miles long. Therefore, the ship is very low in space, on the edge of the atmosphere. We've already got the technology to jump from near this height.

Geosynch orbit does have nothing to do with the problems of reentry.

Quote from: Stargate525Problem 2: You're equating a several ton spaceship with a person. The amount of energy they have, even falling at the same speed, is tremendously different. A person simply isn't carrying enough kinetic energy to get to that 1000 degree heat you want.

:huh: And what do you think are shooting stars? Most of them are made of ice or stone, and only few weight more than some pounds. And yet almost none of them makes it to the surface. Guess why.

Also regarding kinetic energy, mass is only factored in with half its value, while speed is factored in with its squared value. At the last stage of the descent they were falling with speeds exceeding 1000m/s. Assuming a mass of 80kg for Kirk, that means his kinetic energy would be 40000000J. That's the same kinetic energy a 2030 ton space shuttle has when cruising with 6-7 m/s.

Quote from: Stargate525Problem 3: a 90 degree entry is the best one, assuming you don't need to burn off lateral velocity, as you're passing through the atmosphere the quickest. The only reason spacecraft enter at 5 degrees is that that creates the most time to burn off their excess speed without skipping off the atmosphere.

No, 90° entry is the worst possible because it puts the most stress on the heatshielding and structure. Even a 24th century shuttle from the Enterprise-D couldn't survive a 90° entry - which should tell you something.

Quote from: Stargate525'mere moments' being several minutes, or enough time for them to lament a bit, evacuate ten thousand people, and for Spock to do a nice half-mile dash. My guess is that the thing ate out the core and the mantle until the crust couldn't support itself. The dramatic bit took a few moments, but the entire process was much longer.

So you say that the black hole doesn't need some built up time or anything but instantly starts at eating away the planet? Great, how comes the Narada isn't torn to pieces in an instant then?

Quote from: Stargate525Considering the ship had already gone through one of those, we might conclude it would perhaps survive a second one.

How the Narada and Spock's vessel would survive the gravitational tides of the first time travel black hole is yet another pile of pandora's boxes imho.
[/spoiler]

First of all, I found a very good site summarizing all my issues with the movie far better than I could have: http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/inconsistencies-trekxi.htm

[spoiler=Anyway...]

Quote from: Stargate525On Vulcan's sky: It's been red, yellow, and non-exiastent in respective showings. There has never been a consistency here, so why don't we just chalk it up to yet another of the choices for its possible composition?

If you take a look at the pictures of Vulcan in the Memory Alpha article you can see that while the individual color varies the general theme stays the same. Reds and other sand tones are dominant. And a clear blue sky just doesn't fit in. If we go by what Ishmayl posted earlier we must conclude that the atmospheric composition of Vulcan must be identical to Earth's - otherwise the sky would need to be a different color. However, this clearly contradicts the fact that Vulcan has a thinner atmosphere.

Quote from: Stargate525I can't really remember how much of it intact you see in the movie while it's on the ground, but really? They have inertial dampeners, artificial gravity, etcetera. Is a little thing like structural integrity a problem? Not to mention that you don't have to bother with spacewalks, containing the atmosphere, blah blah blah.

[spoiler=Pretty much the whole ship][/spoiler]

And yes, structural integrity is a problem, considering how often it fails in the various shows from even the slightest problems. Would you really want to risk the construction of the whole ship? What do you thing would happen to the saucer section and the internal structure of the ship if the artificial gravity only failed for 10s? How about the warp nacelles and the pylons? A power outage or field generator failure for even a few seconds could ruin weeks or months of construction work.

True, there are support beams. But the proportions of the ship don't lend themselves to the conclusion that the weight and structure is distributed in a way so that the whole ship can be supported on only like nine points.

Quote from: Stargate525On Black Holes: Sorry, you're wrong. A wormhole is two black hole geometries attached at their bottoms. It's highly unlikely that this could happen, but it is possible.

No, no, and no again. You need to connect a black hole and a white hole. However, these so called "Schwarzschild wormholes" are highly unstable, only existing for as long as they don't interact with any matter:

Quote from: Stargate525Unfortunately again for your rants, Red Matter has a precedent, as Romulan ships are POWERED BY ARTIFICIAL SINGULARITIES. Again, you're complaining about the dust in a septic tank, as far as technological bull.

Which, however, is not the same. The black holes generated by red matter are not permanent and seem to disappear shortly after they swallowed their "intended target" (as can be seen by the lack of any lingering effects after Vulcan is destroyed). The artificial quantum singularities used by Romulan capital starships cannot be deactivated and further aren't shown to swallow its surroundings on destruction (or have you seen a single D'deridex being swallowed by its engine in any of the TV shows?).

Quote from: Stargate525On the Narada: Do you know what a storage facility is? Why yes, it's a large hollow space inside the ship! Who would have thunk it? As a mining vessel, it does not necessarily have to have its own processors; it's a mining ship, not a smelter. But then again, we don't see toilets on any of the ships; does that mean they aren't there?

First, in the Star Trek universe capital mining ships generally do have facilities to process the mined materials. After all, if the ship processed the materials on site it can achieve a much higher efficiency because unwanted products can be instantly eliminated and the whole "harvest" can be refined into a denser form or one that's easier to transport.

Second, I meant the massive empty space inside the Narada containing all those small platforms. The platforms where Nero and Kirk fought. This was basically dead space that couldn't be used for anything else. Why would an engineer that wanted to build a highly efficient mining vessel waste so much space - even more, dead space that would still have to be supported by the ship's life support systems (atmosphere, pressure, temperature, radiation shielding, etc. etc.)?

Quote from: Stargate525On Delta Vega: Yes, they did move it, but no, it's not a problem: [...]

This explaination is even more dumb than I could ever imagine. There are misleading and confusing the audience on purpose. Why didn't they just show the scene on a monitor or something? Or from space (again)?

Quote from: Stargate525On Jettisoning: Spock is pissed. Kirk has demonstrated that he can get to places where he shouldn't be (on a ship in orbit, for instance, and this is later confirmed by beaming in). Logically, the best way to ensure that Kirk does not interfere is to get him off the ship.

And to remove him from where you can have an eye on him? That's not logic, that's stupid. If you are suspicious of someone you want to keep him someplace where you can observe him, and not put him somewhere where he can do something that you can't observe or control. And last but not least, what would have happened to Spock if Kirk had died on Delta Vega?

Quote from: Stargate525He's also not supposed to be ON the ship, thereby making him, technically, an intruder.

And what do you do with intruders? You put them under arrest and interrogate them later. But you do not maroon them in a lethal environment. I can see the Klingons doing that ("if you survive this trial you can walk away") or the Romulans ("aren't we being nice? instead of putting you in a dark prison cell we allow you to freely walk around on this planet"). But not the fancy pants goody-two-shoes UFP.

Quote from: Stargate525On Uhura and Spock: That was a kiss, for God's sake. Have you been watching mass media recently? I've seen more explicit stuff on evening TV. Consider how Uhura got onto the ship, and there is your leadup.

I haven't watched almost any TV for almost 2 years now and really, I don't miss it. Still, when she's kissing and caressing Spock in the turbolift the state of intimacy in which their relationship already is comes to the viewer as a complete surprise. There hasn't been any obvious indication before that there might be anything more than a healthy friendship going on between them.

Quote from: Stargate525On Tearing apart: Where does it say the ship is being torn apart? It's merely slightly past the hole's gravity well where it can't get out.

Where does it say that? How about the walls, frontpanel and ceiling being ripped open by the black hole's gravitational pull? :?:

Quote from: Stargate525On The spacejump: Those are futuristic spacesuits. Those flames on them? That's friction. They're obviously able to withstand the heat, and the friction reduces them to terminal velocity.

They are so futuristic that they don't even generate the typical plasma screen around the entry body? Hardly.

Today the best reentry angle is between 5° and 7° - and even then the temperatures at the thermal shield reach in excess of 1000°C. Even with Vulcan's thinner atmosphere the temperatures would be significantly higher, considering that the reentry angle for Kirk and the others was a nice 90°. Further, they were already in an atmospheric region with probably comparable properties as Earth's, considering that the air was thick enough to allow them to talk and fight without problems and to carry their parachutes.
[/spoiler]

Quote from: IshmaylThis is a really weird argument.  I mean, I get being annoyed that they're breaking the laws of traditional physics, but when it comes to black holes, wormholes, and warp speed, guess what?  We're long past traditional physics and moving solidly into theoretical physics.  Which, really, I think gives a bit of license to play with for the sake of drama.  Do you get this pissed off with every sci-fi book you read?  That's not meant to be bastardly, I just get the feeling that you're not much one for sci-fi "implausible but not impossible" scenarios....

The problem is lack of consistency. One moment the black hole created by red matter swallows a whole planet in mere moments, and in another scene another black hole created by the very same red matter sits there and does absolutely nothing to the ship trapped in it until the Enterprise starts firing at it.

I have no problem with wierd and unconventional stuff in scifi - for as long as it stays consistent throughout its whole appearance and doesn't turn around on its heel every other second in what it does and how it works.

Quote from: IshmaylErrr, not to be a bastard nit-picker, but that (^) ain't why the sky is blue... Look up "Rayleigh scattering."

I stand corrected.

However, even then Vulcan's sky prolly won't be blue because of

a) continuity (afaik in no show Vulcan's sky has been shown as blue at daytime)

b) a different composition of atmosphere



EDIT: And even in a thinner atmosphere, Kirk and Zulu would have been burned to ashes by the unprotected atmospheric entry. After all, there was enough air to allow parachutes to work (not to mention that the jerk when the parachutes finally opened should have probably broken their spines/necks or at least given them a lethal trauma - after all, they were falling at what, 1000m/s?).

[spoiler]

Quote from: http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(NCC-1701)[...] According to The Making of Star Trek, the Enterprise was built on Earth but assembled in space. [...]

Second, is Red Matter and 'Black Holes' any less BS that revolving around a sun to go back in time? [/quote][...] The Star Trek novel Spock's World offers the explanation that the "moon" appearing in the Vulcan sky in "Yesteryear" and the original cut of Star Trek: The Motion Picture was actually the sister planet of Vulcan, called T'Khut. This theory is widespread in other non-canonical works like Star Trek Maps, Star Trek: Star Charts and The Worlds of the Federation. [...][/quote]

[spoiler=Plot]

Quote from: Elemental_ElfActually, Spock wanted Kirk off the ship because Kirk posed a problem for morale. His very presence was a beacon for those who questioned Spock's command. Further, as was proven in the movie, Spock was emotionally unstable and thus prone to giving weird commands.

supermassive black hole[/url] that eats the galaxy?

On a further note: the paragraph about the weak tidal in a supermassive black hole don't apply to the black holes shown in the movie. These are simply not of sufficient size (which is required to reduce the tidal forces on entering objects).

An additional glitch in the last scene: the Enterprise is already torn apart by the gravitational pull of the black hole, but no character experiences any inconvenience of any sort? :huh:

Quote from: Elemental_ElfIt was alluded to through out the movie, including the bit about Uhura not being assigned to the Enterprise because it would show 'favoritism.' There could have been deleted scenes where their love was emphasized more, perhaps they cut that along with the Klingon fleet being destroyed.

Ok, I finally saw the movie today.

So, finally, Star Trek transformed from
[spoiler=this][/spoiler]
into a heavily mainstreamed version of
[spoiler=that][/spoiler]

[spoiler=Rating]
As an ordinary and vanilla sci-fi movie I'd give it 7/10 points.

As a Star Trek movie, however, I'll give it 2/10 points - Leonard Nimoy being the movie's only saving grace.
[/spoiler]

[spoiler=Issues, Problems, logical impossibilities]
Sigh, I really don't know where to start.

(1) The ship being built on the ground. Considering the basics of mechanic and logic, why the heck would you build a starship on the surface of the planet instead of a dry dock in space? The components are much harder to move around, the whole structure of the starship must be built in a way to support its own frame and weight, and you'll need to finally beat the escape velocity of the planet to get the thing where it belongs.

(2) Red matter and black holes. Seriously, of all the technological and physical shenanigans ST has pulled in its life, red matter (and its acompanying way of time travel) is definitivly on top of the BS-hill. While the Borg in Nemesis at least used something that could theoretically enable time travelling (tachyons - particles that cannot move slower than the speed of light while all other particles cannot move faster than the speed of light and thus seriously mess up relativistic physics), singularities and black holes just don't work the way. Never. Ever.

(3) The Narada, a mining vessel. Of course. It looked more than the bastard child of a Babylon 5 shadow crab and a Perry Rhodan sphere ship than anything else. Also, why the heck was that thing practically hollow inside? Shouldn't there have been - as it's typical for mining ships - storage rooms and processing facilities for the mined ore?

(4) Vulcan and a blue sky. FYI, Vulcan is a desert planet with only minor bodies of water. Considering that the blue color of earth's sky result from light being reflected by the oceans, it's pretty obvious that Vulcan cannot possibly have a horizon spanning blue firmament.

(5) Delta Vega. Sure, a so far unknown stellar body in the Vulcan system (and coincidentally orbiting right next to Vulcan and even more coincidentally currently so aligned that you could watch Vulcan's destruction from its surface) has a Federation research outpost on it and bears a non-vulcan name. No logical or other problems with that. No, of course not. Never mind.
[/spoiler]

[spoiler=Plot]
Let me get that right. Yet another revenge-driven unforgiving romulan villain with yet another unstoppable-once-fired planet-destroying superweapon sets out to destroy the UFP. Someone please show the director and screenwriters the way to Plotstorming.com - they seem to need professional help.

Also, good to know that UFP starships don't have a brig or holding cells but instead must jettison every bad guy into space. Why merely restrict Kirk to his quarters or stuff him into a cell when you can maroon him on a to human life hostile ice world with predators that eat dire bears for breakfast.

Prime Spock's ship's payload of red matter. Sure, you need only a drop of Unobtainium to stop the galaxy-devestating (!) supernova but nonetheless fit the ship with a whole frigging metric ton of it - just in case, of course.

And please, for the sake of all that's holy and good, don't get me started on the love story between Uhura and Spock. There was basically no build up leading to the almost rape in the turbolift where she jumped on him like a bitch in heat - completely out of the blue.
[/spoiler]

If you excuse me now, I'm going to wash my eyes with bleach to forget that godawful movie and the wasted time in the cinema. Star Trek was the first movie for over a year when I left the theatre before the endcredits were done and the curtain fell, because nothing - absolutely nothing - that could have possibly come after the credits would have saved the film.

[spoiler=Though I fear the bleach may not work...][/spoiler]

Quote from: IshmaylWow, Ra-Tiel, seems you have a grudge against the good guys in the comic? :)

No, I don't have a grudge against them per se. I'm just moderately pissed of that the rules work differently for some characters. There's really no reason why a melee guy at around level 11 completely naked short of a loin-cloth and with an iron bar as improvised weapon should be able to take on a fully equipped and buffed cleric that is at least 4 levels higher.

And don't get me started on that called shot to the eye thing. x.

Quote from: IshmaylGreat comic, but I imagine it can't end is well as it looks like it will.  Hopefully V is able to warp the two of them out of there somehow before people die.

Both O-Chul and V deserve (un)death, simple as that. Roy got stomped into the ground for trying to take on Xykon alone, so why should an out-of-spells squishy and a lower-level NPC do better than him?

Quote from: Elemental_ElfThat was an EPIC comic, god O-Chul is awesome! [...]

I'd rather say that it has less to do with O-Chul being awesome but more with the tide of plot. Somehow Smite Evil in combination with the Rule of Cool seems to be the ultimate excuse in OOTS to throw rules out of the window, but mostly only whenever it benefits the good guys.

The bar would definitively count as an improvised weapon. Considering its length and that it can easily be held and wielded in one hand, the stats of a short spear fit quite good.

So, considering that O-Chul is

a) butt-naked
b) wielding an improvised weapon (including the non-proficiency penalty)
c) unbuffed
d) severly injured and likely not at full hit points (see the torture marks and scars all across his body)

how the heck does he actually manage to

a) survive the disintegrate (remember that his Fort Save is +12, at most)
b) hit a fully equipped and probably buffed cleric
c) maim him so much that he has to get the emergency exit

???

Let's say that O-Chul has Str 16, Cha 10 (he mentioned that CHA was his dump stat) and is fighter 4/paladin 7 (he has 3 attacks per round and further said in an earlier comic that he was a fighter before becoming a paladin). This means he has an attack modifier of 11 (BAB) + 3 (STR) - 4 (non-proficiency) = 10 and with a successful hit would deal 1d6 (base) + 4 (STR, two-handed) + 7 (smite evil) = 1d6 + 11 = ~14 points of damage. Even on a critical hit that would only amount to ~29 damage.

Anway, the called shot thing bugs me the most. :-/

[nerdrage]I want to see V's hands chopped off and his tongue cut out. After all, if the good guys can do called shots the evil guys can do, too![/nerdrage]