David:
It is said that when a GM's plot meets the players, they will find a way to derail it
And so last night, our merry party of travellers was on a train
Half the group spent the first day getting blind drunk (and upsetting the other passengers) (We were travelling first class, and the tickets are 625gp each - the passengers were wealthy and not used to drunken adventurers)
One thing led to another, and (for reasons I shall not go into right now) we end up going to have a little "chat" with a few elven spies (err. no. not spies. "entertainers". OK. Spies)
The first step of the plan was a complete success - we evacuate the other passengers (save the one in a private cabin)
Then the Paladin fails her Move Silently check (again)
Door opens. Elf is ready for us. Zark!
The corridor is now on fire. Freezing fire.
Some of the party jumps one way. Some of the party jump the other way. My character (who is nobility and thus far too stylish to be leaping down corridors to get out of the way of spells) gives himself 20 minutes of resistance to cold.
There's something of a scuffle and before too much longer the (rather dodgy) mage of the party unleashes a shatter spell
This manages to eliminate one naughty spy (with horrible shadowy arcane magics) by virtue of dropping her through the floor.
As the train is moving at 30mph, she is quickly left behind
Such a shame that the shatter also dislodged one of the conductor crystals that elemental power flows through to make the train hover.
A few minutes later the engine and front carriage were detached (thanks to another shatter spell, this time aimed at the coupling)
... and the rest of the train came off the tracks
So, we managed to eliminate about 15 innocent bystanders
Impressive, even by our standards.
Then, despite a few pointed comments from a certain nobleman about the rule of law and how horrible it is to abandon people in the middle of the countryside, the party decides (5 to 1) to not mention that they had stopped the train a little way up the track, and simply steal it, leaving the other passengers (at least, those ones not too dead or injured) to sort out the mess.
ats: "Four decades after Capt. Kirk and crew zoomed off at warp speed to "the final frontier," the iconic sci-fi series Star Trek returns to broadcast television this week with an extensive digital face lift."
"CBS Paramount Domestic Television, a unit of CBS, is digitally remastering all 79 episodes of the original series to enhance the show's 1960s-era visual effects with 21st-century computer-generated graphics."
Yes, because that worked so well for Red Dwarf...
I think the major problem I have with this project is that the effects aren't the only thing about Star Trek that have dated badly; groundbreaking as it was at the time, the gender and race attitudes and the acting style still scream 60s.
And (just as with Red Dwarf) I don't remember ever watching the original version and thinking the effects looked bad.
David: From what I can tell, the effects are much better done then they were on Red Dwarf, and they aren't mucking around adding in extra things (like obviously-CG skutters in the foreground)
ats: Well, Star Trek with scutters would just be silly.
David: It was fairly silly