"Direct Competition to Rogue One"

"As direct competition to Rogue One, we release, Light Up The Night!
We'll just see how well you do at the box office now, Mr. Disney..."

I love how their newsletter over-hypes things.

Also...

Rogue One

Am I jaded for finding Rogue One ham-handed and mediocre? Don't get me wrong, there's things to enjoy about it, but it feels like a rejected alternate to Episode VII, and like the script doctors only got 40% of the way through. 

It'll be successful, of course, because it follows the same plot formula all the other Star Wars movies do; but I would think that these side-story movies would be trying to break from that formula.

[Edit, Jan 7: I am not alone! A kind soul pointed me to a couple articles posted on tor.com. /Edit]

Pathfinder: Evil Rat Cycle

I have a little more to say about Periphery manufacturing rates, but it's taking longer than I expected to sort out.

In the meantime, here's some notes prepared by the first GM in our next Pathfinder cycle. We started out as a party of evil rats in a new campaign region--I think everyone else has moved onto their second, less evil rat by now. I'm the only holdout.

Pathfinder Transcript: Corpses Are Loot & So Are Their Makers

[One of the players in our group has started keeping brief transcripts of our sessions, partly for the amusement of a third party who isn't playing with us I guess, and partly to help us pick up the following session in medias res.]

TL;DR-  We indulge some backstory for the GM's PC (who is present in an ancillary role) by investigating a light house which has gone dark.

The set-piece battle was interesting: steep waves would frequently lift one ship high above the other, periodically taking them out of sight and reach of each other; and the reanimated pirates all shared a common pool of hit points.

The lighthouse itself was going to be a second set-piece battle, but we confused the NPC villain (or maybe the GM?) by splitting up and entering simultaneously through both the top and bottom of the tower. Also, instead of killing the villain, we recruited him.