STORMCROW'S PROFILE

If I'm not mistaken, they were the present that Adolph Hitler got for his last birthday, courtesy of Stalin and the Red Army. I mean, they all fell on Berlin so Hitler didn't get his present directly, but he got the idea.

Anyone operating those trucks: rocketmen. No question.

Those rockets clearly have guidance systems, and they are definitively rockets, hence why they are called rockets.

So a missile is a rocket with a built in guidance system. The thing about (real life) space shuttles is that they are generally made of two parts, the shuttle itself, and a rocket booster which is jettisoned after the shuttle achieves a certain altitude (this is called separation). So actually, in the case of space shuttle launches, the "rocket" component is separate from the component that has a guidance system (and life support and scientific instrumentation etcetera).

////THE ROCKETMAN THREAD SO FAR IN REVIEW////
@Liberty: visual reference as citation, please.
@pianotm: Major Kong counts. Even if a nuke isn't technically a rocket, he's crazy enough to make up for it. Crazy can make up for a lot. YEEEEEEHAWWWWWW!
@Sooz: I'm not sure who in the clip is supposed to be the rocket man. I mean, clearly it's not Faye, who can't be a rocket man because she's a heavy metal queen (I think that might count as a triple entendre?), the title of the episode. Incidentally I typed "Freddie Mercury Peak Gay" into gooble and could not find an image worthy of the search string. Ironically for the name of the band he fronted, Freddie was apparently pretty butch. (Also he's not gay he's what Kinsey might have called "incidentally bisexual": translation, you're in a rock band, it is incumbent on you to bang groupies, kind of how Kinsey labeled men that had done prison time "incidentally homosexual", just better in every conceivable way.)

ANYWAY the crew of the Bebop meet most of the criteria for being rocket men, they're working class joes flying around space without understanding much if any of the scientific principles that let them do so...but the fact that they are super explicitly bounty hunters kind of makes them explicitly not rocket men. (You can't cross-class.)
@LockeZ: I cannot argue with that logic.
@Atiya (you will be missed): most objectively correct answer, strictly speaking (never seen that movie actually).

It's amazing that over a decade--what, are we getting close to like 15 years--that The Way is still being used as a benchmark of a good or great RPG Maker game.

What's even crazier is that every recommendation made here that I was going to make (ABL, TTHW) and most of the games that I wasn't going to recommend that other people did are also well over a decade old.

It's weird, man. Like, alternate universe weird. LISA happened. To The Moon happened. Both made like a shitton of money on Steam, I'm sure. But we always come back to the same few old, old, old games. And why are people not recommending any of the (multiple) badass complete games that unity has made in the last ~3-5 years? The dev unity, not the engine. I mean, it's not like these oldies are without merit. To be clear, TTHW is probably my favorite JRPG I have ever played, beating out FFVII by a smidge.

Objectively* speaking, Sunset Over Imdahl is the best RM game that has been mentioned in this thread (though not my favorite, that would be ABL). Imdahl is nowhere near as epic as The Way, but it's absolutely gorgeous, competently written, and while the story it tells is smaller and more self-contained and includes an intersection of story and mechanic that is to me completely unique in all of gaming, it's also better told. I am one of the people who felt that Wilfred The Hero was a step back for that dev relative to Imdahl. Full Disclosure: I never beat The Way, but I played a lot of it.

* I am not the lord and master of objective truth: when I use wording like this it's because I'm putting empirical assessment ahead of personal opinion which is the opposite of what people normally do. My "objective" is still subjective, but it's "in my opinion this is empirically true" as opposed to "this is just my opinion but".

In the game I am working on that I have yet to deem ready to add to this website, menstruation is closely linked to a certain kind of magical power. Don't worry, it's nothing as weird and gross as like, weaponizing your menses or whatever. Specifically, it's this: the powers of a witch first begin to manifest at Menarche (not to be confused with this unfortunately named MTG legendary, which is exactly two letters off). It's usually a late Menarche and for the character in question it's very late: she's 15. (And as a rule, the later the Menarche, the more powerful the witch.)

This was part of the meaning of the original title Under A Killing Moon*: in the middle ages, generally speaking a woman's menstrual cycle would be spoken of in the context of her "moons", a euphemism that still sees occasional usage today, along with 'Aunt Flo' and 'Time of the Month'. I just briefly considered the idea of a day/night/lunar procession system where indeed a witch will be at the peak of her powers during her period...but I nixed that idea because I think it's so ridiculous even people that want to take the game seriously would have trouble not laughing at it. Too much effort, too.

I'm trying to think of how a young girl in a late medieval village might be stigmatized or persecuted or come under suspicion...pretty much any good reason for her to go running off into the dark woods at night. It shouldn't be hard. I'm pretty sure that in the middle ages, a majority of people still firmly believed that menstruation to be a punishment levied upon women by God for original sin.

My own experience with this during puberty was so uneventful it might as well not have happened--I grew up with at least one decent parent and not during the middle ages, obviously. Every idea I've come up with so far I've realized pretty quick was just ripping off Carrie by Stephen King one way or another (Carrie goes through menarche around 17 which is incredibly late, and also has no idea what menstruation is because her mother's a batshit fundie bitch, the opening of the movie is her being pelted by tampons by her fellow class mates to the chant of "plug it up!", "plug it up!", "plug it up!", bullying which is sufficient to reduce her to the fetal position and tears in a high school girls locker room when she unexpectedly started menstruating.) I'd like to get something that feels a little more real than that, or at least less familiar.

Another idea I considered but rejected is that the mother died during childbirth and the father doesn't know the first thing about menstruating, but I found this logically leading to the fact that it's practically more likely than not that in the absence of her mother, her father would have begun to sexually assault her. (As gross as this is, this still does happen in modern society at least it was hapening well into the late 20th century, but since we're talking medieval Europe where no one's got any morals or ethics that we would recognize as such, it seems more likely than not.) But idk, that specific effed up family life feels like a cliche to me. Also this is going to be a dark dark dark dark dark dark game. If I'm doing my job even half-right as a game designer and storyteller you'll wind up liking and relating to (sometimes playable) characters that die horribly, tragically, or brutally later on, Game of Thrones style (but less excessive) or cross the moral event horizon to the point hwere you can no longer earnestly root for them (also Game of Thrones style). If I put all that rapey stuff in her backstory, I feel like I'd be courting Darkness Induced Audience Apathy (there's a tvtropes page for that, you're welcome for not linking you, you might have something to do today/tonight).

So yeah any of you ladies or a friend of yours have um...a non-ideal onset to their menstruation? Obviously it's a very personal question so don't answer unless you feel like it.

To any guy that clicked this thread out of morbid curiosity: I'm sorry, I actually get it, like, periods are indeed pretty gross whether you're in a position to have one or not. But you were warned in the thread title :P

LockeZ

author=pianotm

I see your Dr. Strangelove and raise you...The Offspring?

Man the opening theme of bebop is like the greatest song ever.

I wish I could ever be as attracted to any flesh and blood woman as I am to Faye. I mean...even if she was both real and gay it would never work, she is OBVIOUSLY a total self-centered bitch, you don't exactly need to do a deep dive on the series to realize that. I have questionable tastes even when it comes to imaginary women.

Pedantic Nerdery Go:
A nuclear bomb is not a rocket. The reason that Slim Pickens is riding that thing straight down and not in a more lateral direction is that it doesn't have a rocket motor. A bazooka, an RPG-7 (kinda obviously, it's what the R stands for), a rocket ship (obviously), a rocket pod on an attack aircraft, and a katyusha truck are all rockets, but a JDAM (laser guided bomb) and a grenade launcher aren't.

Rockets move under their own power (unlike bombs and grenades) but are "dumb" weapons with no guidance system (unlike missiles, i.e. T.O.W. missiles, cruise missiles etcetera).

Glad I didn't try the first build, hopefully I'll get around to this one, it' s the first RM game I'v DLed in a while.