More on Corded Ware vs Yamnaya

More on this topic, which I find fascinating.  From the commentary at Davidski's blog, let me quote just a bit of the discussion:

Michal said, first:

There is simply no way neither for Corded Ware alone nor for Yamnaya alone to have been PIE-speaking. All data indicate that these were closely related populations speaking different Post-Late PIE dialects, so when looking for a hypothetical Late PIE source, we should direct our attention towards the pre-Yamnaya populations on the steppe, with Khvalynsk and Sredny Stog being the two best candidates for the moment. 

Both Anatolian and Tocharian are lacking the wheeled wagon vocabulary. The Tocharian and Anatolian words for "wheel" derive from a PIE lexeme (*h2werg-), which is different from the corresponding words attested in languages descending from Late PIE (where the word for wheel is derived from either *kwel- or *Hrotós). Also, Tocharian does not share the Late PIE-derived words for wagon, axle and thill, so the only Tocharian word indicating the shared vocabulary for wheeled vehicles is kokale/kukäl (chariot), showing analogy to a Greek word for wheel (kúklos), which, however, doesn't seem to be enough to claim that Tocharian and Late PIE diverged only after 4000 BC. Thus, it seems almost certain that not only Archaic PIE (Proto-Indo-Hittite) but also Early PIE (ancestral to Tocharian and Late PIE) were spoken before 4000 BC, and most likely before 4500 BC. 

Corded Ware was associated mostly with R1a-M417 and likely ancestral to both the Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian speaking populations, while the Post-Late PIE dialect spoken in Yamnaya was associated with R1b-Z2103 and most likely ancestral to populations speaking Greek, Armenian and Albanian (plus Daco-Thracian, Mycenaean and Phrygian, when counting the extinct languages that are currently known to us). 

Another group of Post-Late PIE languages, including Italo-Celtic and possibly Germanic, seems to descend from a Post-Late PIE dialect spoken by the R1b-L51 people. As for now, it is hard to say how this group was related to Corded Ware and Yamnaya and when exactly their ancestors moved from Eastern to Central Europe. Also, it is not clear how and where that ancestral R1b-L51-rich population contributed to the emergence of the Bell Beaker culture and whether the R1b-U106 folks were still part of that group at that very time.

Followed by this response from Davidski:

I appreciate your insights, but things move quickly in this area, and you're saying things that I would've said a year or two ago, but no longer. 

One of the problems with your assumptions is that Z2103 is found in steppe populations other than Yamnaya, and you'll be seeing it pop up in many more pre- and post-Yamnaya samples. So how do you know that the language spoken by Yamnaya was ancestral to Greek or Albanian, when the Z2103 in Greeks and Albanians might be from other steppe or steppe-derived populations? 

And, of course, there's no reason why Z2103 should be tied to the same language family in Yamnaya, Catacomb, Dereivka, Babino, Vucedol etc. 

As for the question of the origins of L51, P312 and U106, I'm guessing you're aware of my view that they were somehow involved or caught up in the Corded Ware expansions, so if that pans out, then it will seriously leave Yamnaya out in the cold.

And Archi's response to the last paragraph by Michal:

These peoples are associated with the Babino culture (and its derivatives) which took the place of Yamnaya-Catacomb cultures. The Babino (Multi-Cordoned Ware) culture comes from Corded Ware which captured the substrate Catacomb culture.

Synome's response to that idea:

Working just from the Chang linguistic tree and our current genomic evidence, I would agree with Davidski that there are very few existing languages that are likely to be derived from Yamnaya itself, maybe Tocharian and Albanian. 

Greco-Armeno-Phrygian would be more likely to descend from a post Yamnaya culture on the PC steppe, like KMK.

Note that KMK, Babino and Multi-cordoned Ware Culture are all alternative names for the same archaeological material culture.

Michal's response to all of this:

@Synome
When knowing the commonly accepted positions of both Albanian and Tocharian in the IE tree, it is simply impossible to believe that these two langauges descend from one ancestral Proto-Albanian-Tocharian language spoken in Yamnaya. 

@Archi
By 2000-1500 BC every population in the Near East knew the wheel, yet it doesn't mean that they all spoke a language descending from a Proto-Indo-Hettite dialect. Also, the Anatolians and Tocharians used a very different word for wheel when comparing them with populations speaking the remaining IE langauges that all descended from Late PIE, thus from a language spoken only after the Anatalion and Tocharian languages diverged from the branch ancestral to all remaining IE languages. 

You mean the Armenians descend from the Babino culture? I strongly doubt this. There is no doubt that the Late Yamnaya people who stayed on the steppe were very strongly influenced by the Corded Ware-derived populations moving in the NPC steppe, and this could have been the major reason why ancient Greek and Sanskrit share so many similarities, so some linguists were confused by this and classified Indo-Iranian and Graeco-Phrygian as more closely related to each other than to Balto-Slavic, while in fact this only seems to reflect the relatively late interactions between the not-so-distantly related Post-Late PIE dialects spoken on the steppe in the Post-Yamnaya period. A very similar mechanism was likely engaged in modifying the Yamnaya-derived languages (Dacian and Thracian?) by the Iranian-speaking people from the North Pontic steppe. 

@Davidski
I must admit I don't understand your objections. First, if Z2103 is found in a Pre-Yamnaya population on the steppe, how will it discredit my assumption that the Yamnaya folks spoke a Late IE dialect (let's call it Greaco-Armeno-Daco-Thracian)? Also, if Z2103 is found in some neighbors of Yamnaya after this culture expanded west and east, how will it make my scenario implausible? There were of course some Yamnaya-descending populations rather than Yamnaya itself that were repsonsible for spreading both Z2103 and IE languages to such destinations like Albania or Greece, yet this doesn't make their Yamnaya origin less important. 

Additionally, I find it almost impossible to believe that it was exclusively some Corded Ware-derived waves of people that were initially responsible for spreading very different IE branches (including Tocharian, Anatolian and some Late PIE-derived branches, like Albanian, Greek and Armenian) in different directions, as this does not fit neither the IE tree nor the Y-DNA data we have. In other words, there is absolutely no correlation between the genetics and linguistics when assuming that only Corded Ware was associated with PIE. 

What are the Corded Ware-derived Y-DNA lineages that are supposed to be associated with the Anatolians, Tocharians, Greeks, Albanians and Armenians in your scenario? Do your choices make any sense from the phylogenetic and linguistic point of view? When exactly those ancestral populations are supposed to have left your hypothetical Corded Ware-relatd PIE homeland? 

Finally, I am not sure if this is what you propose, but are you suggesting that there were some non-Yamnaya Corded Ware-derived Z2103 lineages that were responsible for spreading the IE languages south of the Corded Ware territory? If so, what specific Z2103 lineages would you have in mind?

And Davidski's response to that response:

My point was that you can't link Yamnaya linguistically to any Indo-European speaking groups via Z2103, because Z2103 wasn't exclusively a Yamnaya lineage. And even if the Z2103 in some Indo-European groups ultimately came from Yamnaya, this doesn't mean that their languages did also. 

Indeed, it's generally agreed that Armenian spread into the south Caucasus from the Balkans well after Yamnaya was gone. So even if many of these hypothetical Proto-Armenians carried Z2103 lineages ultimately derived from Yamnaya, they may have got their language from somewhere entirely different. But anyway, ancient DNA tells us that they may have carried I2c. 

And I never claimed that Corded Ware spoke archaic PIE, nor that it spread Anatolian languages to Anatolia. 

But I suspect that a kurgan group from the western edge of the steppe closely related to Corded Ware was somehow involved in this process.

So there you have it.  The notion is out there that none of the branches of Indo-European that we know of are descended from the Yamnaya culture, even Anatolian and Tocharian.

Of course, even if that were true, that doesn't mean that they didn't speak a closely related language, merely that it left no descendants.  At best, you could call it a para-PIE language, most likely it's merely a dead-end dialect.  There is still a lot of confusion about the following, for example:

• where exactly did the Anatolian branch, the first to split off, come from and who spoke it?  What was their route into Anatolia, and did they originate on the boundary between the western steppe and Old Europe, say, in the Usatovo culture or some similar horizon, as Anthony proposed in the past?   (This is probably still assumed; either way, Anatolian probably breaks off from the western steppe prior to the formation of Yamnaya proper, which is an eastern development which spread westward to encompass the entire steppe.  Anatolian is not presumed to be a Yamnaya descendant even in the prior model.)
• For that matter, what exactly is the genesis of other paleo Balkan Indo-European languages, including the ancestors of Armenian, Greek, Phrygian, Albananian, and of course, languages that are poorly known but only from the Balkans such as Thracian, Dacian and Illyrian?  We see both Yamnaya derived and later post-Corded Ware derived proposals in the discussion above.
• What was the genesis of the Tocharian languages and does the Afanasievo culture have anything to do with them or not?  The recent spate of DNA from the Tarim basin was not helpful in resolving this, because of a lot of issues: Tocharian isn't attested until quite late, for instance, but it is presumed by linguistic means to have split off from PIE very early; the first, in fact, other than Anatolian, to do so.  The Anatolian area was also swept over by Andronovo variants (as well as other populations from the east) prior to the attestation of the languages, so what would be needed is some kind of direct link discovered between Afanasievo and later Tarim populations, but not so late that they are confused with Andronovo variants.  And as Davidski himself point out a month or two ago, the so-called Tocharian samples that were published are almost certainly actually Huns, not Tocharians anyway.
• There's a six hundred year gap between the end of the Sredni Stog and the beginning of the Corded Ware horizon.  Much of the territory where the transition from Sredni Stog to Corded Ware could putatively have happened is occupied by other culture that seem to be either non-steppe, or at best, mixed steppe and Old Europe, like Globular Amphora, Baden, Ezero, etc.  The actual origins of the Corded Ware, with 75%+ steppe DNA but not Yamnaya DNA are a major missing link still.  Granted, the state of Ukrainian archaeology is pretty bad, which is a major source of the uncertainty.  Better field work should probably help develop some clues to the direction of Sredni Stog expansion into becoming Corded Ware, if that is indeed what happened.

Another interesting aside is that my objections to the parsimony of the physical appearance of the Yamnaya people, as reported, vs their alleged descendants across the board is not really an issue anymore if they aren't actually descendants of Yamnaya, but rather of Corded Ware.  Not that I don't still think the Yamnaya descriptions are probably subject to sampling bias (and other bias, for that matter) that makes the reports somewhat suspect when applied to the population overall, but it actually doesn't really matter either.

I still suspect that the Yamnaya people are the genesis of the Tocharians through Afanasievo, and I suspect that they are a substrate of later appearing steppe cultures, like Srubnaya, Catacomb, etc., if not the direct ancestors of some of them, although given the inherent violence of the time and the rabid extinctions and blossoming of y-DNA lineages, they may have contributed many more women than men to the populations that followed them.  Certainly by the time Sintashta and Andronovo appeared, the directly Yamnaya descended cultures were gone, replaced by some who's primary ancestry (on the male lines, at least) were Corded Ware.

More big-time Star Wars news

Although you have to read between the lines of Disney's lies to get to what it really likely means.

Yamnaya is sister group, not ancestor, to Corded Ware

Although the sampling is still smaller than we'd like, it seems almost certain that the Corded Ware Culture (CWC) people were a sister group, not a descendant of the Yamnaya people.  In fact, it may well have been the spread of the Yamnaya horizon that pushed the proto-CWC people to the north (or perhaps the migration of the CWC people left the western steppe open for the Yamnaya to expand.)  Given that most of the modern Indo-European languages, including all of the languages of northern and western Europe AND the Indo-Iranian branch can all be traced to the CWC rather than the Yamnaya, that puts some doubt on the Yamnaya as the source of late unified Proto-Indo-European.  Yamnaya MIGHT well have been the source of the Indo-European paleo-Balkan languages, and even the modern "Balkan" languages such as Greek, Albanian and Armenian (which originated in the Balkans even if they're not there now) as well as a number of extinct Indo-European languages like Phrygian, Cimmerian, etc.  We don't know enough about those languages to really say anyway.  Also, it might be the source of the Tocharian languages.

And certainly the interaction of westerly pushing late Yamnaya and lingering Corded Ware offshots as well as lingering Old European peoples created a complex melange of what developed later, like the Vučedol culture, for instance.

Another major vector of the spread of Indo-European is the Bell Beaker, which seems to show its closest genetic analogs; almost identical, really, to the Single Grave Culture, a Low Countries variant of the Corded Ware.  Contrary to Carlos Quiles and his Demic Diffusion and Uralic Substrate theories, the R1b clade of Y-DNA that is most strongly associated with the Beakerfolk is not part of the R1b clade most strongly associated with the Yamnaya, something that I didn't actually know until recently.  R1a-M417 is the haplogroup most strongly associated with the Corded Ware, but it isn't the only haplogroup, and R1b-L51, which is ancestral to R1b-P312 seems to have been with the CWC all along, and is present in some sampled areas of the Single Grave Culture.

The Yamnaya may well have been a flashy offshoot of the development of Indo-European, which is still more thoroughly nested within the Corded Ware Culture for almost all branches after all.  Not to suggest that CWC and Yamnaya weren't closely related, of course, but in the same way that your brother is closely related to you but has no role in marking your line of descent, the Yamnaya doesn't seem to have been as important as long thought in the development of most Indo-European branches after all.

But there's still a lot of questions driven by holes in the data about where and how certain lineages grew and expanded so quickly, and where exactly they came from.  The Corded Ware R1a--did it come from a northwestern branch of the steppe population (most likely, but there's only one sample so far that suggests that) and if so, from what population and when?  Late Sredni Stog II would be an obvious choice, and there are some archaeological hints that CWC can be found rooted in Sredni Stog, not Yamnaya, that have been out there for a long time already.  The Bell Beaker formation has a hypothesis rooted in the Single Grave culture, but much more data to make that assertion more sure would be appreciated.  And the formation and arrival of the Corded Ware is still somewhat mysterious.  How they got to where they are, especially if they come from the Sredi Stog II territory is a no-man's land when it comes to sampling, and we know that the non-Indo-European Globular Amphora Culture was laid across that exact same territory.  How the two of them interacted is also unknown.

This doesn't fundamentally challenge the steppe hypothesis, but it probably does require (or will require) some modification and tweaking to it.  And curiously, it means Carlos Quiles was right about one major aspect of his theory, at least, even if the other two big legs of his tripod are dead wrong.  Sredni Stog is almost certainly the most closely associated with the R1a haplogroup of the Corded Ware, and should be seen as its most likely direct ancestor.  But the Corded Ware people spoke an Indo-European language, quite clearly, and the Bell Beakers from Hungarian Yamnaya is not as likely as from within a Corded Ware group.  But that's some of the stuff that still isn't settled or sure, even if we can see the way it will likely develop.

Keep in mind that there could well be sampling bias in the samples we have, too.  The people who were buried in kurgans, for instance, were high status males, almost entirely.  The people who were found in bogs in Denmark were probably criminals or sacrifices (or both) and were, on the other hand, low status.

So, it is possible that as social status changed, suddenly we have the appearance of the explosion of a y-dna haplogroup from nowhere, but in reality it was there all along, just lacking in sufficient status to be buried in such a way that it would likely be found.

But again; the answer to all of these question is more sampling.

Pathfinder Society Scenarios Season #1 Part 4

46. Eyes of the Ten Part I--Requiem for the Red Raven.  This is the first part of a four-parter for relatively high level characters (level 12.)  The scenarios have to do with the "Shadow Lodge"; a secret society within the Pathfinder Society itself that wants to overthrow the current leadership and replace it with... themselves, naturally.  Venture-Captain Helstrom from Absalom, who's appeared in many of the scenarios so far to date, is one such Shadow Lodger, looking to get on the Decimvirate himself.  The adventure is also more than twice the length of the average; I don't know yet if it's going to be the new normal, or not (we'll see as we continue this exercise.)  The PCs are invited to a lodge in Galt (the "French Revolution" country of their setting) by the Decimvirate themselves, but some of their old venture-captain allies are there, all excited by their schemes for advancement, which seem to be bearing fruit.  Curiously, several pages of location descriptions are included, allowing the PCs to wander around the lodge exploring it in some detail.  Unbeknownst to the players, the local Pathfinders suspect Adril has been murdering members of the Decimvirate, and this whole affair is a loyalty test or a trap, and the PCs are also there to prove their loyalty.  Adril is murdered in the middle of the ceremony by the Red Raven, a kind of combination of the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Frank Nitti of The Untouchables movie.  He escapes after doing so through a weird extradimensional "maze" that Helstrom himself used to assassinate members of the Decimvirate; in fact, one such member was part of the Galtan heirarchy, and the Red Raven was striking in revenge, completely unrelated to politics within the Pathfinder Society.  Finally, the Pathfinder's suspicions about Helstrom (and the PCs themselves) are brought forward, and the PCs have to solve the mystery to absolve themselves.  The maze is inhabited by a medusa and lots of "stoned" people and monsters.  The maze deposits them in the Batcave (if the Red Raven were Bruce Wayne, which in some ways he is.)  However, Bruce Wayne's mansion is under attack by antifa, who wants to execute him and confiscate his stuff.  It's expected that the PCs will rescue him, although they may well not.  Either they do and talk to him, or they don't and read his papers, and they have all of the evidence to condemn Helstrom.  Returning to the Lodge, they report their findings to the venture captain and Osprey (another shadowy Pathfinder agent featured in some earlier scenarios), and find that Helstrom's body is missing (or he himself, if he were somehow saved from being killed.)  The whole scenario surrounds this already fairly complex plot with some complex set piece combats with plenty of "crawling" through tunnels, caves and passages with lots of weird monsters.  This, more than any scenario I've looked at so far, feels like a full-fledged "module" which removes some of the charm of this type of scenario on the one hand, but serves as a pretty nice (albeit railroady) adventure otherwise.
47. The Darkest Vengeance.  Set in Ustalav, Paizo's Transylvania and much of the original inspiration for my own Timischburg, and the PCs are to investigate a corrupt Pathfinder who is suspected of embezzling funds from the society to fund his own private obsessions.  Of course, his lodge is... in the caverns underneath a manor somewhere.  Sigh.  And it connects to the Underdark.  But first, they find that squatters are living in the manor, and they pretend to be the legitimate owners, hoping to murder the PCs or at least rob them in the evening.  Anyway, there's traps, there's the squatters, there's some other weird monsters (for some reason).  Dark Creepers are a major player, and one of them has in fact kidnapped the corrupt Pathfinder and has been torturing him; payment for a past betrayal.  Anyway, the PCs find the secret laboratory, including a rather dumb experiment in making blinding lights out of crystal (which doesn't seem to be a very useful thing to do in most situations) and then go save (presumably) the dude in distress. (A very common occurrence in Paizo scenarios, because they have an allergic reaction to damsels in distress, or something.)  The corrupt Pathfinder is put out to pasture in some remote location where he can't do the organization much more harm, and the venture captain who recruited you in the first place takes his place, rewarding the PCs.  In essence, the location doesn't matter, because this bizarre dungeoncrawl could take place anywhere; bizarre in the sense that there's no good reason for this dungeoncrawl down into the Underdark to actually exist in this location, but it does anyway.
48. The Devil We Know Part IV: The Rules of the Swift.  This is the series that takes place in the tunnels beneath Cassomir, where derros are kidnapping people.  The Swift is a prison, and they've broken through and kidnapped all of the prisoners, except for one who's actually an Aspis Consortium agent who had a deal with the derros.  Of course, the Consortium is also betraying the derros by making sure that Pathfinder agents (the PC's patron) finds out about them and goes and exterminates them, while keeping the Consortium's involvement on the DL.  In reality, the scenario is just a dungeoncrawl through a prison and the Underdark tunnels beneath it, with strange monsters who's presence is poorly explained, if at all, including an earth elemental, ghasts, mites and, of course, derros.  And a small subplot about a magical bell that is to be stolen spills the beans about the Consortium involvement, although the good news is that the derros are effectively and pretty much permanently defeated.
49. Among the Dead. This is a rather sad trap-filled dungeon, a sequel to Among the Living from way back to early in season 0.  There's a zombie cult beneath Oppara that the PCs need to infiltrate and destroy, in part to send a message that the Pathfinder Society doesn't brook murder of its members.  The PCs meet their contact out in the wilderness, and he's under attack by wild dogs (yes, this is a low level adventure...)  Almost immediately, it turns into its trap-dungeon exploration.  Other than traps, exotic zombies make up a large percentage of the challenges to face (monsters to fight).  Poltergeists and bat swarms give it a little variety, and the presence of tons of different types of traps I guess makes the traps more interesting?  I dunno; ask someone who thinks trapped dungeons are intriguing; I clearly do not.  After fighting some cultists and more traps, you finally face the unique, exotic wight who is the "boss" of the scenario.
50. Fortune's Blight. The PCs wander the River Kingdoms attempting to find a missing fragment of a broken and cursed magic sword.  They are dropped off in the woods and immediately come across a disguised green hag who was related to the curse of the sword and wants the fragment back.  She has another fragment.  Later, the ghost of another green hag killed due to the sword tries to attack the PCs too. They continue their travels by boat, and in the town of Sevenarches, they find a third fragment with a sword expert guy that they're meeting with.  The fragments fuse and the guy is dominated, and the PCs now have to fight him.  Assuming that he can be defeated without being killed, he can tell the PCs that while dominated, he understood how the curse must be broken--two monsters must be killed.  One of them is the green hag met at the beginning, and the other is a harpy, who lives in a nest with a bunch of other harpies.  When they kill them both, the curse is lifted, and the adventure ends.  This one seems particularly weak in terms of motivation and having a thread to follow that isn't just strap you to the rails.  It's a more forgettable one, although the chance to use harpies and hags is at least unusual.

Star Wars, licensing and Star Wars Remixed

So, my wife took one of my sons and my daughter to DisneyWorld to go see the new Star Wars land.  We'll all be able to see it next year, except that one son.  He just graduated from high school, and will be leaving on his mission in a month.  With two years in Peru, visiting DisneyWorld with the family in 2020 will obviously be out.  Besides I'm all out of vacation, and my youngest son still has to be in school.

Anyhoo, I've seen a lot of discussion among the "Fandom Menace" type guys about how Star Wars Land is failing, and Disney Parks is hurting, and the whole thing is going to come crashing down soon (in fact, I embedded several of them in my last post.)  To counter that, I suppose, I'll say that my family is reporting that Star Wars Land is pretty packed, and they think it's really cool—although the one ride available has had mixed reviews, trending negative (two thumbs down, one thumb up.)  And the droid and lightsaber factory things, while cool, are absurdly expensive.

 That said, I still think that the Star Wars brand is not nearly as strong as it was, obviously.  The new movies, especially The Last Jedi, but also The Force Awakens, were just on the downside of mediocre at best, and actively offensively terrible at worst.  And I have no expectation that the new movie is going to fix it, because Jar Jar Abrams just isn't a good enough film maker.  Plus, he's mired in the paradigms that messed up Star Wars in the first place too much to ever be able to make an actively good movie.  Toy sales are down because nobody really likes or cares about the new characters, because they're so badly done, and everyone's honestly kinda pissed off about what they did to the original trilogy characters; turning them into sad, old losers.  Probably because in Jar Jar Abrams and Rianne Johnson's world, those are the only kind of parent figure people that they know.  Rey simply isn't a stand-in for young Luke; she's a cypher and an egregiously Mary Sue bore.  Kylo Ren isn't a stand-in for Darth Vader; he's just a whiny, entitled bratty little princess.  Oh, he's evil alright.  But not in an engaging way from a story-telling perspective.  He's, again, too much like the creators for that.  The sidekicks characters are marginally likable, but nowhere near Han Solo quality, the weird surrogate Yoda figure with the old African lady voice and her eyes set inside two buttholes is considerably worse than Yoda.  Even BB-8 is a piss-poor bad reflection of R2-D2.  Nothing about the new movies is memorable or even really very good.

I do like the rumor, which I think one of my videos I embedded yesterday referenced, that part of the reason DisneyWars has been so insistent on getting rid of any trace of the Original Trilogy, even going so far as to modify the appearance of the Millennium Falcon (new version; Millennial Falcon in reference to the generation of narcissistic, entitled, bratty little princesses that this movie is targeting?) is because George Lucas still gets royalties from them.  He sold them Star Wars, but not everything Star Wars, so they're trying really hard to replace everything that George Lucas still gets royalties from with something else.  Of course, that's not necessarily a bad idea, but their execution was absolutely freakin' terrible.  And part of that was that they set it so close in time to the original trilogy that it begged a bunch of questions about how stupid and incompetent the rebellion had to have been to allow the Empire to turn into the First Order and how stupid did Luke have to have been to have failed to restart the Jedi Order properly and how much of a loser did Luke, Han and Leia have to have been to turn out to be the people that they did.  Except Leia, of course, because girls always win in Clown World Star Wars.  The Old Republic was better executed (especially in the first game—although there are too many SJWisms buried in there too, it didn't poison the main thrust of the story yet) but more to the point, it was far enough in time from the original or the prequel trilogies that it could stake its own territory without it feeling ridiculous and copied.

I still maintain that my idea of STAR WARS REMIXED is the way that the new movies should have gone.  Go forward in time far enough in the future that you can have the freedom to structure the setting the way that you want it.  Of course, none of that matters if you give even brilliant ideas (and I'm hardly pretending like my idea is brilliant; it's just Old Republic turned around, and then because Legacy did the same thing, I borrowed a few concepts from it there too) to people like Jar Jar Abrams and Rianne Johnson to screw up.  The First Order vs The Resistance with old Han, Luke and Leia isn't a totally unworkable idea if it'd been executed better—although I don't think it was the best idea either.  Timothy Zahn certainly showed that a legitimate sequel with a high quality story could have been made.  Not that Disney could have made those, at least not without recasting, because Zahn's trilogy is set; what, about five years after Return of the Jedi, so actors who have aged more than thirty years in real life since filming Jedi couldn't possibly reprise that role exactly.  But maybe that's kinda the point; as good as Zahn's books were, they didn't need to be filmed, especially in the 2010s.  What needed to be done was to allow the characters to have their assumed happily ever afters and just move on after their long gone.

Star Wars in trouble? Yeah, no doubt

I have absolutely no doubt that it's a dumpster fire.  I admit that I kinda sorta actually wanted to see if they could possibly recover from the dumpster fire that was The Last Jedi, which was such a terrible movie that it actually seems to have made DisneyWorld hurt, all by itself.



Well... it's not like I'm surprised.  Disney has become one of the most evil as well as most incompetent companies around, which given the ridiculous nonsense that corporations in today's ClownWorld environment routinely pull, is really saying something.  As much as I love what Star Wars was, I can say honestly that I'm not at all concerned with what happens to Disney or Star Wars or Marvel.  In fact, I feel a great deal of schadenfreude in watching them implode.  Disney people hate us; normal American men who were their core fanbase.  Their hate has taught us to hate them back.

UPDATE: There's more:



And, heh, heh.  Yeah, this too.

Revisiting Eberron Remixed

Yes, I know this isn't really an Eberron piece...

My EBERRON REMIXED was always a minor project to begin with, but one that I rather enjoyed while I tinkered with it.  I never did go back and add house rules or discussion about the Dragonmarked Houses and stuff like that, but that's probably OK.  The feats can be readily adapted by any GM who needs them from the d20 rules themselves without too much work; after all, that was the promise of m20, that any d20 element could be adapted.

Rather, I think the setting being remixed is what's more important to discuss rather than some mechanical elements or components.  Let's revisit the way I'm doing this.  The remixing process requires:

1. Adapting a system that better manages the expectation of that high concept than the highly tactical and static and rulesy and bloated modern versions of D&D (I've selected my own m20 variant, but you can go with something else, if you like) - COMPLETE, although I need to make sure my Eberron rules are still in harmony with the newer version of DH5 or FANTASY HACK, which I don't think that they are anymore.
2. Establish some guiding principles which, if adopted, means you can fine tune the remix at the detailed level when in game in order to better coincide with the good, old-fashioned, pulpy tone that the setting is trying to reach for but failing for a variety of reasons (but most especially the demands of conforming to details of the social justice delusion about the nature of reality) - COMPLETE, see below
3. Pruning esoteric D&Disms that are unrecognizable outside of the world of D&D junkies and more in line with what anyone with a familiarity with the foundational myths and fantasy literature of Western Civilization would recognize - WORK IN PROGRESS
4. Adapt setting elements as highlighted in this brief prospectus over the course of a few blog posts into this paradigm. - WORK IN PROGRESS

Now keep in mind that I don't really want to change too many things for its own sake; if I'm changing something it's because 1) it's more convenient do use something already off the shelf than reinvent the wheel, or 2) an Eberron element doesn't fit the vision of the Remix and therefore needs to be adjusted to one that does, or 3) an Eberron (or D&D element in Eberron) element simply didn't work as well for me as the author thought it would, and it came across as either hoaky, strangely esoteric, or just odd and unlikable.  Yeah, yeah—that third point means I can make any change for any reason I want, but I reserve that right, I suppose.  

Anyway, the Guiding Principles are as follows; also reposted from before:

1. Eberron is a D&D setting, but the pulp and noir elements that inform its tone clash with D&D as it has become (D&D is not cinematic, action-packed or swashbuckling; it's careful, cautious and tactical, and it actively punishes anyone who tries to be pulpy or swashbuckling.)  The very first thing I noted that is important to successfully "remix" the setting is to find a new system for it that better accommodates its tone.  
2. Along those lines, pulpy, swashbuckling settings from the actual pulp era were much more humano-centric, and D&D was initially expected to be so as well.  The more I've thought about it, the more I've come around to the wisdom of humano-centric settings.  I used to be perfectly fine with weird, cosmopolitan, and fantasy-alien settings, but that doesn't really work well for the tone of Eberron.  The tone of swashbuckling pulp and noir really needs to be humano-centric.  So, for every nation, I've changed the population balance to greatly increase the expectation of humans, and greatly reduce the expectation of non-humans.  
3. It's also striking how much social justice dogma has infiltrated any official D&D publication.  I'm very interested in remixing out any of those strains of melody (to probably take the remixing analogy a little too far.)  The former point actually supports this; an understanding of biological HBD, for instance, makes social justice equalitarianism ridiculous.  The piling on on traditional institutions of Western civilization (or their fantasy surrogates) is insulting and any instances of it will be removed with extreme prejudice, the elevation of strange hippiness as a surrogate for actual moralty will cease, most of the female NPCs that are acting like men will be reskinned as men, and vice versa.  
4. Finally, I just want a more coherent whole.  I've always thought that coherency is one of the things that Eberron lacked, because, as Keith Baker said repeatedly, everything from D&D had to have a place.  This might mean that some elements; even important ones, are left out.
5. UPDATE: Adding a new guiding principle; a setting like Eberron is deliberately BIG, so that there are lots of different places that can appeal to lots of different people as needed for their own campaign style and taste.  Golarion or Forgotten Realms is similar.  HOWEVER, any given campaign can't reasonably be set all over the place (although it was often a hallmark of Eberron adventures that you were taking magic trains and airships and traveling a fair bit) so realistically I should focus my efforts on remixing only a single geographically constrained region—at least, if you mean beyond what I've already remixed for background context.  Because Breland and Sharn in particular are the spotlight areas and main protagonist area, if you will, I think it makes the most sense to focus my efforts there if I do any additional Eberron Remixing.

Now, granted, Sharn and the surrounding area needs considerably less remixing than the entire setting, but I also need to think of what kind of adventures would be set primarily there and not hightailing it all over the continent (or even beyond).  Certainly few of the official adventures would do so.  That's OK, but maybe the two need to be done in concert; i.e., lets start working on developing a potential campaign arc of sorts and see how that impacts additional development needed on remixing the setting and vice versa.  Luckily, being a relatively cosmopolitan area, the remixing (beyond what's already been done) can be kept more or less to a minimum.  Sharn was probably one of the setting's best single elements anyway.

Along those lines, the remixing has to apply to the adventure styles too.  If I'm saying Eberron failed to live up to its promise in large part because it was straining to be something other than D&D but stuck in a D&D game, that's especially true of the "signature" adventure; the one set in Sharn and spotlighted in the Campaign Setting book, "The Forgotten Forge".  Starting out as a kind of noir mystery, it quickly turns into.... a dungeoncrawl in the caverns underneath Sharn.

Sigh.  I probably ought to at least skim the modules, or read some decent summaries of them online or something, and see what elements are ripe for theft into a new paradigm, but otherwise, it's not like I can't do a fantasy urban noir mystery and intrigue adventure on my own, of course.  I've done it before and can certainly do it again.

So, I might yet revive this tag and do a little more work on it after all.  Maybe.  Certainly, right now I'm feeling warmer to that idea than I have in a long time.

History of m20

I was poking around a bit while waiting for roadside assistance to come unlock my daughter's car so the keys could get picked up out of the passenger seat (long story and not very interesting; don't ask) yesterday, and re-read some of my older blog posts.  I thought one was ripe for some updating, which explained my history (at the time) of using m20.  Let me start with the ordered list that I originally had and then add some new line items at the bottom.

1. I'd been running around house-ruling d20 Modern and D&D 3.5 to be used with my DARK•HERITAGE setting for years.  I'd also played with other systems, but never really settled on anything.  Until...
2. In early 2013 I belatedly discovered the Microlite system (amazingly, by then it had already been around for almost 7 years!)
3. In May of 2013, I created my own adaptation of m20 for use with DARK•HERITAGE.  I also took the two existing Star Wars iterations of m20, combined them into a single one, and added my own elements.  I think this was a great adaptation of the m20 rules to an existing setting that works well with the premise of an old-fashioned game like m20 anyway.  Even if it's just me saying so.
4. These systems underwent periodic revision and fixing of minor elements for some time.  Most of these changes were minor, but they didn't really completely settle down until 2015, at which point both the Star Wars m20 and DARK•HERITAGE m20 were considered complete.
5. Also in 2015, I was confronted with the possibility of needing to pick up where our group had left off; in a campaign that was faltering.  We ended up doing something else (Call of Cthulhu—a campaign that also ended up faltering, as it happens.)  I decided to start the CULT OF UNDEATH project; a thorough pruning and adaptation of Paizo's Carrion Crown adventure path.  For whatever reason, I decided to adapt m20 to do this.  This was the genesis of the m20 CULT OF UNDEATH game; I basically took the DARK•HERITAGE game and replaced the DARK•HERITAGE races with some that more closely resemble standard D&D.  I could, of course, simply have used an existing m20 D&D version, including the original 2006 m20, or maybe the Purest Essence.  But, for whatever reason, I wanted to do my own thing.  
6. In June of 2016, I decided to expand the CULT OF UNDEATH system into a full-blown "My D&D"—i.e., my own take on what I think the D&D system should look like to best emulate my ideal game of it.  This became, of course, FANTASY HACK.
7. By this time, The Force Awakens is already out and of course it's disappointing, although not nearly as much so as The Last Jedi was going to be.  About a quarter into 2016, I started to think that my STAR WARS REVISITED was played out.  I was very happy with the system, but less happy than I hoped to be with the setting, because it was irrevocably tied to an IP that I was more and more unhappy with.  Although this predates CULT OF UNDEATH, I did some early exploration of what it would mean to turn STAR WARS REMIXED into AD ASTRA in April of 2016, that really wasn't a full blown initiative yet, and it wasn't until March of 2017 that I really released AD ASTRA as its own stand-alone game; although by this time, with a setting that was off to a good start.
8. Almost a year ago, I had really started getting excited about developing the CULT OF UNDEATH setting more (under the draft name of TIMISCHBURG), but as I was doing so, I found I was turning repeatedly to ideas that were in DARK•HERITAGE; many of which had actually been cribbed from some other setting I'd developed before being put into DARK•HERITAGE itself.  When it became clear that the two settings were converging, I decided to make it official and bump Dark•Heritage from it's current version 4 to DH5; still a substantially similar setting in many respects, but with a substantially altered geography and more a focus on Medieval familiar pseudo-British nations rather than the pseudo-Renaissance Spanish nations that were more the protagonist race of DH4.
9. With substantial updates to both settings, I had a look at all three rulesets and harmonized and updated all of them a small amount.  This led to other ideas, and the updates were slightly more thorough than I had originally expected.  This especially applied to the two fantasy games.  I added a small section to enable FANTASY HACK in particular to serve as a fantasy Western, mostly because I'd gotten into Red Dead Redemption 2, but also because I'd had the idea of doing so a couple of years ago anyway.  It was just a small add-on appendix anyway.
10. Other than that update, though, I don't really have any additional plans for FANTASY HACK, and DARK•HERITAGE in its current format is basically the same game, except optimized for the setting (all that really means is that the monster lists differ slightly as do the player races spotlighted.  FANTASY HACK therefore is officially a "dead" although still obviously quite playable game, and the DH5 specific version of the rules is really my preferred fantasy game.  I might yet dust off FANTASY HACK sometime for a D&D game, and I've got a few random elements floating around (EBERRON REMIXED, for instance) that could be added to it, but I'd actually prefer not to and as of right now, I'm not planning to.  I have therefore two real games; DARK•HERITAGE which is fantasy and AD ASTRA which is space opera, along with their attendant settings.  Although both are 100% usable as is, I do intend to continue setting development for both; especially DARK•HERITAGE, which after the major structural change is actually less developed now than the space opera, although over the next year or so that will probably change.
11. For the heck of it, here's a picture of spaghetti western era Clint Eastwood interpreted as a fantasy character.  I could see him in the Hill Country as a fairly typical PC.  Sweet.  Onward with more development!

Anyway, stepping back, here's a copy and paste of Microlite's own description of what it is.

What is Microlite20? 

Do you remember when the gaming table was full of pizza and soda, not rulebooks, miniatures and dungeon tiles? Do you yearn for a role-playing game that doesn’t require weight training to carry all the books? Do you want to be able to hold all the rules in your head - or in your back pocket? And do you still want to use all those lovely monsters, adventures and game worlds too? So do we!! 

--  Greywulf 

Microlite20 is a minimalist role-playing game designed to be usable with the majority of the OGL/d20 supplements, rules and adventures with little or no advance preparation. The basic rules for character generation, combat, magic and level advancement take up a single sheet of paper, meaning it is perfect for introducing role-playing to new players, gaming oneshot adventures or tailoring into your own game system. 

History of Microlite20  

Microlite20 was designed by Robin V. Stacey (aka Greywulf) in 2006. The purpose of the rules were to strip the OGL/D20 system down to its bare minimum so that the world’s most popular fantasy system could be played quickly and without thousands of pages of rules, but still be usable with all the adventures, campaign settings, and supplements that had been published for the 3.x edition of the world’s most popular fantasy RPG. 

Amazing, one page of basic rules (coupled with the Fantasy SRD for spells and monsters) really did allow for fast-playing games with just about every adventure and supplement published for the 3.x edition. 

Microlite20 was an immediate hit with players who liked the 3.x edition of the world’s most popular fantasy RPG but did not like the complex and time-consuming (both to GM for and to play out combats) beast it had become. Microlite20 was a rules-light way to play that brought fun back to many game tables. 

The Microlite20 rules were entirely open game content. Only the names “Microlite20” and “Robin V. Stacey” were listed as product identity. Having the entire system open game content sparked a flurry of gamer creativity. Simple variant rules and basic expansions came first – for example, lists of limited spells and monsters so Microlite20 could be played without lugging the huge SRD around. However, customized rule sets and complete games based on Microlite20 soon followed.

As an interesting aside, I've been looking over the big Microlite Compendium, and although there are tons of alternate and variant m20 games included, almost none of them bothered to include anything whatsoever to explain what they are, what they're doing differently, or why you should look at them instead of just basic Microlite20.  Even the ones that included an Introduction just copied and pasted the introductory text to Microlite20.  Sigh. 

Dice

I've got plenty of sets of dice.  I don't know why I still want more, but I do... anyway, here's some of the sets that I'd love to have, from Q-Workshop.

The green with bilious yellow markings STRANGE AEONS dice set is kinda half D&D, half Call of Cthulhu.  Should be right up my ally, right?

Actually, the yellow with green markings and scales from the SERPENT'S SKULL adventure path are probably among my very favorite ever published.  I really want these.

These black and glow-in-the-dark CALL OF CTHULHU dice are even better than the Strange Aeons ones, though.  In a pinch, I'd get these instead of those.  Although they cost twice as much.

The MASKS OF NYARLATHOTEP biege with red markings dice are also quite nice, and I do like bone-colored dice a lot, actually.  I have a set that's just regular black markings on bone coloration, but these are much prettier with very stylized markings.

Why do I like dice?  Well, I mean, every gamer likes dice, but given that I've already got at least a dozen sets, why do I want nearly half a dozen more? (I trimmed my firs list which had at least two more than what I ended up posting here.)  I dunno.  Can't help it.  I love 'em.

Friday Art Attack Part II

Because I haven't done much of this in a while, here's a second part to the Friday Art Attack.

An alternate Star Wars cover done with Game of Thrones characters.

Just some cool stuff.  Make of it what you will.

Part of the opening animation for Thundarr the Barbarian.

Speaking of which...

A redesigned more savage version of Thundarr.

I called this file a thurse.

A tiger attacking a Russian soldier in Siberia.

A cool Boba Fett image.

I'm not sure where this Tomb Kings image came from, it's not one of the ones you see around very often.  Cool, though.

A very lizardy dragon.

A kind of fake Millennium Falcon for Traveller.  Better shape, I trust.  Not such a piece of junk.

I'd live in this tree, if I could.  I really like it, actually.

A very pale modern style tiefling witch or something.

Tron Darth Vader.

Tsothoggua vomiting out spawn.

Orcs and Lovecraftian monsters, or something.

I really like this image.  I've gotta think of something awesome to do with it.

A WAR Paizo image of some kind of undead somebody or other.  From one of the adventure paths, but I can't remember which.

WAR's cover art for the NPC codex, I think.  This is a weird collection, though.

Lovecraftian horrors can be in space too.

More Star Wars concept art.

Friday Art Attack

It's been a little while, what with my weird schedule, since I've done a Friday Art Attack.  I don't want to miss it today, so let me get it out early then I can see if I have time later to post about something else.

Let's start with some Wayne Reynolds Paizo stuff.  With a big, stronk waman, hearing her roar.  Cool dragon, though.

Quite honestly, this art was probably associated with some trance mix I was listening to or something, but I like this superimposition of some scenery with big, exaggerated stellar elements in the sky, like moons that are hundreds of percent larger than real life, and galaxies, and crap like that.  Cool stuff.  I wish our sky looked that cool.

Barsoom!  The banth killer!  That outfit looks really, really uncomfortable in the snow.  Yeah, yeah—the naked people running around is part of the gratuitous appeal of Barsoom (especially with the Frank Frazetta illustrations) but they don't dress like that at the poles, even in Warlord of Mars which takes place about half at the north pole.

I'm not quite sure why cyberpunk is so Japanese, but Japanophilia and cyberpunk both peaked at the same time in the 80s, so maybe it was just an accident of timing.  Anyway, here's futuristic cyperpunk Japan, I guess.

Because I prefer the plots of spy thrillers and crime novels to those of typical fantasy save the world quests and certainly to dungeoncrawls, this kind of stuff is right up my alley.  The Godfather and Robert Ludlum in a fantasy setting.  Layer in some Lovecraft and Stoker and we're good to go.

More cyberpunk and more Japanese symbols on the signs.  I wonder if in the 80s we thought Japan was going to take over the economy or something.  Certainly it seems much more likely now that China is poised to do so, although of course China's economy is actually rather fragile.

Another stronk waman!  Sigh.  It's a nice picture, but c'mon.  As much as people bleat what they're told by their brainwashing to bleat, the reality is that feminine women are attractive, as are masculine men.  Masculine women and feminine men are at best off-putting, at worst contemptible.

The world can always use more great ghost stories.

I'm not quite sure what's going on here or why that guy's running, since he doesn't seem to be in imminent danger of having junk dumped on his head, but this is still a really cool picture.

More ghost stories, in specifically D&D milleu.

Some Warhammer art; some of the death angels of Nagash's army attacking a big monster of the ogre kingdoms army.  Or maybe the new Age of Sigmar equivalent, but I can't be bothered to relearn the names.

When ghost riders in the sky come down out of the sky...

See what I mean about feminine women and masculine men?  Although this is a slightly foppish interpretation of Solomon Kane.  James Purefoy's interpretation in the movie, although not exactly canon compared to the stories, was still excellent.  Purefoy is not a traditional pulpy, square-jawed type of hero, but he seems competently masculine enough to pull it off.

I liked him as the crown prince in A Knight's Tale too.

WAR's new Paizo GM's guide cover.Stronk waman again.  Sigh.  Although she does appear to be the villain here.

WAR's new Paizo Bestiary cover.  Love that undead dragon, and the morlocks or whatever they are are pretty cool.  The snakeman is OK.  But I'd rather have had the dragon with some heroes, honestly.  I know, I know—bestiary covers just need the monsters.  But as a work of art specifically, I would have prefered the ghost dragon with some heroes.

A reminder that fairies are not really very nice.  I haven't given a lot of thought to my otherworldly cosmology since I wrote the following many months ago, but here it is again, slightly edited:  "I had earlier kept Faery apart from the world as an excuse to not really have elfs or dwarfs running around; but after reading the Feywild chapter of 4e's Manual of the Planes and having it remind me strongly of Jim Butcher's take on Faeries, which of course, is closely based on Celtic folklore about them, I'm rethinking that strategy.  Elfs and dwarfs (and every other type of faery) will not be appearing as player character "protagonist" races, but as monstrous foes, they work very well.  There won't be any Elrond or Galadriel or Legloas, there will be King Oberon, Queen Titania, the Erlking, etc. Although I don't love calling them Sidhe, which is an Irish word that actually means "mound" (the full title is Daoine Sidhe or the Aes Sidhe, or people of the mounds) there aren't a lot of alternatives that are sufficiently well-known that they work as well, so I probably will anyway.  I'd prefer to go with the Scottish equivalent, because I'm much more partial to the Scottish over the Irish, but that word is Sith.  Although pronounced [shee], no native English speaker is going to see that and think of anything other than Star Wars.  I do wish that the older pronunciation of Sidhe (sheathuh) was still in use, but it's not and most people wouldn't recognize it anyway.)"

Another minieature; this one isn't specifically supposed to be a ringwraith, but in point of fact, it sure as heck looks like one.

More ghosts from Games Workshop.

And finally, the big old ghost chariot, or coffin wagon, to be more specific, although it works as a chariot.  I want to do something with this image in my setting, but I'm not sure what.  Some local haunt or something or other is betting to look like this.

10 Lies you Still believe about Dinosaurs

Sigh.  Granted, I'm kinda a dino-nerd, but this is an especially bad youtube video.

I'm also irritated by the terrible mispronunciation of many of the dinosaur species.



10. Dinosaurs Roared - well, dinosaurs was a large and very diverse group, comparable to the mammals.  Not all mammals make the same sounds, so not all dinosaurs should be expected to either.  In any case, dinosaurs were as closely related to crocodylians as they are to birds in many respects, both being the existing branches of Archosauria, and certainly crocodiles roar.  His debunking is even more speculative than the "lie" that he's trying to debunk.  Thumbs down for number 10.

9. Velociraptors were smart.  Yeah, the smartest dinosaurs were about the same intelligence (based on the circumstantial evidence used to determine that kind of thing) as the dumbest of birds; the ratites.  Thumbs up here.

8. T. rex had weak arms.  This is another pretty decent debunking, but most texts, even kids books, didn't call the arms weak as opposed to tiny, and their use is still... well, nobody knows what they did with them.  Thumbs up, although the lame ending to this is ridiculous.

7. The Triceratops.  Not only is he not correct in asserting that it's "increasingly likely" that Triceratops were Torosaurus, but even if it were, it would actually suggest that Torosaurus is the one that doesn't exist, not Triceratops. The Triceratops name has priority, and the number of fossils compared to Torosaurus is staggering. And subadult Torosaurses are known, actually.  Thumbs down.

6. Dinosaurs were too big to move on land.  Nobody has believed this since the 60s, I don't think—or based on old kids books that were written in the 50s and 60s. Thumbs way down.

5. Dinosaurs all existed in the same era.  I've never believed this.  Every kids book I ever read in my entire nearly 50 year life suggests that at the very least they all lived in three periods.  Who believes this?  And technically, the Mesozoic is an Era.  All dinosaurs lived in the Mesozoic.  This poor idiot is so hapless that even when he's trying to debunk a "lie" that nobody actually believes, he gets it wrong.  Sigh.  Thumbs down.

4. Pterosaurs are not dinosaurs.  The only people who believe this are people who don't really know anything about dinosaurs.  It's kinda like people who can't tell apart a squirrel from a raccoon.  Yeah, there probably are people who think that pterosaurs are dinosaurs, but again—every kids book on dinosaurs I ever read made the point that they weren't. Also, his details about "pterodactyls", which is the wrong label, are very dubious.  Don't take them seriously. Thumbs down.

3. Dinosaurs were all scaly.  Actually, probably all large dinosaurs were mostly scaly, and only the smaller ones were completely covered with feathers. Tons and tons and tons of skin impressions in the fossil record prove this. His details about T. rex are wrong (scaly skin patch impressions have been found for the animal) as well as its relationship with the chicken (which probably wasn't meant to be literal, to be fair.) Thumbs way down.

2. Dinosaurs terrorized our ancestors.  Without getting into the totally separate question of the problems with the theory of evolution, this is just absurd.  So... he found one Mesozoic mammal who probably preyed on small (or baby) dinosaurs?  Whoop-de-doo.  The majority of predatory dinosaurs would still have eaten even this guy, as well as every other mammal from the era, unless of course they were big enough to leave mammals unworthy of notice.  Thumbs way down; fake news.

1. T. rex can only see you if you move.  I know that they said this in a movie, but do people really believe that that was anything other than a fictional thing made up for dramatic purposes?  I'm sure that there were a few, but really?  I don't know if I should consider this a thumbs up or a thumbs down, because I have a hard time believing anyone ever took it seriously in the first place.