The Gilded Age Campaign

[Taedis]

I'm building a world where the golden age characters are examined in a more modern light. Hence the Gilded Age.

When all is said and done I will present my players with the option of making any golden age character from any company (Timely, DC, Fawcett, Quality, Lev Gleason etc.)

I have been thinking of ways to tie bits of disparate continuity together and coming up with..... well I suppose the term would be retcons, but that doesn't seem right.

For example. Instead of blond haired Steve Trevor washing up on the shores of Paradise Island it's Steve Rogers. Diana returns to "man's world" with the injured hero after modelling her costume on the Captain America uniform under his amy fatigues and the eagle mural on his downed plane. His indestructible round shield would be a gift from the gods to replace his heavily dented original.

I want this to be good so I'm looking to get as many helpful suggestions as possible.

Thanks in advance.

[nexus]

Re: The Gilded Age Campaign

 

So its going to be sort of an Iron Age treatment of the Golden Age? Thats neat. Sorry I can't offer much help, but I'd like to hear how it goes. You might to take a look at the game Godlike. It has a similar setting time preriod wise.

[OddHat]

Re: The Gilded Age Campaign

 

Yup, Godlike is not a bad source.

 

350 points is actually about right for the Golden Age heroes, if you want them to perform as well as their comic book persona's did.

 

Aquaman and Namor are obviously the same person, with different names according to the source.

 

The Shadow, The Spider, Doc Savage, G8, and all the other Pulp heroes are still around, though nearing the ends of their careers.

 

Batman is likely to have studied under one or more of the Pulp Heroes, maybe the Shadow, and Doc Savage's Fortress of Solitude was undoubtedly taken over ny Superman after Doc vanished. Probably Doc trained Supes.

 

Captain Marvell and his familly are actually more powerful than Supes in this period, though Supes will catch up.

 

The Wold-Newton universe sites are great for this stuff; just do a google search on Wold-Newton and Superheroes.

[Vanguard00]

Re: The Gilded Age Campaign

 

Heck, you could even tie the Fantastic Four's origin (bombarded by cosmic rays) in with the arrival of Superboy (cosmic rays being vaguely kryptonian), and in turn have a huge chunk of "meteor rock" turn Bruce Banner into the Hulk. Plus all them cosmic meteor rocks had such a funky effect on humanity that mutants began to appear soon after.

 

Um...is that the kind of thing you were lookin' for, or did I miss the point?

[Taedis]

Re: The Gilded Age Campaign

 

So its going to be sort of an Iron Age treatment of the Golden Age? Thats neat. Sorry I can't offer much help' date=' but I'd like to hear how it goes. You might to take a look at the game Godlike. It has a similar setting time preriod wise.[/quote']

 

 

Thanks. Godlike is one of the inspirations for this whole thing. The game mechanics seem a little weird, but the background is amazing.

 

It will probably be a while before this gets played. Our regular gaming group usually plays a campaign for a year then switches off to something else. We've just started a D&D campaign so this won't be played at least until Fall.

[Taedis]

Re: The Gilded Age Campaign

 

Heck, you could even tie the Fantastic Four's origin (bombarded by cosmic rays) in with the arrival of Superboy (cosmic rays being vaguely kryptonian), and in turn have a huge chunk of "meteor rock" turn Bruce Banner into the Hulk. Plus all them cosmic meteor rocks had such a funky effect on humanity that mutants began to appear soon after.

 

Um...is that the kind of thing you were lookin' for, or did I miss the point?

 

Sadly most of the better Marvel characters are Silver Age and I've made an (arbitrary) rule that I would only work with Golden Age characters.

 

That said I really like your idea about Krypton's destruction leading to the creation of the FF.

 

About 10 years ago I did a crossover thing set in the modern day. One of the bits I used as background was Krypton being destroyed by Galactus (which I guess was used when the FF met Superman a few years later.)

 

The notion that Galactus' actions created the Fantastic Four is too good to pass up. Once this campaign hits the Silver Age (or I skip ahead) this will be part of the back story.

 

Thanks loads.

[Taedis]

Re: The Gilded Age Campaign

 

Yup, Godlike is not a bad source.

 

350 points is actually about right for the Golden Age heroes, if you want them to perform as well as their comic book persona's did.

 

Aquaman and Namor are obviously the same person, with different names according to the source.

 

The Shadow, The Spider, Doc Savage, G8, and all the other Pulp heroes are still around, though nearing the ends of their careers.

 

Batman is likely to have studied under one or more of the Pulp Heroes, maybe the Shadow, and Doc Savage's Fortress of Solitude was undoubtedly taken over ny Superman after Doc vanished. Probably Doc trained Supes.

 

Captain Marvell and his familly are actually more powerful than Supes in this period, though Supes will catch up.

 

The Wold-Newton universe sites are great for this stuff; just do a google search on Wold-Newton and Superheroes.

 

 

I almost forgot the pulps and radio.

 

Clark Savage training Clark Kent then turning over the Fortress of Solitude works. As does the Shadow training Bruce Wayne after a young Wayne figures out his secret ID, not the ones that we read about in the stories, but the one that is alluded to by Farmer in his biographies.

 

Of course that last part may be too much of a rip-off of Tim Drake.

 

And what about Margot Lane's little sister Lois?

 

God, I'm a geek.

 

Thanks

[Guest Champsguy]

Re: The Gilded Age Campaign

 

There are actually a lot of cool Golden Age characters from Marvel. Most of them simply didn't get carried over from Timely Comics. There are lots of pages out there that give info on those old characters.

[Agent 13]

Re: The Gilded Age Campaign

 

I was gonna post some links that might help, but I realized that I already had.

[David Blue]

Re: The Gilded Age Campaign

 

It's hard to see the Spider not training the Punisher. With the attitude and the two blazing .45s in their iconic images, it's like: "that's my boy!" Actually, there may have been an excellent reason for mobsters to gun down the Punisher's family (that is, his father and anyone else present). Revenge!

 

It would be embarrassing to have to tell the don that one of the Spider's sons had survived and was even more violent than his old man, as well as being burly rather than a hunchback. But I doubt the embarrassment would survive long.

[HeroGM]

Re: The Gilded Age Campaign

 

I see Batman studying under Sherlock Holmes personally. The Falls be d**ned. Maybe the Joker was an underling of Moriarty (nahh, too obvious).

 

Hm....Horton created the Human Torch, backed by money from the Wayne Foundation. Take some of the characters back to their "roots" ret-conned or not....A young airline stewardess survies a crash and through amnesia becomes Catwoman (could it be Hugh's TWA she worked for?). Mixing periods a little we have the Pengiun, growing up as an obese child he was made fun of, and left out, always on the edge of everything. Always ignored or looked down on he learned a lot of things he shouldn't have, becoming one of the biggest information sellers during the War.

 

Just an aside. If you go back and read the Fantastic Four Reborn (hey, it was Lee, it wasn't totally bad) the FF and others got their powers from radiation and "power cosmic" due to the wormhole that brought the Silver Surfer to Earth. Tieing in Galactus not only to the FF but also to the Inhumans (who's home was built atop a "seed pod" that Galactus & his heralds use to speed up evolution on potential worlds).

[gewing]

Re: The Gilded Age Campaign

 

There was a Batman comic in the 70s iirc where he encountered the Shadow, he told him that he was one of his inspirations.