JSA - Day One

[fredrik_nilsson]

In my golden age campaign I plan to use DC's Earth-2 quite much, so I would be very thankful if you coud help me give stats to the important heroes and villains.

 

I want the heroes made with the normal Golden Age Champions guidelines, since there's a chance some of the players want to use them. Try to make the heroes as they were when they debuted, if possible.

 

The Golden Age Champions Guidelines Are:

• 150 Base Points + 100 Disadvantage Points
  
• 40-60 Active Points in most powers
  
• CVs 6-10
  
• SPD 3-6
  
• Avoid Multipowers with more than a half-dozen slots
  
• Most attack-powers have only one Advantage, if any
  
• The 20-points Disadvantage Normal Characteristic Maxima is more common than in many other eras; especially among the so-called mystery men.
  
• Almost all supers (both good and bad) have secret IDs.

 

Some helpful links are:

 

The Justice Society of America

Toonopedia

JSA at Toonopedia

Wikipedia

The Golden Age Villain Fact File

The Comics Archive

[John Desmarais]

Re: JSA - Day One

 

In my golden age campaign I plan to use DC's Earth-2 quite much' date=' so I would be very thankful if you coud help me give stats to the important heroes and villains.

 

They don't all fit your guidelines, but you might find some helpful stuff: http://www.herostuff.net/gnborh/groups/gnborh-DC-All-Star_S.html

[Ura-Maru]

Re: JSA - Day One

 

Remember, there are really three ‘Golden Ages.’

 

Actual Golden Age: As seen in actual golden age comics!

Simplistic black-and-white worldview, heroes do pretty much whatever they want, because they’re the good guys. Killing, torture, anything. Good and Evil are divinely mandated, and have no bearing on the character’s actions. Random Bad Stuff never happens.

 

Nostalgic Golden Age: As Described By Comic Book Fans Who Didn’t Actually Read Them, And Flashbacks From The Silver Age!

Simplistic black-and-white worldview, heroes are purer than pure, and spectacularly dull. Despite being in the active military, they rarely if ever kill anyone. Random Bad Stuff never happens.

 

Retro Golden Age: As Shown In Iron Age Flashbacks!

Essentially, Bronze, or even Iron Age moral and plot complexity, but set during the Golden Age. There’s still a bit of bright Silver sheen on the good guys, but even they can make mistakes and occasionally shoot the wrong guy. They kill people, but occasionally feel bad about it. Random Bad Stuff can happen.

 

Guess which one I prefer? Though the important thing is that everyone knows which Golden Age they’re in.

 

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I’d cut out NCM. All it does is punish some people’s character concepts.

[assault]

Re: JSA - Day One

 

Try to make the heroes as they were when they debuted' date=' if possible.[/url']

 

First: most of the characters had been around for at least a little while before the JSA was formed. Do you want them as they were when they had their individual debuts (as you suggested above) or when the JSA debuted?

 

In either case, it's a bit tricky, since most of the reprints of the original material that is around is very expensive, and not all of the relevant stuff is available at all.

 

On the other hand, I have a reasonable collection of the Secret Origins series from back in the 80s. These were derived from the original stories, but don't necessarily reflect the characters exactly as they first appeared.

 

Also: which characters do you want? Strictly speaking, the original membership was: the Spectre, Dr Fate, Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Flash, Hourman, Sandman and the Atom, but Johnny Thunder and Red Tornado (Ma Hunkel) made cameo appearances in All Star Comics #3. What about the characters that joined later?

 

And so on...

 

Of course, someone else has already posted a link to the Great Net Book of Real Heroes, which is a good place to start.

 

The most obvious problem with these characters is the extreme range of power levels. The Atom has absolutely no powers, and no gadgets either. The Spectre, on the other hand, is a cosmic powered entity...

 

Mind you, you could probably cover a lot (though not all) of the Spectre's abilities with funny builds. The main scams would be to treat a lot of his abilities as illusions and/or as extra-dimensional movement. For example, the occasions when he grows bigger than the Earth could best be modelled as EDM, in much the same way the Shrinker in CKC possesses an "enter the microverse" EDM.

 

Building a character like this on 250 points would certainly be possible, but calling it "The Spectre" would be a mistake. It would be much better to call it something else. But of course that's generally true - it's usually better to file off the serial numbers and produce homages than to directly use characters from the comics.

 

A 250 point Spectre homage would be a detective type character with a bunch of mental powers, Desolidification, Invisibility and Flight. You could probably scrimp on things like Life Support to begin with. This kind of character would be able to slaughter normal criminals until the cows come home - just like the real Spectre. On the other hand, it wouldn't be able to trash battlefleets initially. In short, it's near enough for a starting character.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: JSA - Day One

 

Also: which characters do you want? Strictly speaking' date=' the original membership was: the Spectre, Dr Fate, Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Flash, Hourman, Sandman and the Atom, but Johnny Thunder and Red Tornado (Ma Hunkel) made cameo appearances in All Star Comics #3. What about the characters that joined later?[/quote']

 

Batman and Superman were technicaly "original members", but always honorary.

 

Membership rotated for two reasons initially. First, if you had your own book, you became an "honorary" member and didn't appear in the JSA (wouldn't want them to be overexposed - imagine that concern today? ). Second, if your feature got cancelled, out you go. The second changed as comics wound down, but the formula for mush of the JSA career was two charaxcters each from Flash Comics, More Fun, Adventure and All-American.

 

Flash was quickly replaced by Johnny Thunder. Hourman and GL were replaced by Dr. Midnite and Starman. Wonder Woman became group secretary (rather than honorary member).

 

That stayed the formual for a while, with the occaisonal exception. Comics got smaler as books were cancelled, so Dr. Fate and the Spectre disappeared. Black Canary replaced Johnny Thunder (just as she took over his feature). Flash and GL returned as the Golden Age wound down and their solo books were cancelled (and bit players had their strips cancelled). There was, IIRC, one issue where Wildcat and Mr. Terrific appeared as members.

 

But you had characters of vast power working alongside boxers in masks - the power variance is significant.

[fredrik_nilsson]

Re: JSA - Day One

 

They don't all fit your guidelines' date=' but you might find some helpful stuff: http://www.herostuff.net/gnborh/groups/gnborh-DC-All-Star_S.html[/quote']

I shall take a look at them. Maybe it's possible to scale them, so that they "fit" within the guidelines.

[fredrik_nilsson]

Re: JSA - Day One

 

Retro Golden Age: As Shown In Iron Age Flashbacks!

Essentially, Bronze, or even Iron Age moral and plot complexity, but set during the Golden Age. There’s still a bit of bright Silver sheen on the good guys, but even they can make mistakes and occasionally shoot the wrong guy. They kill people, but occasionally feel bad about it. Random Bad Stuff can happen.

I haven't given it much thought, butI guess this comes closest to what I intend to do.

 

I’d cut out NCM. All it does is punish some people’s character concepts.

In what way? I've never tried it before. My intention was to highlight some of the pulp fiction character left-overs in the campaign.

[fredrik_nilsson]

Re: JSA - Day One

 

But you had characters of vast power working alongside boxers in masks - the power variance is significant.

I guess this problem summerize both Hugh Neilson's and assault's posts.

 

Exactly who to build, and how to build them is always a problem. A 250-point Atom allows for building almost anything he could do, while 250-point Spectre wouldn't even remind of the character as seen in some stories.

 

The guidelines are just guides, then aren't laws. The reason for the strict built is to have them on the same power level as the heroes. I don't want to run an underdog campaign this time. It might be better if we graded the heroes (and villains); for example, using both 150+100 and 250+100.

 

As for the exact history, and the exact line up. I haven't decided this yet either. I'm generally after the Golden Age DC era, so I guess I'm more after DC as presented during that eran than anything else. The reason I wrote JSA was more to limit my choices. We could begin we the original line-up, and some of their main villains during the early years. After that, we could see what feels best.

 

As already pointed out, few if any, of the heroes started as JSA members. Build the characters as they where before JSA. The exact line-up will depend a lot on the players, so I migt need to make some changes to the JSA members exact stats anyway.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: JSA - Day One

 

As for the exact history' date=' and the exact line up. I haven't decided this yet either. I'm generally after the Golden Age DC era, so I guess I'm more after DC as presented during that eran than anything else. The reason I wrote JSA was more to limit my choices. We could begin we the original line-up, and some of their main villains during the early years. After that, we could see what feels best.[/quote']

 

If you want to restrict yourself to early JSA lineup, you will find a scarcity of "villains", to be sure. The vast majority of opponents in the Golden Age, especially early Golden Age, were gangsters and nazis. To the extent there was a "villain", he tended to be a non-powered mastermind lurking in the background, possibly a superscientist.

 

The first Injustice Society story (already pretty late in the JSA's publishing history) featured, as I recall, the Gambler (normal joe with some skills), the Wizard (he could hypnotize people, but the magic powers he has today were nowhere to be found), Per Degaton (who had previously time travelled, but lacked such technology in this storyline), Vandal Savage (his second appearance - his power was limited to immortality), Brain Wave (superscientist who actually had *gasp* some minor mentalist powers and the Thinker (Superscientists with "thinking helmet; also minor mental powers bestowed by helmet).

 

Not much power to go up against the Atom, Dr. Midnite, Hawkman, Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and Johnny Thunder. [Johnny and WW had no solo chapters iun the story as page counts were down]

 

The second Injustice Society story included Wizard, Sportsmaster, Huntress, Icicle, Harlequin and maybe one or two others (memory fails) all of whom had more "Super" gimmicks or powers than the whole crop from the first Society (even the Wizard's powers were beefed up), as the Supervillain became much more commonly used about that time. Other than Batman, and maybe Wonder Woman, however, I don't think anyone had much of a rogues gallery prior to the end of WW II.

[ParagonAlpha]

Re: JSA - Day One

 

If you are trying to run a game based off the Golden Age and your players are fans of the genre, why limit the points for the characters?

 

Use write-ups that reflect the character, regardless of points. The Atom and the Spectre were on the same team, they interacted, but the Spectre had limits on how much he could interfere,

 

Trust your players to roleplay the characters.

 

Peace

[fredrik_nilsson]

Re: JSA - Day One

 

If you are trying to run a game based off the Golden Age and your players are fans of the genre, why limit the points for the characters?

 

...

 

Trust your players to roleplay the characters.

I believe that the majority of the players can handle even godlike PCs, but every group has its problem player.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: JSA - Day One

 

I would recommend Matt's Champions Page. Mathew Ignash has a sizeable number of DC heroes and villains fully written up at 250 points or less, and generally conforming to the guidelines you give, including several classic JSA heroes. Some of the others could easily be adapted to their JSA counterparts, such as the Flash and Green Lantern. Admittedly most of these writeups are for 4E HERO, but they'll put you well within the ballpark right away.

 

Matt's page is full of lots of other neat stuff, too - I recommend sifting through it. One warning, though: the links on the page are sometimes cranky, and may take you to his homepage instead. Just go Back and try the link again.

[fredrik_nilsson]

Re: JSA - Day One

 

I would recommend Matt's Champions Page. Mathew Ignash has a sizeable number of DC heroes and villains fully written up at 250 points or less' date=' and generally conforming to the guidelines you give, including several classic JSA heroes. Some of the others could easily be adapted to their JSA counterparts, such as the Flash and Green Lantern.[/quote']

Thanks for the recommendation!

 

The Atom requires almost no tweaks at all. The same goes for Batman, Hourman and Superman.