Wold Newton Superhero Campaign Setting

[Prometheus]

Re: CU - Wold Newton

 

Don't usually care for Wold Newton, but your version is uber-cool.

 

Any chance of Hyborian age warrior-kings or Nth metal making an appearance?

[Superskrull]

Re: CU - Wold Newton

 

As to Chinese characters of pulp origin, how about the classic orinetal mastermind, Fu Manchu?

 

http://www.pjfarmer.com/woldnewton/Fumanchu.htm

 

'Sides, putting him in gives you Shang Chi and that's always a fun thing. anyway, that let's you use him in various Marvel stories involving the Yellow Claw, following your custom of having the original subsume the secondary's activities and position. This should also give you some hang-points for where to use Nick Fury & SHIELD, esp. Jimmy Woo & his battles against the Yellow Claw. After all, Nick is a must-have, for your respectable head of a secret organization. Remember, one of the main opponents of Godzilla in the 70's Marvel stuff was SHIELD.

 

On another note,

-sarcasm on-

You just had to suck me back into the wold-Newton stuff, didn't you?

-sarcasm off-

 

Oh, well.

[OddHat]

Re: CU - Wold Newton

 

Added:

 

The Spider

 

Spiderman

 

The original Invisible Woman / Phantom Lady

 

The Fantastic Four

 

The original 1939 Iron Man, aka Hugh Hazzard and Bozo the Robot (really; look it up)

 

Iron Man

 

Nikola Tesla

 

Various Victorian Robots

 

Doom

 

Luthor

 

Adjusted dates. It was tricky getting Reed Richards in as Plastic Man's son, but I didn't want to go by even more convoluted routes to connect two similar characters. Moved Tony Stark from being a Vietnam Vet to being a vet in Korea, as his origin story made more sense that way.

[OddHat]

Re: CU - Wold Newton

 

Don't usually care for Wold Newton, but your version is uber-cool.

 

Any chance of Hyborian age warrior-kings or Nth metal making an appearance?

 

Thanks.

 

Hyborean Age is 10,000 BC. Not sure I want to include it, but it's easy to plug in.

 

Is Nth metal an anti-gravity metal? If so, you can use it as an alternate name for Cavorite.

 

Suerskrull, Fu is already in. I'm folding Shield in with the OSI; I want to keep down the number of government agencies that deal with metahumans. However, it would be easy enough to slot in if you'd like.

[Susano]

Re: CU - Wold Newton

 

Woohooo! Master Li and Number 10 Ox made it!

 

OddHat, I am really thinking I want to reboot and rebuild my old Champions universe now. Err... along with all my other projects.

[OddHat]

Re: CU - Wold Newton

 

Woohooo! Master Li and Number 10 Ox made it!

 

OddHat, I am really thinking I want to reboot and rebuild my old Champions universe now. Err... along with all my other projects.

 

I know the feeling.

 

I'd like to get this timeline up to 2000 and call it quits. That should be enough for most world backgrounds.

 

EDIT: I also want to get most of the Sulver Age characters off stage, to make room for the PCs.

[McCoy]

Re: CU - Wold Newton

 

Is Nth metal an anti-gravity metal? If so' date=' you can use it as an alternate name for Calverite.[/quote']

Nth metal seems to be whatever the current writer of Hawkman/Hawkgirl need it to be. It is shown to be an anti-gravity metal, something that increases the effect of their weapons, and may have somehow kept Hawkman's and Hawkgirl's souls together through succeeding incarnations.

 

But checking back, looks like in the Golden Age it was ninth metal, and now I'm wondering if that may have been inspired by the ninth Barsoomian Ray.

 

Humm, John Carter's memoirs had not been published in time for Prof. Cavor to have benefited from them, how publicised were the anti-gravity experiments? Wondering if Captain Carter might have showed up there too.

[OddHat]

Re: CU - Wold Newton

 

Nth metal seems to be whatever the current writer of Hawkman/Hawkgirl need it to be. It is shown to be an anti-gravity metal, something that increases the effect of their weapons, and may have somehow kept Hawkman's and Hawkgirl's souls together through succeeding incarnations.

 

But checking back, looks like in the Golden Age it was ninth metal, and now I'm wondering if that may have been inspired by the ninth Barsoomian Ray.

 

Humm, John Carter's memoirs had not been published in time for Prof. Cavor to have benefited from them, how publicised were the anti-gravity experiments? Wondering if Captain Carter might have showed up there too.

 

Well, in the source material Cavor refined Cavorite from a meteorite. By switching the meteorite to the wreckage of Hugo Danner's ship, we allow the possibility that Cavorite was part of the ship's propulsion systems.

[Bloodstone]

Re: CU - Wold Newton

 

While I suppose I should not be surprised that Susano and Oddhat are familiar with it, I've met very few people in my lifetime that would recognize characters from Barry Hughart's stories... too cool

[Agent 13]

Re: CU - Wold Newton

 

On another note,

-sarcasm on-

You just had to suck me back into the wold-Newton stuff, didn't you?

-sarcasm off-

 

One never really leaves...

[sinanju]

Re: CU - Wold Newton

 

Woohoo! I really like it that DD Harriman funded Reed Richards' space flight! And how can you not like having Chiun & Remo running around.

[zornwil]

Re: CU - Wold Newton (A Campaign Setting)

 

Way cool, excellent work! I really, really thought the pulp tie-ins were particularly effective, better than many if not most such pulp=>supers tie-ins I've read.

 

I particularly liked the Luthor tie-in, the Clark Kent backstory and history, the roots of the F4, and Billy Batson bits. Wonder Woman was also excellent in tie-in as well, it took me a little to realize/remember who Diana Prince was at first. Very well done.

 

By the way, you got Doom's name wrong, it's Domovitch. I should know, he's the President of Russia, after all... ... in my world.

 

I really enjoyed seeing the Oscar Goldman mention.

 

And the Inferior Five was really nice to see, I laughed heartily out loud at the (appropriate) "Rumors persist that the entire group made use of mind altering substances during this time."

 

Shall rep as soon as I can!

[zornwil]

Re: CU - Wold Newton

 

I know the feeling.

 

I'd like to get this timeline up to 2000 and call it quits. That should be enough for most world backgrounds.

 

EDIT: I also want to get most of the Sulver Age characters off stage, to make room for the PCs.

I noticed the intention to clear the stage. I've mixed up the approach in mine, many didn't exist at all, some are only now popping up later in time, and .

 

As an added oddity, the comic books of the 1940s existed before any sort of metahuman beings existed, so it was natural for many of the first metahumans to copy the comics. There were loads of Jokers, mostly very unsuccessful, and many so non-notable they don't even get mentioned in histories of the Joker imitators. Superman was the first, in 1948, but he didn't last long at all, he was brutally murdered by a Luthor imitator calling himself the Mad Scientist. OTOH, Spiderman was one of the earliest as well, appearing in the same year, he captured the Mad Scientist, and is now in somewhat-bitter semi-retirement, having helped out the Justice Squad (the PC group) a couple times (he's remarkably less effective when he's not in his own book! ).

 

Oh, I forgot to mention in my above feedback, from my history, Kennedy was also concerned with metahumans. "As the U.S. entered the 1960s, society attempted to forget about the mutants and Kennedy, emphatically embracing "humanity" and the accomplishments of "hard work", ignored as much as possible the mutation phenomenon. His death by Ricochet, however, sent shock waves through America and stepped up the persecution of suspected mutants."

 

My history, to the extent it's written, is at http://realschluss.org/x-champions/x-champions_setting/x-history.htm. It's a bit embarrassing next to this one!

[OddHat]

Re: CU - Wold Newton

 

Thanks, very glad you liked it.

 

The Luthor tie in was suggested by McCoy. The rest were lifted from all over the place, then re-aranged to fit together. It's a fun project.

 

Still have to do the legacy of Stephen Strange as well. I was looking on the Toonpedia, and saw that Dr.Druid, created a few years earlier by Stan Lee, was exactly the same character, so that at least will give me a start date.

 

I'm also thinking of incorporating more TV material to flesh out the OSI.

[zornwil]

Re: CU - Wold Newton

 

Tying Namor into Innsmouth is inspired. Consider that stolen!

Oh, yeah, meant to mention that as well! Loved that.

[zornwil]

Re: CU - Wold Newton

 

Thanks, very glad you liked it.

 

The Luthor tie in was suggested by McCoy. The rest were lifted from all over the place, then re-aranged to fit together. It's a fun project.

 

Still have to do the legacy of Stephen Strange as well. I was looking on the Toonpedia, and saw that Dr.Druid, created a few years earlier by Stan Lee, was exactly the same character, so that at least will give me a start date.

 

I'm also thinking of incorporating more TV material to flesh out the OSI.

Oh, that's interesting, never knew that about Dr. Druid.

[OddHat]

Re: CU - Wold Newton

 

I noticed the intention to clear the stage. I've mixed up the approach in mine, many didn't exist at all, some are only now popping up later in time, and .

 

As an added oddity, the comic books of the 1940s existed before any sort of metahuman beings existed, so it was natural for many of the first metahumans to copy the comics. There were loads of Jokers, mostly very unsuccessful, and many so non-notable they don't even get mentioned in histories of the Joker imitators. Superman was the first, in 1948, but he didn't last long at all, he was brutally murdered by a Luthor imitator calling himself the Mad Scientist. OTOH, Spiderman was one of the earliest as well, appearing in the same year, he captured the Mad Scientist, and is now in somewhat-bitter semi-retirement, having helped out the Justice Squad (the PC group) a couple times (he's remarkably less effective when he's not in his own book! ).

 

Interesting stuff. My own rule with stage clearing has been that, with some exceptions, a character dies when his book goes out of print, or when the writers change. The exceptions are cases where the character is explicitly immortal (Ayesha, Tarzan), too useful to drop (Hugo Danner / Clark Kent), or doesn't provide an organic feeling cut off point (Batman). Merging characters also helps.

 

Oh, I forgot to mention in my above feedback, from my history, Kennedy was also concerned with metahumans. "As the U.S. entered the 1960s, society attempted to forget about the mutants and Kennedy, emphatically embracing "humanity" and the accomplishments of "hard work", ignored as much as possible the mutation phenomenon. His death by Ricochet, however, sent shock waves through America and stepped up the persecution of suspected mutants."

 

I like that, though I'm not using the anti-mutant theme. In the Destroyer books, CURE was intended to deal with organized crime by going outside the law (classic pulp idea). Having it intended to deal with Rogue metahumans works well, especially as almost all of Remo and Chiun's worthwhile foes have been supers of one kind or another.

 

My history, to the extent it's written, is at http://realschluss.org/x-champions/x-champions_setting/x-history.htm.

 

Thanks. I'll take a look.

[zornwil]

Re: CU - Wold Newton

 

Interesting stuff. My own rule with stage clearing has been that, with some exceptions, a character dies when his book goes out of print, or when the writers change. The exceptions are cases where the character is explicitly immortal (Ayesha, Tarzan), too useful to drop (Hugo Danner / Clark Kent), or doesn't provide an organic feeling cut off point (Batman). Merging characters also helps.

 

 

 

I like that, though I'm not using the anti-mutant theme. In the Destroyer books, CURE was intended to deal with organized crime by going outside the law (classic pulp idea). Having it intended to deal with Rogue metahumans works well, especially as almost all of Remo and Chiun's worthwhile foes have been supers of one kind or another.

 

 

 

Thanks. I'll take a look.

I didn't know Tarzan was immortal. Was that in later books or in the original?

 

My prior supers campaign's history was more explicitly similar to yours, with a continuous thread of super-beings, the regular supers period starting in the late '30s/'40s, the pulp linkage, and all that. I wanted to experiment with the mutant theme this time, so radically redid things. Now we're moving past that theme and broadening, as I feel it's suitably been played and, given the PCs' role and the backstory of the campaign, there's necessarily cataclysmic events altering people's viewpoints. Plus at some heart level I'm an optimist, I guess, about mankind in general even if not about the specifics of things.

[Susano]

Re: CU - Wold Newton

 

I didn't know Tarzan was immortal. Was that in later books or in the original?

 

Later in the books:

 

http://surbrook.devermore.net/adaptionsbook/erb/tarzanbb.html

[zornwil]

Re: CU - Wold Newton

 

Hey, thanks!

[Enforcer84]

Re: CU - Wold Newton

 

scanned the timeline again, didn't see Luthor reference.

Looking better all the time though

[zornwil]

Re: CU - Wold Newton

 

"1924 – Nikola Tesla draws up his first detailed plans for his “Death Ray”, and seeks financial support from the military. The support is not forthcoming. Tesla takes on the brilliant young mathematician Alexi Luthor as a lab assistant. "

 

"1943 – Nikola Tesla dies. His papers and equipment fall into the hand of his one-time assistant, Alexi Luthor."

[Enforcer84]

Re: CU - Wold Newton

 

"1924 – Nikola Tesla draws up his first detailed plans for his “Death Ray”, and seeks financial support from the military. The support is not forthcoming. Tesla takes on the brilliant young mathematician Alexi Luthor as a lab assistant. "

 

"1943 – Nikola Tesla dies. His papers and equipment fall into the hand of his one-time assistant, Alexi Luthor."

Thanks! I can't see how I missed that...

[OddHat]

Re: CU - Wold Newton

 

Later in the books:

 

http://surbrook.devermore.net/adaptionsbook/erb/tarzanbb.html

 

Good write up.

 

The immortality was added by Burroughs, not by later writers, but I doubt he had it in mind from the start. I think he was mainly trying to move the series to a point where he could go further with the fantasy elements, as well as explain how Tarzan could remain inhumanly strong and fast even at 40+.

 

Farmer and other writers do some strange bits with Tarzan and time travel that I've ommitted from the time line; I wouldn't rule them out in play, but I think they overcomplicate what's meant to be a straightforward campaign background.

[McCoy]

Re: CU - Wold Newton

 

Good write up.

 

The immortality was added Burroughs, not by later writers, but I doubt he had it in mind from the start. I think he was mainly trying to move the series to a point where he could go further with the fantasy elements, as well as explain how Tarzan could remain inhumanly strong and fast even at 40+.

 

Farmer and other writers do some strange bits with Tarzan and time travel that I've ommitted from the time line; I wouldn't rule them out in play, but I think they overcomplicate what's meant to be a straightforward campaign background.

Makes sense, as Captain John Carter was established as immortal in his first book.