Leaderboard

The Shadow Queen was one of the major villains in my last Champions campaign. It worked quite well to have Black Paladin as her lieutenant. Because of the faerie tale nature of her realm, I used Disney-esque elements in the encounters with the villains and describing her kingdom. Because it amused the Shadow Queen, one of the heroes became involved in a singing contest with Black Paladin, which the fallen knight wasn’t going to do until she spelled him into it. It later became known in that campaign that Black Paladin has “a marvelous singing voice.”

RIP indeed. I'd also look at "Streets of Fire", an under rated but cult movie yhat has his finger prints all over it.

I've been giving this some thought, and if I may answer my own question I'd like to list some common elements I've observed. Foremost, fairy tale magic has to advance the story. For example, teleporting oneself to a christening to bestow a curse, but not to reposition oneself during combat. Spells are flashy one-off sort of things. Fairy tale magic is less of a toolkit and more a set of narrative devices; thus, a generalist spellcaster isn't going to be utilitarian with their repertoire. Anything permanent has a high price, fatal flaw, or escape clause. There could be socio

The Shadow Queen often hires Earthly supervillains for her schemes, particularly supernatural ones who fit her medieval/fantasy motif. For one story arc I gave her a whole cadre of "knights," her Obsidian Table, led by Black Paladin and including Hell Rider, Morningstar, Lightning Man, Matachin, Shadowdragon (from a different culture, but his code-name pleased her), and Harpy (Brangomar's jealousy normally precludes women, but she saw Harpy's bird-form as ugly and therefore non-threatening).

Brangomar, aka the Shadow Queen, most recently written up Champions Villains Volume One: Master Villains, is essentially Disney's Maleficent (the classic animated version from Sleeping Beauty, not live action); except that instead of being a dark faerie queen who can transform into a dragon, Brangomar is a dragon using magic to appear as a human-like woman. Her personality and style are very much like Maleficent, and like the evil Queen in Disney's Snow White. Brangomar rules a land called the Shadow Realm in the dimension of Faerie, that being the sum of all the lands, races, creatures, and g

IDK who that is. But, considering my audience, I'd say that "Fairy Tale" magic functions to teach a moral/in-group/role-affirming/conformity lesson. Don't stay on the path? Bad things happen. Do follow the elders' instructions even though they sound batshit crazy? You prevail. Unfailingly polite to even weird creatures? You make your way past them unmolested. Violate cultural norms? (unless, it's a batshit crazy thing an elder told you to do) Get transformed into something icky.

Derek Chauvin guilty of all charges. Good.

Sure. I suppose it's like literature, some is timeless, some isn't. Shakespeare's plays have been brought forward into various time periods and still worked. 1815's Emma adapted neatly to the screen in 1995's Clueless. Maybe I'm just noticing it acutely in these cases as I actually lived in and remember much of the Silver Age time period - and, lacking the good sense to have died young, also inhabit the current day.

You make a very strong argument, and as I think about it there are several Champions "Iconics" that make more sense in 1985 than now and suffer from the movement. I do think some characters are more mobile than others. You are very correct on your look at Iron Man, and I feel like every take on the Fantastic Four that severs them from their cold war origins has weakened them. I'm pretty sure the new Superman TV show starts with Clark Kent getting laid off from the daily planet because journalism isn't really a stable career anymore. Spiderman's "Geeky Kid with a responsibility

I prefer 4TH A, but a case could be made that different nests could have different uniforms, subject to the approval of the Supreme Serpent.

Seemed appropriate to revisit this one.

Something with green and a yellow V.

My own thing. The Hidden City of Ravenna. Secret magic, Black Schola, Mages kidnapped to swept away to a magical Sub-Realm to be initiated into an arcane society that's been around since Augustus ruled. Dee, Caligostro, a weird orb like entity known as the Librarian. Trolls. Something called a SOMA. Anti-mage special ops. The Contemptable Harpy, Jennifer Renquist. House Barlowe and their questionable experiments. A bunch of Kill-On-Sight wizards and undead known as the Execration. A tree that knows when you're going to die. Stagger-Lee's Stetson... the Bluesmobile... Excalibur... Wal-Martians.

One thing that's struck me over the years is that the way magic is used, described and related to in very old sources - like Greek mythology, for instance - is very different from traditional fairy tales, which are very different from modern fantasy, is even different from post-modern fantasy. And, yes, it makes sense the presentation of magic changes with the times, with how it contrasts to the mundane, with prevailing beliefs, and with the role it plays in the story. In traditional fairy tales, even as they were written down after in the 18th or 19th centuries, there's an impres

Actors and their stunt doubles.

Did you hear about the mathematician who was afraid of negative numbers? He'd stop at nothing to avoid them.

I wanted to learn how to drive a stick shift, but I couldn't find a manual.

I'm considering using Brangomar in an adventure set in New Zealand. Because of the LOTR movies, of course.

Found it! A slight omission in the Rules Maven group (had file upload size set to 0). You should be good to go now.

Aside from Champions the only superhero rpg I played was the Batman rpg, which was derived from DC Heroes. I ran it a few times. There was an mini rpg called Crimefighters, which IIRC originally appeared in an issue of Dragon magazine. One of my friends made a lot of modifications, so we played that a lot. Despite me playing a Batman-type character, the OCs were closer to powerful heroes than low-powered superheroes in the power scale. Still, the game played like a Dark Champions campaign.

Looking at some examples from fairy tales: accelerating the growth of/animating plants, e.g. walls of thorns, grasping tree branches or vines; conjuring/summoning animals, solo or in groups; changing one's form into an animal, a monster like a dragon, or to resemble another person; transforming someone else, such as making them old or hideously deformed, or turning them into an animal, possibly under the magician's command; cursing someone with perpetual sleep, or madness; enchantments through an object, e.g. poisoned fruit or sharp items whose prick brings a curse; enchantments through crafts

Secret: Something mysterious happened to Robbie's brother, Chuck, who disappeared one day and is never mentioned again.

Yeah, the more we talk about it, the less I like it. People are products of their time. Moving them around in time either changes who they are, or what they represent in the new context. 1963 Tony Stark was white by default, and 'millionaire industrialist,' defense contractor, playboy, and genius inventor all carried different, mostly more positive connotations (OTOH, alcoholic, which came a bit later, is not so negative today as it was then). IMHO, the Marvel Movies didn't go far enough in rehabilitating him, and thus made the character less heroic and positive than he origin

I too grew up with 4e. The bigger thing to me is though is to still keep them looking comic book-y. I like escapism.

I tend to agree with this. I used to actually run White Wolf games back when their meta plot started dictating that certain PCs were either no longer "canon" or were the last of their kind because of what happened in this book or that book. I ended up having to ignore more and more of their world building as it was interfering with the games I was running. Then they ended their setting in a choose your own apocalypse... while my PCs were still playing every week. I really like the cohesiveness of the Champions Universe, and I would *love* an update that said who was doing what w

"You thought he was a man, but he was a muffin...."

Did I...Stutter!?

Buckwheat Corn Muffins

My favorite one of those includes the appended composition-related classes, and is about me: Obese Balding Astronomer Found Guilty: Killed Many Reluctant Nonscience Students

A stack of catalogs a couple feet tall at Christmas time.

I'm just talking about school!

I have invisibility, but only when I want to be noticed. The reverse seems to be true as well.

Q: What do you get from a pampered cow? A: Spoiled milk.

Damn. One of the few songwriters I've been a fan of just for his style. RIP.

A great movie, a fantastic soundtrack and Ellen Aim & the Attackers is one of the best movie band names of all time. I was in one of the early test audiences for it. I couldn’t get a 7 pm ticket for Search for Spock on its first day and a guy announced that for anyone who bought tickets for the next show could come in and see this test movie for free. On the little cards they gave us after I gave the movie a B+ and wrote that the soundtrack was an A++ and that the bad guy (a young Williem Defoe) should play the Joker somewhere.

Real considerations for any teams beyond putting a quality team on the field are 1) size and intensity of the fan base - Arkansas has a very intense fan base as does Texas. But Texas's fan base is huge in comparison. There's a lot of Texas graduates scattered across the country because they graduate more students than most university systems. 2) wealth of fan base 3) whether the fan base travels with the team 4) merchandising ==== Any team selected will find recruiting easier and putting good players on the field easier. A

Everyone has heard about the proposed rollout of a European Super League in soccer (what they call 'football' over there). At its heart, it's a big money grab for and handful of teams from England, Spain, and Italy, with the possibility of including teams from, say, Germany and France or maybe other countries in the future. Good gig if you can get it, I suppose. This led to an interesting op-ed by USA Today sports writer Dan Wolken: A college football Super League would be very lucrative ... for the very few. The basic idea, as quoted in the article, is this:

Granting wishes, transforming people to animals, causing people to fall into enchanted sleep, Charming people to be your lovers/slaves for years. No direct damage spells like fireball.

What like this ? Then raise your forum posting high On May 3rd the sentient beings will live and die Though gods will flinch and goddesses sneer We'll keep World Creation going here

Assuming Opal's last one counts this will be number 7 but I'll give Lorehunter the right to call it. Remidi8 This member of the Samaritans is a Buddhist and uses the 8 pillars of Buddhism to conduct himself. He is a vegetarian. His goal is the end of suffering and he follows the four noble truths of Buddhism, the truth of suffering, the cause of suffering, the end of suffering and the path that leads to the end of suffering. He will look at the big picture and look to resolve a big issue to end suffering but he can focus on an individual to end their suffering. He works

Apologies if anyone finds this too political, but the recently passed law is just so ludicrous.

Humble, too. 😜 though, really, that's a very human tendency, creating connections, 'magical thinking,' confirmation bias, whatever you want to call it. Like our ability to see faces in tree bark, clouds, toast, and photos of the surface of Mars. The Green Goblin certainly throws bombs, and is crazy. Anarchists stereotypically throw bombs, and may be crazed, but they're not craz-y if I may draw the distinction between extreme action spurred by desperate faith in a belief system and actual mental illness. So GG isn't an anarchist, he actually /is/ crazy, and doesn't have much of

That's what They want you to think! Dean Shomshak

From our old friend teh bunneh: Q: Why is Rep. Matt Gaetz so bad at Blackjack?

He discovered the Zarkon Particle! Then suffered a lab accident creating Zarkonite! The most perfect material in the universe! Everything he builds is "Powered by Zarkonite!" "You cannot resist my Zarkonite weapons forever! My victory is in...evi...table..."Regular robots are "drones' Special robots are powered by Zarkonite! These Zee robots will conquer the world! If you already have a weird glowey rock in your game it Could be naturally formed Zarkonite that he must steal and study! If somebody is weak to Zarkonite then Zarkonite rays are a real threat even in the 6 to 8 D6 rang

Aberris Aberris is a Biker Demon. We didn’t know they had those. He travels around North America with Sonya, his undead girlfriend. Agent Stone Who is the woman known as Agent Stone? Seriously… cuz we have no clue. Akuma Merged with his demonic armor, Yamada Akihiro is a tortured soul… or more accurately, two tortured souls. Anathema Anathema is raw hate poured into red and black spandex. She’s a terrible human being, just like most people on this list, but she became so much worse after her kidnapping by the Mutant Master. Antagonista

Honestly, I've seen bigger plot holes in other critically-acclaimed movies. But the mechanics of these exercises in cosmic power were never the crux of this story. The crux was the human drama, how our protagonists, and the rest of our kind, reacted to these monumental events. At bottom those events were created to stimulate and enhance the internal conflicts.