"V"

Re: Hero Talk Magazine Brilliant stuff, and may I add repped.

Re: Hey Rube! Circuses in Pulp Hero. I find the lady acrobats tend to have small outfits. Nice comprehensive post too... I'd love to see the Vaudevillian troupe as a pulp team too - roles are not so obvious as the circus guys (less adventure ready skills) but probably a very interesting campaign idea.

Re: A Thread for Random Mooings Apparently.

Re: Hey Rube! Circuses in Pulp Hero. Hello Dave. Dave? Is that Dave? YouTube may have more clips including a great mindreading act by Papa ("His name is George...") and Papa's dreadful reappearance in the third season when he's masquerading briefly as a young man who works in a charity shop (one of his victims is the implication) and while he is attacking the former husband of one of Papa's new wives, the husband grabs at his assailant's face and wipes off smears of the flesh toned make up to reveal Papa's leering countenance... and they call this a comedy! First ever appearance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYhxFFlibdQ&mode=related&search=

Re: Bewitched Rule Britannia, I say and run out the guns. Mrs Peel joins the Hellfire Club. Damn your colonial eyes, Claremont you plagiarising insurgent!

Re: New Campaign Idea I've done a few bait & switch campaigns in the past (without the prior written consent of the players) & they've all been very well received. I stayed out of the other thread about whether or not GMs should have the temerity to do such a thing as most of the posters were of the opinion that a GM responsible for such an outrage should be at the very least castrated. At the time I didn't feel like putting my neck on the block (sorry about the mixed metaphor, didn't want to use the word testes). All I can speak from is personal experience. I've done it. It worked well. As with anything in the gaming field you need the right GM and the right players and the right delivery of the material. More of an art than a science I suppose.

Re: Herophile Fantasy art Hope nobody minds me adding another of my Daz Studio pieces:

Re: Hey Rube! Circuses in Pulp Hero. I think I've been blessed with good players - their characters don't tend to wander round toting firearms unless they have a good reason for doing so & there is a concensus that once a fight breaks out that means they've done something wrong. I tend to run games that don't reward "let's solve the problem by fighting better than the other side" tropes. Not that there's anything wrong with that if you're running an adventurous campaign of course - but as you point out it's hard to then down-gear to a "horror" rather than an "action" scenario. It's possible of course - compare Aliens (Action/Horror) to Alien (Horror) - but you couldn't really slip from one to the other & back again in alternate weeks and expect the players to keep up.

Re: Hey Rube! Circuses in Pulp Hero. And for a totally frakked up circus theme can I recommend the following two films (both directed by Tod Browning I believe, though I may be wrong) Freaks - a gold digging, good looking, heartless acrobat in the best traditions of EC Comics pretends to fall in love with a circus performer of less than average height (I'm sure they'd use the term midget in the film, but thankfully we live in more enlightened times) in order to get his money. Meanwhile she's carrying on an affair with the circus strongman. As the other inhabitants of the freak show learn of this betrayal they exact a dreadful revenge on the villainous pair leaving the strongman dead (the original screenplay had him castrated instead) and the beautiful acrobat, in the chanted words of the vengeful 'freaks' "One of us, One of us..." Absolutely chilling film, not least because the most monstrous characters are the two "Normals" The Unknown - a silent classic starring Lon Chaney who, for reasons that will become apparent when you watch the film but are too long winded to go into now, is posing as an armless knife thrower in a circus. He falls in love with another performer who has a phobia of being touched - hence she can tolerate his presence because she believes he cannot touch her. When the criminally minded knife thrower commits murder he decides he can both get a great alibi and the woman he loves by having his arms amputated. Meanwhile the love of his life has got over her phobia & fallen in love with the strongman. Hmm, strongman cuckoldry theme running rampant. Anyway - plot for diabolical revenge involving wild horses and ripping arms off. Ignore my flippant synopsis & watch it - absolutely splendid film. Edit as memory kicked in: The UK TV show "The League of Gentlemen" (ostensibly a comedy, but the nearest I've ever seen to a genuine Lovecraftian feel on screen!) featured a character called Papa Lazarous who was the ringmaster and possibly the scariest TV character I can remember. A sample appearance is here and from the Christmas special... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFwUY0CpkZY (and, offtopic, doesn't feature the circus but this clip from the series pretty much sets the tone: ) If you get a chance to find some more clips for the feel of things you may well have the perfect archetype for the scary monstrous travelling circus to throw in as bad guys.

Re: Help.....i Need Some Help!!!! Oh I like that one.

Re: matchmaker for masks? Kitty-bleeding-Pryde. Great. According to the internet (which is never wrong) my ideal superheroine lover is Kitty Pryde. The last time I read a comic she was about twelve which is just plain wrong. Plus she was a whiny obnoxious self-analytical Claremont talking head, whose primary purpose was to provide some "Will the Russky bang the jailbait" tension with Colossus. Still I suppose they had to do something with Piotr - a metallic brick (an ingot?) whose characterisation extended as far as "Da, Comrade Professor, I am wery grateful for the chance to sleep in a real bed instead of in the collective's spiky metal box back in Russia". Sigh. Plus, even if she is legal these days there's always the nagging doubt that a night of passion could accidentally end up as mattress abuse.

Re: Silly Name, Super Hero (A Game) Harry the Horse: Edgar Grimble was the unluckiest man in Fulchester, being born with a particularly foul body odour that drove animals into a frenzy of hatred and aggression - particularly equines. Donkeys, zebras, horses, you name it, they hated him. During a particularly ill judged holiday in Texas, Edgar unwisely attended a rodeo with the inevitable consequences. Kicked almost to death he was left with major head injuries and placed into a coma until revolutionary nanotech surgery gave him the recovery he needed. The nanites flowing through his bloodstream also gave him strange powers to influence the minds of others - he is now one of the most powerful mentalists in Fulchester suburbs, but with the limitation that he can only use his mental domination to cause his victims to conduct acts of aggression, annoyance and mischief against domestic equines. He calls himself "MENTOX THE MENTALIST MAN" (he read too many comics as a child) but the newsmedia prefers to know him by his hypnotic battlecry, the command he yells to his victims: "HARRY THE HORSE!" Next: Roger the RampAnt.

Re: [Hooks] News articles that could be Pulp Adventures Death penalty over China ant scam A Chinese company chairman has been sentenced to death for running a scam involving giant ants. -- Ok the rest of the story doesn't live up to the headline, but how often do you seen a headline like that on the BBC website... Full Story

Re: Help with npc statting Thanks Rage. I must admit I haven't done much work on the campaign setting so far, but it's gonna be a doozy. I've already statted out his glamorous all-female special forces team. Next I'm working on the Random Antichrist Table.

Re: UnCaped Seems like a reasonable price - about 2.50 pounds sterling. Very cheap compared to their equivalent in the UK. Or so I am told. Changes subject rapidly to include a third page from the issue... better stop now as I think the Centrefold would not make it past the posting guidelines (also I have work to do!) (click to enlarge)

Re: Bewitched I guess my whole thing about watching dogs eat goes right back to Scooby Doo. Wow. Just remembering the way he could fit a whole quintuple decker sandwich in his mouth makes me feel so... so... hungry.

Re: Capes: When Superheroes stop being four color and start being real You know. Them

Re: UnCaped Haven't a clue what they cost in the US - I admit I just took your $5.99 and added a little on just for jolly (reassuringly expensive, don't you know). I've just googled & found that a subscription to Playboy costs $15.96 an issue so I think we're selling ourselves a little too cheap... Edit: btw, created & added an interior page from the magazine in my last post...

Re: UnCaped Love it. In the spirit of democratic response I'd like to recommend another in the range... (click to enlarge)

Re: Info on Faeries? A brilliant recommendation - well written & supportive of my own personal biases, what more could a man want from a book? On a related tangent - I was recently moved to include the character Lankin from the old folk song Long Lankin as a boogeyman figure in my 19th century Ars Magica campaign. Even though the character in the song was not a supernatural being, his modus operandi was sufficiently unpleasant to become the basis for a mythological figure (and in my campaign the Fae tend to fit into the shapes expected of them by humankind). I made my Lankin the henchman/hitman of the local Faerie Queen. It was only when I re-read Lords & Ladies that I realised Pratchett had done exactly the same thing... I swear I didn't consciously plagiarise this at all & came up with the idea after hearing the song on a CD I'd bought, but it's nice to know I'm on the same wavelength as Mr Pratchett. And as a little bit of additional fluff, here's the lad himself from my campaign gallery: (click to enlarge, naturally)

Re: Info on Faeries? The Ars Magica supplement "Faeries" is pretty good too - emphasising the weird nature of the old faerie tales. As part of a personal prejudice I would implore you not to make the Faeries even remotely like New Age celtic-wannabe hippy types. In the old folk tales they tended to be very odd, very dangerous, very unpredictable and usually ambivalent to humanity at best. My players have all learned of my bigotry and tend to treat encounters with the fae as fraught with danger... and rightly so in my opinion!

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

Re: A Thread for Random Videos Derren Brown, British TV mentalist/magician/hypnotics fraks with someone's belief in voodoo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW2yKlNFFuU And then turns himself invisible... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2DJomsxK8A

Re: A Thread for Random Videos That was tremendous - especially the way he Britished himself into a corner...

Re: "Back when I started playing Champions...." "Gobbler's on the Interstate..."