"V"

Slightly off topic, but related to both games mechanics and clothing (and it amuses me...) so I'll mention it anyway. I played in a pulp based campaign using some home grown rules that allowed PCs to specify how they regained "Plot Points" (luck point type system allowing extra successes) based on their character stereotype- some characters had 'catchphrases' or particular schticks that regenerated Plot Points. One of our female players, playing a glamorous lady adventurer (daughter of the infamous Professor Dashwood) had recently discovered the "Spicy" pulps and designed her character to recover Plot Points whenever caught in a revealing pose or whenever losing garments (incidents suggested as opportunity arose, by the player herself, eg skirt caught in car door, car drives off etc). Raised a chuckle from time to time and certainly in the spicy genre... A similar system seems to be used in a lot of Hollywood action movies, explaining why heroines are forever running round in tight t-shirts, night-dresses etc etc etc. It helps them beat the bad guys

How rude.

Danger surrounding, Fate demands the finest one! Foxbat triumphant.

Marvellous! I too would like to see any background info.

Sounds good to me!

vworp vworp vworp Sounds like it might be worth installing some sort of time-portal with one end in Victorian England (or elsewhere) and the other in modern day wherever. Only works for original character or his/her offspring. That way we could have a character equally estranged from both times flitting back and forth and getting into romantic scrapes and misadventures as well as dealing with Victorian mastercriminals who are strangely also adrift in time...

Outraged, London I've just managed to get hold of a copy of the Swimsuit Edition referred to at the start of the thread. Imagine my delight and anticipation as I scuttled back to my Penumbratic Palace and bolted the doors behind me. Imagine my delight turning to horror as I unfolded the Centrefold and discovered some pneumatic wench in a sapphire blue micro-kini! I'd been promised Michael Jackson in a thong! Now admittedly his recent thongs have thucked, but I'm still outraged. Furnish me with semi-nude neo-albino pictures or it's firework time!

Back in the heady days of my student life during the 1980s, Games Workshop had just released the "Judge Dredd" roleplaying game. Pretty basic stuff, but Dredd had quite a following back then so we played it quite a lot. One of the characters, Judge Grendel, semed to be jinxed. Almost every time she rolled (percentile based skill system) she fumbled. For some reason she ended up as a "floating character" that new players could pick up and use, and the jinx followed her regardless of who was playing her. It became a running joke in the group. Two particular incidents stand out. In the first Judge Grendel had to shoot out the massive plate glass windows of a city block about thirty feet from her. The referee ruled that she could only possibly miss on a fumble since she was effectively shooting point blank at a tower block (I think a roll was only called for since it was Grendel and everyone knew what could happen...). Roll... 00 (naturally). Grendel sneezes as she fires and sprays the immediate area with bullets. Colleagues dive for cover as was their habit whenever Grendel was on patrol. Second incident... skirmish gone wrong, Judges end up behind cover pinned down by bad guys. Grendel decides to get some heavy backup, gets on her radio and calls her Bike Computer "Bike, to me!". Straight line between bike and Grendel runs right over two comrades lying prone behind cover. Referee allows Grendel's player to roll for the intelligence of her bike computer... You can guess the rest.

We are not worthy! Marble Archie... inspired Mr McCrae, inspired. And, Agent X, please keep us posted as to how things develop. I've got very attached to some of the unusual characters proposed by the various contributors to this thread & I'd love to hear how any that you use work out in practise. It's refreshing that there are very few "obvious" British stereotypes there, although the feel is very very accurate for the British comics of those bygone days (sigh). Just goes to show, we gamers are a darn (apologies for the profanity) sight more creative than most comic writers.

And on the Axis side... GIFTGEIST Feared even among the ranks of the Nazi paranormals, Giftgeist's true identity has been lost for decades. Speculation is rife that he was a soldier during the first world war, exposed to ridiculous levels of poison gas attacks (or possibly to experiments designed to protect soldiers from such attacks). Physically Giftgeist resembles an emaciated corpse like figure with blistered and discoloured skin, his face little more than a skull. He wears tattered and decaying military uniform (new on every morning, the material rots by exposure to Giftgeist). His personality is equally distressing. He regards himself as the enemy of all living beings, but with a perfect hatred for those nations who were his enemies during the last war. He regards himself as undead, though technically this is unlikely to be the case. He does not work well in teams, and tends to be sent into an enemy position in advance of an assault to "soften up" resistance. His touch is toxic, bringing corruption and burning by simple exposure. He can also exude a cloud of corrosive gas from his body that can devastate anyone unfortunate enough to be near him. He shows astonishing regenerative powers and disdain for danger. Campaign use would be as a very dangerous sinister figure, possibly suited to a Horror themed scenario. He relies on stealth and silent assassination to get close to a target, unleashing his more overt powers only when confrontation is inevitable. Other axis supers would probably express hatred and loathing for this creature too... he triggers an automatic negative reaction from most living beings.

Mr McCrae enquired: Never worked that one out. The International Hero site suggested the old "Mr X" character (and the name pun seems appropriate, suggesting both mystery and the letter). However the characters looked and acted differently so that's a bit tenuous. I've never really approved of heroes with single letter codenames anyway... May I also present: The Iron Duke and Boney Professor Matthias Dashwood had always been somewhat eccentric. The unfortunate affair in Kent was still being talked about ten years after the last of the dinosaurs had been captured and the bad publicity this had generated had driven the old man into seclusion. Abandoning most of his experiments, Prof Dashwood indulged his passion for history and worked round the clock to create robotic simulacra of two of the greatest military figures of the previous century: The Duke of Wellington and Napoleon Bonaparte. Each standing an impressive 7’ tall and constructed of riveted iron, steam and clockwork, the two robots were programmed (on unbreakable Dashwoodium Plastic platters) with the personalities and tactical knowledge of their two role models gleaned from all the historical sources at Dashwood’s disposal. He intended to have them play chess against each other. Needless to say things didn’t go according to plan. “Boney†in a fit of gallic temper threw the chessboard at Dashwood and stormed into the night leaving a robot-shaped hole in the wainscoting. The Iron Duke, slightly more reserved, simply strolled out of the front door. Through the last few years of the 1930s these mechanical myrmidons fought each other constantly across the UK, with “Boney†in the role of master villain and the Iron Duke as a “wrought iron wrighter of wrongs†(the tabloid press responsible for that one). With the commencement of hostilities however, and the surrender of France, “Boney†handed himself over to the Iron Duke with the astonishing suggestion that they join forces to fight the hated Bosche. Now, Nazi agents throughout Britain live in perpetual fear of the –clunk-clunk-clunk- of heavy iron feet and the sound of bickering metallic voices (one with an appalling stage French accent) approaching their hideout… Rumours that Dashwood has since created a robotic Bismarck, nicknamed “The Iron Chancellor†are hopefully ill founded.

In response to Mr McCrae, yes I'm afraid these creatures are my responsibility alone. I'm quite taken with the idea of the changing ghost theme myself but I'm baffled as to how to write it up. And I must agree... the International Heroes site is truly magnificent. As someone who enjoyed Zenith Phase III when it first came out, seeing that someone (else) has been fanatical enough to identify all the old British comic heroes who made cameos is very refreshing. I guess that's a good way to deal with a genre fiend... throw in enough obscure little references that they get a real kick from spotting them, without actually obscuring the plotline of the scenario. Then when they think they've got a handle on what you're doing, hit them with a sudden twist... I love being a GM. The insane sense of power is invigorating.

"Lady Jane, does yer 'ave ter be so Obvious?" "Oh Mellors, I just wanted you to know I was Accessible." "Shut up milady, just Focus." (works best with broad Yorkshire accent and familiarity with dialect... rest assured this is a hilarious gag even if it seems otherwise... ).

Good grief, that was quick. Are you trying to tell me something? On a more serious note... just as an idea seed.... something that would be very true to the genre in terms of both harking back to the idyllic England of yore (etc etc) and the plucky 'all pull together' spirit that seemed quite genuinel to exist at the time, how about a team comprising some local "Lord of the Manor" type (probably as a Patriot archetype) accompanied by members of his estate. You could have the local Blacksmith as the team Brick, the happy go lucky Poacher as a stealthy marksman type etc. Sorry the idea's not worked out in more depth, but I think the "feel" would be appropriate.

Sorry about this one... How about a hulking but impressive looking iron robot with a multi-valve computational brain that specialises in solving mysteries. "Stately Holmes."

Try "The Rocket" aka Stephen George. He was a sort of train-themed combo Brick/Speedster who took a long time to get up to full speed, but then specialised in devastating collisions (Move Throughs). Character-wise he was pretty unsophisticated, but a down to earth "country gent" type who smoked a pipe and drank beer in the local pub. Actually he was around in the 1930s, but no doubt would have come out of retirement to harrass the hun- "Full Steam Ahead Fritz" would have made a nice battle cry as he plowed into the side of a Panzer. Jimmy Riddle was an annoying boy-genius type who in a real British school would have been drowned in the toilets by the first playtime. He had a utility backpack from which he'd pull appropriate gadgets ("tinkertoys") at the appropriate moment. His name reflected the fact that most of his adventures involved entangling complex clues. There was another chap called Lord Midnight who was a member of the landed gentry in his Secret ID and had a VERY haunted country house. He tended to stumble into adventures accidentally (week in, week out) and each week a different ghost from his house accompanied him and helped out. How you'd model that in Hero I have no idea... the chap himself had very few powers of his own, but since no one else could see the Ghosts everyone thought he did... perhaps the Ghosts could just be a "special effect" for a VPP?

Thanks... that should save some work.

Ah, well, you see... I pinched it. A Swedish art group called Blodbad did a live multimedia, theatrical, performance art kind of version of V for Vendetta a little while ago. Their site is entirely in Swedish, but some kind person made an English translation of it which, since my Swedish is, to say the least, rusty was invaluable. There are some photographs from the performance, and I... nicked one. Trimmed it down to the appropriate size and used it. "Mea culpa" (Lilliman). Here's another lovely pic from the site http://web.ukonline.co.uk/mathias.lindgren/vfv/vfv-translated.html

I just posted a scathing criticism of the writer of that episode and then found that Trebuchet had posted a much more reasoned explanation of why it could make sense... Darn. Bats' fear of becoming as bad as the bad guys is a legit thing to remove. If the writer just meant that he was scared of the retribution that would have been very poor indeed. Thank goodness we can edit posts...we don't all have invisible tiger buddies to advise us.

Good idea: Spending the evening on an intimate date with a foxy babe*. Bad idea: Spending the evening on an intimate date with Foxbat. * as you young 'uns say.

On the subject of export templates... the "Hero Boards" template in HD doesn't seem to export the background material for the character, so I had to do lots of cut/pasting for Ulfwyn (above). Am I doing something wrong, should I be using a different template? All advice gratefully received.

I was going to make some pithy comments about Geminis but to be honest I'm in two minds about it.

Elementary, my dear Bazza. May 23rd 1994, surely you remember the passing of the great edict of Virgoan practicality?

We Virgos are too practical and level headed to believe in astrology.

Gomen nasai, hdc file attached as requested...