Lunatic Fringer

Hello! Been lurking for a while now because I really haven't been playing Hero System games for several years. I'm a 4th Edition diehard, but my circle of friends willing to deal with this system's crunch has shrunk to the point where nobody who's left wants to do it anymore. I've been keeping busy during the pandemic by writing and releasing my own superhero rules system and a city setting supplement for it - specifically for those who have problems with the math these days (which is a lot, actually). 1) My handle comes from one of my favorite songs by Red Rider. 2) The very first TTRPG I played was the red box set of D&D, though I quickly graduated to AD&D. (I'd been playing wargames for a few years before that.) 3) The first I ever GM'd has slipped my memory, but it's likely that it was AD&D. 4) Currently, I'm running my own game, the XD12 Superhero System, on the Babies with Knives Discord Channel on Thursday afternoons from 1500 to 1700 Central Time (US). I'm also playing in an ICONS: Assembled Edition game with pretty much the same people that are in my group for XD12 on Friday afternoons in the same timeframe.

Some prime retro 80's synthwave from Andromeda Dreams - Stardust and Point of No Return. Excellent music for writing up science fiction adventures.

My all-time favorite supplement for Champions is Challenges for Champions. But, Villainy Amok ranks a very close second. My absolute favorite supplement is Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads for Cyberpunk 2020... LF

Is it done yet? Is it done yet? Is it done yet? LF

Milwaukee is a good location for a silver age city. Population between 500,000 and 750,000, lots of traditional industry, and of course, the setting for Happy Days! But, San Francisco is also an excellent choice at around 750,000 at that time, and probably the best one for adventure opportunities. And yeah, San Angelo is also an awesome setting for just about any superhero game, as is Freedom City. LF

KEEP METRONOVA WEIRD Overview Many Old Portlanders would say that the city was pretty strange even before The Cataclysm. Now that we’re seventy-plus years past that, most Metronovians will say this place is just plain weird. And to most residents, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. What follows is a run-down of the more famous (and infamous) strangeness that has visited (and may still be visiting) the city. The Bizarre Case of Carl Pendleton Gray The popular NBC television show Grimm which started in 2011 does a lot of its outdoor and location scenes in and around Metronova. While most people think that the whole business of a secret society of humanoid monsters and monster hunters being the basis of many of our fairy tales is great entertainment and nothing more, there is some evidence that the series might be based on a few slivers of truth. Back in 1921, Carl Pendleton Gray – a veteran of the First World War – murdered over thirty transients in and around Portland. During his trial, his hand-written journal with its hideously detailed drawings was introduced as evidence of his mental state. The court found Gray innocent by reason of insanity and had him committed to an asylum for the rest of his life. Gray claimed in his journal that he had gained the ability to see “the monsters that walk among us like disguised wolves among the sheep” after surviving a chlorine gas attack in the trenches in 1918. These monsters (as portrayed by Gray’s drawings) were humanoid but exhibited animalistic features and abilities. Furthermore, Gray had amassed a personal arsenal of medieval weaponry with an alchemist’s lab of compounds and poisons – some of which had been used in the murders. In 1923, Gray escaped the asylum after murdering two other patients there. His arsenal disappeared from the state’s evidence vault a week after and despite a heavy reward and several searches of the area, Gray was never seen again. However, not all of Carl Gray’s legacy was gone. One of Portland’s pathological doctors had a sample of overly large rodent hair and a claw, neither of which has ever been identified as belonging to any known race of rodents alive today or in the past… Dr. Progress Dr. Jeremiah Xerxes Progress (Dr. Progress for short) was a brilliant inventor and scientist who turned his energies toward crime fighting in the 1930’s as one of the founding members of The Knights of Portland. This group of mystery men (and women) offered their talents to the Office of Strategic Services in 1942 and was charged with the defense of northwestern United States. On the night of 21 October 1943, the group battled The Disciples of the Rising Sun, a group of Japanese special operatives who were trying to smuggle an Anasazi artifact called The Talisman of Unmaking out of America. During the fight, a shugenja in the Japanese group (who realized they were not going to escape) invoked the talisman with the intent to destroy a sizable chunk of America and Canada. Fortunately, The Freemason was able to work out and cast a magical mathematical formula to open a portal into another dimension and while Dr. Progress modified one of his Tesla levitators to drop the talisman through the portal (since its magical energies killed the shugenja when she invoked it). It almost worked. Unfortunately, just as the portal was closing, the talisman unleashed its magical energies, the tiniest fraction of which escaped into our plane of existence, causing The Cataclysm that destroyed Portland and Vancouver. For several days after the event, everyone assumed that all of the Knights were killed. Dr. Progress showed up at Veteran’s Hospital on October 28th, but he had been forever changed into a non-corporeal being that resembled his former physical form. He relayed the first account of what had happened in the Port of Metronova to the media. It would take him years to tell the full story without grief overcoming him – of how The Freemason had also created an equation of protection from the talisman’s destructive energies for Dr. Progress while he manipulated the talisman into the portal. His transformation has made him insubstantial, but also effectively immortal. Since none of his faculties were lost, Dr. Progress was selected to oversee The Metronova Initiative to rebuild the city after the war. He also organized Super Force and was the team’s scientist and technology expert. He has continued to this day as an inventor, using the royalties from his patents and inventions to support his other great cause – to continue building and improving the city. The wait can be up to four months, but anyone can get an appointment to see Dr. Progress in his office on the 70th floor. Depending on the subject, the length of the visit will be anywhere upwards of five minutes to an hour. Most people these days are just interested in asking a few questions and taking a selfie with the last of The Mystery Men, but he has also spent time working with individuals with unique and challenging problems that only his brand of science can solve. The Forest Walkers This is a special organization dedicated to finding people who get lost in the magical places that have manifested around Metronova in the aftermath of The Cataclysm. This group formed in 1957 after the unions representing Metronova’s police and fire departments went on strike until the city agreed to write a clause into their contract that exempted them from conducting searches for missing persons in Greenbriar Forest. To be fair, over a dozen emergency responders had disappeared without a trace in the years leading up to the strike. It takes a special breed of searcher to be on this team – specifically somebody who can resist the magical manifestations. And that means The Walkers are a collection of oddballs that shows up to search from someone who goes missing, ranging from soapbox preachers to new age mystics and a host of other fringe personalities. Because of this highly specialized work, the organization requires those who are rescued to subject themselves to the scrutiny of their specialist researchers and investigators. Sometimes this can lead to bizarre situations, such as being forced to give up personal possessions or being subjected to strange medical exams. Whatever The Forest Walkers discover in these exams, they haven’t told anyone… Greenbriar Forest People tend to disappear in here – a lot. It is so bad that Metronova is levying Draconian fines against anyone found off the established trails here. Since the unions representing the police and fire department have negotiated a clause that they don’t try to find people lost in that forest, there is a special organization – The Forest Walkers – to do that. (They don’t work for money, but they don’t work cheap, either.) People who have managed to be found or walked out on their own are profoundly affected by their experience. Many report seeing ghostly figures among the trees. Others say they heard the trees talking to each other and moving. People have reported that magnetic compasses and GPS units are completely useless in the forest. Several people were completely incoherent when found and a few remained institutionalized for the rest of their lives. A few survivors claim to manifested magical powers as a result of their experience – the most famous of which was Lady Emerald, a magical supervillainess who was active in the 1960’s. In 1993, Sandi Holmes spent a total of 43 days lost in the forest with only a sandwich bag of trail mix and two bottles of water to sustain her. Her calendar watch indicated that only six hours had passed since she’d entered the forest and Sandi only had memories of a pleasant stroll through the woods. The Mystery Hole According to Bugs Bunny, there ain’t no place like a hole in the ground. And, so far as The Mystery Hole is concerned, there isn’t any place like this hole in the ground. After The Cataclysm, what used to be a tourist trap turned into the genuine article when what appeared at first to be a very deep sinkhole opened up. Everything within eighty feet of the original attraction fell in and disappeared. When good Samaritans hitched up a rope and tried to rescue people they assumed were at the bottom, they disappeared, too. There have been attempts to probe the depths of the hole over the years, and all of them have met the same problem: anything that goes more than 120 feet down this rabbit hole, doesn’t come back, doesn’t communicate and has no clue that it is about to disappear until it has already happened. Over a hundred people who tried to plumb the depths in the 1940’s and 1950’s have disappeared without a trace. Local authorities covered the hole with a steel framework and built a ten-foot high wall around it in 1958 to dissuade anyone else from entering, but about once a year somebody manages to get inside and goes away. Of course, there are stories of things that came out of the hole before that framework went into place. The story changes depending on who’s doing the telling but most are regarded as tall tales spun for the price of a drink or the contents of a wallet belonging to a “true believer.” What most people don’t know is that something did come through once in 1981, but Super Force dealt with it quickly and quietly. After that, they brought in a shugenja from Japan to place a magical seal on the framework to keep it from happening again… Shards A shard resembles a spike of rock crystal that glows faintly when held close to a living being. It is believed that they are fragments of the Talisman of Unmaking that made it through the portal when it exploded. They vary from fingernail-sized to nearly five inches long, though most are about the size of a man’s thumb. To date, about fifty shards are claimed to have been found in and around Metronova – most of them before 1950. The rumor is that if one holds a shard over his heart, the residual magic within it will grant him a wish. This is based off the unauthorized biography of Black Paragon – a supervillain of the 1950’s – which claimed that was how he obtained his super powers. The merest possibility of this being true has driven many people to search every nook and cranny of Metronova in the desperate hope of finding one. The reality is a bit different. The Meditation Chamber in Old Portlandia has a dozen “shards” that it uses to induce visions of the future in its patrons, but nobody is really sure that they are the genuine article. There are also several “shards” on display in the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Hawthorne that people can induce to glow (through an armored transparent case). Nobody really knows if they are the genuine article, either. But there has also been at least three other supervillains who claim their powers came from shards they stole or otherwise obtained, so the legend persists, as do the hunters… Super Force’s Secret Base For five dollars, you can take an hour-long tour of the base that once housed Metronova’s only dedicated team of superheroes, get some spectacular views of the city and even take a selfie at the controls of Angel-3, the team’s jump jet transport. However, rumors persist that the five-floor complex atop Progress Tower is just there for show and that the real base is located elsewhere within or even under the city. Practically every year, somebody claims that they have discovered the location of that secret base. And every year, the claim is shown to be either outright fabrication or a misinterpretation of a forgotten structure either above or below ground. The most compelling evidence came from an autobiography done by Nelson “Zeta-Man” Comstock in 2008. One chapter describes the group’s first, temporary base in 1976 as being established in a subway station that was completed but never officially connected to the METRA network. Comstock indicated that once the team’s digs in Progress Tower were finished in 1978, the temporary base was stripped bare and then filled with rubble to prevent its use by supervillains as a hideout. Of note, METRA reports that around a dozen people are arrested annually for trespassing in the subway tunnels while looking for the aforementioned base. Sadly, despite an ongoing campaign of public service announcements about the dangers of trespassing in the subway tunnels, a handful of would be urban spelunkers are killed each year before they are caught. Unfortunately for would-be searchers, they cannot ask the author for more details about the former base. Shortly before the book came out, Comstock was killed by his estranged wife for its portrayal of her, after the last of her court appeals to block its publishing was denied. Publicly distraught at her trial, she was committed to Hopewood Asylum. The book sold over three million copies worldwide with proceeds donated to The Metronova Initiative – a foundation overseen by Dr. Progress to help disadvantaged citizens of the city. LF

I have no idea. Just a villain team from one of my campaigns. LF

TEAM ONYX: This group of super-powered females has orchestrated several high-end jobs throughout the United States. Blackball: She's a mutant with super strength, super toughness and a lifetime of street fighting experience. Blackbird: She stole a prototype stealth combat hardsuit one piece at a time from her former employer, modifying it with additional weapons of her own design. Black Jackie: She's a martial artist with ability to teleport both in and out of combat, plus employs a deck of razor-edged playing cards as weapons. Black Note: Her voice is enhanced with dark magic which she can use as a weapon; plus she can sway individuals or crowds to do her bidding. Blackout: She's an electrokinetic powerhouse that can cause localized power outages, can arc bolts of lightning from electric lines, can operate electrical and electronic devices remotely and has a form of telepathy with computers and networks. Black Pearl: She employs a magical talisman to wield powerful magic spells. LF

The Gray Ghost would immediately try to find some way to trace the origin of the machine and send it back from whence it came. He would also actively discourage anyone from attempting to use the machine until he could figure out how to send it back. LF

Okay, here's the initial write-up of Metronova's districts and points of interest. Let me know what you think! LF Metronova City Districts.pdf

An intriguing idea, but the location is well off the map boundaries. When I get around to doing a regional map, I will keep this place in mind. Thanks for contributing! LF

UPDATE: Still working on the districts and points of interest on the map. Getting fairly close to the end and I'm hoping to finish it up this weekend. I guess my typing speed has suffered a bit since the stroke. Oh well... LF

I also chose S.O.N.J.A. since my paradigms for intelligent computers were forged by Star Trek. LF

Thanks. I am working on the players' write-ups for the districts and points of interest on the map. As with other campaign cities I have worked on, I'm leaving space for additional points of interest to be added by adventures and character backgrounds during play. LF

Metronova City Map.pdf Here's a preliminary map of Metronova. Enjoy LF