Rene

Re: Iron Age Philosophies The Thing was the most Iron Age-y of the FF, I remember one story (about FF #30) where he had to be restrained from beating the hell out of a fallen Dr. Doom. He surely had a temper in the early days. Not to mention the Sub-Mariner, perhaps comics's first major "grey" hero, that was revitalized in the FF title. And Spider-Man. I think that maybe Spider-Man was more important even than the X-Men and the Hulk in paving the way for the new kind of hero. Thugh he was undoubtly moral and heroic, he opened the door for real for the "less than perfect" heroes. He was, in all ways, the opposite of the DC Silver Age hero who always had his act together and lived a perfect life.

Re: High End Cannoical Character in Champions Universe

Re: High End Cannoical Character in Champions Universe I used to believe the former, now I go for the later. Thor, Hercules, calm Hulk, Wonder Man, I'd put around 90-100 STR, and scale down from there. That don't mean the Roger Stern's era Wasp (the one I'm more familiar with) would have much more than 8-9d6 attacks with a decent Find Weakness roll, IMO. After all, she was a LOT below guys like Cyclops in destructive power, and I'd put Cyclops around 14-15d6 without pushing.

Re: High End Cannoical Character in Champions Universe Well, they seem to have beefed her up from my days as a regular reader. I think I could create Roger Stern's Wasp with 400 points, tops. Maybe 450, if I wanted to go really wild. No way she'd be more than that. And I usually don't represent other heroes and hero groups as contacts, when I write-up established characters. No more than a PC would take other PC as contacts. I think the Wasp has "business community" and/or "fashion community" as contacts, though.

Re: High End Cannoical Character in Champions Universe

Re: Gods and Champions Yes, Astro City's CONFESSION is probably the best attempt so far of mixing superheroes and religion in a positive (but not rosy-colored) light. The Confessor was a devout Christian super-character that was both admirable and complex. BTW, the Islamic villain in Wild Cards is named "Nur-ah-Allah", the Light of Allah. Wild Cards also had Reverend Leo Barnett. What was great about Barnett was that when you first hear of him (fundamentalist preacher who hates the Wild Card), you think he will be this archetypical religious wacko-villain, but he is a lot more complex (and even occasionaly sympathetic) than that. He is basically a nice guy who genuinely hates the sin but loves the sinner, even though he is kinda of an antagonist to most of the heroes, who are almost all liberals.

Re: Iron Age Philosophies Nice summations again, Mutant for Hire! Can't forget the guys like Punisher, Batman, and the Crow. I would also complement something you said. There is another kind of really common Iron Age villain. If some Iron Age heroes are morally grey and flawed, some Iron Age villains, unlike Magneto or the Kingpin (or even the new Luthor) are the very epithome of depraved twisted sick evil. They make even the most flawed of heroes a square-chinned paragon by comparision. Usually extremely powerful, immune to injury, and personaly intimidating, this type of villain indulges in "that which should NOT have been done" kind of destructive orgies. Some perfect examples would be Kid Miracleman, Wild Card's The Astronomer and Blaise, the Joker, Seth from the Authority, and the psycho that is just starting to appear in Supreme Power. Planetary's The Four are kind of a mix between this kind of villain and the "political masterminds" you've mentioned.

Re: Iron Age Philosophies

Re: Iron Age Philosophies Nice summation, Mutant for Hire. I'd also note that usually there are fewer true superhumans in Iron Age settings than in Silver Age ones, but that is not always true. And when there are a lot of meta-humans, they usually share the same origin (that is true of Aberrant, Wild Talents, Wild Cards, Marvel's New Universe, Supreme Power, Rising Stars, Miracleman, wow, most of the Iron Age settings, really!)

Re: Iron Age Philosophies Well, that could be explained by his sociopathy and thrill of adventure. The Wizard initially was a bored millionaire who wanted a challenge.

Re: Iron Age Philosophies

Re: Iron Age Philosophies Science has to be a bit more believable. Not much, but a little. Or at least not to run completely counter to science. Genetical engineering, other dimensions, nose-bleeding psionics, magic based on real world traditions, real strange aliens, are all in. Radiation accidents, Kirby science, Dr. Strange magic, aliens that are psychologicaly and physicaly identical to humans are out.

Re: Foriegn Captain America's

Re: Foriegn Captain America's Hm... if we're talking national stereotypes turned superheroes, I think... The premiere Brazilian hero would be a trickster hero, perhaps with illusion powers and enhanced dexterity and charisma, something like that. He would be a lazy, amorous, likeable chap. He would probably prefer to outfox and deceive his enemies over beating the crap out of them. He also would work outside the law frequently if need be to stop the bad guys (Brazilians usually don't have that American attitude of "Oh my God, I just broke a law! Oh no! Now I'm going into a slippery slope and I'll become a psycho!") but mostly in a non-violent way. I don't know what this hero would be called. I'm very bad at creating names. With a few alterations to the archetype (perhaps playing up the sex thing), this hero could be a heroine. A revealing "sexist" costume would certainly be more appropriate for a Brazilian heroine than for an American one, even though the idea that we live in Carnival 12 months a year is ridiculous.

Re: Polishing The HERO System STR can bring to mind a relationship between weight and damage, but this thing about guns isn't anywhere in the book. You mean the .44 has four times the power of the 9mm? You're talking about energy released by the guns or something?

Re: Polishing The HERO System

Re: Polishing The HERO System

Re: Polishing The HERO System The question is, in what direction should you go? There are other instances of +5 pts = x2 of non-combat measurement in the rules. Noncombat Movement, Density Increase and Growth's extra weight, extra weight for Teleport, ED-Movement, UOO attacks... You can keep the rule as it is, and buy HA if you want your 30 STR brick dishing out more damage. In extremely realistic games, you could even buy a HKA and/or Armor Piercing to better represent how superstrength is portrayed. Or you can make the table less steep and make the high-level bricks buy extra STR with the Only to Lift Lim. Either way would be fine with me. Perhaps they should make a official ruling about how much extra Lifting STR would cost.

Re: Polishing The HERO System Well, I tried to say it more tactfully and calmly, but yes, that is basically right. The lifts listed on the Handbook are convenient to compare who is stronger than who, but the absolute values in tons seem to be off, even allowing for different writers picturing the character's powers differently. I can understand the argument that in some stories, for instance, vampire tales, superstrong characters with a comparatively wimpy lift capability seem to cause great damage, but one can't forget that in such stories the vampires are hitting normal humans who should not have 15 PD, 40 STUN.

Re: Polishing The HERO System I doubt there are many people left out there who respect the "official" listings they present in the Marvel Handbook. They're handy for a quick-and-dirty conversion, but even Colossus and Sub-Mariner, listed at 75-ton lift have routinely lifted much more. And I mean, routinely, not only on life-or-death situations that would allow for Pushing. Guys like Hulk and Thor can lift MUCH more than 100 tons on a routine basis. Nowadays, I tend more to the side that thinks it's better to get the tonnage given in the Marvel Handbook and translate it directly into Champions STR for lifts greater than 40 tons. So, the Thing would have 85 STR, the calm Hulk would have 90-100 STR, etc.

Re: Polishing The HERO System

Re: Polishing The HERO System I don't think Superman is a "once in a blue moon character". Superman is the most important superhero there is and one of the most important characters in Western culture. If a generic universal game system proposing to simulate all varieties of heroic fiction is unable to do Superman and the many heroes patterned after him, then the system is weak. That is one of my problems with old GURPS (I'm not sure about the new edition yet). The beauty of HERO is that you can give Supes a 125 STR and have him doing the big but not absurd amount of 25 dice of damage. In GURPS you'd have to, what, give him ST 30.000 to represent his lifting amount? And then he could destroy the universe with the damage he does with his little pinky. Not to mention other problems created by the "x2 non-combat element must be equal x2 combat element" that is well-meaning but ultimately disastrous. Like, making the Flash pretty much impossible to build too. I believe that the game system must follow the genre. Not that the genre must be distorted to fit in the game system, so we'd have bricks and speedsters that are much weaker than the comics versions because the game don't support them. Now, okay, Golden Boy is the strongest man on Earth on Wild Cards "low-level realistic gritty" superhero world and he can "only" do 11d6 with his 40-ton strength. 11d6 isn't impressive, you say. I say it is impressive, when you consider that most characters in Wild Cards and other realistic superhero worlds will have PDs on the 3-8 range, and thugs and minions should definetely have very low PDs on realistic games. And in the Wild Cards stories Golden Boy had to take plenty of time to rip into a tank. In game terms, I think he resorted to haymakers.

Re: What Gold/Silver/Iron Age story or series do you love? I never read much of the Golden Age comics, and DC's Silver Age, even though I like the crazy ideas, I think the characters are a bit too bland and a bit too interchangeable, and I'm unable to really get involved. I prefer Stan Lee's bombastic melodramatic Marvel comics, but the only one I've read many issues of is "Fantastic Four". I'm really a scion of the Bronze Age, my favorite Marvel series would be: - John Byrne's Fantastic Four (IMO, the definitive Marvel comic book) - Claremont's X-Men (until they "died" in Dallas, it went kinda downhill after that), New Mutants, and Excalibur - Walt Simonson's Thor - Louise Simonson's X-Factor issues - Miller's Daredevil, Ann Nocenti's run I also liked - Micheline's Iron Man - JMdeMatteis's Captain America and the first half of Gruenwald's run (the last half is pretty hideous IMO). - Stern and deFalco's Spider-Man - Peter David's Hulk (okay, that is very late Bronze Age) On the DC side, the only series I liked were Wolfman's Teen Titans, Levitz's Legion, and the occasional Batman story I got to read. Most of the other titles seemed like Silver Age-y icons desperately trying to become more modern and failing utterly. It all changed after Crisis (IMO for the better), and I confess I kinda switched to DC for a while, favorites would be: - Byrne's Superman - Perez's Wonder Woman - Bill Messner-Loebs's Flash - Stern's Starman (Will Payton) - Morrison's Animal Man - Captain Atom - Hawk & Dove - Truman's Hawkworld (probably the utmost test to see whether you valued good stories or continuity. The series pretty much wrecked DC's continuity, but was beautifully written with a rare thing: a introspective, sensitive Iron Age character, IMO) I liked the beginning of Giffen and deMatteis's Justice League, but I got tired of it pretty quickly, and positively started to abhor it when all the "light-hearted" sitcom spin-offs started. By then I had pretty much given up on Marvel, except for Nicieza's New Warriors. That series was the last survivor of the Bronze Age Marvel. Whenever I looked Marvel had became all-flash no-content. Iron Age superhero books from the 80s... let me see... Watchmen I loved, but today I think that perhaps I don't loved it as much as everyone else anymore. If we're talking Alan Moore, I think "Miracleman" has aged better. I was never a fan of Miller's Dark Knight and felt kinda vindicated by the atrocious sequel Miller produced recently. Hm... and the Wild Cards series probably is my favorite superhero work from all time, I've read each book ten times, but that isn't comic books... And so I gave up on comics but got back years later and my favorite modern comics would be a good blend of Retro and Iron: Alan Moore's Tom Strong Astro City Powers JMS's Rising Stars (went a bit downhill after the first trade, but still kinda good IMO) JMS's Supreme Power Warren Ellis's Planetary The Ultimates James Robinson's Starman (Jack Knight) That pretty much sums up my life as a superhero fan. I occasionaly sampled and liked current "lighter" comics such as Waid's Fantastic Four, New Teen Titans, Outcasts... but I couldn't say I'm really into them. As I got older, it seemed like I started to require a diet of weirder stuff and they seem too straightforward superheroics for me, even though they're damned good straightforward superheroics.

Re: Ultimate vs The Authority Well, based on what I've read on this thread alone, I don't think he was especially arrogant. But I can't talk about the earlier threads. And I've seen four colour fans being arrogant and rude in threads that didn't even had Wanderer's presence. Am I to assume that Wanderer has been so offensive that four-color fans are so scarred that they come guns blazing in threads that don't even have Wanderer's presence? Take a look at the "Ultimate Champions" thread, for instance. Evil Toki just suggested something Iron Age(without implaying that other styles were worse) and was almost killed by some posters.

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity? Yeah, but Aberrant isn't World of Darkness, it's a much smaller line. And I've read that Steve worked specifically on the powers part. I'm not sure if he worked alone at it, though.