bcholmes

Re: Favorite Adventures Most of my superhero RPGing was done with V&V. I liked Crisis at Crusader Citadel a lot. (All around good introductory adventure). I also liked Force and Death Duel with the Destroyers and The Dawn of DNA.

Re: Re: Americans on the team In our campaign, one of the PCs (Captain Sorted) is a member of the British super-soldier program on long-term loan to Canada to help them get the latest version of the Northern Guard up and running. The Canadian government has started to suspect that Captain Sorted is... uh... not the British Army's favourite member of the super-soldier program.

Bigger than her head.

Dunno about why they disbanded, but it's interesting that the second and third teams were formed in the same years that we had a change of government. Chretien came to power in '93, and Mulroney came to power in '84. Heh. That's the premise of my campaign.

Gunfight at the Oka Corral *nod* That'd be an interesting piece of backstory to put into a character's history. I remember when Alpha Flight essentially said that Northstar had belonged to the FLQ. That was an interesting backstory item.

In my campaign, the members of COMET (from Champions Universe) have a common origin. They've salvaged alien technology from a UFO in the Ottawa river. Before they were a super-team, they worked for Carleton University (COMET = Carleton Office of Metahuman and Extraterrestial Technology). They're much more a "Challengers of the Unknown"-ish team of adventurers than a bunch of costumed heroes.

Re: Thanks L.L. "American" Indian?

Re: In the shadow of the City of the Future- Windsor's heroes Plus you've got all those chemical plants just a bit north in Sarnia... it's practically an origin story waiting to happen. Some thoughts: - The child of one of the Avro Arrow designers finally perfects the flight armour that dad was working on back in the 50s and 60s. - Canada has, I believe, the largest population of Chinese outside of China -- I'm thinking a were-Dragon character might an interesting member - The Red Ensign -- daughter of the WWII flag-suited hero. Sure, our flag has changed since WWII, but people still fondly remember the original Red Ensign.

Re: How do I summon (Someone has to say it) Just use the standard "Summon S-1798" and write in 'pizza' where it says 'machine gun'

Re: Best/favorite Champions product That's a hard question because I like so many of the products in different ways that aren't really comparable. At the moment, I think Champions Universe is the most evocative thing supplement. It gives me lots of ideas for stories -- especially the "filler" pieces. It has piqued my interest in Vibora Bay, and I've used the back-story of Canada's Northern Guard as the basis for my campaign. So I guess that's my favourite. Having said that, I can't imagine not having Conquerors, Killers and Crooks or UNTIL Super-Powers Database. Those two books are hugely helpful. I also use a lot of characters from Champions of the North (which feels comfortably Canadian to me).

About the process.. I'm curious: how long does it take for a commission to gel in your head? Do you doodle a couple of ideas first? Or do you just visualize it in its final form?

I just love some of the little touches you put into the 70s version: the fringe on the belt pouches. And that belt. Eeek! I think I had a belt like that once. Very nice.

Re: What would you do if YOU could travel in time? On November 22nd, 1963, I'd be watching the grassy knoll very very carefully.

Re: Favorite Champions Villain(s) I'm rilly rilly fond of Captain Chronos. I'm also keenly interested in figuring out how to use Sludge and Leviathan.

Re: Re: Errr... Huh? Hmmm... I don't know your business, or its metrics, but this is what jumped into my head. When dead-tree products arrive at my local game store, they usually have a number of copies in stock. Those copies may get sold weeks or months after they arrive. The question I wonder is: are you figuring 10-15% based on numbers that went out to distributors, or actual sales? Or are you comparing to your own online store. (These questions may be considered rhetorical; I'm just tossing out the thoughts in case they aid in understanding the comparisons).

Re: Pop Culture Villains I used the Presleybots out of one of the Gold Rush Games modules, once. Gave them to Foxbat (he held a downtown shopping mall hostage and demanded that Graceland be moved to Toronto for its own safety).

Wow. My mileage varies. I thought Earth-2 wasn't up to par for Morrison. But, in my mind, nothing beats his run on Animal Man.

Shooter's run on the Avengers... especially around the whole "Trial of Henry Pym"... is probably one of my favourite periods of that book.

<nod> I just went and scanned through the book again this morning, and there is a bit more diversity than I first noticed. Erik has a few images that play with middle-eastern styles, for example. Yeah, he's a good character. Black mages are pretty darn rare. For what it's worth, I really liked your analysis of the way you think (including the blinders when they exist) as you approach an art assignment.

Oh, definitely. The pros outweigh the cons by orders of magnitude. It's a great book!

Re: This Will Probably Get Me Banned, But... Oh, I'm with you on that. I just picked up a second-hand copy of that module, and I'm really looking forward to running the adventure. Boomer and Screech seem a little too pop for a band that's otherwise very punk/industrial, but all in all this is an innovative group. Cool. I, for one, would love to hear about your conversions.

First reaction: it's a tome! Five things I like: 1. Excellent and varied assortment of art. Some really nice pieces: the winged woman on page 44, your magical texts piece on page 226, Storn's dragon rider on page 229, Hogwarts SG-1 on page 235, and the poppet-weilding vampire on page 255. I also really like the black chapter start pages. 2. An all-around excellent collection of things to think about, presented in clear language. Steve, I know you get a lot of general "great job!" compliments, but man, you write well. 3. The magic section rocks! 4. I perceive a bit of a shift in recent Hero products (the UNTIL Superpowers Database definitely set a new level) to emphasizing the effects more than the "rules write-up". I see that in the spells write-ups (and magic-using characters as well) 5. The brief (but happy-making) urban fantasy discussion! There are also a host of things that I continue to be thrilled about, but which I always forget to mention because they're in every book: the index (oh, god, the index!), the consistent elements of the cover designs (including the "Hero System Fifth Edition" logo which changes colour to match the cover art), the sidebars. The general high level of editing quality. Five things I'm less satisfied with: 1. Is this the whitest Hero product to date? (Yeah, I know there's something about the genre that makes people think about old Europe. I guess I thought the artists would be hungry to try out distinctive looks in the fantasy genre). 2. As a follow-on to point one, I would have really liked to see a magic style that was notably different than "european" systems. Sure, Vodou got a brief mention. But I wish there was something in there as evocative as, say, Nyambe mask-magic. 3. I wish each of the fantasy races were pictured. I know that this is a genre book, rather than a settings book, but I fear that the settings books will skim over races, given how many pages are in Fantasy Hero. And I like to see what the races look like. 4. The cleavage brigade 5. I'm starting to think that having a bibliography in a book like Fantasy Hero doesn't really provide any value for me. I think I would get more value out of a bibliography if it talked about some Really Interesting Ideas that appear in the books listed. But if it's just "this book is excellent", I'd rather have a few pages of sample maps.

Gak. *gurk* Okay. Now I have hiccups.

Oooo. That reminds me of Tempest from the second ('70s) Doom Patrol. That's all he could do. Really massive EB. Didn't like to use it.

Re: Superhero Children One of my favourite stories on that topic is the "First Family" storyline from Astro City. BCing you