Lord Liaden

Sarcastic B@st@rd.

With that I can agree. I love the Green Lantern Corps. The idea of a small army of super beings chosen to bear one of the most powerful and versatile artifacts in existence, and charged with protecting the entire universe, is compelling to me. It opened the DC world into a whole cosmos of potential adventure. The diversity of sapient beings in the Corps, all united by dedication to an ideal, is IMO inspiring. I do have to disagree with some other objections raised here about the Corps. A Green Lantern is not "just a beat cop among beat cops," any more than a Knight of the Round Table was just one of a bunch of armored fighters. A Green Lantern is an exceptional being carefully chosen for a tremendous responsibility. And I remember multiple eras since the Silver Age when Green Lantern and the Corps were very popular. As you say, it comes down to execution. Overpowering is a chronic issue with DC. Every time there was a reboot to try to bring their characters down to a reasonable level, writers came along who wanted to move planets or rewrite time or cross the entire universe. In the case of Green Lantern, IMO it was a mistake to introduce continuing multiple GLs based on Earth, and to keep dragging the whole Corps into so many events focused there. It diluted what was special about the Lantern from Earth, and diminished the epic impact of the Corps. Again IMO, the GLC works best when individual Lanterns are looking after their own sectors, and the larger Corps only becomes involved in the most epic of star-spanning events.

It's Canada. We're magical. 😝 That's Parliament Hill, the seat of the federal government, overlooking the Ottawa River. The round structure in the foreground is the Parliamentary Library, with the Peace Tower over it in the background. The complex was completed in its present form nearly a century ago, in the Gothic Revival style.

Ottawa in winter.

No significant change to society was ever accomplished by just asking for it.

I'm starting to think of Zack Snyder as, "the anti-Feige."

"If we can't accept limitations, we're no better than the bad guys." - Tony Stark. I honestly found that a compelling argument. As Rhodey pointed in CW, the Sokovia Accords were supported by the United Nations, representing the governments of the whole world. It was reasonable for Rhodey to call Cap arrogant for putting his judgement ahead of theirs. "We have orders. We should follow them." - Steve Rogers, Avengers. Cap's focus up to and during WW II was to be of service. As a soldier he accepted that he was under a higher authority, and he didn't question that that authority was for the good. His journey as a character in the modern world, which often caused him to question and challenge the methods and motives of present-day authority, led him to the conviction that he had to stand behind what he believed to be right, even if the whole world told him he was wrong. Tony Stark's character arc over the MCU movies was essentially the opposite. His origin as Iron Man in that cave changed his motivation, but he still chose his actions based on his judgement alone. He famously bragged in Iron Man II that he had "privatized peace." Over time he came to see that he had to be part of something greater than himself, and to submit to it. His sacrifice at the end of Endgame was not only selfless, it was an act of faith that he was following the course Dr. Strange foresaw.

I loved the dialogue between Steve Rogers and Nick Fury in Winter Soldier, and between Steve and Tony Stark in Civil War (movies, not comics) because you can understand why they each see things in a certain way. You may agree with one or the other, but neither viewpoint is unreasonable or unjustified. They may be antagonists, but neither one is a villain. Which is why, to bring about the kind of physical confrontation the genre is famous for, you need to introduce a villainous agency. (Although even Zemo in CW is sympathetic.)

Superheroes survived for so long because they were about positive elements of humanity: ideals, principles, responsibility, compassion, hope. They represented the best in us, inspiring us to try to be better people ourselves. What I see of recent comics are full of cynicism, brutality, "edginess" for shock value rather than serving any purpose. Sound and fury, signifying nothing.

SHIELD was headed that way anyway, even if its Project Insight had gone the way they expected. But many members of SHIELD, particularly Nick Fury, had been depicted as fundamentally good, but having a different viewpoint from Steve Rogers as to what the world needs. Having their organization become outright villainous under their watch would have been tougher to justify, although not impossible. But I think the biggest reason why I prefer HYDRA be behind this is because it's a Captain America movie. Steve Rogers fought and apparently defeated HYDRA, but lost everything except his life doing it. To be confronted with the reality of HYDRA having not only survived, but grown stronger than ever within the very institutions Steve fought to preserve, really brings home the tragedy of Zola's dismissal of his life as a "zero sum." His fight in this movie becomes the salvaging of his own legacy.

It seems too many comics today are written by people who want to write for a genre other than superheroes.

Monsters, Minions, And Marauders pp. 119-25 has character sheets for a dozen different "generic" human NPCs. The City Guard sheet is on p. 120. There are also ten template "Package Deals" for humanoids of various backgrounds and professions. There is a Hero Designer Character Pack for MMM in the Hero website store. I don't use HD so I can't assert whether or not those sheets are included. https://www.herogames.com/store/product/300-monsters-minions-marauders-character-pack/ In case you weren't aware, all the characters, equipment, and Package Deals from The Turakian Age are also in HD, and quite inexpensive. I'm sure there's quite a bit there you could use. https://www.herogames.com/store/product/419-turakian-age-character-pack/ May I assume you knew that all the NPCs in Nobles, Knights, And Necromancers are also in HD? Well, your signature argues that I shouldn't. https://www.herogames.com/store/product/365-nobles-knights-and-necromancers-character-pac/

To me, colorized black-and-white film always looks distractingly phony.

Kevin Feige, as a fan himself, also understands and respects why these characters have endured for so long, what it is about them that speaks to us. You can feel the love for them in every Marvel movie.

The increase was made abruptly. Employers made the changes that were easiest to make quickly to compensate for the changes to their operating costs. The Biden administration is rolling this out over five years. I honestly don't see why I would consider those to be tied together. That's still well above minimum wage. Median wage is a much more significant factor in how an economy will respond. Which is why I suggested that things like tax breaks could help ease the cost to small businesses. I've heard the same arguments from business all my life, about adding employee benefits to the payroll, about the cost of environmental protections. In every case there was an initial impact, until the economy adapted and the situation became normalized.

You fight the grandest, costliest war in history to eradicate vermin, only to discover they've infested your own house. 😣

Agreed. But it was never meant to be entertaining, except to the hand-rubbing, mustache-twirling, maniacal laughers.

Unfortunately "political theater" plays a role in these arrangements. Emotions, biases, partisanship are unreasonable, but they're still powerful human motivations. In a representative democracy one ignores those motivations at peril, especially when one's political opponents can manipulate them to their own purpose. Appearances often count for as much as substance, sometimes even more.

The 4E Champions adventure, Atlas Unleashed, introduced a very proactive "super agency," Prometheus, a fully private international humanitarian aid agency described as a kind of "armed Peace Corps." Agents of Prometheus would travel anywhere in the world suffering war or natural disaster to deliver food and water, medical supplies, emergency shelters, clothing, whatever was needed, whether or not they were invited or welcome. If the local dictators, warlords, or rebels tried to stop them, they were armed with advanced non-lethal weapons and would fight their way to the people in need. Although most members of Prometheus were sincere, dedicated humanitarians, the group was secretly the mask and source of funding for a utopian terrorist organization, Atlas, dedicated to establishing a new world order of peace and equality -- under their leadership, of course. The leaders of Prometheus/Atlas had discovered a method of creating superhumans to augment their ranks. For my part, I found the concept of Prometheus much more interesting than Atlas, so for my own game I excised the latter to make the organization unequivocally benevolent. "Atlas" became the code name for the "superhero" component of Prometheus, as I changed the backgrounds and motivations of the Atlas villains to make them more heroic. The revised Prometheus made a couple of appearances in my games, but I never got around to utilizing any of the more involved plots I had in mind for them, particularly the international community's response to them.

Red October Files On the website of lawyer and Hero Games author, Shelley Chrystal Mactyre. Many of the links to other parts of Shelley's Hero resources are dead now, but these extensive original files can still be downloaded.

THIS is a Greatsword!

Yeah, anything longer than Sting won't cut it.

On the subject of Faerie during WW II, there were other regions and peoples defined for that dimension in additional Champions 5E/6E books. One was first raised in Champions Of The North, with further elaboration in Golden Age Champions. In the Northern Lights, the spirit realm of Inuit myth, there's a region called the Land of Ice or the Ice Realm, whose Ice People were ruled by the immortal King Vultok, a devotee of the great spirit of the North known as the Ice. During WW II Vultok allied with the Axis and became the greatest threat to Canada, operating out of a palace under an impenetrable dome of ice in northern Manitoba. In 1948 Vultok's minions stole a prototype atom bomb, intending to deliver it at the first United Nations meeting in San Francisco. Several Canadian heroes tracked the bomb back to Vultok's palace and confronted him, during which the bomb was accidentally triggered. The blast killed Vultok and destroyed his palace and dome, and apparently the blast carried to the Land of Ice and wiped out all the Ice People. UNTIL still maintains a watch over the radioactive remains of Vultok's Earthly base. (GAC also mentions that Vultok returned from the dead in 2008 and allied with the demon Tillingkoot, but nothing about his later activities). The other new region appears so far only in GAC. The land of Bohica is inhabited by the Gremlins, a diminutive but hardy race who, unlike most inhabitants of Faerie, are fascinated by mechanical devices, and adept with them beyond most human engineers. Since the Industrial Revolution the Gremlins have covertly visited Earth to study human mechanisms, and sometimes reward inventors of particularly clever devices, or sabotage shoddy workmanship. But pre-1940, Nazi occultists discovered and invaded Bohica and enslaved the Gremlins, forcing them to build weapons and equipment for the Third Reich. Many of Germany's cutting-edge devices only functioned with assistance from the Gremlins. The crown prince of the Gremlins, Fubar () , was freed by Allied superheroes and joined the war effort until 1944 when they liberated Bohica. At last word Fubar succeeded to the throne of Bohica and still rules it, occasionally interacting with Earthly heroes.