Captain Liberty

Re: league of extraordinary PULP HEROs

Actually, they are Doc's Super Six (six players in the group). And at this point I have no idea who they are because I haven't even briefed them on the game. We are in the midst of a Fantasy Hero campaign at the moment that will probably go on for a few more months.

More time for me to prepare.

Re: league of extraordinary PULP HEROs

In 1912, Jim Thorpe was the sensation of the Olympic games, winning both the pentathalon and decathalon and three individual events. But in 1913 it was revealed that he has played semi-pro baseball as a youngster and he was stripped of his medals. Many believe that his being a Sac and Fox Indian may have contributed to the zeal in which the Olympic Committee took away his medals.

Whatever that case, when the 1920 Olympic Committee was confronted by an equally gifted Navaho athelete named Bartholomew Techumseh Manyshadows from the Navaho tribe, they were quick to pounce on the fact that he had fought four semi-pro boxing matches to disqualify him at the Olympic trials.

Batholomew, disappointed, went back to Harvard, where he graduated with a PhD in physics and an MS in Engineering. For a gifted athelete with a PhD, there was only one obvious career, adventuring.

Several patents made him rich. He acquired the heroic nickname of "Doc" Amerind, and used his scientific expertise and ready fists to assemble a group of similarly gifted adventurers to fight evil wherever they could find it.

"Doc" has the build of a Middleweight fighter, though expanded to Heavyweight proportions. His bronze skin is smooth with very few blemishes. He wears his coal black shoulder-length hair in a traditional navaho style of braids or sometimes loose with a headband, and generally wears American Western garb with a distinct Indian approach. He is well-spoken, with a trace of Harvard accent. He often indulges in stereotypical Amerindian phrases such as "many moons ago," and "In his wigwam, my grandfather had many scalps of enemies like you." This often sets up a quote from Shakespeare or the Bible.

He is a top pilot, in superb shape, and a crack shot with several different weapons, including the bow and the machine pistol. He always carries an elaborately decorated Bowie knife, though he has never used it in combat (to anyone's knowledge).

"Doc" is the lead NPC of a pulp game I am slowly assembling that will actually be centered on his followers.

Re: league of extraordinary PULP HEROs

Our own Darren ran the Pulp All-Stars game at several conventions about four years ago. The lineup included

Doc Savage

The Shadow

Tarzan

Mandrake the Magician

Indiana Jones (for players who have no idea who the others are)

Nancy Drew (whose adventures actually started in the early 30s and she was a gun-toting daredevil as well as a first rate detective)

The Saint (Simon Templar) who people also tend to forget was originally a pulp hero. At DunDraCon I got to play The Saint and put as much into it as I could, as the actress said to the bishop.

It was a lot of fun. We had an ideal Doc Savage, a well-done Tarzan, a Shadow who didn't have much flare as a player but had the attitude and motifs of the character down pat. The Saint is an old favorite of mine, so I had a great time.

Re: What is 'Animated Style Write-ups'?

Animated Style simply means the writeup is based on the character as it appeared on TV or DVD, rather than from the comic books. Sometimes this is not much difference at all, sometimes there is a distinct difference.

Re: Thou Shalt Not Speak Its Name

You mean, of course, an entirely serious CIA team.

Re: Songs that inspire(d) you to make a Champions Character

I put together an entire super team called Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Gang (which tells you when I was listening to rock...)

Sponsored by "The Fool On the Hill"

Headquartered in "Strawberry Fields"

Members included:

Maxwell, who was actually the silver hammer. It is a cursed object that attracts punks who pick it up and are very nasty killers until finally put away.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds: Tripped out LSD-head with an extensive multipower that she accesses at random.

Blackbird: Sonics using flyer who only operates "At the Dead of Night"

Nowhere Man: Everyone's favorite invisible assassin

Eleanor Rigby: Often the most effective member of the team, because "no one knows she is there."

Rocky Racoon: used only for the name, your basic feral hand-to-hand type

Norweigian Woods: Golf-club using energy projector

I'm Getting Better: absorbing brick who gets better as he is pounded on

And so forth

Re: Foxbat....Where have I used him?

A few years back I was running an ISIS campaign. One of the PCs was a young light manipulator who was part of the group as work furlough/community service. Seems she had a weakness for glittery objects.

In this world, Batman existed in the Golden and Silver Ages, but retired in the 60s and his successor (Dick Grayson) was killed in action in the early 80s. Since then, Huntress (Helena Wayne) and Nightwing (Bruce Grayson) have guarded the Batman legacy and there has not been another Batman.

Foxbat decided that (1) Radiance was his sidekick, or maybe girlfriend, or maybe both and (2) the way to best impress her was to be the ultimate super hero, Batman. So Foxbat became Batman. He was surprisingly effective, merging both Freddy and Batman into a super-suave man of the world impressing the impressionable young super heroine. He "flew the bat" for several arcs until he received an off-screen visit from Huntress and Nightwing and went back to being Foxbat.

Re: WWYCD: The Seven Deadlies

I hereby refuse to play Chastity.

Chastity includes being faithful to a spouse/lover.

Re: Old "butt" Champions Mini's

I'm unfamiliar with Heroscape. What are the non-Marvel figures like? Are they superhero-oriented, or more fantasy? Or what?

Re: Old "butt" Champions Mini's

JimOZ Spake -Umm, no, they are not imo competators, Hero/Champions as a PnP game vs Heroclix which is a wargame, while it is true that they are games the type of games is very different and in my experience, and attract people for different reasons, in otherwords I have not seen anyone say why are you playing Hero when you could be playing Heroclix. I have seen that with GURPS, D20, and Palladium vs Hero, I have also seen it with Warhammer, Warhammer 40k and Warzone vs Heroclix.

I will concede that there are differences between Hero and HeroClix. I will also concede that players might play both. I will point out that a gamer might, at some point, have to make a choice whether he will follow the Clix or the Champs, if only financially. Both are games; both take up gaming time and money. Both fill the superhero gaming niche, though each in different ways. They are competitors.

Lord knows I hope I am wrong. I would love to have me some Champsclix. But I don't think it is likely to happen, especially considering the fact that Hero would have to put out money they might not get back.

Re: Old "butt" Champions Mini's

Why would HeroClix support another superhero game? Clix are competitors to Hero. A license with a comic book publisher makes sense for HeroClix. But Hero is another game company.

And miniatures manufacturers in general are in the business to have the publishers pay them for the privilege of having their creations immortalized in pewter or plastic. Steve and Darren would not be giving the license to a manufacturer. They would be paying a manufacturer to provide miniatures to support their game.

Re: Old "butt" Champions Mini's

Why doesn't Hero Games get someone to do some new Champions Minis? I mean' date=' one of the few games that [i']requires [/i]miniatures to play is also one of the few systems that doesn't have official miniatures? What's up with that? So, how about it, Mr. Long?

Someone needs to want to do miniatures. To have miniatures done on command, Hero would have to have its own miniatures company. Not in the budget, as I understand what's going on. I imagine various figure makers are assuming that there isn't enough market for Champions figs. Besides, you can always kitbash HeroClix...

Re: Old "butt" Champions Mini's

Wasn't there an armored someone with an energy corona around his fist in this set? Kinda an Iron Fist Man?

That's the aforementioned "Aluminum Man."

Re: Old "butt" Champions Mini's

The armored figure was never originally named. He was a random illustration Mark Williams did for one of the original Champions books. Later, Steve Peterson did a version of the character he called Aluminum Man. I used the miniature for a late 1930s character, painted garish early age of plastic appliances colors, calling him Plastics Man - the Hero of Plastics.

Others in the hero box include Flare, Icestar, Marksman, Gargoyle, Dove, the aforementioned Aluminum Man, the platinum blonde wearing pretty much nothing from one of the original Champions covers, Crusader, and maybe a couple of others.

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

Some time back, during the early days of RuneQuest, a bunch of the players at the regular Chaosium game decided to put together a beast team. It was, and is, fairly easy to play non-human, beast-oriented, characters in RuneQuest. So they had a Baboon (from the intelligent baboon tribe), a newtling, a duck, a morokanth (intelligent animal that herds humans), and some others.

A mutual friend heard about the game and decided that this was for him. His main role playing experience was with Arduin Grimoire, where any race can be just about anything. He looks at a copy of RuneQuest and sees the Scorpion Men (totally Chaos-oriented - which most animals are not). So he makes up a Scorpion-man and the character approaches the other beast men saying "Hey guys, I want to join up." Probably the last words spoken by that character. In Glorantha, people take things like Chaos very seriously.

Re: Goings on in Washington, D.C.

 

Declaring that it causes more problems than it solves, the United States Department of Transportation stated that states must now prohibit right turn on red in order to receive federal highway funds.

Personal agenda, much?

Re: I am so, so old...

Never had any children, but I have introduced the children of other gamer friends to Hero on a few occasions. Some very interesting games. I ended up being part of a group that one of the kids ran a campaign for as a senior project (alternative school). Not a bad campaign, either. Werewolf though, not Hero.

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

A friend of mine was playing a very experienced character who only had a DEX 15 but a lot of levels. The player was very good at playing the levels so he was always pretty proof against agents and the like, and of course he had a higher SPD than the agents.

Comes the climactic battle against the Big Bad and his scads of agents. Comes a golden opportunity to take the Big Bad down. The player shifts all of the levels to offense, takes aim, and blows the target down. Then, and only then, he thinks to ask, "Is this Phase 8?"

It was. Not sure if the player or the character deserves the Darwin Award.

Re: Defenders of Ireland

Well of course, Ireland has a lot of stereotypes associated with it as a matter of history. I rather like the Leprechaun idea, in fact I used it for an Irish mercenary super team called the Wild Geese a few years back.

Some other notes on other Irish stereotypes that aren't necessarily so obvious and overdone.

The Poet - A magician who uses lyric poetry as the basis of his magic.

Morrigan - a Warrior Woman with divine attributes (and I am not necessarily referring to her bust size)

Shamrock - You have to have a luck controller, whether a brick or martial artist or just adventurous and lucky.

Ireland is a high tech center these days, but you may have that covered with Leprechaun and/or Emerald.

Manannan MacLir - the god of the sea and ships.

Minstrel Lad - A young harpist who uses his sonic powers to fight crime and oppression

Brennan on the Moor - the spirit of an Irish highwayman. Could be a hero or villain.

Re: MancerBear's Art Den

Everybody keeps using the term, and I really don't understand it. What is "repping"? What is the term derived from? I can't help it, I love to discover the origins of slang.

Re: Create a NEW Zodiac

For other Zodiac ideas, I cannot recommend The Zodiac Ring from Lame Mage Productions highly enough. This is an M&M scenario available in PDF for very little, and posits a set of Zodiac characters who are not necessarily all evil, but all are true to their zodiac mindsets. Sagitarrius, for instance, is not an archer. He's a luck-controlling con man. Taurus is not a mastermind, just a brick (with nary a horn in sight), and Leo and Aries are both fire manipulators, though very different ones. Capricorn is an earth elementalist, Aquarius a power dampener, etc.

Check it out. It has become one of the central storylines of my M&M campaign. Easily adapted to Champions.

Re: Create a NEW Zodiac

I used the Zodiac book in my Golden Age campaign. They were still on the same timeline, so several members were not yet present. As I recall, only Taurus, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces were present by the Golden Age. I may be forgetting one. Most of the stories in my campaign had to do with the Zodiac trying to recruit other people to the vacant positions. They actually did recruit one of the female PCs to the Virgo position.

EDIT: Oh yeah, Cancer was already in place in the Golden Age.

Re: Create a NEW Zodiac

One thought would be to re-imagine already existing Champions villains as newly-recruited Zodiac members. Assume that some mystical artifact is creating a new Zodiac. For instance, think of the Amazing Bulldozer as Taurus.

Or what if Doctor Destroyer decided to create his own Zodiac, using already existent villains?

Re: GM's - putting one over on your players

A player in my game left the game. I continued playing his character (an oversexed sorceress called Sorceress) as an NPC. I shortly introduced an alternate super"hero" team that took a very proactive and violent approach to crimefighting. The two teams took on Black Paladin, who had kidnapped Sorceress and her grandfather (Alaister Crowley, as it happens); one of the PCs ran into Sorceress because he had been captured, too, and got him and her back, but not the grandfather. In the following confrontation, Black Paladin was killed by one of the PCs, but he had already shifted to the grandfather's body.

Shortly thereafter, the Sorceress informed everyone that as a result of the stress of escaping Black Paladin she could no longer do instant magic. Everything she did would have to be ritual. The players all accepted this as my action to take Sorceress out of the campaign but retain her as a possible resource.

In actuality, Black Paladin had taken her over. He immediately especially befriended two of the PCs, including the one who had killed Black Paladin earlier.

The players found this out in the climactic battle of the Demon Invasion (from a Champions scenario I forget the name of) when Sorceress appeared on the scene with the two ensorcelled members of the superteam (players were not there) and commanded the other team to kill the PCs. They had been Black Paladin's puppets all along.

Re: Ps238

I would say that PS238, the comic, is targetted at a growing demographic, comic fans with children. Gamers with children will be especially interested in the PS238 game.

Both of these demographics are growing but not humongous groups. Fortunately for the project, the book and assumedly the game are entertaining for anyone.

Speaking as one of the oldest members of this board who has been married without children for 40 years now and still wants to play Captain Clarinet!