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AlHazred reacted to ArmlessTigerMan in Fu Manchu and the Si-Fan
Just found another resource for Fu Manchu imitators:
The Shadow of Fu Manchu in Weird Tales
Jess Nevin's site is awesome, but by necessity gives a broad overview of a great number of stories and characters. The above page goes quite deep into stories published specifically in Weird Tales with links to articles on specific authors, as well as links to issues of Weird Tales on archive.org. I recommend it.
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AlHazred reacted to Lord Liaden in Fu Manchu and the Si-Fan
I was hoping ATM might drop in to enlighten us. I can't think of anyone likelier to have an answer about pulp Hero resources this side of Steve Long.
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AlHazred reacted to ArmlessTigerMan in Fu Manchu and the Si-Fan
It might have been:
https://www.sysabend.org/champions/gnborh/text/Fu_Manchu-ks.txt
and
https://www.sysabend.org/champions/gnborh/text/Si_Fan_Agents-ks.txt
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AlHazred reacted to Lord Liaden in Fu Manchu and the Si-Fan
Not precisely Fu Manchu, but "the insidious Dr. Fang and his Legion of Crime" for Pulp Hero 5E is a very close analogue, obviously inspired by Fu. You can find him/them in Masterminds And Madmen, part of an excellent collection of baddies for pulp-era gaming. Alternatively, The Dragon Mandarin, a small 5E book detailing the Champions villain, Dr. Yin Wu, has full alternate character sheets for versions of Dr. Wu for pulp, fantasy, and modern/near future adventure games.
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AlHazred reacted to ArmlessTigerMan in Ray 'Crash' Corrigan
Character Sheet: https://www.herogames.com/files/file/643-crash-corrigan/
Background
Ray 'Crash' Corrigan is a recent graduate of Annapolis. Professor Norton has been investigating a series of earthquakes. Crash accompanies the professor and a small party of explorers on his rocket submarine to seek out the source of the quakes, and they wind up in Atlantis.
The warlike Atlanteans, led by the mad tyrant Unga Khan, seek to sink the surface world so that Atlantis can rise back to the surface. They are opposed by the more peaceful Atlanteans led by the high priest Sharad. Our band of intrepid explorers land in the middle of this conflict, adventure and cliffhangers ensue.
Abilities: Crash Corrigan is a champion athlete and naval officer. Aside from the uniform, being in the Navy doesn't seem to confer any perks or complications. The Crash Lock is to represent what I consider to be his signature move, crash holding two targets in a chokehold, one under each arm, while they flail and attack him ineffectually until they go to sleep.
Notes on Atlantis: The Atlantis of the Champions Universe is a rough analogue to the underwater kingdoms of Marvel or DC. The undersea kingdom of this serial is closer to the Lemuria of the Champions Universe, with a lost civilization living far below, breathing air not water, etc...
Campaign use
Hero version: As a hero from the serials, Crash is a bit two dimensional. He might need a bit fleshing out to make an interesting player character. As an npc I guess he could be a useful connection in the Navy.
The Real Crash Corrigan: In the 1930's Raymond Benitz (or possibly Raymond Bernard) was working in Hollywood as a fitness instructor. He landed a role as a stuntman, playing a gorilla in Tarzan the Ape Man. In 1936 he was cast as Ray 'Crash' Corrigan in Undersea Kingdom. He adopted the character's name as own and went by Corrigan for the rest of his career. In 1937 he bought 1500 acres in Simi Valley and built the Corriganville movie ranch, which became a popular filming location and tourist destination.
This Crash Corrigan would be well connected in the film industry, and have skills like Acting, as well as Professional Skills like Business, Real Estate, etc... And maybe tone down his physicality a bit.
Darkside Version: 'Ripper' Rourke washed out of Navy and wandered the seven seas, until he and his crew made contact with the Lemurians! Now he works as their advance scout, preparing the way for their conquest of the surface world. I kinda dig this idea, as you can have Rourke making trouble for our heroes over one or more adventures (sabotaging various naval bases, stealing experimental submarines, etc..), these encounters leading up to the meeting with the Lemurians and thwarting their plans of conquest!
Further Reading:
https://milwaukeerecord.com/film/the-action-packed-life-of-milwaukees-ray-crash-corrigan/
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0181003/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_1_nm_4_q_crash%2520corrigan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undersea_Kingdom
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AlHazred reacted to Duke Bushido in Wondering if I'm alone here
Ditto.
And to assuage your incredulity earlier: The production principles were sound, and the demos of the POC batch showed them to be at least as durable as modern "high impact" resin dice, if not moreso.
The problem appears to be the outsourcing. They had a process that worked extremely well, but was insanely expensive. They outsourced to China (like the rest of the entire earth, apparently-- everyone bags on the amount of pollution coming out of China. Fact is, it's _our_ garbage. ). Since then, apparently no one has been able to deliver on the promise of replicating the process at an affordable price.
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AlHazred reacted to RavenX99 in The Clobberin' Times Zine
And this is my concern... relatively few knew about it, and the material is of varying quality, but it's this little piece of hidden Champions history that I feel would enrich the community to preserve it where everyone can have access.
One of the fun things about APAs is that writers often talk about what's going on in their lives, projects they're working on, etc, and I find reading through those in Haymaker! archives to be more compelling than the game material.
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AlHazred got a reaction from Duke Bushido in The Clobberin' Times Zine
That's the problem for a lot of old fanzines. The rights are the murkiest, and many of the contributors will be difficult if not impossible to reach. I have a feeling the old fanzines will slip into obscurity and inaccessibility far faster than other media. And another piece of the gaming history will be gone forever.
EDIT: And it should go without saying, I'd be interested in the progress of this and would like to subscribe to your newsletter!
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AlHazred reacted to RavenX99 in The Clobberin' Times Zine
OMG, someone remembers Clockwork Hero. I'm actually looking at scanning the whole collection and making it available, but I'm working through the legal/ethical issues. Scott Heine wrote stuff for it that he later reworked and sold to a publisher, so I'm talking to him about his contributions, and I probably need to see who I can find from the original authors.
The big problem is that technically, I don't have the right to copy anything but my own work... everyone participated with the understanding that the APA was distributed to a limited audience. There's one author I've searched for off and on for _years_ and have never been able to find.
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AlHazred reacted to mattingly in The Clobberin' Times Zine
Here are the old articles of mine I could find -- https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Q-1oKphlwDWQe3LWZX2dt1DHB5S-iUq0?usp=sharing
I think the timeframe (for me, at least) was 95-ish to 2000-ish.
I'm pretty sure I lost my physical copies to some basement flooding many years ago.
The APA was part articles and part superhero fiction. The fiction eventually split off into a sister APA, The OmniVerse.
There were annual awards, called The Grimmies.
From memory, some of the contributors were: Ben Bellott, Will Geiger, Bill Jackson, Martin Maenza, John Moorman, Michael O'Connell (RIP), K.C. Ryan, Tim Watts
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AlHazred got a reaction from Lord Liaden in Hero System Article Index
I don't know if I should include Red October. It expands the whole thing greatly beyond its original scope. Also, she has the archives at least split into categories which makes them easier to search. Part of the reason for this list was, a lot of these publications are hard to find and will only become more rare -- for instance, is it worth buying an expensive item on eBay if you only know it has a Champions article? Hopefully you can at least check my list and see if it's of interest!
For me personally, I'm always interested in archives of old Champions and Hero System material. No need to ask!
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AlHazred reacted to Susano in Strike Force Organizations
And this is what reading through the lore can be so much fun:
[[SIDEBAR]]
DRACULA?
Mircea Dracula is the older brother of the vampire Vladislas Dracula and half-brother of Radu Dracula. All three were born in the 1400s and are effectively immortal, possessing either mystic or vampiric powers, or both. Mircea is the heroic one of the trio, with Vladislas the King of the Vampires (and the basis for Vlad Dracula in Bram Stoker’s Dracula), while Radu dwells in a pocket-universe where he engages in hedonistic pleasures.
[[END SIDEBAR]]
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AlHazred reacted to Sketchpad in Strike Force Organizations
You know you're a Hero player when you see "PS: The Blood" and think it's a professional skill.
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AlHazred reacted to Susano in Strike Force Organizations
Pretty positive I've broken 20k words. The origins of the Blood are pretty much as written in Organization Book 3. The fun begins when I start sorting out the existing Blood, their character sheets, and their histories. I've converted Aaron's most recent version of the Affrighter to 6e and wow... he's scary (no pun intended). The drawing is one I made of the Affrighter back in 1988.
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AlHazred reacted to Beast in Strike Force Organizations
was on the 2016 KS for Strike Force
and will most likely get this too
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AlHazred reacted to Susano in Strike Force Organizations
I have a working copy of Hero Designer, so you will probably see me develop some new HERO content (such as the Bigfoot product).
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AlHazred got a reaction from Beast in Hero System Article Index
A while back, I worked up an article index for the Chaosium Pendragon game. This isn't to index all relevant material that has ever shown up online; that would be a monumental and fruitless task. It was mainly to index articles in old print and PDF periodicals, which aren't always well-documented in RPGGeek. After I completed it, it occurred to me that Champions/Hero System also has not-that-many articles that have ever shown up in magazines -- there were a huge number of online resources from the very beginning (starting with and including the Red October BBS), and so I guess a lot of people were looking there for their resources. Still, there are more than Pendragon, and I used to have subsciptions to Adventurer's Club, EZ Hero, and Digital Hero, so I've got those to go off of.
I've started the list here. I've got quite a ways to go, and I have no idea where to find some of the resources. Haymaker! has compilations available on DTRPG, but I love old APAzines (they're basically the Web forums before the Web existed) and even if I did, indexing them would take ages.
Suggestions welcome.
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AlHazred reacted to Lord Liaden in Hero System Article Index
A most noble effort and contribution, AlHazred, thank you!
Do you have and are you interested in the old Red October archives? Because Shelley Chrystal Mactyre maintains a lot of those files on her personal website: https://mactyre.net/archives/october/Files.html
Note that not all the links on that page work, so don't be disappointed if one of them doesn't take you to what you want right away. You might have to play around a bit to find everything.
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AlHazred reacted to mattingly in From The Management: Hero Games History Question
... HeroZine, The Clobberin' Times, Black Hats & White Capes, Clockwork Hero ...
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AlHazred got a reaction from Lord Liaden in Hero System Article Index
A while back, I worked up an article index for the Chaosium Pendragon game. This isn't to index all relevant material that has ever shown up online; that would be a monumental and fruitless task. It was mainly to index articles in old print and PDF periodicals, which aren't always well-documented in RPGGeek. After I completed it, it occurred to me that Champions/Hero System also has not-that-many articles that have ever shown up in magazines -- there were a huge number of online resources from the very beginning (starting with and including the Red October BBS), and so I guess a lot of people were looking there for their resources. Still, there are more than Pendragon, and I used to have subsciptions to Adventurer's Club, EZ Hero, and Digital Hero, so I've got those to go off of.
I've started the list here. I've got quite a ways to go, and I have no idea where to find some of the resources. Haymaker! has compilations available on DTRPG, but I love old APAzines (they're basically the Web forums before the Web existed) and even if I did, indexing them would take ages.
Suggestions welcome.
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AlHazred got a reaction from Sketchpad in The Clobberin' Times Zine
Despite being a long-term Hero turbonerd, I found out today about The Clobberin' Times, a Champions zine put out by a group of players from Sacramento, California from September, 1988, to January, 2000, finishing its run after 67 issues. There was a revival of sorts in the form of The Clobberin' Times Online, an online-only form of zine which lasted from April, 2005, to February, 2010, for a total of 30 "issues." The Online form can still be found (in a form) on the Wayback Machine here: https://web.archive.org/web/20150405000329/http://forteuniverse.com/cto/30main.htm
I'd never heard of any of it. And I'm a guy who religiously read every issue of EZ Hero and Digital Hero, and the old Adventurers Club (when it was around), and even has a copy or two of Haymaker around (I was never a prolific-enough writer to contribute before deadlines, so my participation in an APAzine is always intermittent). But I've at least heard of Haymaker -- until today I'd never even heard of The Clobberin' Times. Does anybody know a contact who sells copies of the old physical zine? As both a Hero fan, and a fan of the old zines, this ticks all of my boxes and I'd love to check it out!
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AlHazred got a reaction from BigJackBrass in The Clobberin' Times Zine
Despite being a long-term Hero turbonerd, I found out today about The Clobberin' Times, a Champions zine put out by a group of players from Sacramento, California from September, 1988, to January, 2000, finishing its run after 67 issues. There was a revival of sorts in the form of The Clobberin' Times Online, an online-only form of zine which lasted from April, 2005, to February, 2010, for a total of 30 "issues." The Online form can still be found (in a form) on the Wayback Machine here: https://web.archive.org/web/20150405000329/http://forteuniverse.com/cto/30main.htm
I'd never heard of any of it. And I'm a guy who religiously read every issue of EZ Hero and Digital Hero, and the old Adventurers Club (when it was around), and even has a copy or two of Haymaker around (I was never a prolific-enough writer to contribute before deadlines, so my participation in an APAzine is always intermittent). But I've at least heard of Haymaker -- until today I'd never even heard of The Clobberin' Times. Does anybody know a contact who sells copies of the old physical zine? As both a Hero fan, and a fan of the old zines, this ticks all of my boxes and I'd love to check it out!
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AlHazred reacted to Christopher R Taylor in The Clobberin' Times Zine
This is new to me as well, never heard of it I used to surf Red October!
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AlHazred reacted to Rich McGee in Numberblocks
I'll admit to having run an one-shot mashup of Liddsville and H.R. Pufnstuf about twenty years ago, but I used the Toon RPG for that one. Not exactly as educational as what you're talking about, though - unless you count "this is what it's like to be on an acid trip" as educational.
Also, I had missed that Marty Krofft passed away last month, and now I am sad.