Agent 13

SS: Physics is always good. Skills regarding Computer Simulations as well. If you want to give the guy something to make him stand out, give him some artistic skills and have him intricately paint the bows and shafts or laser etch designs into the arrowheads in his spare time or something.

December 11, 2004

Re: Theme music

I was wondering. Does anyone use theme music to set the mood of the game? I ran a campaign a year or so ago and to begin the session I played the theme to the X-Men animated series. I pointed to each player and asked for a heroic pose. It got everyone into the mindset of there character. I hope to be playing again soon and was wondering what music (if any) you folks used?

I ran a game using Mr. Bennie's Getstalt setting once, and the character who was one of the gestalts of Pro Wrestling, Warhammer, had the Distinctive Feature that his theme music (AC/DC's "Thunderstruck") would play anytime he went into action, which made him somewhat useless for anything that required stealth.

December 11, 2004

Re: Favorite Pulp Character

Doc Savage was neat' date=' but way back when my Great Grandfather got me these audio tapes of the radio classics. There was like 15 or 20 tapes and it was chock full of Abbott & Costello, The Shadow, Burns & Allen, RKO Radio Hour etc. I spent SO many nights listening to the 'radio.'[/quote'] Well, you don't have to stop. My Winamp is usually pointed at this station.

December 11, 2004

Re: Background Cliches

Orson Welles famous 1938 Halloween hoax is real - alien invaders genuinely did land at Grovers Mill. The superheroes that arrive separately to repel this invasion form a superteam. This is used in CU and also independently by Big Willy' date=' the GM of our Golden Age Golden Heroes campaign. And in this random bloke's superhero universe that I just googled. Three's a bit too many for my liking. I'm calling cliche.

Four. In my old universe, the events of the Second War of the Worlds indirectly led to the creation of superhumans.

December 10, 2004

Re: Island of Dr. Destroyer as a one off?

"Yeah, Baby! I'm a swinging, power-projecting, Man of Mystery, Baby!
Watch my groovy Psychedelic Flower Power Blast put these squares on ice!"

"Welcome to the 21st Century, hippy."

December 10, 2004

Re: Island of Dr. Destroyer as a one off?

Just to clarify -- by "swinging" power projector do you mean someone who's primary movement power is Swinging?

"No' date=' no - I'm trying to say that my sidekick and I... we have an [i']arrangement[/i]."

December 10, 2004

Alright, you alternate historians, riddle me this:

It's become something of a cliche in superheroic universes that with the rise of McCarthyism, all but a few heroes retire and/or drop out of the public eye in some way. So what happens if McCarthy gets discredited right off the bat, whether from some Senator or patriotic super actually having the balls to say "You're a liar, and this isn't how we do things in this country", or pictures of Tailgunner Joe's (and his staff's) private peccadilloes turning up in the scandal rags, or from him being drunk and slamming his car into a tree or something?

What would be the effect on the world, both Normal and Super, if the Second Red Scare had never happened?

(I realize that McCarthy was only one the movers behind the Scare, and that Stalin and the Soviet Union was a real and evil force at the time, but let's not get too far into that discussion, and instead concern ourselves with the Superheroic aspects of things...)

December 10, 2004

Re: Show me the PC

Wow' date=' that brings back some memories. And whoo-hee, is that a lot of Endurance, or what![/quote'] Yeah, that's what I was thinking after I dug it out. I can only imagine that my GM said that END was important, so I said "Gimme a lot of that!" (It was everyone's first time with the system, remember, but we all went for it in a big way. Our two GM's bought copies of that edition of the rulebook for everybody in the group, I still have mine.)

No RSr but have a +3 with FLight' date=' Force Feild and EB. What For?[/quote'] I can only imagine it seemed like a good idea at the time. I'm guessing that I bought the pluses to the Multipower after I purchased my Force Field as Usable on Others, since (if I recall correctly) I had to roll to hit unwilling or unsuspecting bystanders with it.

Boy ' date=' that's nostalgic. You should rebuild him for 5th ed.[/quote'] Yeah, I should, but I'm not sure I know where to start.

December 10, 2004

Re: Show me the PC

Ladies and gentlemen, I present, across the space of two decades, my very first Champions character ever, on his original character sheet:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v414/agent13/helix.jpg

December 9, 2004

Re: Is there such a thing as TOO evil?

I Don't Like Where This Is Headed: Detect NGD, 18-

December 9, 2004

Re: ICE Era hero stuff sloppy?

Do you have a first edition copy of Werewolf: The Apocalpyse? If you do' date=' go through it and check out all the missing page references (the infamous Page XX bug mentioned by bblackmoor). That's a pretty egregious printing error, even in the extremely dicey history of RPG publishing.[/quote'] There's also the small matter of the fact that while I still have my ICE era material - scuffed but still intact - every White Wolf book I bought at the time disintegrated in a matter of months.

December 8, 2004

Re: The City/Hero Connection

Spoken like a true alumni of Zoo Mass Amherst.

No, just a former resident. I loved the Pioneer Valley, and if the job market hadn't gone to hell, we probably never would have left.

That said, a lot of the flolks in the People's Republic of Amherst can be a little... uptight.

December 8, 2004

Re: The City/Hero Connection

Actually' date=' that's an intriguing notion. I see Foxbat as an avatar of chaos, so logic says that the city that needs him must have more order than is good for it. A city that is being stifled by the culture police and NEEDS a good shaking up. [/quote'] Amherst, Massachusetts will never be the same.

December 8, 2004

Re: Fantasy Web Resources

Camelot In Four Colors

http://www.camelot4colors.com/

Encyclopedia of the Celts

http://celt.net/Celtic/celtopedia/indices/encycintro.html

Enigman's Favourite Latin Sayings

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~enigman/latin.html

Medieval Demographics Made Easy

http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm

Medieval Names Archive

http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/

On Thud and Blunder (An Essay by Poul Anderson)

http://www.sfwa.org/writing/thud.htm

Steampunk Media Chronology

http://steampunk.republika.pl/chrono02.html

Women Warriors

http://www.gendergap.com/military/warriors.htm

December 8, 2004

Re: Heros for hire?

Looks like there's some available on eBay even as we speak...

December 8, 2004

Re: Heros for hire?

First, some good background reading. Michael Odom (I think it's Michael) wrote two novels, the first of which is F.R.E.E.L.A.N.C.E.R.S. I don't recall the sequel OtTOMH.

[...]

Really, give the books a read. They are very nicely written and the general setting is one of my favourites. One of these days I will put together an official campaign setting for it.

You're about 20 years too late. The novels were based off the setting that TSR put out for the Top Secret/S.I. line, and as I recall, there was the original F.R.E.E.Lancers sourcebook and a follow-up worldbook, F.R.E.E. America.

December 7, 2004

Re: Comics from the Good Ol' Days

Well, if you like those, here's a few more from my bulging bookmarks. They're not all Golden Age, and they're not all comics, but they all come in handy if you use published characters or settings in your games.

Amalgam Chronology Center

http://www.geocities.com/schablotski.geo/Center.htm

The Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe

http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/

The Atlas Archives

http://www.atlasarchives.com/

Batgirl/Oracle Site

http://www.bat-hound.com/batgirl/index.html

Bring on the Bad Guys!

http://www.geocities.com/marvel_villains/badguys.html

Camelot In Four Colors

http://www.camelot4colors.com/