MCMaenza

My game world has its roots in stories I wrote to pass the time in study hall in junior high school (1976-1979). Those tales drew inspiration from the DC and Marvel comics I was reading at the time. The world further evolved when I started to pick up first and second edition Champions product. I picked my fav characters and concepts to incorporate into my world.

The "why" for me is a couple things: - I am long time friends with Ron (thanks to the Champions APA the Clobberin' Times) and Steve (we gamed together many times in the 90's). I support my buds. - I played mostly with 4th edition but have very fond memories of the earlier ones (much of my world was built on the early rules from 1 to 3). I did not go to Fuzion or 5th edition as at that time I moved away from RPGs. - I am startzing to get back in to RPGs again as I want to promote them via programming as I finish my librarian master's degree. I think teens (and adults) could really benefit from these kinds of games.

At the $15 pledge (or more) you do get those classic PDFs plus the new Now PDF too. That seems like a very reasonable price just for the original stuff. If your physical books are as worn from use as mine are, having the PDFs is a great thing. Consider pledging $15 just to get those.

Re: SO much new art at the Forte site! Mike, I just have to break into a course of "it's a small world after all, it's a small world after all, it's a small world after all, it's a small small world..."

Re: W W Y G M D ?? What a great topic. Like other GMs, I would go a similar route - let it happen and game out the results. The key as the GM is to make sure you maintain the control so things don't totally get out of hand.

Re: Mystery Men write-ups? Love this film! My buddies (all old school Champions players) and I first saw it in the theatres during a San Diego Comic-Con weekend. We were cracking up the back row as we all got the in-jokes. Talked about that night doing a Con game along those lines. My character was going to be called Trivial Pursuit - whose power was to bring up oscure facts all the time (hopefully one would be deemed useful in a crisis situation).

Re: The Marvel Handbook online I unearthed my copy of these a few months ago when we unpacked at our new house. I realized I was missing about five of the total run (most towards the end). Still, they were cool for artist references at the time. You can bet bottom dollar though that Marvel won't make Essential volumes of this series.

Re: Supervillain Psych Lims: The Reboot I just want to chime in saying this is a great discussion. When I'm writing or GMing, I like to get inside my villains' heads as much as possible to really flesh them out. So, good Psych. Lims can go a long way to setting up some fun personalities.

Re: Was watching Superman TAS and wondered about Mxyzptlk I wrote a piece of DC fanfiction a few years back where I had Bat-Mite mess around with the Flash for a change of pace. I was pleased with Mxy's appearances in the comics and the cartoon. It was just a nice way to have Superman think his way out of situations where his powers alone couldn't do it. A good contrast to, say, a knock-down drag-out fist fight with Metallo.

Re: Sick of Wolverine I grew tired of him by around the mid-80's myself. Too much exposure. I even had to put a mandatory "no Wolverine-types" for campaigns I was GMing. The hack-n-slash characters work fine for AD&D games but not true four-color Champions campaigns of which my world was noted for having.

Re: movies/t.v. vs comic books I treat TV and movie versions of the comic books with a huge grain of salt. I have accepted (as far back as the Batman show of the 60's) that Hollywood will tweak and poke and change whatever they feel to make the piece "work" for the audiences at the time. And I'm okay with that. I don't go into these things with my comic book nitpickers hat on. I treat each of them as their own separate entity. Kind of like a parallel world version of the property. Some things will be the same - sure - they're canon. Some things might be altered. That's okay too. Grain of salt. mmmmm....salt...glaaaarghghgh....

Re: Help needed: character who causes intoxication Gang, lots of great suggestions - to add to variability and effect. I'm definitely leaning towards stuff that could affect combat - so the stuff about DCV/DEX/perceptions are definitely in there. I like some of the other things too. I am considering something along the lines of a multipower with a bit of a random factor thrown in too - ie. different effects of intoxication. That makes it a bit more fun to play, a bit more variable in how it would effect certain characters, etc.

Re: Silver Age Villains? I'd add to it that one of the elements of Silver Age villains that I love is the hokey dialogue. You know what I mean. Examples: Captain Cold saying "this'll put you on ice!" or "Chill out." Or how Egghead on the old Batman TV show from the 60's would say "eggs-terminate", "eggs-actly" or "eggs-hausting", etc.

Re: Golden Age Champions Steve, man, I totally forgot about the Flying Ninja. Or, as we affectionately referred to him as "the Frying Ninja" (damn those L's). With our latest move to Hickory, NC, I finally got a place to unpack all my boxes of gaming stuff. I ran across my old APA's where I did updates about Lizard's campaign. I need to pull those out some night and have a read. Ah, those were some interesting times...

Re: Help needed: character who causes intoxication Nice ideas, guys. Keep them coming! Oh, and Bloodstone, I'm not reading "the Freshman". I actually had this character idea in my gameworld (via some fiction I started back in the early 90's) for quite awhile - just might be doing a revised write up and wanted some hardcore gamer opinions.