DShomshak

Because the American people don't want a moderately competent (and competently moderate) politician. Biden offers no myth, no glamour (in either the modern or archaic senses of the word). He's neither an amusing entertainer, a rabble-rousing firebrand, nor the anointed prophet of God. There's no great story to "Guy beavers away for decades, finally works his way into the job he sought, and does okay at it." Donald Trump is supremely skilled at making people care about him, one way or another. He is an entertainer and firebrand, and convinced his cult he is the anointed prophet of God. Even if he is ruined in business and sent to jail for his crimes, the 2024 election may be a coin toss because it's hard to beat exciting with dull... at least for a populace that confuses politics with TV. Dean Shomshak

Even if differences based on inherited somatic difference ("race") blur away and we all become Niven's "flatlanders," the tribal impulse will make humans create artificial differences in appearance through makeup/dyes, tattoos, clothing, ornament, etc. And such differences will appear, whether by religion, political identity, or whether you crack open your soft-boiled egg at the big end or little end (as in the Lilliput section of Gulliver's Travels.) Thgough such visible differences might also be created by genetic engineering, whether for practical purposes (such as adjusting spacer genomes to prevent bone loss from prolonged microgravity -- or the more extreme modifications of quaddies, from Bujold's "Vorkosigan" setting), or various transhuman notions (such as Betan herms -- Bujold again), or if the technology becomes accessible enough, pure whimsy (we want to look like anime characters! With cat ears!). James Blish coined the term "pantropy" for genetic adaptation to new environments, but it doesn't have to be that rational. In a Star Hero setting I made, the ideology that humans should genetically fragment into new species was called "cladism." It had dire consequences because people were still people. Different approaches to cybernetic/bionic modification might happen, too. Analog to Mac vs PC tribalism, only for brain implants from different companies. Dean Shomshak

A few Powers already can carry Advantages that they act based on EGO rather than some other Characteristics, such as STR or BODY. Giving such an Advantage to Regeneration seems reasonable to me. Plus, Regeneration isn't on the Adjustment Power list but it acts like one in most ways. I don't see anything immediately abusive in applying standard Adjustment Power Advantages to it, such as altering which Characteristic it applies to, multiple Characteristics, etc. (Maybe there is, but I don't see it at the moment.) Dean Shomshak

No. Trump as Speaker would be two bullets away from regaining the White House, and I truly believe that thousands of Americans would like to try making the shot. (Plus an unknown number of Russian and Chinese agents.) And millions would cheer if it happened. Fortunately, it's hypothetical because I am also persuaded that aq sufficient number of Republican Reps now see Trump as a liability that the scenario could never happen. Dean Shomshak

I dare say that's what most GMs do in practice. There's too much CU to use in the average campaign; GMs must decide which sections and characters to use, and leave the rest in the background. But that's how comic books operate, too. (Or did, anyway.) Take the Marvel U, for instance. The Fantastic Four have their stable of regular and semi-regular villains like Dr Doom, Galactus, the Mole Man, assorted aliens, etc. Spider-Man and Daredevil have their street-level villains, which the X-Men seldom if ever encounter because they're fighting Sentinels, other mutant factions, and such ilk. None of them are likely to fight Nightmare, Dormammu, or Dr Strange's other mystical foes. And so on. Sure, change-of-pace stories happen: The X-Men go into space, Spider-Man fights a demon, or Thor fights robots. But that's the point: Change of pace. Heroes usually stick to their niches. So pick what style of heroes and team you want for your campaign and pick the set of villains and background to support it. Say the rest doesn't exist or just ignore it. Like, unless you're running a Mystic Masters campaign most of the mystical side of the CU effectively shouldn't exist. Unless you really want to make anti-mutant prejudice a big part of the campaign, you can (and probably should) ignore IHA and the MInuteman robots and, conversely, Kinematik and his mutant supremacists. And unless you want to actually run an alien invasion story arc or out-to-space story arc, the alien races might as well all not exist... jnless one of your players specifically wants to play an alien character. The same goes for the "thousands of supers around the world" issue. For decades, 90% of Marvel stories happened in the Greater NYC area. Heroes were more likely to visit the Kree Galaxy than, say, Nebraska. Or even major countries like India or France. DC spread things out further by at least giving different home cities to heroes, such as Metropolis, Gotham City, Star City, Central City, yadda yadda. But those heroes tended to have their own favored sets of villains, too. Dean Shomshak

Still my preferred word processing system... Dean Shomshak

At this moment I'm also working on revising Brother Bone. He'll still be a bugnuts-insane skeleton with a book of magic. His spells are powerful, but it's an important part of the character that he has only a limited set of them. OTOH one of those spells can be one to Summon demon minions (not just the succubus that helped corrupt him). The variety of demon minions can be arbitrarily large. Dean Shomshak

Vampires have accumulated so much lore (if you like it) or baggage (if you don't) that it would take at least a small supplement to do them justice -- even if you stick to pop culture "gothic" vampires. There are many others! It's tempting, given the amount of freelance work I did for White Wolf's Vampire: the Masquerade and Vampire: the Requiem, but I don't know that I will ever get a chance, for personal reasons that would take a while to explain. My own favorite choice for First Vampire master villain is Kastchai (or Kostchei, Koshchei, etc) the Deathless, from Russian fairy tales. Intermediate shadowy mastermind of worldwide, behind-the-scenes power, Agrippina (look her up). But like I say... not yet, maybe not ever. CotN Resurrected will have just one general-purpose supervillain vampire. ADDENDUM: I just finished my final revision of The Sylvestri Family Reunion (and it needed it). IIRC from what Jason Vester has said, it might be possible to publish it through Hall of Champions without needing an okay from Cryptic Studios. I will be looking into that possibility. That book will include a powerful specter and a vampire with a wide (probably too wide) array of powers. Dean Shomshak

Given the Pubs' slender majority, Dems might have been able top preserve McCarthy as Speaker so long as a fgew Pubs loathed the Freedom Caucus more than they loathe Dems. Not impossible, IMO, given how personally abrasive (as well as politically deranged) Gaetz et al are. At least minimal legislative functions might have been done. While it's rather horrible to say so, I also think McCarthy protected Biden and Harris from assassination. The same sort of lunatics who are not willing to accept that Biden was legitimately elected also, I hear, loathe McCarthy. While some of them might try putting an R in the White House by murder, they wouldn't do it to put *him* in the White House. As much as Dems dislike McCarthy -- the ATC report said none of them trust him -- removing him does open the possibility of someone even worse taking the job. And whatever is gained politically by letting the Pubs flail in chaos, there could also be gains from voters seeing an R Speaker dependent on D representatives for his office. I suspect some Dem voters would be heartened by seeing the party exercise raw political power more often. Dean Shomshak

In the same vein, yesterday Beau pointed out that whaddaya know, not only can Democrats stand firm, a majority of Republicans were willing to vote alongside them. Gosh, maybe that majority is getting as tired of the Berserker Caucus (as The Economist calls them) as everyone else is. As a result, Gaetz and his fellow maniacs are weaker, and McCarthy is stronger by comparison. I can only hope that at least some Republicans continue down this path to basic sanity in government. Deanb Shomshak

The Today Explained podcast just finished its 4-part series, "Blame Capitalism," on its history as an economic system and ideology, and current disappointments and challenges. Here they are from Google podcasts. Possibly of interest, though the whole series is nearly 2 hours long. "Souring on the System": Capitalism has entered its villain era. In a new series running Fridays this month, we look at how Americans came to blame it for just about everything. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9yc3MuYXJ0MTkuY29tL3RvZGF5LWV4cGxhaW5lZA/episode/YTgyNTg1ODYtMzM5Zi0xMWVkLWE1NTAtYWZmYzY4NGIxN2Jm?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiw1KTvwNWBAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ "Profit Over Everything": Economist Milton Friedman published an essay in 1970 arguing that the job of a corporation was solely to make money for its shareholders. General Electric CEO Jack Welch pushed that idea about as far as it would go — and broke capitalism. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9yc3MuYXJ0MTkuY29tL3RvZGF5LWV4cGxhaW5lZA/episode/YTgzOWM1NzgtMzM5Zi0xMWVkLWE1NTAtMzM2ZDgyOTdhNWNj?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjIp5PawdWBAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ "The 99%": Two wildly different political movements — Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party — emerged from the Great Recession. They forever changed the way Americans think about capitalism and democracy. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9yc3MuYXJ0MTkuY29tL3RvZGF5LWV4cGxhaW5lZA/episode/YTg1MDRiZjQtMzM5Zi0xMWVkLWE1NTAtYTc2NjkyNmI5OGJl?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjIp5PawdWBAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ "Degrowing Pains": Capitalism isn’t natural, was never inevitable, and endless growth is killing Earth. The final episode of “Blame Capitalism” examines the degrowth movement, whose proponents call to end capitalism as we know it. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9yc3MuYXJ0MTkuY29tL3RvZGF5LWV4cGxhaW5lZA/episode/YTg2NmRmY2MtMzM5Zi0xMWVkLWE1NTAtOTcyOTcwMzM4ZjQ4?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjIp5PawdWBAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ Dean Shomshak

All Things Considered said the Senate passed the stopgap a little while ago. ATC mentioned that more Democrats than Republicans voted for the stopgap, so I guess McCarthy has broken the "Hastert Rule" of trying to pass bills with Republican votes alone. Dean Shomshak

All Things Considered had tributes for Sen. Feinstein, including this: https://www-cf.npr.org/2023/09/29/1202745293/former-rep-jane-harman-on-sen-dianne-feinsteins-trailblazing-legacy Best moment, I think, is the clip of her during the debates leading up to the assault weapons ban of 1994. A senator from Idaho apparently thought the li'l woman from California couldn't really understand guns the way a big strong man from Idaho could, and... ...She proceeds to rip him a new one without raising her voice. A moment when the Senate truly was a great debating body. Dean Shomshak

For classic sorcerer villains, you might take inspiration from Lin Carter's "Thongor of Lemuria" series. Yellow Druids of a flame cult, Red Druids of a blood cult, both practicing human sacrifice and holding cities in terrified submission... and then the Black Druids of the sinister city of Zaar, each one of them a unique and gaudy villain. For them, see Thongor in the City of Magicians. Short reads, second-rate Howard pastiche, but the series is pretty fun. Or, yeah, necromancers. You just can't go wrong with necromancers. Dean Shomshak

Incidentally, here are the characters I already finished, including the <Character> Facts and Story Seeds sections: * Caiman * Great Beast, including his pets (and one new extra-oogy creature) -- and each pet gets a story seed of its own * Ooze * Haunt * Four Eyes I've done the edition conversion for a few more -- that's the easy part. As a sample, here's the Story Seed for Flying Dogs, that I hope will take players straight from "Aww" to "Aw, S***": Dean Shomshak

I do indeed. Most of these characters were beyond the capabilities of basic pseudoplasm, but if the Great Beast was trying to patter it from mutants in attempts to port mutant powers into his "research sjubjects," why, anything becomes possible. I won't crib anyone else's characters, but a new character of such ilk is possible, And I will view the New Flesh as the bar I must meet. Dean Shomshak

I'm not settled on the form this will take: whether a complete book, or broken into smaller units about the same size as my old "Shared Origins" pdfs. For now, I'm grouping characters in tentative chapters: Body Horror: Caiman, Doctor Black, the Great Beast (and his pets), Ooze, Reverent Gil Purdue All In Your Head: Fearmonger (with Killer Appliances ported over from Supermage Enemies -- they were originally supposed to go with him), Four-Eyes, the Think Tank (renamed Mind-Master Complex, with its possessed proxies), Whisper Undead: Brother Bone (with Skeleton Monks), Dead Heat (from SMB), Decay, Haunt, Lady Twilight or vampire to be chosen later Diabolical: Apollyon (massively rewritten per an earlier discussion, to be a Satanist cult leader/con man), Brujo (from Ultimate Supermage), Gamygin, Razor Girl. The other demons from the Appendix don't get revised because In odd moments I'm also working on a Descending Hierarchy guidebook. It's doable because I don't need to buy illos or make them myself: The 19th century Dictionnaire Infernal supplies public-domain illos of dozens of demons, which the author of that book solemnly claimed were drawn "from life." But that's a discussion for another time and place. Which leaves Granny Hex, Shadowfire, and some miscellaneous solo characters. Apollyon, Granny Hex and Shadowfire are decoupled from the Devil's Advocates (though you could fit them back in if you wanted). Maze is now redundant after Tesseract (of the Paradigm Pirates) and Gyre. Plus he's a bit dated. I'm not revising the Totems. They were a late addition because I thought CotN needed another team, and they're a rather horribly superficial treatment of Native American themes. While I like the idea of some Native American force attempting ghastly genocidal revenge on the theory that turnabout is fair play, this isn't it. Possibly Tezcatlipoca (CV1) covers this well enough already. I am not sure about revising the Monad. Thus far I haven't felt the need to buy and read Book of the Machine, but it's possible that this explanded treatment of Mechanon makes the Monad redundant. Archimago has been made redundant by Takofanes. While there are aspects of Takky I dislike, I actually *do* rather like the idea of Archimago as the master villain whose plots keep running decades after his death. A supplement about Archimago's plot and catspaws could be interesting, but this is not it. Though Homonculus should be updated because Killer Dolls are such a classic trope. Kobold is probably the most straightforward supervillain of the old characters, but by that token I'm not sure he has much to interest GMs. It's possible other characters from USM and SMB could be ported in, if they fit the horror thime. Since writing CotN I've also written several villains for my games that turned out rather horrific. They're available if they're needed. We'll see. Dean Shomshak

That's fair. I never used published characters either, and regarded the Enemies books just as sources of ideas to field-strip and recombine. Dean Shomshak

So my front page newsfeed had a Newsweek article claiming "The Republican War on Taylor Swift Could Backfire." Not reading it because life is short but... Republicans hate Taylor Swift? Okay, that makes as much sense as deSantis' war on Disney. I guess? Because she hasn't pledged fealty to Trump or said anything wackadoodle enough to make the front page? If anyone cqan explain this in 100 words or less, I think that's about what the topic is worth. Dean Shomshak

Oh, hey. As a convenience for people who don't want to read through the whole article, here are the relevant paragraphs: Dean Shomshak

Several of the 4e characters I created in Creatures of the Night: Horror Enemies were revised for later editions of Champions, ultimately making it to the Champions Villains trilogy. Most of them, however, did not. Tiger has expressed interest in updating selected characters for his Forgotten Enemies series (and used Lady Twilight with my blessing), but -- since I am still here -- I might like to do this myself. I've noodled around with Creatures of the Night Resurrected for the last several months, writing up 5e/CC versions of several characters. Before I go further, though, I have some important questions: Does anybody want this? Did you ever use them, back in the day? Would you use them if they were revised? Subsequent posts will discuss ways I plan to revise characters, but if they were never that useful in the first place I probably won't bother. Dean Shomshak

NPR, quite rightly, no longer reports every deranged thing Trump says, but this got mentioned in passing: Trump recently claimed he could design a better fighter jet than the Pentagon. Okay, given that the Pentagon is an extremely large office building and, as such, would not function well as a fighter jet, for once Trump is probably correct. But I'm also amused by the thought of a Trum-designed fighter jet. Literally gold-plated, for sure. Instrument panel of Carrera marble. Real leather or crushed velvet bucket seat for the pilot! Wet bar stocked with the most expensive single malt whiskeys! And most important of all, a big "TRUMP" sign on it! A great fighter jet! The best fighter jet ever! Ability to fly optional. Sorry, but the cheap shots are just so easy I couldn't resist. Dean Shomshak

News stories say the Osiris-Rex capsule landed safely and has been transported to the Jpohnson Space Center for study. No word yet of either origins or space plagues. (Though I suppose we could have both, a la Wild Cards.) Dean Shomshak

Asteroid material soon to be delivered to Earth... if all goes well. Also (as noted in Champions forum) an excellent "origin event." https://www.npr.org/2023/09/22/1200803124/nasa-osiris-rex-mission-bring-home-asteroid-rocks-returns-utah Dean Shomshak

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/22/1200803124/nasa-osiris-rex-mission-bring-home-asteroid-rocks-returns-utah The RL news story: On Sunday, the OSIRIS-REx space probe swings past Earth to drop off a capsure holding material collected from the asteroid Bennu. Pretty good origin material right there, but one of the scientists mentions a few odd dreams about the mission. One sounds straight out of a comic book, lacking only the super-powers one would inevitably gain as a result of the described object and action. (The text of the linked story gives more information, but the "listen" draws more attention to the dream.) Enjoy. And if you end up creating a character based on this for your game, you're welcome! Dean Shomshak Dean Shomshak