DShomshak

A NOTE ON CHINESE MONEY Again, from a slop-over bit of Davies. Just because people have money doesn't mean they rely on it. Chinese money was all made of copper or bronze. Early coins were made in the shape of cowries or spades, knives or other tools. Coins always had a hole in them. In the first place, this made it easier to carry large strings of coins: Since none of the coins were worth much, you could need a lot of them to make large purchases. But the hole also played a role in the minting process: “…In the process of manufacture, a rod would be inserted through a number of coins which could then have their rough edges filed or be otherwise finished in a group of fifty or more coins together.” “A further consequence of the base-metal composition was the ease with which such coins could be imitated and counterfeited. The raw material costs were low, the method of manufacture was simple and the superficial inscriptions easy to apply. Consequently imitation was endemic particularly at the periphery of the authorities' power.” The Chinese used gold and silver to make large purchases, but up until recent centuries they continued to do so in the most archaic way, by weighing the metal. They also sometimes fell back on using cowry shells as money. When you look at the proportion of humanity that used cowries as money, accumulated over hundreds or thousands of years, cowries are among the most popular and successful currency of all time. Dean Shomshak

A NOTE ON MESOPOTAMIAN BANKING When I copied pages from Davies’ book, I incidentally obtained the last bit of the section on banking in ancient Mesopotamia. In brief: It goes waaay back. By 1750 BC (or so), banking by temples and landowners was so common that standard rules were inscribed on a 7’ high block of diorite (now in the Louvre). The 7th century BC “Grandsons of Egibi” are the first bank of which we know the name. “Their headquarters were in the city of Babylon, whence they carried out a very wide variety of business activities combined with their banking. They acted as pawnbrokers -- and in case anyone objects that this is hardly banking, perhaps one should be reminded that the original charter of the Bank of England empowered it to act as a pawnbroker. The House of Egibi also gave loans against securities, and accepted a wide range of deposits. 'Customers could have current accounts with them and could withdraw the whole or parts of certain deposits with cheques... The ships of the firm were used in trade expeditions exactly like those of the royal and temple households. Speculation and investment for secure income were combined in the business pattern of this bank' (Heichelheim, 1958, I, 72). After having flourished for some hundreds of years this bank seems to fade from the scene some time during the fifth century BC.” The Sons of Maraschu, based in Nippur, carried out an even wider range of financial activities. “As well as carrying on the same kind of banking functions as the Grandsons of Egibi, they specialized in what we would call renting and leasing arrangements. They administered, as agents or tax farmers, the royal and larger private estates; they rented out fish-ponds, financed and constructed irrigation canals and charged fees to farmers within their water networks; and they even had a partial monopoly on the sale and distribution of beer. They also acted as jewellers and goldsmiths.” (Davies, p. 51) Dean Shomshak

Here is perhaps the strangest monetary system ever devised IRL: ROSSEL ISLAND MONEY (Adapted from W. E. Armstrong, “Rossel Island Money: A Unique Monetary System,” in Tribal and Peasant Economies, ed. by George Dalton) The people of Rossel Island, near New Guinea, invented their own system of money that’s like nothing else in the world. * There are two kinds of money: Dap and Kö. Dap money consists of thin pieces of polished shell, variously shaped (though usually a rounded triangle), perforated near one corner. Colors range from white through shades of orange and red. A “coin” of Kö money consists of a string of 10 identical shell disks. * There are 22 main values of Dap money, each type having its own name. The names are “somewhat clumsy,” but the system can adequately be described just by using numbers from 1 (the lowest value) to 22 (the highest). Each coin of classes 15 to 22 also has an individual name; there are only 81 such coins in total. * There are 16 values of Kö money, whose names are the same as the higher 16 values of Dap money, with a suffix to show the difference. * The god Wonajö made the original stock of Dap and Kö money, which are still in use. New coins have been made of the lower values of Dap money, but none of the higher values, and none of Kö money at all. * Dap and Kö moneys are only partially equivalent. Some commodities can be bought only with Dap, or only with Kö. Tradition holds that Dap is “men’s money” and Kö is “women’s money,” but this has little effect on actual use. * The values of different coins are not related numerically: You cannot say how much one type is worth in terms of other coins (the way you can say “100 pennies to a dollar”). You cannot take, say, a type 20 coin and exchange it for an equivalent value of lower-numbered coins. To buy something, you need a coin (or coins) of the correct type and rating. “…commodities are price in terms of particular Dap and Kö, and not in terms of any Dap and Kö which add up to the required value.” * Don’t have the right coin? Borrow one and pay it back later… and this is how the values are related, for the Rossel islanders have monetized time. To wit: * Values are related by the time you take repaying a debt. If you repay within a few days, you repay with the coin of the next-higher value. Within a week, a value two grades higher. Within the next time increment, three grades higher, and so on. (After 22, the system rolls over and you must repay with a 22 plus another coin, whose value increases with time.) * Thus, any commodity’s value can be given in terms of the particular coin used to buy it, or of any lower-numbered coin plus a certain interval of time. Conversely, the value of any coin can be given as a #1 plus a certain length of time loaned. “A wife costs a year, a house two years, a basket of taro a week, and so on.” * Rossel Islanders have professional moneylenders who keep track of all these grades and debt-times, and know all the coins by name. If a moneylender lacks the particular coin you need, he knows who has it and can borrow it to lend in turn to you. These brokers are particularly important for transactions involving the very limited number of high-value coins. “These brokers derive their income by keeping their capital in motion and by a process somewhat analogous to the activities of a London bill-broker – by borrowing at a lower rate of interest and discounting at a higher – and practice a magic by means of which they claim to act on the minds of debtors, making them repay within the customary time, while the minds of their creditors are effected [sic] in the reverse direction.” * Plus various further complications: collateral (sometimes goods, sometimes higher-value coins than one borrows), periodic interest-payments of lower-value coins, and various complex schemes for groups of people to make purchases. “In conclusion, it may be pointed out that Rossel Island money is money in the strict sense of the term. It serves as a medium of exchange and a standard of value, and it is not desired for its utility for other purposes, even for ornament or display. Indeed it is considered ‘bad form’ to make any sort of display of one’s wealth of Dap and Kö. How such a peculiar monetary system came into being it is difficult even to conjecture. The concept of “interest” is rare in Melanesia and New Guinea, though it occurs in simple form in parts of the Bismarck Archipelago. This would point to some exceptional cultural influence which reached the island of Rossel but no other of this extensive region, unless we suppose that a ‘higher’ culture, containing the germs of the peculiar features of Rossel, once extended over a large area, throughout which it has since degenerated, leaving a vestige on Rossel in the shape of its present fantastic monetary system.” It’s the money of lost Lemuria! Or whatever. In a Fantasy setting, some utterly idiosyncratic monetary system really could be the work of a god. Story seeds: It’s not the details that matter, just that the people of this one island have a complex monetary system that no other human society shares. * Have fun breaking into such a strange and self-contained monetary system. * A merchant frustrated by the islanders' refusal to trade in anything but their own money steals a bunch of the higher-value coins in hopes of wrecking the system. The islanders offer a reward to get them back. * Or a natural disaster removes many of the coins. If the islanders are your friends, convince them to accept your replacements. * Hey, the coins and system really did come from a god. Who is now angry that the islanders have started using the simple money of outsiders. Cope with the resulting temper tantrum. * You should have seen the warning signs! The monetary system comes from the Deep Ones (or your setting's analogous fish-people who serve an ancient evil power)… because these “simple islanders” with the incongrously intricate monetary system are the Deep Ones' slaves and front men, and in coming to the island you’ve fallen into their trap! Dean Shomshak

GIROBANKING IN EGYPT (Based on A History of Money from Ancient Times to the Present Day, by Glyn Davies) First I had to look up what a ‘giro’ is, since I’d never heard the term before. Wikipedia tells me it’s more used in Europe than the US. It refers to fund transfers by direct deposit, in which the recipient does not need to approve the exchange. For instance, suppose I want to repay my friend Segev’s postings on banking and money by paying him $5. The usual American method would be to write a check to Segev and send it to him. He would then endorse the check and give it to his bank, signifying his approval of the transfer, and my bank would then transfer the $5 from my account to his bank and his account. In a giro, I would tell my bank to transfer the money directly from my account to his, and Segev wouldn’t need to do anything. So that’s a giro. My apologies to Europeans and banking geeks who already know this. * Egyptians had a long history of centralized storage of grain. Farmers sent all their grain to the local Royal Granary and the quantity was recorded. This made it easy for tax collectors to take their cut. * Most common Egyptians didn’t use money and didn’t need it, because they were tenant farmers or laborers and their master doled out grain and other necessities. If they didn’t like it… tough. * Egyptians also had a long history of using grain to buy and sell (when they did so at all). People could withdraw quantities of grain from their “account” at the granary with which to buy stuff, or deposit it. It was only a short step to just do the paperwork of recording that Amenhotep paid 5 bushels to Thutmose, without anyone needing to physically pass any grain around. By the 3rd millennium BC, these banks already took deposits and made loans. * “The separate crops of grain harvested by the farmers were not separately earmarked, but amalgamated into general deposits, except that the harvests for separate years, and therefore of different qualities, were stored in separate compartments.” * “Vagaries of the weather, though on occasions disastrous, were of course much less of a hazard in the Nile Delta than with us: so that inflation or deflation could to some extent be controlled and the monetary scarcity of one year be compensated by the bounty of the next.” * When the Ptolemies took over, they linked all the granaries in a national system. Then, people could not only buy and sell using grain locally, but nationally, by sending fund transfer orders through the central bank in Alexandria, which kept copies of all the regional granary records. * In fact, international business was conducted this way. “We have unmistakeably clear records of such transactions between Babylonians, Assyrians and other nations of Asia Minor.” (Heichelheim, 1958) * These payments were done as giros. (Probably necessary, but not what I would consider the most important feature of the system. Whatever.) While they didn’t have double-entry bookkeeping, the banks had a system for marking credit or debit accounts. * The Ptolemies found the Egyptians’ stubborn adherence to grain-banking and suspicion of metal coinage useful. On the one hand, they were short of precious metals, which they needed for foreign exchange and foreign military ventures; but OTOH they knew that to stimulate economic activity they needed more money. (There were also private banks, dealing in precious metals and money made from it, but they were chiefly used by Greeks and foreign traders.) “Thus the giro system in Egypt had come about because of the need to economize on coins and the precious metals, by the need to supplement the existing private banks with a state bank system, and above all by the desire to spread the banking habit throughout the community. It also gave to the rulers a closer control over the economy for fiscal purposes, while providing a general stimulus for trade more widespread than had previously been possible, particularly among the poorer classes… Grain may have been primitive money -- but the world's first giro system transformed it into an efficient medium of payments partaking of many of the most desirable features of modern money.” (Davies, p. 54) (This is just too good. I have to find a way to use it somewhere, somehow.) Dean Shomshak

Many Fantasy games follow the pattern set by D&D, where people buy and sell using variously-valued coins of different metals. It's all pretty familiar and suits the quasi-Medieval/Renaissance models of many Fantasy settings. But there are other possibilities. Here are a few. THE HOMERIC ECONOMY (based on W. L. Finley, “Wealth and Labor [Archaic Greece],” in Tribal and Peasant Economies, ed. by George Dalton) It’s possible to reconstruct many aspects of Bronze Age Greek life from the Iliad and Odyssey, including the economic system. Here are the major traits: * Rigid Class Structure: Aristocrats (like Odysseus, Agamemnon, etc.) on top, then freemen, serfs and slaves. Thetes, or hired laborers, are lowest of all – with no fixed abode or master, they can be exploited or abused with impunity. * The Oikos, or household, is the basic social and economic unit. The patriarchal head of the household is nearly all-powerful over his family and tenants. * Subsistence from farming and herding cattle, sheep and goats. There are no significant differences in the basic commodities available to people, either by region or by class: The aristocrats just have more. Thus, there is no basis for trade in utility goods. * Luxury Gifts are the only trade: Aristocrats give each other presents to cement alliances, obtain treasures and slaves, divvy up loot from pirate ventures and wars, show friendship, create obligation, etc. Every gift obliges the recipient to, at some point, offer a gift of equal value in return. There is no intent for profit, as such (though it’s a way to gain things you lack, such as giving ingots of iron and getting ingots of copper in return). * Treasures matter a great deal to aristocrats. These include weapons and armor, ingots of precious metal, tripods, bowls, jewelry, fancy cloaks, etc. * Booty is the other source of new treasures. You call together your tenants and friends, and go rob some other aristocrat. Afterward, you call it a “war” and have a poet turn it into a myth. * Who Makes This Stuff? Somebody has to. Among the gods, it’s Hephaistos. Presumably, some kings have their own artisans on staff, but these lower-class individuals were not considered worth mentioning. (Though there’s the example of Daedalus, but he isn’t in Homer.) * Cattle act as the standard of value. Example: For a special slave, Laërtes gave goods worth 20 head of cattle. Treasures have a customary value in cattle, but they were not a medium of exchange (people did not actually drive herds back and forth to buy things). Dean Shomshak

I know about different play styles, thank you. But the question still stands: In actual play, why does it matter to know exactly how much things cost? Giving thought to the economic basis of your setting and cultures is effort well spent. Ambitious GMs might even build cultures where money, as such, doesn't exist or at least doesn't follow tidy systems such as D&D's copper, silver and gold pieces. But before you tie yourself in knots working out how much everything costs (whether the standard is copper pieces, cowries or cattle), ask yourself whether this is work you actually need to do. As GM, you have plenty else to do! So there are issues of time management as well as play style. (And head explosions. Avoiding head explosions is good. Unless it's your players' heads exploding at the latest freaking awesome thing you just sprang on them, of course.) In Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller series, the protagonist spends a long time near-destitute. He actually needs to worry how much small things cost. His efforts to obtain money. in quantities most of the people around him consider negligible, drives part of the story. In Lord of the Rings, OTOH, money is mentioned little if at all. It's just not relevant to the story. If your campaign resembles Rothfuss' story, yes, you'll want to work out prices for commonplace goods. If Tolkien is your inspiration, not so much. Dean Shomshak PS: I have some brief materials about premodern economic systems that might be inspirational in moving beyond gold pieces. I'll post them in a separate thread.

For everyday expenses such as flint and steel, I think the appropriate answer is, "Okay, you buy flint and steel." Given that the typical Fantasy game seems to assume that PCs acquire significant treasure, the everyday expenses that might trouble a peasant or day-laborer really don't matter much. Look at it this way: Is there any *story value* in knowing exactly how much flint and steel cost, or a mug of ale at the inn? You might want to consider something more like the Resources system that White Wolf used in its games: Prices rated by dots, from one dot (commonplace, easily affordable even by people of modest income) to five dots (the sort of thing only kings, merchant princes and other super-rich people can afford, and even they might not buy such things very often.) Then just keep track of the corresponding wealth level of the PCs. At (say) 3 dots of wealth, they can buy any 3 dot commodity if they must, 2 dot goods and services easily, and 1 dot purchases aren't even worth noting. Maybe my friends and I are strange, but we don't find much thrilling adventure in tracking every copper piece of our characters' expenses. Unless our PCs' purchases are extraordinary, or they are for some reason destitute, we just don't worry about setting exact prices. Dean Shomshak

Diamond Spear: I ran a campaign (actually three in the same setting) sorta kinda like what you propose, in that it was fantasy set in an alternate history with magic. It was set in an "alternate present" (1990s) rather than an alternate Age of Exploration, though. The second campaign took the PCs to the Caribbean, where the European colonies -- left on their own for decades after Europe nearly destroyed itself in magical versions of the World Wars -- were menaced by post-Aztecs who'd built a giant barge with a gilded pyramid-temple so they could take their powerful sacrificial magic to the high seas. In this alternate history, European colonization of "Terranova" didn't get much past the Caribbean. In part this was because native American cultures had magic; but more because the Age of Exploration began a century or so later, and the first would-be conquistadors found an Aztec Empire that had consolidated itself, had a politically and militarily astute ruler, and the Europeans didn't arrive in a year of special religious significance. So, instead of recruiting a bunch of subject tribes to rebel against an overly-cautious emperor, the first swaggering, gold-hungry freebooters were swiftly crushed by superior numbers and their guns and steel were completely useless. Pretty much the same thing happened to the first group that tried conquering the Incas in South America. Without easy fluke victories as an example, Europeans put more effort into trade and less into conquest. (European diseases still ravaged Native Americans, and this was one of the grievances the post-Aztecs had against the Caribbean colonists. Not the only one, though: Europeans *did* conquer parts of Mexico, which the post-Aztecs reconquered during the decades of transatlantic isolation.) So, I know your idea can work for a campaign. Dean Shomshak

I think you have to keep in mind the difference between simulating a superhero world and simulating comics as a medium. They are related, but how closely you want to tie them is a matter of taste. One effect of the comic-book medium is that not much stays permanent: Years later, a writer or editor can undo what another writer did, and probably will. Somebody wants to tell a story about the character who was killed off umpteen years before; or somebody just wants to pull some cheap melodrama by shaking up a character's life... again. Which is why heroes' marriages rarely last. A wedding makes a dramatic turning point in a hero's life, but so does a divorce or a spouse's death. Or for lesser impact, hook ups and break ups. It's an easy way for writers to add soap-opera excitement. Like I said, cheap melodrama. After years or decades of publication, though, the resulting churn can look frantic and silly. The Scarlet Witch offers an example. For years, our time, she was married to the Vision. Then -- improbably, but she makes the improbably happen -- they had kids. And the churn begins... Oops, no they don't have kids: They were magical constructs that were actually shards of a supervillain's soul! (Huh?) The Vision loses his emotions, turns white, and their marriage breaks up. Which was about the time I stopped reading Marvel, but Wikipedia tells me she's had various hook-ups, at least one nervous breakdown, and I don't know what all. Maybe it didn't seem so frantic and silly spread over 20 years, but it sure seemed ridiculous as I read the summary. Resurrection retcons are particularly tacky when they unmake character choices, such as Jean Grey's first resurrection. As the Phoenix, she chose to die to protect the universe from herself. Oops, no, she didn't: The Phoenix wasn't really Jean Grey, the real Jean Grey was regenerating in a pod on the bottom of a lake! And the Phoenix Force is eternal, so no one really died! From one of the most dramatic events in X-Men continuity, it became a meaningless puppet show. All in all, some of the worst writing comics have ever seen. I would hope the CU, as published, could avoid *that* sort of character resurrection. (AFAIK, it has.) Dean Shomshak

Well, QM, here's a *brief* overview of the ARchmage-related information in The Mystic World. It should answer some of your questions: Mystic tradition holds that the line of Archmages began with Thanoro Azoic -- whoever, or whatever, he, she, or it was. It happend so long ago that mystics have only a name, which might be a mistake or mistranscription. The line of archmages broke in Hellenistic times. The mage Thestor restored it. How? It's a secret. (That's a small joke.) Thestor's grimoire, the Krypticon, was passed from archmage to archmage with ol' Bohdan the last known owner. Presumably it got blowed up real good along with the rest of Bohdan's sanctum, but I gave a writeup of the book so there's hope yet. Seven archmages came after Thestor. One, the Eternal Tulku, retired from the office. He's still alive but deeply senile most of the time. He and Bohdan are the only other named archmages. (The rest are left for you to fill in to suit the needs of your campaign.) An archmage must obtain gifts of power from denizens of all four Imaginal Realms: the syncretic Heaven of Elysium, the Netherworld of all Hells, the Land of Legends, and Babylon the City of Man. OTOH, the archmage cannot be bound to any spiritual power. An archmage must also know a spell called the Quaternion Banishment that provides Earth's ultimate defense against invasion from the Outer Planes. Some mages actively try to become archmage, including supervillains like the Demonologist. Being evil is no disqualifier! Some of Earth's most powerful mages, however, *aren't* in the running, or at least they don't seem to want the job. The Sylvestri Patriarch is obviously disqualified because he's bound to the Dragon. (Note that Demonologist isn't disqualified by his favored style of magic: He exploits demons but never sold his soul.) OTOH, Adrian Vandaleur and Doctor Yin Wu have no obvious impediment but have outlived multiple archmages. Dean Shomshak

The Circle of the Scarlet Moon killed the last Archmage of the dead-tree published CU, Bohdan Stanislavsky, in 1908. This involved a massive explosion in Siberia. His apprentice, the next Archmage-in-training, had already been killed fighting Edomite horrors in Africa. This apprentice was never named in the CU material to which I had to remain consistent when writing The Mystic World. Vincent Dimitrios was part of the Mystic Masters setting. In that setting the Archmage is still alive but very old and too feeble to carry on the good fight. He calls the PCs together to act as a collective defender of Earth. At that time, there was no coherent CU; Steve Long decided not to follow MM when he organized the current CU. I think Steve made a good choice. MM had many excellent features, and I view my own "Super-Mage" work as carrying on from it, but it did build its setting around a particular story arc that not everyone will want to use. A living but enfebled Archmage is also just a little too convenient of an NPC... and a little too close to the Ancient One from Marvel. Learn from your sources of inspiration, but don't imitate them too closely! You could name Stanislavsky's dead apprentice "Vincent Dimitrios" if you want, but I don't see any particular need to do so. First you need to decide if defining somebody who's been dead more than a century even matters for your CU campaign. (Like, if -- as in Mystic Master, spoiler alert -- he isn't really or entirely dead.) Dean Shomshak

Incidentally, this reminds me how in the 1970s, Marvel and DC gave us various black superheroes, who invariably had "Black" in their names: Black Lightning, Black Goliath, Black Panther, etc. Okay, so Black Panther's superhero name would have made sense whatever the character's race, but still -- such names seem *incredibly* dated now, at least to me. They meant well, but such characters just point out how very, um, "white" the comics industry was. "Gawrsh, look at this character, he's BLACK!" It was progress, but thank all gods we've moved beyond it. Heroes and villains can be black, and it matters that the character is black, but it doesn't define the character utterly. I am at least grateful that comics avoided following this clumsy route in the 1990s, as the wider culture became more aware and accepting of LGBTI rights. AFAIK we were spared "Trans Lightning" and "Gay Goliath." Some attempts at respect are worse than scorn. Dean Shomshak

In my own campaign, I'm building characters as I need them. So far, one NPC hero met in play has been gay; it came up only because the female PC made a pass. (Bull and Bear, called "the heroes of Wall Street" although they prefer to think of themselves as the heroes *against* Wall Street, shared an origin as bank employees surplused in the Mortgage Meltdown, turned Occupy activists, who were sacrificed by a coven of Satanist bankers. The ritual wen wrong and they ended up with super-powers. Both are bricks with a few wealth-related powers. Bear is a bear-man who can sense the value of items around him, and straight; Bull is a minotaur who can transmute any metal into coin, and gay. They share a Manhattan apartment and are active in charity work when not fighting crime.) Speaking as a player and GM, I would expect the CU to include LGBTI heroes and villains in about the same proportions as the general population IRL. It's just part of it being a 21st century setting. But for the same reason, people in the developed world don't make a big deal of it. Dean Shomshak

Pretty much. I know and you know that we'd just be spitballing idea for fun, player to player. But would the lawyers know? (I can't even blame Cryptic's lawyers for this hypothetical hypervigilance. I gather that if you don't guard intellectual property this closely, you can lose it. And I do not wish Cryptic ill.) Dean Shomshak

All good questions, and good ideas for archmage-related scenarios. But I am also in a rather delicate position here. As LL mentions, the CU is the intellectual property of Cryptic Studios now. If I posted anything with even the faintest hint of a suggestion of an implication that it was official, that could be interpreted as a challenge to Cryptic's ownership, and they could sue my ass off. So while I'll tell people who've only read the 6e books on what I wrote for 5e, try to clarify passages that people find unclear, or explain choices made in the writing process, I will not post any new material to expand on what was published. For instance, if anyone who's read the mention of the Archmage in the 6th ed CU book wants to know more, I'll tell how the office began with the legendary Thanoro Azoic, about whom virtually nothing is known except his/her/it's name (and even that is dubious). The line of Archmages broke for a century in Classical times, until the Hellenistic mage Thestor located the cosmic entity Kryptos, personification of Secrets, and restored the office. Thestor's grimoire, the Krypticon, was subsequently passed from Archmage to Archmage. Seven more Archmages followed Thestor, both men and women and from around the world. One of these Archmages, the Immortal Tulku, retired from the office and is still alive, but senile. The Russian mystic Bohdan Stanislavski became the last Archmage until the Circle of the Scarlet Moon killed him in Siberia in 1908. Unlike many events in the Mystic World, ordinary people noticed this. But I won't suggest other past Archmages, their deeds, allies, enemies, or tools of power. That's trespassing a little too closely on Cryptic's rights for my comfort. I am deeply sorry, but... (I also don't know a thing about the MMORPG or what it might have done with characters and concepts to which I contributed. LL and other people can fill in there.) Dean Shomshak

No, I never wrote package deals or templates. Ultimate Super-Mage and Ultimate Mystic included some loose discussion of how to build mystical characters, but my playtest experience was that characters varied too much to be nailed down to any formula more detailed than, "A big Multipower for spells, and an Elemental Control for all Powers the character must use at the same time." The Mystic World discussed the role of Archmage in the CU. It sounds like you've already read The Mystic World, QM, so I probably don't need to repeat what's there. For the current CU, the most important aspect of the Archmage is there isn't one, and all the last Archmage's sanctum and mystical paraphernalia got blowed up real good: Steve and I thought it was important to leave GMs and PCs a blank slate they could fill in the course of play. As such, designing further allies, DNPCs, and other accretions around the office was not a priority. Dean Shomshak

After reading the CU book, ask here if you want more information about particular parts of the setting, and we can recommend the 6e or 5e books with the most information (or just answer directly). I wrote a bunch of the mystical, Doctor Strange-y stuff, so I am somewhat expert in it. Dean Shomshak

Oh -- Heller also believes that jovian planets could have Earth-sized moons, and these could be habitable, or even superhabitable. Their interiors would be heated by tidal stresses rather than radioactivity, so that factor would be removed. Heller's article has a bibliogaphy: Habitable Climates: The Influence of Obliquity. David S. Spiegel, Kristen Menou and Caleb A. Scharf in Astrophysical Journal, vol. 691, No. 1, pages 596-610; Jan. 20, 2009. http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/691/1/596/article Exomoon Habitability Constrained by Illumination and Tidal Heating. Rene' Heller and Rory Barnes in Astrobiology, vol. 13, No. 1, pages 18-46; 2013. http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.5323 Habitable Zone Lifetimes of Exoplanets around Main Sequence Stars. Andrew J. Rushby, Mark W. Claire, Hugh Osborn and Andrew J. Watson in Atrobiology, vol. 13, No. 9, pages 833-849; Sep. 18, 2013. [Didn't give a URL] Superhabitable Worlds. Rene' Heller and John Armstrong in Astrobiology, Vol. 14, No. 1, pages 50-66; Jan. 16, 2014. http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.2392 Dean Shomshak

In brief: Author Rene' Heller notes that Earth's habitability -- measured by actual quantity of life -- has varied widely over time. During the Carboniferous, Earth's biomass was probably larger than it is now, what with our large desert areas, the near-lifeless middle of the oceans, etc. More importantly, habitability should be summed over time. Earth's period as a life-bearing planet is almost over, geologically speaking: As the Sun gets brighter and hotter with age, the "Goldilocks Zone" moves outward. Current estimates place Earth at its inner edge. Within the next billion years or so, the oceans evaporate. Earth also faces some geological exhaustion-points. The magnetic field that protects the atmosphere, and the plate tectonics that keeps carbon cycling between atmosphere and lithosphere, are driven by a combination of relic heat from the Earth's formation and heat from radioacive decay. The supply of radioactive elements inexorably declines. In a billion years or so, internal heat drops to the point that both processes stop. CO2 builds up in the atmosphere, unless the atmosphere gets blown away by the solar wind. Bad either way. Heller suggests that a larger planet would sustain its geological processes longer, through its larger supply of radioactives and greater heat of formation; while a K dwarf star would heat more slowly, leaving the planet within its Goldilocks Zone many billions of years longer. He estimates that a planet twice Earth's mass, orbiting a K dwarf star, could remain habitable for many billions of years longer than Earth. <oreover, the higher gravity could mean a flatter topography, with fewer high, expansive continents to develop deserts and more life-rich archipelagos. I see potential problems with Heller's arguments (notably, an article I read several years ago that a planet significantly larger than Earth can't have a liquid core -- the greater pressure keeps it solid, even if it's hotter). But it's an interesting alternate view of habitability, and a healthy counterpoint to the "Rare Earth" school that says even the slightest difference from Earth would make complex life impossible. I think one should hesitate to be too certain, in any direction, until we have more than one example of a life-bearing planet to study -- and as a gamer, I prefer to err on the side of possibility! Dean Shomshak

The latest Scientific American has an article about the potential for "superhabitable" planets -- worlds that are actually better than Earth at sustaining Life As We Know It. (Sorry, no link. I read SA in Dead Tree, and me big tech dummy who doesn't know how to post links on this forum. Maybe someone else could do this? Sorry again.) Dean Shomshak

Mm, I think it takes something away from the setting if the original serum was controllable enough to have sterility built in. The original scientists reached into the unknown when they created the first super-soldiers, the fear of what they might unleash on the world outweighed by the fear of an Axis victory if they did not. Sort of like the scientists on the Manhattan Project. Recall that the speculation that the first A-bomb might start a nuclear chain reaction in the atmosphere was answered, "Certainly not. Well, *almost* certainly not." At first, with all supers state-created, there may have been registration. As the first super-powered children came of age in the late 1950s and 1960s, though, there would be court cases in the US challenging the law as part of the wider civil rights movement. Forcing someone to register for something they were born with arguably violates a few Constitutional amendments. Laws might stand about people who use the serums -- at least for now. Other countries will take different approaches due to their different legal frameworks regarding the individual's relation to the state. It also might muddy the setting too much to have low-grade serums for sale to the public. It seems to me the strength of a setting like this is to explore issues of law and control. Dean Shomshak

In my gaming group, the GMs now start each adventure with a look at what each character is doing individually, both in costume and in Secret IDs (for those who have them). If you keep switching from character to character quickly, no one has time to be bored. Thing is, those of us who GM find we spend most of our prep time thinking up these short solo vignettes. The group adventure only requires a few scribbled notes and the character sheets for the antagonists. We're so likely to send the story off in unexpected directions that any more prep is a wate of time. Dean Shomshak

I've sent Jason the .pdf of SHARED ORIGINS: THE DYNATRON. It should appear for sale very soon. Continuing the SHARED ORIGINS series, it presents the Dynatron: A miracle machine that can give anyone super-powers. Its inventor, the supervillain Red Giant, has become an important vendor of origins to anyone who can pay. This is not as good for Red Giant as you might think. SHARED ORIGINS: THE DYNATRON is almost twice as long as the previous supplement in the series, SKY-Q, with 10 sample characters of various power levels. You also get game mechanics for the Dynatron itself. There should soon be a more complete product announcement in the Product Line Forum and the News homepage. I hope you find SHARED ORIGINS: THE DYNATRON useful, and as much fun to read as I found it to write. Dean Shomshak

The Cherubim bringing gifts reminds me of the Axons, from the old Doctor Who episode The Claws of Axos. Golden humanoids with obviously fake curled hair -- just the surface of the head, sculpted, rather than actual hair -- and blank eyes. I think it's a rather creepy, uncanny-valley look. It's a little too obvious they are trying to look like us for so they don't scare us, but aren't very good at i -- which raises the question of what they are really like, that we would find so scary. (This being Doctor Who, the Axons' "gift" -- a substance called Axonite, which could vastly multiply humanity's food supply, among other benefits -- was of course a trap meant to destroy humanity. The Cornucopias are probably not that sort of trap, but shrewd people will not be too quick to rely on them.) Dean Shomshak

Steriaca: A Program could become a Power Vendor, or vice-versa, over time; or a Program could hire a Power Vendor. Like, imagine a country that wants a corps of super-soldiers but doesn't have enough native mutants to train, the tech for powered armor or cyborgs, or other available resources. The government might just hire a vendor such as Marvel's Power Broker, Inc. to augment a group of loyal soldiers. If it's an unpleasant regime, so what if half of them die or are horribly mutated into mindless monsters? If the government is somewhat more responsible, the soldiers are volunteers who know the process is dangerous. QM: Yeah, Will "Starman Payton was great. One of my favorites from DC. I never cared much for DC's A-list characters like Batman and Superman: Too much history (and sometimes, too many titles published at once). I preferred Blue Devil, Halk and Dove, Booster Gold, etc. Dean Shomshak