DShomshak

Re: Types of Superheroes/Villains I came to find Marvel's attempts to use "anti-mutant hysteria" as an allegory for other forms of bigotry ham-handed and dubious on multiple levels. Still, Marvel could generate one good story from it, by postulating a smallish country whose people have (both spontaneously and as official policy) decided to accept mutants. As a result, mutants move there. As a result of *that,* the country is rapidly gaining wealth and power. This story arc would be a latter-day retelling of how the Dutch decided to sit out the religious wars wracking the rest of Europe. Not only did the Netherlands avoid squandering its resources in fruitless war, the country's immigrant Jews, Anabaptists and other religious minorities included a lot of scholars, artisans and other folk who helped make the country very rich. A prosperity the Dutch still enjoy, centuries later. Leaving Marvel, I see two important story aspects to super-powered mutants. First, the powers are totally spontaneous and unexpected. In one sense, this makes them a "fair" source of super-powers: Anyone might be a mutant. In another sense, they are deeply unfair in they are completely undeserved. You didn't even have to be in the right place at the right time to have your origin. You were, apparently, a completely ordinary person before you discover, out of the blue, that you have super-powers. What do you do about this? The second aspect is that mutant powers are potentially heritable. That reverses the randomness of the first factor. Instead, you have the potential of a super-powered caste -- an aristocracy whose members are, really and truly, born more powerful than everyone else. Potentially, a very nasty ruling class. Once *that* potential becomes clear, hating mutants becomes a bit more plausible. Dean Shomshak

Re: It Beats the Alternative Yeah, Professor Alternative is a great character. Thing is, he could probably make a bit of cash selling his services to people who want to be someone different... but the mind-set to do this would probably make it impossible for him to invent his goofy rays in the first place. It also occurs to me that after his first attempt, Professor Alternative was probably kidnapped by someone who demanded, on threat of death, that he reverse his "gay ray" to produce a Straight Ray so the kidnapper could "cure" homosexuals. (Good story otherwise, too!) Dean Shomshak

Re: Types of Superheroes/Villains In working on my own Champions campaign way back when, I classified superbeings this way: Innate powers: Supernatural Being: Gods, elementals, ghosts, vampires, demons, angels, etc. + spirit hybrids (offspring of human and supernatural). Mutant: Born with potential for powers because of some genetic quirk. Alien: Comes from a race that naturally has super-powers. Robot/Android: Artificial entity with built-in powers. Induced powers: Enchantment: Powers ganted by magic, but innate from then on. Lycanthropes, origin potions, blessings from gods, etc. Weird Science: Radiation accidents, genetic manipulation, etc. Cyborg: Powers from artificial bits implanted in the body. (Includes bioengineering.) Trained Powers: Sorcerer: Includes "psionic training" (old wine in new bottles). Inventor: People who invent battlesuits, advanced weapons and other super-gadgets. Martial Artist: What it says. External Powers: Weapon: Powers come from a device that the character cannot or does not significantly upgrade. Includes characters who build just a few super-gadgets and stick with them, character who obtains a magic item (o item of alien super-technology), and stuff like that. Mastermind: "Powers" come from having lots of money, status and other social resources, so the character can have other people do things for them. Characters can fit under more than one heading. If a character fit under three or more, I classified them as "Complex" and left it at that. I also did a power breakdown of Brick, Energy Projector, Martial Artist, Mentalist, Other, and Complex, and cross-referenced to keep track of, say, how many supernatural characters I'd created were mentalists, as a way to spot concepts and combinations I'd neglected. Yes, it was a lot of work. Yes, I was insane. Dean Shomshak

Re: [Retro] COTN 5th edition proposal I'm with LL on the Four Great Spirits: They seem too inhuman and, well, "cosmic," to be among the gods of Earth. Upper Planes, for sure. Dean Shomshak

Re: Question for Dean Shomshak There's at least one other god-level entity active on Earth, and I'm surprised no one brought him up: Mephistopheles is active and powerful enough to provide origins on short notice, as he did with Hell Rider. How does he evade the Ban? Simple. He cheats. (OK, maybe that was too obvious even to need saying.) Dean Shomshak

Re: Question for Dean Shomshak Since I've never read The Turakian Age, I don't know what it says about Krim. Still, if you want Krim to be powerful and (potentially) active despite the Ban, the Crowns are a good excuse for this. One possibility is that Krim placed himself entirely in the Crowns. You could give the Crowns an AI to represent Krim's will, with a Mind Link between them to represent that Krim possesses all the Crowns at once while remaining a single will, and an IPE Psychic Bond to the wearer. Even if Dark Seraph et al. aren't sock puppets for Krim, he could still be influencing their minds and choices beyond a generic "Be Evil." Dean Shomshak

Re: Question for Dean Shomshak Don't get me wrong, I'm proud of all (well, most of) the stuff I wrote for USM and SMB, and I'm glad you found it fun and useful. Just about all the big ideas and major characters made it through to 5e, though -- the framework for the mystical side of the CU, that had to be there for other material to make sense. It's too bad there couldn't have been a revised Mystic Bestiary to update the other critters and characters, but such is life. Now that Cryptic/DOJ allows people to write their own licensed supplements, I'm working on entirely new material that I hope people will find just as appealing. Dean Shomshak

Re: Question for Dean Shomshak Now, about Lucifer. I did not think that nailing down many details about the Descending Hierarchy was a good idea; I wanted to leave a lot of freedom for GMs, without saying that any particular accoun of devildom was true. For instance, that's why MYW and UMY say that devils lie about their rank. Hey, even if the Abrahamic tradition there are multiple stories about the origin of devils. I want them all available for GMs to use. So, is there truly a supreme Devil or Satan in the Descending Hierarchy? There can be, if you want -- or not. There might be an archdevil named Lucifer -- or that might be a pseudonym of another archdevil, or even a title for whoever is most powerful at the moment. Vibora Bay uses the fall of Lucifer as part of Therakiel's background. I did not coordinate UMY and MYW with the Vibora Bay authors. Well, except for Steve Long, who as line developer could have asked me to include Lucifer, Therekiel and the Fall in MYW. He didn't, and I don't think that was absent-mindedness on his part. You'd have to ask him, but I suspect his motive was the same as mine: To keep these matters loose, with lots of room for GMs to tweak the setting. All the gods and spirits have their own memories of their mythic pasts. It would be normal for Therakiel to remember the Fall: That's his mythology. What matters is not whether it's true. I'd say it's that holy crap, there's a god-level entity on Earth who *somehow* escaped the Ban. (How? Why? More story possibilities here.) Dean Shomshak

Re: It was a dark and stormy thread At the start of my second Supermage campaign, the player of Artifex asked if the Master of the Cosmic Craft could now have a live-in girlfriend: Barbie. As in, a life-size Barbie that he animated. Artifex wasn't much for human connections that could be used against him. Well, how could I pass this up? A couple of adventures into the campaign, the PCs discovered that one of the people injured in the crossfire was a highly realistic, living plastic mannikin. In fact, there were thousands of them in the city and one on a plane flying away. They had all been human, but were victims of a sort of contagious Reality Vampirism. The US government's super-team was already transformed, which added to the problem. Eventually they traced the plague back to Barbie and Artifex. At which point, Artifex remembered that he was Barbie's slave and turned on the team. Barbie was absorbing all the stolen reality and becoming a nascent dimension lord; the PCs saw the Barbie World she was creating to replace the Earth. She claimed she was doing it for the good of humanity: No more sickness, old age, starvation or war. Just life in plastic, dolls playing out roles. The other PCs got through to Artifex, though, and he destroyed Barbie before the transformation of humanity was complete. With her destruction, all the transformed people became flesh and blood again. Yeah, it took Artifex a while to live down that particular oopsie. As for other creepy things that happened in the campaign? Later. Dean Shomshak

Re: Question for Dean Shomshak Before or after makes no difference. It's not a curse on specific individuals, it's a metaphysical brick wall with a teeny tiny hole in it. Above a certain power level, you can't squeeze through. DS

Re: Question for Dean Shomshak Mortality. Yahweh was born as Jezeray Illyescu's daughter Jordan. Cosmics only possiss gods, not mortals. Not much of a power vacuum, with Mephistopheles sitting on the throne of Heaven, using all his skill and power to make sure nobody realizes the substitution. Because that could be bad for him. Lucifer needs a more complicated answer. I may get to that later. Dean Shomshak

Re: It was a dark and stormy thread Hm. There are so many possibilities... Was it the mob of partly melted mannikins from Trinity (you know, the mock-up town that got blown up in the first nuke test) shuffling and lurching forward Night of the Living Dead style, strying to grapple the heroes in their deadly radioactive grip? Nah. That wasn't even my creepiest scene with mannikins. That was... for tomorrow. Dean Shomshak

Re: Question for Dean Shomshak Or maybe Thaumiel, the Two-Faced Lord of Good and Evil. In my own campaign, lots of cosmic entities made Yahweh their sock puppet, pulling him this way and that like dogs fighting over a juicy bone because he was such a *useful* sock puppet. He had like five minutes a day of free will. The final story arc in my second Supermage playtes campaign dealt with Yahweh's jailbreak from Elysium. Dean Shomshak

Re: Question for Dean Shomshak How "canonical" is USM? At this point, not very. Everything genuinely important got ported over to Ultimate Mystic and Mystic World. Also, don't be too sure that Yahweh had anything to do with creating the Ban. He may have been as surprised (and annoyed) by it as any other deity. The description of the Ban's rise is deliberately somewhat vague and the matter of causality and intentionality. If anyone is the prime mover for the Ban, I'd nominate Urizen as the cosmic entity with the strongest interest in promoting religious belief centered on doctrine rather than direct experience. At crucial moments, though, Urizen could have possessed Yahweh and made him say and do things to support the plan. Dean Shomshak

Re: Question for Dean Shomshak

Re: Question for Dean Shomshak Wow. It's been so many years (and campaigns, and writing projects) I'd forgotten about that earlier version of the Ban. Yeah, in USM the Ban was to explain (or explain away) how Christianity and Islam could ever replace the old polytheisms if the gods could appear at will and remind people they were real, and powerful. In the superheroic Age, this version of the Ban fell almost completely and gods were merely faced with the problem of being in another dimension. But then, USM also suggested writing up gods in the normal power range for superbeings, with only a few being significantly more powerful. (Which can be done. As an exercise, I wrote up a "starting PC" Thor on 400 points -- though it had to be early Marvel's version, with OIAID on damn near everything.) In this case, pantheons are no more a problem for the setting than any other small, super-powered race such as the Eternals and Inhumans for Marvel. Long's decision to make every god comparable to Doctor Destroyer made the problem sharper, and required the Ban to continue in some form. Dean Shomshak

Re: Evil Fanaticism is more complex than it may seem at first. Consider the young man who becomes a Jihadist suicide bomber. He's likely unemployed, seething with sexual frustration, and has been brainwashed for weeks using harangues and sleep deprivation (standard cult indoctination techniques). He is a tool in another's hand and, I think, deserves a measure of pity. The one who brainwashed him does not. This man is a fanatic, but also a hypocrite: You don't see *him* strapping on explosives, eager to become a martyr. But fanaticism and hypocrisy go together like the two sides of a coin. For the sake of The Cause, any lie, crime or blasphemy becomes acceptable and maybe even noble. The fanatic is above the laws and morals that govern lesser, less committed men. A law unto himself. The egotism is incredible, and incredibly evil. Dean Shomshak

Re: Evil The latest issue of Scientific American has an article that might be relevant to this discussion. It's called "The Wisdom of Psychopaths." Sometimes there is a fine line between hero and villain -- like the world-class brain surgeon who says that over the years, he has deliberately extirpated any trace of compassion for his patients. To keep a steady hand and perform surgery at that level of difficulty, he cannot afford any trace of emotion. Psychopaths are, provably, also better detectives than other people. They sense vulnerabilities -- such as having something to hide. But there's a spectrum. The traits of a psychopath (inflated self-esteem, empathy that can be turned off at will, superficial charm, etc.) can be useful at moderate degrees, but criminal and dangerous if they're turned up too high, or paired with other traits (such as a need for instant gratification). Dean Shomshak

Re: Question for Dean Shomshak Lord Liaden: The Congeries is definitely a Netzach plane. There is no law but Skarn's will. Thulkos superficially seems to maintain some natural laws, such as the tendency of matter to collect in Hula Hoop shapes. That is only an appearance, though. The central spheres of world-loops and star-loops could not exist under Thulkos' old system of natural law. So, modern Thulkos is a Netzach dimension as well. Keep in mind that the distinction between Netzach dimensions and Hod dimensions is partly political: Whether there is a dimension lord actively controlling the dimension. So, what if Skarn or Tyrannon die? The GM must decide what happens to their dimensions. If the Congeries and Thulkos continue operating by whatever rules, in whatever condition their masters last imposed, they become Hod dimensions. On the other hand, maybe the dimensions fall apart without their masters as keystones... which means Skarn and Tyrannon both have a whole lot of hostages to protect their lives. For a third option, maybe the system is so strong that if you kill the dimension's master, the plane sucks a new entity into the role of dimension lord. (Think of how Dormammu's flames of regency switched to Umar and Clea.) Plausibly, this would be the nearest and most powerful mystic to the slain lord. Like, the PC who just struck the death-blow, who is now the *new* dimension lord and bound by the same restrictions as Skarn or Tyrannon. Oops. (As GM, I would give the PC a brief window in which to use the vast Cosmic Pool "inherited" from the dead dimension lord to restructure Thulkos or the Congeries so the dimension could survive on its own, as a Hod plane. But it would be interesting to see the player's reaction.) Dean Shomshak

Re: Question for Dean Shomshak Scott: No, the entities from the Outer Planes can invade Earth at will. The Ban applies only to humanity's gods. As a setting element, the Ban exists because of the way Steve Long wanted gods to be written -- on thousands of points. See Tezcatlipoca for an example. If dozens (hundreds?) of such entities can be active on Champions-Earth any time they want, it dilutes the impact of human heroes and villains. It also raises the question of how Skarn, Tyrannon or other dimensional conquerors can pose a serious threat to Earth if dozens (hundreds?) of Tezcatlipocas can defend it and have an interest in doing so. (Which also explains why Mystic World says the supernatural powers of gods don't work against entities from the Outer Planes. The defense of Earth is humanity's responsibility. I forgot to mention it in the book, but all the "dodges" by which gods reduce their power to operate on Earth as PCs also remove that limitation. So, if Tyrannon invades Faerie, the god Ogoun can't fight him in any way but fisticuffs, but the god's mortal avatar, the hero Ogoun, can use all his powers effectively. So can the PC-level demigod Chrysaor because he's not a full god. Etc.) The Ban is sort of a brute-force solution, I admit, and I'm not entirely happy with it. I wouldn't criticize a GM who adopted some other solution to keep gods from dominating the setting. Dean Shomshak

Re: [Retro] COTN 5th edition proposal Saguenay? Oh. OH. See, the west coast of North America is even more of a patchwork than the East. Over hundreds of millions of years, North America has collected dozens of old volcanic islands, shreds of oceanic crust and scraps torn off other continents. In fact, everything from the coast inland to the Rockies consists of such "exotic terranes" (the geological term) that have been swept up and smooshed together. Until now it didn't occur to me to have the same thing happen metaphysically. Bits get torn off Earth or one of the Parterres, drift through the Astral Plan and merge with another dimension. Astral cysts accrete. Maybe even little Outer Planes stick to bigger dimensions and slowly merge -- a slow, natural version of what Skarn and Tyrannon do by force. Saguenay could be a North European culture that got erased from Earth by powerful magic or time paradox, but continued to exist as a pocket dimension. Maybe it's all Nihil's dream. Maybe it's a little Outer Plane that Greater Earth swept up. It's only begun to assimilate to Earth. By traveling back and forth, Nihil is speeding the process. At some point, the whole pocket world splices itself into Canada, BLOOP. The event is likely preceded by earthquakes, auroras, rains of toads and other natural and supernatural prodigies. The metaphysical shock might also crack open other prisons and portals. Preventing or easilng the merger could be a suitably epic challenge for heroes. Dean Shomshak

Re: [Retro] COTN 5th edition proposal Ah, thank you for the corrections. The program was from 20 years ago, and my memory is imperfect. I guess I conflated "encouraging immigration" with "finally allowing immigrants who aren't white." (Still a significant cultural shift that could be worth exploring. Really, every place is globalizing and a modern setting should robably reflect that.) I've been mistaken for British too. I assume it was for diction. Dean Shomshak

Re: [Retro] COTN 5th edition proposal Thinking of Australia from the distant US... Layer 1: Geography. Australia's population concentrates around the coast, with a truly vast, sparsely settled interior. I heard an urban legend that government satellates and/or seismographs picked up evidence that parties unknown tested a *nuke* in the Australian desert, with no witnesses. At least none who've come forward. In a super-world, this could be true. The Outback would be a great place for Master Villains to build their Secret Hideouts and build Doomsday Weapons to conquer the world. The Australian military probably has a special department tasked with watching all the supervillain bases that heroes have found and trashed over the years. Good places for origins, too. Layer Two: Aboriginal. The Dreamtime and all that. Layer Three: Early British settlement. Tall tale characters, who might have been real and established legacies for heroes and villains. Layer Four: Mature nation. I am interested in how Australia's foundation myths affect current attitudes to law and order, as it can shape the conduct of heroes and villains. I remember a documentary program noting Aussies' changing attitudes to accents. Used to be, anyone with social ambitions tried to talk like they went to Eton. Politicians don't do that anymore -- they want to seem authentically Aussie, not some pretender who's ashamed of where he was born. Mature Australia is as technologically advanced as anyplace in the world, and the superbeings should reflect that. Level Five: New Immigration. The same program said that after WW2, Australian leaders made a conscious push to encourage immigration from damn near anywhere, never mind about preserving Britishness, because the low population was seen as a military weakness. So Australia gained a lot of immigrants from Asia (and other places, I assume, but SE Asia is closest). Immigrants mean assimilation issues, and you can hardly expect all the cultural influence to be one way. So the idea of a blonde Australian ninja might not be that incongruous. A Shaolin branch temple in the mountains back of Sydney or Brisbane, why not? Maybe one of the monks is developing 'Roo Style Kung Fu. (Or Crocodile Style -- I hear those huge salties in the northern swamps are pretty amazing.) Dean Shomshak

Re: Things That Exist in a Superhero Universe Or to put it another way, aliens who are enough like humans that Earth, and humanity, are worth conquering. (Given that assumption, it's easy to justify any invasion. For humans, "Because it's there" was historically an adequate justification for attempts at conquest.) 'Course, this assumption isn't unique to superhero settings. Dean Shomshak

Re: [illo Test] What Tartarus Really Looks Like Good idea. Until I get the image insertion codes right, you can find Tartarus at http://s1227.photobucket.com/albums/ee439/DShomshak/ Dean Shomshak