DShomshak

Now I wonder who held which view... Dean Shomshak

SORCERERS Brick: 3 characters; 9% Energy Projector: 13 characters; 39% Martial Artist: 2 characters; 6% Mentalist: 10 characters; 30% Other: 4 characters; 12% Complex: 13 characters; 39% Male: 22 characters; 67% Female: 11 characters; 33% Other: -- TOTAL: 33 characters The rarity of bricks is expected and acceptable: A spellcasting brick can be an interesting change of pace, but it isn't a normal part of the archetype. (Of the three, the Xhadow Queen turns into a dragon, Golem uses magic to possess and animate statues, and Stingray gave herself permanent enchantments as one of those change-of-pace characters. But several of the complex characters include super-strength in the package, such as Shadow Destroyer and Skarn.) Speaking of complex characters, some of them are partial exceptions to the rule of ignoring VPPs -- because a big VPP is almost all they have. The two martial artists are sort of oddball cases too. Doctor Yin Wu has actual training in martial arts; and while Asia entangles martial arts and magic, they are not explicitly joined here. Martial Enemies combines them more tightly. Chatoyant knows only one spell, by which she projects her astral body in the form of a jaguar whose only mode of attack is HTH. Energy Projector, Mentalist, and hard-to-classify Other sounds about right for the archetypal sorcerer. And there's plenty of hooks on which to hang origins for other sorcerer characters. Dean Shomshak

Moving along... CYBORGS: Brick: 1 character; 14% Energy Projector: 7 characters; 78% Martial Artist: 3 characters; 43% Mentalist: -- Other: 1 character (17%) Complex: 1 character: 17% Male: 7 characters; 78% Female: 2 characters; 22% Other: -- TOTAL: 9 characters As discussed before, CV is short on cyborg villains, even when I extend the category from tech to people with magical bits added. But I'm still surprised at so few bricks and so many energy projectors -- even discounting Fiacho and Drago, whose ranged attacks come from weapons rather than their body modifications. If anyone's interested, here's the full allotment: Interface (brick, energy projector) Warcry (energy projector) Silver Hand (martial artist, other) Fiacho (energy projector, martial artist) Drago (energy projector, martial artist) Cairngorm (energy projector, though you could make a case for "other" in addition) Engineer (complex) Evil Eye (energy projector) Howler (energy projector) Another thing: No repeat/shared origins. Well, maybe. ARGENT rebuilt Interface; Soviet scientists rebuilt Drago; but those scientists probably worked in Larissagrad (see CHAMPIONS Universe), which now is part of ARGENT. And while Fiacho's backstory doesn't say where or who surgically altered him, is it implausible that Danar Nicole knew about Larissagrad? Cairngorm, Engineer, and Howler owe their powers to unique events, but the others could be part of shared origins. In addition to ARGENT/Larissagrad, the Warlord has the resources to create other super-cyborgs. Doctpor Yin Wu can probably make other magical prosthetics. Archimago, too -- and the only reason there wouldn't also be an Archimago-made magical hand out there, waiting for the person who will use it and be forced to work with Evil Eye, is that Doctor Yin Wu already made one. Too bad; it would be nice to have Archie doing a Vecna homage. The Engineer might turn people into cyborgs; well, put human brains in robot bodies as a way to liberate people from icky meat. And she might even find volunteers. If I've learned one thing from the internet, it's that there's a fetish community for *everything.* Dean Shomshak

I heard Pres. Zelenskyy's speech to Congress yesterday. I thought it was quite good: professional, well constructed. Related: the Economist "World in 2023" special issue included a couple perspectives on Russia's decay that I hadn't thought of. First: Putin has abandoned the basic principle of statecraft, that the state should try to maintain a monopoly on the use of organized violence. In using the Wagner Group and the militia of his Chchen stooge (named Kadyrov, IIRC) he's fostered warlords. This never ends well for the state. Second, in claiming to annex Ukrainian provinces before he has real control over all the territory, Putin has made all of Russia's borders potentially fluid and open to dispute. He wants to change borders by force; other countries can do the same right back, or restive populations within Russia might dispute their own inclusion in the Russian Federation. Say, Chechnya and Dagestan, which tried rebelling not so long ago. Having abandoned the legality of fixed borders, can Russia hold itself together by raw force alone? The authors assess Russia as a failing state. It is even thinkable that in a few years it may cease to be a state at all. Dean Shomshak

Thorn was among at least a dozen characters I thought were iffy between Mutant and Weird Science; to be rigorous, I could have restricted the Mutant category to characters who actually had the Distinctive Feature, "Mutant." But then what of cases like Medusa of PSI, who is called out as having a latent mutation, but it wasn't strong enough to give her powers or (still) be detectable by "Mutant Detectors"? So I ended up putting characters in one category or another based on how their descriptions seemed shaded. Thorn's description explicitly mentions plant DNA and that it "altered his cellular structure," so I filed him as a mutate. But I am very much trying to impose order on chaotic data and create categories that are more distinct than the characters I place in them. I also admit to a personal Psychological Complication (Uncommon, Strong): I intensely dislike "Distinctive Features: Mutant" and the attendant handy-dandy "Mutant Detector." Especially since it creates a binary distinction out of a condition that entries such as Medusa says is a spectrum. So I am not inclined to treat the Distinctive Feature as the final word. For Mutants/Mutates and Weird Science, though, I don't think moving characters back and forth would alter the overall spread very much. Maybe a few less Martial Artists and Mentalists in Mutants (goodbye Medusa and Pantera, for instance) and placing them in Weird Science. But in neither class of characters do any power types seem bizarrely out of proportion. ADDENDUM: And what is the mutant detector detecting in a "natural" mutant, that isn't there in someone given powers be, say, Teleios, or the latent mutation strengthened by the Psi Serum? I know, I know, it's really all magic. But to me it seems not well thought out. It pushes my willing suspension of disbelief too far. Dean Shomshak

WEIRD SCIENCE Brick: 16 characters; 30% Energy Projector: 22 characters; 41% Martial Artist: 5 characters; 9% Mentalist: 5 characters; 9% Other: 10 characters; 19% Complex: 2 characters; 4% Male: 45 characters; 83% Female: 9 characters; 17% Other: -- TOTAL: 54 characters Nothing here surprises me. Dean Shomshak Dean Shomshak

Yes, I did forget Stingray: I just had her down as a sorcerer, but her super-strength, bio-electric powers, and inky cloud are indeed permanent enchantments. So add one more character, a brick/energy projector. The table is now corrected. Eclipsar's origin story is not clear about the relation between Lucia Esquivel and the force from the Anti-Inti, but since there's so little of her left and she has total, inherent Life Support, I classified her as a supernatural being. She's just a Lucia-shaped vessel for a force of darkness and destruction. Dean Shomshak

Out of curiosity, which ones? I know only that George H. W. Bush went to Yale. Dean Shomshak

ENCHANTMENT EDIT: Corrected for the addition of Stingray (see LL's post) Brick: 910 characters; 42% Energy Projector: 1011 characters; 46% Martial Artis: 4 characters; 17% Mentalist: 1 character; 4% Other: 3 characters; 12% Complex: 1 character; 4% Male: 22 characters; 92% Female: 12 character; 8% Other: -- TOTAL: 2324 characters Harpy is the sole female character. EDIT: And Stingray, but the number of female characters is still strangely low. Vesper is the sole mentalist, for his power to call and control bats. Necrull is the sole complex character. He's got a Blast, a Drain, Mental Paralysis, and high end Shape Shift, even before you get to his Power mimicry. The relatively high number of energy projectors is misleading: Six of them are the Crowns of Krim, whose energy Powers all come from Foci. I would classify them only as Weapon users, except they also have superhuman Charactristics that are not bought through a Focus, and so I infer are permanent enchantments. This enables Dark Seraph, Bloodstone and Temblor to be bricks as well as energy projectors. White Wolf and Black Fang illustrate how a single origin -- werewolf -- can be spun to give characters a different emphasis. WW is a brick, though still very fast; BF is emphatically a martial artist, though superhumanly strong. I presume that Firewing's transformation was magical, though with Malva one gets into Clarke's Law territory. I also presume that Shadowdragon's power over darkness is magical, since it seems that something supernatural is using him to enter the mortal world. All in all, CV does a good job showing the diverse possibilities for sources of empowering enchantments: pacts, curses, potions, artifacts and magical places, deliberate enchantment by a sorcerer, etc. But the extreme lack of female characters seems odd. Dean Shomshak

Incidentally, I created one robot mentalist for my "Avant Guard" campaign, called the Autocrat. Its/his predecessor was a third-tier gadget villain called Nevermind, who invented a "hypno-ray." The robot hive-mind called the Monad, in one of its sneakier plots, captured Nevermind and built an improved hypno-ray with various other weapons into a battlesuit worn by an android that was given an edited version of Nevermind's memories. The Autocrat then began recruiting third-tier super-criminals and giving them battlesuits as a power-up, forming a villain team... not telling them the suits were Monad tech, designed tpo slowly subvert their will and make them the Monad's obedient slaves. But the Autocrat didn't know this either, or that it was an android... Everyone was very upset when the PCs presented them with the truth. The Autocrat's recruits joined the heroes in destroying the android, but what the Monad built once it can build again. Dean Shomshak

As many as the GM wants, of course! But I would prefer just one, to keep a distinctive style. Example: Fencing. If you've seen The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, remember the scene where Tom Baker brings the statue of Kali to life as a six-armed golem armed with swords, fighting Sinbad's whole crew at once? Or if a big stone statue seems like it ought to have 40+ STR, how about a cockpunk robot fencer with a rapier, or Darth Maul's two-bladed lightsaber? But this classification does not require actual Martial Arts as a game mechanic. It just means the character principally fights HTH but doesn't depend on raw STR for damage. Like, say, an ungodly fast robot -- hey, let's add the Kali golem's six arms, just for fun -- but each hand delivers a powerful electrical shock when it hits. Dunno if the CU has any technologists who would build anything so fanciful, but I could see Zorran the /Artificer building magitech constructs like this. ADDENDUM: Ah! Now I know. Doctor Crandall Herzog, later to become the Overbrain. He used to supply technical services to various criminal and terrorist groups and secret government programs. If somebody paid him to build robot martial artists, he'd shrug, take their money, and do it. I dare say he was a bit wackadoodle even before becoming a disembodied brain. Dean Shomshak

Boebert maybe, but I suspect Greene is only playing dumb. What clinched it for me was the "peach tree dishes." To me that sounds too on the nose, too calculated a mistake. An impersonation of ignorance and stupidity. And right on cue, mainstream media pounced on her and mocked her for it... and right on cue, the Republican base sent Greene more gobs of money. I am told she's the GOP's top fundraiser. Fear Marjorie Taylor Greene. If I'm right, she has the chops to make it into the ruling junta of Fascist America, and maybe even win the Game of Thrones. Playing dumb can be a powerful gambit. Dean Shomshak

ROBOTS/CONSTRUCTS Brick: 3 characters; 37% Energy Projector: 4 characters; 50% Martial Artist: -- Mentalist: -- Other: 1 character; 12% Complex: 2 characters; 25% Male: -- Female: 3 characters; 37% Other: 5 characters; 62% TOTAL: 8 characters As noted before, I include Corundum and Oubliette here, though I don't deny the argument to file them under Supernatural Beings -- in which case there's only 6 characters. The strangest thing is that 3 characters (Mechana, Corundum, and Oubliette) are presented as at least superficially female, but Steve Long did not make the others "default male." He rigorously uses "it" as their pronoun. I am not sure what this means, but if anything. Both of the complex characters, Mechanon and AVAR-7, would be classified as bricks and energy projectors if they did not have other major powers as well. No surprise, really, these are the most obviously "mechanical" types of Powers. Mechanon is the only mentalist (his machine control suite). No martial artists, unless you count AVAR-7's "phase tough" attack, which I am inclined to file under "other." The number of characters is too small to assign much significance to the omissions, but if you want to make a robot villain who feels a little different, a robot martial artist or mentalist might be a starting point. Dean Shomshak

MUTANTS/MUTATES: Brick: 12 characters; 18% Energy Projector: 23 characters; 35% Martial Artist: 13 characters; 20% Mentalist: 18 characters; 28% Other: 7 characters; 11% Complex: 2 characters; 3% Male: 44 characters; 68% Female: 21 characters; 31% Other: 1 character; 2% TOTAL: 65 characters Masquerade is the one nonbinary character. Nothing here surprised me. It seems esthetically right to me (as well as consistent with Marvel mutant portrayals) that mutants should have focused powersets: the only two complex characters are the Rogue expy Eclipse and the mutate Thorn ("plant powers" can cover a lot). Maybe I expected more bricks, but I wouldn't call the proportion strangely low. Mutant mentalists have long been a thing in SF, so the relatively high proportion seems apt. It would probably be even higher if more members of PSI had made the cut to CV2. Dean Shomshak

Gimmicky. Avoid, unless you're building the setting around it -- like, these weapons or other artifacts are central elements of the setting, and it's known that yeah, people have had to do this before to obtain the Big McGuffin. Potentially interesting, especially if you connect this somehow to the "world is broken" premise you alluded to before. Whoever or whatever broke the world, however it happened, leaves the world open to these supernatural influences. Also privides an "endgame" in which the PCs can fix what was broken. Dean Shomshak

SUPERNATURAL BEINGS: Brick: 9 characters; 30% Energy Projector: 10 characters; 33% Martial Artist: 2 characters; 7% Mentalist: 6 characters; 20% Other: 6 characters; 20% Complex: 9 characters; 30% Male: 23 characters; 77% Female: 7 characters; 23% Other: — TOTAL: 30 characters The first thing I notice is the prevalence of complex characters. This is partly because supernatural creatures can have lots of different powers (and Powers), and partly because supernaturals are heavily represented among Master Villains who tend not to be one-trick ponies. But some of them could be pruned back to two power classes if you decide that some of their Powers shouldn’t count as major aspects. For instance, Takofanes is mostly a ranged combatant, with his undead horde Summoning as a major Other power, but he has a pretty big Mental Blast, Undead Command, and his Power of Command, which I think qualify him as a mentalist. But your mileage may vary. Arguments can also be made regarding Skarn and Tyrannon. OTOH I call Tezcatlipoca a Brick/Other (for his Drains and his battlefield control Darkness), but he I wouldn’t argue if you called him Complex for having a few mental powers and his Soul Strike (which could qualify as a Martial Artist Power). I've waffled over other characters, too. Deadman Walkin’ and Samhain are the only characters I classed as martial artists: DW for his knife use (but not quite being a brick), Sammy for his weird NND antlers. If someone wants to create a supernatural villain with an unusual feel, a non-brick unranged combatant might be a good place to start. Dean Shomshak

Another way to classify the CV characters is by their powers. This sometimes gets *more* subjective than origin types, because there are judgment calls about the boundaries of power types and whether a given power is really important to a character. But again, some trends might become visible. * MENTALISTS are the most objectively definable, because Mental Powers are a distinct and definite set. You have them or you don’t. But I also include a few Powers such as Images, if the utility for the character is to modify another character’s actions through deceit. * BRICKS, at least, are straightforward. Mostly. The question is how much Strength a character needs to be classified as a brick. I decided to make 40 STR the cutoff. Many characters have 30 STR just because it’s really useful to have at least 30 STR (especially in past editions with Figured Characteristics). But in a Superheroic game, a 6d6 punch is not a meaningful attack. So I insist on a minimum of 40. * ENERGY PROJECTORS are blurrier, though. Anyone who principally attacks at range with non-Mental Powers is probably an Energy Projector. But if a character emphasizes ranged Drains, Entangles, Transforms, Change Environment, and other attacks that are more, hm, “battlefield control” than causing direct harm, I might file them under “Other” instead of (or in addition to) Energy Projector. But I repeat, this is *very* subjective. * MARTIAL ARTISTS also get blurry around the edges. It’s for more than characters who use the Martial Arts mechanic: I also include many characters who emphasize nonranged attacks whose damage is not primarily due to Strength, such as a person with a shock-stick or a blade. But some unranged attacks are strange enough that I call these “Other” as well, such as characters with Damage Shield or stunning Phase Touches. I can’t pretend that these allocations are all that objective, either. * OTHER accounts for Powers that push the boundaries of the big four categories further than I like, or characters that emphasize Powers such as movement or Shape Shift that aren’t directly used to cause harm. For instance, Vixen’s chief power is her intangibility: She has Martial Arts, but her damage classes are too low for this to be a major part of the character. * COMPLEX characters fit in three or more categories. For instance, Tartarus is principally a brick but he also has Hellfire Blasts and some Mental Powers. Whenever possible, though, I try to pare characters down to their top two classes. A WORD ABOUT POWER POOLS: I generally ignore them in classifying characters, because in most cases they would automatically make characters Complex. I stick to the Powers listed on the character sheet as always usable. So, Dr. Destroyer gets classified as a Brick and Enerrgy Projector — not because he couldn’t produce Mental Powers or other stuff from his whacking great VPP, but he won’t always do so. Or Dr Yin Wu gets filed under Martial Artist (his principle attack mode) and Other (Summoning his army of monsters), even though the sample Powers for his VPP include ranged attacks that could make him an Energy Projector. The Power Class breakdown works out like this: Brick: 76 characters; 26% Energy Projector: 139 characters; 48% Martial Artist: 53 characters; 18% Mentalist: 45 characters; 15% Other: 39 characters; 13% (but many of these could arguably be filed as Energy Projectors or Martial Artists) Complex: 30 characters; 10% Nothing here seems noteworthy. The analysis gets more interesting, IMO, when you *intersect* the two classifying methods to find, say, the Power breakdown for Supernatural Beings or the Origin breakdown for bricks. Forthcoming. Dean Shomshak

Back from the weekend's gaming! One consequence of this project was that I had to actually *read* all the villains' origin stories. And yes, many of them were a bit repetitive. However, I won't blame Steve Long for that because I don't know how many characters he created specifically for those three books. Perhaps oddly, considering I tend to go into my villains' histories and personalities more than perhaps many readers care, I am completely okay with a basic "Person gets powers and becomes a criminal." It probably says something unpleasant about me, but I find it *entirely plausible* that many, perhaps a majority, of people would become criminals if they suddenly found they could do whatever they wanted and almost nobody could stop them. Hummingbird is my favorite, paradigmatic case for this: Her telepathic and mind control powers appeared when she was a teenager, and she did what most teenagers would do with such invasive powers. Or at least as teenagers are often portrayed. It's the *heroes* who I think need greater care in explaining why they risk their lives to fight the villains. But that is another topic, worthy of its own thread. I am more dissatisfied with the sheer repetition of origin stories. Yet another explosion in the lab or exposure to toxic waste... Sure, they're classics, but for me they slide from "trope" to "tiresome" when I see them all together. I am sure it doesn't feel that way to players in actual games since, as Chris Taylor observes, the players often don't care. But it's also why I atgtempted the "Shared Origins" project: origins that had a *reason* to happen over and over again. Anyway, I hope I soon have time to move on to the next stage of analysis. Honest, I do have something. I hope other people find it interesting. Dean Shomshak

Getting more into cultural context and commentary, the latest On the Media examines the politics of nostalgia. MAGA and various authoritarians mentioned, of course, as they use myths of "the good old days" and threats to those supposed ancient virtues to inflame the gullible. Funniest part, though, comes at the end in which a journalist describes his search down the annals of history to show that the lamentations of the present -- from the incipient collapse of democracy to political correctness killing comedy -- are just the latest chorus of very old refrains. (The oldest of course being "Kids these days," which even Socrates bewailed.) https://waaa.wnyc.org/otm/otm121622_cms1280290_pod.mp3/otm121622_cms1280290_pod.mp3_ywr3ahjkcgo_7318511a6160ff68056b0a7e85c808c8_49602498.mp3?awCollectionId=398&awEpisodeId=1280290&sc=siteplayer&aw_0_1st.playerid=siteplayer&hash_redirect=1&x-total-bytes=49602498&x-ais-classified=streaming&listeningSessionID=0CD_382_352__443e4caba02d74c1e2025ae0e3eecfa5c4bbe85b Dean Shomshak

The limits of cyborgs: I won't argue that the boundaries have to be exactly where I drew them. This is also, btw, relevant for the Robot/Construct category, and for the same reason: I decided to privilege the quality of "builtness" aspect over the "tech or magic" aspect. But I do see the argument the other way. In which case the two CU characters I classified as magical constructs -- Corundum and Oubliette -- become supernatural beings, while, yes, Cairngorm and Evil Eye are filed under Enchanted. The enchantments just happen to be concentrated in artificial and physically distinct bits that are at least theoretically separable. (And I might have classified Tak as a magical cyborg for the Dragon Crown, except I did try to keep power origin categories down to 2 -- not counting Mastermind or Alien -- by focusing on the most important powers. And the Dragon Crown, for all its presumed importance as one of the Crowns of Krim, doesn't do more than Aid mgic that is already ridiculously powerful. And the Scepter of the Undying King is just a special effect, since it can't be taken from Tak even in principle. So I just file Tak under Supernatural Being, Sorcerer and Mastermind. YMMV.) Oubliette, btw, was one of the more difficult choices for me. Corundum's entry clearly calls "her" a golem. But Oubliette, though called out as an artificial being, seems more like a spirit in many ways. Conversely, suppose Takofanes calls up a few damned souls, shreds them and melts the tatters into a new demon that will follow all the rules for demons from then on, including the potential to be Summoned? Built, in a sense, but in that case I think I'd file the character as a Supernatural Being. <shrug> Edge cases, man. Though one can sometimes generate interesting characters specifically by seeking edge cases. Incidentally, cyborgs -- whether one insists on pure tech or not -- are another case where the CV books seem oddly deficient. I remember Marvel having entire teams of bionic villains; and there were quite a few pre-5th ed Champions villains to draw upon, IIRC. Dean Shomshak PS: Thanks for the kind wishes, my eyes feel much better now, thanks to antibiotics.

Oops, bad timing. Eyes burning; think it's pinkeye; will try to get to Urgent Care to see if there's anything I can do that I'm not doing already. I'll be out at least a day, so tangent away until theDean Shomshak

I think CLOWN was a fundamentally bad idea. One prankster villain, okay, it's a classic type. A whole team? With enough points lavished on them to make them quite likely to win confrontations, at least in the old 250-character point days? No, I don't think so. My old Seattle Sentinels had a few prankster villains, but I used them sparingly. (They also picked on other villains, which allowed the players a little schadenfreude.) The Fellowship of Fear was a whole team designed as comic relief, but part of the joke was that they took themselves utterly seriously and did not realize how ridiculous and inept they were. UNICoRN, a fill-in campaign of low-power heroes, was often farcical with villains such as Commander Coleoptera (and his Arthrozoid Army) in the adventure, "They Cloned Quisling's Brain!" but everybody knew that going in. And the Keystone Konjurors campaigns were meant to be serious; the slapstick was the fault of the players making characters with Activation Rolls and big Side Effects. Anyway, when people are done with other discussions I'll move on to the next stage of the analysis. But don't feel pressured; I'm enjoying this, too. Dean Shomshak

When the SCOTUS overturned Roe v Wade six months ago, anti-abortion forces seemed to have won. No federal protection for abortion, trigger laws taking effect in many states, and Republican legislatures ready to pass additional bans. But now? Thie situation is far less clear. The fight will surely be long and fierce, but abortion rights advocates have found strategies and won some victories... sometimes using the very words conservatives placed into state constitutions. The Unexpected Ways the Left is Winning in the Abortion Fight - The New York Times (nytimes.com) Dean Shomshak

It sounds like there are two issues here. Birth control is one. The other is parental sovereignty over children. The goal in this suit may be to establish that minors cannot interact with government without their parents' permission as it is to erode rights to contraception, as such. Dean Shomshak

That would explain his omission, yes. I forgot which edition Champions Beyond was. As for robots: The man with the magic memory strikes again! I'm a bit ashamed of not remembering Life Model Decoys, because they were an important, ongoing element. Though I don't think I ever read any issues in which they appeared, OHOTMU tells me there was even a LMD incarnation of the Zodiac villain team, and of course they were brought back as central to a season of Agents of Shield on TV. And the Destroyer played a big role in what was IMO one of the best story arcs of Walt Simonson's superb run on Thor. At the other extreme... Ultimo? I never heard of Ultimo before this. Its appearances must have been before I started reading comics. Looking through my OHOTMUs, the only entry I found was in the Appendix to the 1983 edition, so I don't feel bad about missing that one. Once again, I am in awe of your encyclopedic knowledge! Dean Shomshak