DShomshak

This looks like one of Wile E. Coyote's designs--and looks just as certain to fail.

Oh, hey, and how could we forget Zelazny's Lord of Light and Creatures of Light and Darkness? In the former, another case of humans posing as gods using advanced technology and possibly artificial psionics. (It's been a while since I read it, but I remember one of the quasi-Hindu god-men saying that the new Agni [fire god] still has to use a flamethrower.) Plus demons who are actually the conquered energy-being indigenous inhabitants of the planet in question. Lord of Light was a big inspiration to me in designing the rival psionic aristocracies of planet Sard, mentioned upthread.
 
Creatures of Light and Darkness is harder to gauge. Some of the characters might be god-men enhanced/ascended through indistinguishable-from-magic technology. The Steel General is called out as once having been mortal. (And likewise his steed, which was once a horse.) But others...? They may, indeed, be gods.
 
Dean Shomshak

For instance, the psionic aristocracy of Marion Zimmer Bradley's "Darkover" series objectively has power that other Darkovans lack, which they maintain and strengthen through selective breeding. (With, in the planet's past, catastrophic results when the powers became too strong.) Though the distinction is not as clear-cut as the aristocrats like to believe: The lords and ladies of the Seven Domains are still all too human, which means there are by-blows and their further descendants -- an important plot point in at least one of the novels.
 
The psionic technology of Darkover also resulted in at least one relic from that catastrophic past that could evoke the psionic construct of a god that was worshiped by one of the planet's subcultures. An extremely dangerous divine/psionic construct, especially when being evoked by a group of people with, IIRC, pretty serious hang-ups of their own.
 
Dean Shomshak

Follow me for more gift ideas!
 

 

I would be very surprised if any comics creator follows fora for obscure roleplaying games. We may amuse ourselves, but I estimate the chance of affecting any existing title is approximately zero.
 
As for PCs having pets, in my Avant Guard campaign the hero Huntsman can summon a demon horse named Brimstone that carries him through the air. Written up as a Power, Huntsman is sure it's just a construct of magical energy... but wow, Brimstone, sure manages to look smug when women coo over him, pet him and try to feed him. Maybe Huntsman is projecting.
 
Dean Shomshak

I would be very surprised if any comics creator follows fora for obscure roleplaying games. We may amuse ourselves, but I estimate the chance of affecting any existing title is approximately zero.
 
As for PCs having pets, in my Avant Guard campaign the hero Huntsman can summon a demon horse named Brimstone that carries him through the air. Written up as a Power, Huntsman is sure it's just a construct of magical energy... but wow, Brimstone, sure manages to look smug when women coo over him, pet him and try to feed him. Maybe Huntsman is projecting.
 
Dean Shomshak

We stopped buying wrapping paper decades ago. We still have at least a half-dozen rolls. Maybe we'll start on them when we run out of wrapping paper re-used from past years. I figure our stock should last up to my neices' grandchildren.
 
We have all the lights we need, too. I still put up the string of lights around the door that my parents bought for their fist Christmas, at least 70 years ago. Most of the sockets still work.
 
Ornaments? HAHAHAHAHA. In addition to glass balls, strings of beads, little plastic musical instruments, and other ornaments that are older than I am, we have Christmas balls I made decades ago with Styrofoam balls covered in colorful fabric or silky thread, ribbon, beads and jewelry findings, and all the ornaments my mother received as presents when she taught preschool. We have enough for at least 3 trees.
 
We suck as consumers. But tradition? We've got tradition in spades.
 
Dean Shomshak

A nice Thanksgiving yesterday, with family. Today is Eat Leftovers Day. Also Stay Home And Don't Buy Anything Day, for I am a traitor to the American way of life.
 
Dean Shomshak
Also: So much delicious pie...
 
Dean Shomshak

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the first broadcast of Dr Who.

This is a cute game.  I refuse to do the obvious, and that snout's more gator than croc anyway, so:
 
Florida Man - The product of a botched supersoldier program using retroviral treatments to empower "volunteers" with animalistic capabilities, Florida Man is largely amnesiac about his previous life (much like fellow test subject the Mighty Bullfrog).  He's acted a shades-of-gray hero or antihero (and occasionally a villainous dupe) over the last few years as he seeks to learn more about himself and the scientists who transformed him.  As you might expect, he has superhuman strength and durability, his jaws that can bite through a steel I-beam, and can hold his breath for absurd periods of time, see in the dark, and manage some remarkable short-term bursts of speed for a brick archetype.  His blood also contains powerful antiviral and antibiotic properties and for unknown reasons doesn't trigger immune responses in most humans, making transfusions a viable cure for many infections as well as promoting regenerative healing - with only the smallest risk of passing along his "condition" and creating a new gator-human hybrid with scrambled memories.  Honest, it's probably perfectly safe.  Don't ask about She-Gator.
 
Florida Man is quick to take offense when mistaken for anything even vaguely Egyptian, and insists he's a US citizen who was born in Tampa (he thinks...) despite lack of proper ID.  Other things that annoy him are luggage jokes, asking him if he eats his meat raw ("Gross, I don't even like sushi."), and people assuming he's an idiot.  His altered physique still hasn't managed to completely obliterate that Floridian accent, although he hisses more than he used to.  He does not, in fact, like biting people at all ("You all taste terrible.  What, do you think I don't have taste buds?") and usually sticks to chomping inanimate objects as a show of force.  Cold temperatures (below freezing) make him increasingly torpid, and he'll eventually lapse into complete inactivity if exposed for long enough.  He also doesn't like salt water much, although he's not as sensitive to it as actual alligators are.
 
Those are loose swimming trunks he's wearing, not some weird foreign skirt, and lots of supers wear utility belts.  How else is he supposed to keep his phone dry?  The boots are custom jobs designed to handle his mass and amphibian lifestyle, and the weighted wristbands add a little something extra to his punches.  He might bundle up in the largest trenchcoat he can find if trying to go incognito or if it's cold out, which works about as badly as you'd expect.  If he's working with technically-minded allies they'll usually try to find him a holo-projector disguise gadget and/or some kind of personal heating field as needed, but he tends to break such things pretty quickly during brawls.

The only case where I ported a character directly from other media into my Champions game was in my early "Seattle Sentinels" campaigns, in which the heroes' police xcontact was a captain named Dietrich. He was Lieutenant Dietrich from Barney Miller, promoted and moved to the other side of the country. At least, that's how I played him.
 
While I've read lots of comic books (mostly Bronze Age; the Iron Age '90s eventually bored me into quitting everything but Astro City), I have never ported characters directly from a comic book into my game, or copied a plot from anywhere. Types and tropes, yes, but I have tried to learn from rather than copy.
 
Like, my dimensional conqueror Skarn the Shaper happened because I knew my Dr. Strange-inspired "Keystone Konjurors" campaign needed a Big Bad filling the same role as the Dread Dormammu -- but I gave Skarn quite a different origin and personality. His home, the Congeries, is very much a "Dark Dimension" homage, though.
 
Also, I pulled various demons and other creatures from mythology and occult lore, but translating them into something gameable usually takes a fair bit of, shall we say, creative re-interpretation or extending of source material.
 
My vampires show a fair bit of resemblance to those in Vampire: the Masquerade, but that's fair because VtM draws a wide net through vampire pop culture. No background mythology about Caine (the Bible guy but spelled with a final E to be more pretentious), Antediluvians, the Great Jyhad, blah blah blah. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt and found it didn't fit.
 
Dean Shomshak

The only case where I ported a character directly from other media into my Champions game was in my early "Seattle Sentinels" campaigns, in which the heroes' police xcontact was a captain named Dietrich. He was Lieutenant Dietrich from Barney Miller, promoted and moved to the other side of the country. At least, that's how I played him.
 
While I've read lots of comic books (mostly Bronze Age; the Iron Age '90s eventually bored me into quitting everything but Astro City), I have never ported characters directly from a comic book into my game, or copied a plot from anywhere. Types and tropes, yes, but I have tried to learn from rather than copy.
 
Like, my dimensional conqueror Skarn the Shaper happened because I knew my Dr. Strange-inspired "Keystone Konjurors" campaign needed a Big Bad filling the same role as the Dread Dormammu -- but I gave Skarn quite a different origin and personality. His home, the Congeries, is very much a "Dark Dimension" homage, though.
 
Also, I pulled various demons and other creatures from mythology and occult lore, but translating them into something gameable usually takes a fair bit of, shall we say, creative re-interpretation or extending of source material.
 
My vampires show a fair bit of resemblance to those in Vampire: the Masquerade, but that's fair because VtM draws a wide net through vampire pop culture. No background mythology about Caine (the Bible guy but spelled with a final E to be more pretentious), Antediluvians, the Great Jyhad, blah blah blah. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt and found it didn't fit.
 
Dean Shomshak

Duke, you raised your kids right.
 
Dean Shomshak

Trolling the fanbases ....
 

This is a chilling, terrifying echo to the American present from the American past.
 
 

This item just turned up in my internet front page newsfeed. A secret library walled away decades (centuries?) ago should be good for a Fantasy scenario or two. Plus it's in Tibet, for extra mystical glamor.
 
Unveiling the Unseen: 84,000 Unread Manuscripts Discovered at Monastery (msn.com)
 
Dean Shomshak

A recent article in The Economist pointed out that several developing South and East Asian countries are among the most rapidly 'aging,' demographically... without having first attained the degree of affluence enjoyed by, say, Japan. This will make supporting a large elder population even more difficult.
 
One solution might be to import labor. In a few decades, countries that are now freaking out about unplanned immigration from the Middle East and Africa may be actively courting such immigrants as a supplemental labor force, because those regions are the demographically 'youngest.' As a lover of irony, I find some piquance in this.
 
Dean Shomshak

Winners of the 2023 Natural Landscape Photography Awards
 
I don't understand the awards system but it hardly matters for this thread.