DShomshak

Still my preferred word processing system...
 

 
Dean Shomshak

Standard Brother Bone plot (with apologizes to the very late Hershel Gordon Lewis).
 
Brother Bone, using illusions to disguise himself, opens a health resort of the rich and important. The person goes there for a couple of months then comes back seemingly healthy and fit. Then they start doing odd things with their fortune.
 
They actually died at the resort but was made into a zombie who can't do anything except what Brother Bone orders. To make matters worse, the zombie is covered by illusions and anti-rot magic so his true nature can go unnoticed. Eventually when Brother Bone sees no use for him, the zombie dissapeared (presumably to instantly rot to dust).
 
What Brother Bone needs the victim for is up to the GM, but it should be noted that Bone might like the sheen of gold and gems, he doesn't actually need money. But if the zombie can convince more people to visit his resort of health...
 
 

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

If you should go skating
On the thin ice of modern life
Dragging behind you the silent reproach
Of a million tear-stained eyes
Don't be surprised when a crack in the ice
Appears under your feet.
You slip out of your depth and out of your mind
With your fear flowing out behind you
As you claw the thin ice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She’s allegedly dating Travis Kelce and is encouraging people to register to vote in high population areas. They’ll fixate on less.
 
 Oh and she’s an outspoken ally of LGBTQ groups and has been moving away from her historically apolitical positions to support progressive policies more openly. I figure they thought she was apolitical because she was secretly endorsing GOP positions, and there’s a sense of betrayal. 
 
People really really care what popular performers think about public policy and politics these days, so they’ve apparently tagged her as an adversary. 

Actually, it's a short read.  The first 2 paragraphs:
 
 
I mean, they try SO HARD to suppress voting rights, then this stupid singer-chick disrupts their plans???  HOW DARE SHE?  DOES SHE KNOW WHO WE ARE??????

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

Yes please

I would buy it, and I would find a way to use them.

Hard to answer.
 
On the one hand, I did like the original, but in general I don't use published characters: it's enough work to tweak them so they dit my game that I find it easier just to make new characters.
 
However, I _did_ like the original, and used a _lot_ of ideas and background from it.
 
So if the question is rephrased as "would I buy it?,"  then yes; no question, if it is the same sort of book as the original.
 
 

Me? I don't have a campaign per say. But I'll say yes. I would love to see an expanded The Great Beast, especially what his actual beast form looks like (a humanoid variation of the biblical Great Beast maybe, complete with multiple heads?). And remember my tribute to Crongberg in the Create a Villain thread ("The New Flesh"). I'm sure the Think Tank needs to be out there under It's new name. I would love to see Brother Bone again, this time as a semi-indpendant necromancer "healer".

Hmm... I'm actually unsure how to respond. On the one hand, I really like Creatures of the Night. I used a number of characters and concepts from the book, either as written or adapted to fit with other things. Some of the things you updated for later publication, I preferred and stuck with the earlier versions. Overall I found it interesting, enjoyable, useful, and sometimes even informative.
 
On the other hand, if it's essentially the same characters with game stats for later editions, I really wouldn't be interested in buying it. I do quite well with what I have. This new book would have to have substantial changes to the capabilities and/or backgrounds/personalities of the characters, or a significant number of new characters, for me to want to invest in it. I might still buy it to support you and Hero Games if I had the disposable income, but my budget is likely to be tight for a while.

Definitely used the earlier versions. I mostly used the Devil's Advocates, but the other characters got used on occasion either directly or as background setting. I won't lie though. I never used Lady Twilight. To me, she was the least interesting character in the book. The Mind Master Complex, Dr. Black, and Hell Rider all got major stories in our campaign. I also plan to use The Totems, but haven't introduced them yet.

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

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