DShomshak

Well, if I get sniped on my planned department, I can fall back on Runic Yoga Yodeling. Maybe with penguins in there somehow. If you can't be good, be weird.
 
Dean Shomshak

Okay, update -- The Circle is at ~18,000 words. All of the NPCs are complete, as is the description of the Garden. Next up are the scenarios with some updated NPC sheets. Then... well, then I talk to Jason. The Cult of the Beast comes up so much, I'd like to cobble together what I can and present that.

Current word count is: 68,000.

I have occasionally seen it spelled without the second A, presumably as a compromise (or confusion) between the Greek and Latin spellings.
 
Anyway, it was the '90s. You had to misspell everything to be kewl. (And what do you expect from a group of raving nutter third-tier villains? (Though at ;east they drew the line at being the "Kriminal Alliance...")
 
Dean Shomshak

I have occasionally seen it spelled without the second A, presumably as a compromise (or confusion) between the Greek and Latin spellings.
 
Anyway, it was the '90s. You had to misspell everything to be kewl. (And what do you expect from a group of raving nutter third-tier villains? (Though at ;east they drew the line at being the "Kriminal Alliance...")
 
Dean Shomshak

If Medieval art treasures are involved, the heroes might consult the art appraiser Jos Terhune, a.k.a. Tartarus of the Devil's Advocates (CV2). Or hey, bring Walker, Terhune, and Professor John Black together, none knowing who the others are! That should be good for a few laughs, as well as a brawl.
 
Dean Shomshak

True, dat. Though my mother tells stories about how her grandfather came from Norway as a teenager and crossed the country to Washington state, unattended, penniless and not speaking a word of English...
 
Though her great-aunt came from Norway, on her own, when only nine. That or starve, doncha know.
 
Yeah, during the pandemic I couldn't muster much sympathy for people who complained they couldn't go to a bar, a barbershop or the gym. History is a great supplier of perspective.
 
Dean Shomshak

Valid points, but I take the oppoaite tack:
 
Villains who have been captured and processed no longer have a Secret ID, at least not most of them.   It would be difficult to run the fingerprints of Plasmus, for example.  Characters whoe develop physical characteristics that cant be concealed- well, they aren't going to easily handle Secret IDs, either.  As an example, Rook (former player's character now an NPC in the youth group's universe) is a brick who, like many bricks, developed immense stature and musculature. She is eight feet tall and wider across the shoulders than most doors and is seventy-two years old.  She couldn't maintain a secret ID if she wanted to.
 
Still, those sort of chracters are a minority of characters (at least, those who aren't bricks, who seem to receive physical grotesquery at a disproportionately high rate).
 
But again: the majority of villains who get even a little bit through processing are never going to have a points-worthy secret ID without completely changing their villainous ID, and in forty-four years of Champions history, I don't believe I have stumbled across one of those in any official product.
 
Still,like LL, I have occasionally enjoyed letting the villain's  secret ID assist the PCs on a case- in one case, I had a villain's secret ID who became a regular go-to Contact with the PCs-- to the point of eliminating four of his alter-ego's competitors, celebrating each victory with the heroes, ingratiating himself into their lives until they finally figured him out (caught him rifling through some,of their files on other "competitors" and after trying to figure out what they had in common, the high-tech HERO recognized the architecture of some spyware left behind in their systems--
 
The players were genuinely surprised, and genuinely felt taken in, and they somehow managed to both be furious and hurt by it as well as love it as a plot twist that they had fallen to, hard.
 
They were _thrilled_ when they finally took him down: it was very personal for every one of them. 
 
unfortunately, it also cemented in their minds that they should never reveal their own secret IDs, even to each other (which was always a problem even before that camoaign, and this made it worse), so we have an entire battery of various Bat Signals in use....
 
 
eh...
 
win some; lose some, I suppose.

I remember years ago, I was helping another forumite who wanted to run a game artifact-hunting scenario inspired by The Maltese Falcon, brainstorm the Champions villains who would fit the role of the antagonists to the PCs. He wanted to use Cateran as the analogue to Brigid O'Shaughnessy. He also wanted an art expert villain as the Joel Cairo analogue, so I suggested Jos "Tartarus" Terhune. We rounded out the cast with Slun for Sidney Greenstreet's Gutman, and Pulsar as Gutman's overconfident gunsel Wilmer.

If Medieval art treasures are involved, the heroes might consult the art appraiser Jos Terhune, a.k.a. Tartarus of the Devil's Advocates (CV2). Or hey, bring Walker, Terhune, and Professor John Black together, none knowing who the others are! That should be good for a few laughs, as well as a brawl.
 
Dean Shomshak

I've thought that many published villains don't deserve the 15 points from Secret Identity, because they don't show any sign of trying to maintain a life outside their villain activities. In some cases, this would even be impossible. For instance, Radium (CV1, in Project Sunburst) has Secret ID even though he lives in a bright red containment suit that keeps him from killing everyone near him thorough radiation exposure. Yes, his pasty is hidden: Finding that he used to be a soldier named Jason Matthews takes a Skill Roll at -10. But his entry doesn't say why this information would matter OK, so his connection to the military Project: Sunburst matters. It's an enormous secret waiting to explode (heh) into a scandal that might ruin people who are still alive and in government. But that is a different kind of Social Complication.
 
Dean Shomshak

Spoilered for less-than-work-safe language--
 

A bit about the loony Taylor Swift/Superbowl conspiracy theories. The key point, I think: The Masters of MAGA monetize the outrage. Outrage gets attention, and attention is the coin of the Internet. Especially when you can then hit up the faithful for donations or sell them merch. As we have noted here before: A grift.
 
https://www.npr.org/2024/02/01/1228373511/heres-why-conspiracy-theories-about-taylor-swift-and-the-super-bowl-are-spreadin
 
Dean Shomshak

Well, no surprise that in 240 years a litigious people should have already considered the constitutionality of secession...
 
The problems of state-by-state dissolution of the Union are well described, but I think there's something to be said for limited forms of 'soft secession.' My favorite scheme would let individual counties declare themselves quasi-states on the South African "homeland" model -- nominal sovereignty while having no control over their defense or economy. These "Albistans" could be legally Straight White Christian only, since so much of MAGA grievance seems to be loss of acknowledged racial, sectarian and cultural hegemony. They can also do without those nanny-state features that offend their peoples' sense of heroic self-reliance, and the rest of us don't have to feel guilty if this results in starvation or plague. Corporations can also exploit them for non-union labor, if that's how the albistanis roll. (But be careful to draw up the charters of quasi-secession so companies can't use them as tax havens.) Most importantly, Albistanis lose any right to vote in national elections, leaving the rest of the US to chart a more progressive path.
 
Failing that, the easiest way to unzip the USA is through sale of territory to other countries. The US grew by buying tracts from other countries; it can shrink the same way. If Trump wins the Presidency again, it might be a good idea for urban governments to petition to be bought by, say, Canada. Trump might love to be the broker of "THE GREATEST REAL ESTATE DEAL IN HISTORY!!!!!" while bidding farewell to most of the people who voted against him. The rural, rump Unites States of Real America can then hold a constitutional convention to make him President for Life, or Emperor, or whatever. The USRA would lose maybe half its population and more than half its economy, but at least the righteous Real Americans would be rid of people like me. We'd be Canadian, and I for one would be glad of it.
 
As for blather of civil war: It doesn't seem impossible to me, but what's so mind-blowing is the lack of substantive issues on the MAGA side. Slavery gave the Confederate States abundant grounds for secession: It wasn't just a "peculiar institution," like, I don't know, Austtralians and Vegemite. It was integral to their economy and the wealth of its ruling class. Rational, in a deeply unpleasant way. But studies show MAGA isn't suffering economically (though many of them think they should be wealthier). They aren't being robbed to support the elites; rather, the liberal and urbanized states are subsidizing conservative and rural. Nobody is forcing MAGA to worship in particular ways; merely that they can't force their faith on others. The Constitution's setup means they are in no danger of being steamrollered politically. The grievances seem to be all cultural: the rest of us no longer accept their dominance. If it happens, it'll be a Seinfeld civil war, fought about nothing.
 
Dean Shomshak

I have to say, I find this particular insight pretty compelling.
 
 

https://www.npr.org/2024/01/29/1222539335/banned-books-high-school
 
A secret collection of banned books for students. In Texas, no surprise, though I expect it could be needed in at least a dozen other states.
 
At least it shows that books still matter.
 
Dean Shomshak

Another superheroic mission ends.
 
After rotor damage, Ingenuity helicopter mission on Mars is ended

Well, no surprise that in 240 years a litigious people should have already considered the constitutionality of secession...
 
The problems of state-by-state dissolution of the Union are well described, but I think there's something to be said for limited forms of 'soft secession.' My favorite scheme would let individual counties declare themselves quasi-states on the South African "homeland" model -- nominal sovereignty while having no control over their defense or economy. These "Albistans" could be legally Straight White Christian only, since so much of MAGA grievance seems to be loss of acknowledged racial, sectarian and cultural hegemony. They can also do without those nanny-state features that offend their peoples' sense of heroic self-reliance, and the rest of us don't have to feel guilty if this results in starvation or plague. Corporations can also exploit them for non-union labor, if that's how the albistanis roll. (But be careful to draw up the charters of quasi-secession so companies can't use them as tax havens.) Most importantly, Albistanis lose any right to vote in national elections, leaving the rest of the US to chart a more progressive path.
 
Failing that, the easiest way to unzip the USA is through sale of territory to other countries. The US grew by buying tracts from other countries; it can shrink the same way. If Trump wins the Presidency again, it might be a good idea for urban governments to petition to be bought by, say, Canada. Trump might love to be the broker of "THE GREATEST REAL ESTATE DEAL IN HISTORY!!!!!" while bidding farewell to most of the people who voted against him. The rural, rump Unites States of Real America can then hold a constitutional convention to make him President for Life, or Emperor, or whatever. The USRA would lose maybe half its population and more than half its economy, but at least the righteous Real Americans would be rid of people like me. We'd be Canadian, and I for one would be glad of it.
 
As for blather of civil war: It doesn't seem impossible to me, but what's so mind-blowing is the lack of substantive issues on the MAGA side. Slavery gave the Confederate States abundant grounds for secession: It wasn't just a "peculiar institution," like, I don't know, Austtralians and Vegemite. It was integral to their economy and the wealth of its ruling class. Rational, in a deeply unpleasant way. But studies show MAGA isn't suffering economically (though many of them think they should be wealthier). They aren't being robbed to support the elites; rather, the liberal and urbanized states are subsidizing conservative and rural. Nobody is forcing MAGA to worship in particular ways; merely that they can't force their faith on others. The Constitution's setup means they are in no danger of being steamrollered politically. The grievances seem to be all cultural: the rest of us no longer accept their dominance. If it happens, it'll be a Seinfeld civil war, fought about nothing.
 
Dean Shomshak

Well, no surprise that in 240 years a litigious people should have already considered the constitutionality of secession...
 
The problems of state-by-state dissolution of the Union are well described, but I think there's something to be said for limited forms of 'soft secession.' My favorite scheme would let individual counties declare themselves quasi-states on the South African "homeland" model -- nominal sovereignty while having no control over their defense or economy. These "Albistans" could be legally Straight White Christian only, since so much of MAGA grievance seems to be loss of acknowledged racial, sectarian and cultural hegemony. They can also do without those nanny-state features that offend their peoples' sense of heroic self-reliance, and the rest of us don't have to feel guilty if this results in starvation or plague. Corporations can also exploit them for non-union labor, if that's how the albistanis roll. (But be careful to draw up the charters of quasi-secession so companies can't use them as tax havens.) Most importantly, Albistanis lose any right to vote in national elections, leaving the rest of the US to chart a more progressive path.
 
Failing that, the easiest way to unzip the USA is through sale of territory to other countries. The US grew by buying tracts from other countries; it can shrink the same way. If Trump wins the Presidency again, it might be a good idea for urban governments to petition to be bought by, say, Canada. Trump might love to be the broker of "THE GREATEST REAL ESTATE DEAL IN HISTORY!!!!!" while bidding farewell to most of the people who voted against him. The rural, rump Unites States of Real America can then hold a constitutional convention to make him President for Life, or Emperor, or whatever. The USRA would lose maybe half its population and more than half its economy, but at least the righteous Real Americans would be rid of people like me. We'd be Canadian, and I for one would be glad of it.
 
As for blather of civil war: It doesn't seem impossible to me, but what's so mind-blowing is the lack of substantive issues on the MAGA side. Slavery gave the Confederate States abundant grounds for secession: It wasn't just a "peculiar institution," like, I don't know, Austtralians and Vegemite. It was integral to their economy and the wealth of its ruling class. Rational, in a deeply unpleasant way. But studies show MAGA isn't suffering economically (though many of them think they should be wealthier). They aren't being robbed to support the elites; rather, the liberal and urbanized states are subsidizing conservative and rural. Nobody is forcing MAGA to worship in particular ways; merely that they can't force their faith on others. The Constitution's setup means they are in no danger of being steamrollered politically. The grievances seem to be all cultural: the rest of us no longer accept their dominance. If it happens, it'll be a Seinfeld civil war, fought about nothing.
 
Dean Shomshak

Not discussing wich is the best, I'm here just to tell I played a campaign in 6th century Europe, from Byzantium to the Vandal Kingdom to the Persian frontier in Armenia, with the Blue and Green hippodrome factions fighting in the streets, Huns still menacing, conspiracies, spies, and a gold mine. Years 519-535, a long run.

"Top. Men."

Well, the PCs in my urban D&D campaign encountered a magic sword with a will of its own, though it did not talk. Thousands of years old, forged by Elves for one of their ancient wars against Orcs, still devoted to the cause. Only, oops, Elves and Orcs are now equal citizens of the Plenary Empire (as are all sapient beings who are capable of obeying its laws). When the sword woke from centuries of sleep to find itself in a city with an orc minority, it overpowered the will of its owner and began a campaign of assassination intended to spark a race war.
 
The PCs dealt with the situation and freed the wielder from the sword's control. They have been assured by the Powers That Be that the powerful sword has been destroyed.
 
Dean Shomshak