Kharis2000

Re: Pulp Squid Cake

Hmmmm..... Pulp HERO scenario appearing in brain.... Mechanical kraken-ship monster raiding shipping... Put it in the Great Lakes (because no one would look for it there) and only attack ships during winter storms (al la the Edmund Fitzgerald)... minions with mechanical 'tentacle whips' to wrap folks up... creepy diving gear to salvage sunken ships...

Re: Harbinger of Justice

I've got to agree with Ghost Angel. The Harbinger is pretty darned terrifying to just about anyone in the genre that he lives and works in, but he is *not* in Destroyer's range of power.

I did have to demonstrate to players a few years back why there were still criminals in Hudson City (they having read his entry and assumed that he would have just killed the all): because he can't be everywhere at once. Based on the material dating back to 4th edition we have to look at, Ol' Harby spends something like 95% of his time running around different disguises gathering information so he knows *when* and *where* he needs to show up and shoot people.

Re: Using Hudson City in Day After Ragnarok?

After thinking it over last night, further suggestions follow:

Fitting it into the setting shouldn't be that difficult - it's designed to be able to be shifted if needed, so most of the historical material can be used with a few dates shifted or a name changed to protect the guilty (as it were). By moving it to the western half of the country, you could, in fact, simply use the entire modern-day map of the city as the older version without a need to trim it off on the edges, since west coast cities have tended to sprawl out more than east coast ones. You'd want to tone down the higher-tech references, but that shouldn't be too hard. (as compared to figuring out what parts of the city aren't actually there and altering a map to fit those alterations)

You'd likely see more henchmen with actual combat experience, based on the fact that so many men served in the war prior to the interruption of Ragnarok. (Even without Ragnarok, it's an explanation I've used in pulp era games to explain why the heroic adventurer died out in the 50's - they *literally* died out, because more and more 'faceless minions' hit the street with several years of hard-won combat experience, weapons handling skills, and access to the flood of post-war military hardware, significantly altering the balance of power.)

The supernatural would obviously play more of a part than in a normal Hudson City setting, since, you know, there's this big 'ol serpent lying on top of France and making it kinda hard to deny and all. I'd assume more cults, and more mundane criminal use of magic (or attempts to make people think it was present), as well as a more open acknowledgment and acceptance on the part of the man on the street that it existed. Probably more cults and the like all over the place.

As far as where to physically relocate Hudson City goes, keeping it roughly on the same latitude would place it somewhere in Northern California. I'd actually suggest moving it a bit further north, because even in Northern California it's overshadowed by the larger Los Angeles and San Francisco, and placing it in Oregon. A look at the coast for places where a piece of coastline close enough to the map of HC exists suggests that you could place it at/near the locations of real-world Tillamook, in Willapa Bay, or in Gray's Harbor. All three locations would allow you to use the map as is by simply changing the current map's East-to-West orientation to a North-to-South and placing HC on the northern edge of one of the bays listed. Seattle and Portland would be the nearest major cities, and maintain a similar (but actually further) separation as NYC and other large cities do to HC in it's original east coast location. That distance would support the extensive docks and expansion of the city to the modern-era's size in the 30's and 40's.

Other alterations don't require geographic juggling so much as things like noting that the turn-of-the-century fire could have been spurred on by an earthquake, and eliminating most of the non-Chinese Asian criminal influence, to replace them with more tongs, and expanding Chinatown to absorb the smaller ethnic Asian neighborhoods. You might have one or more rich families base their wealth on logging and lumber, and/or mining, since those are bigger interests in the west. Any reference to American Indians should be shifted to reflect a more Northwestern tribe kind of feel.

Hope that helps, sir!

Re: Using Hudson City in Day After Ragnarok?

Given that the most significant supernaturally-oriented crimefighter in Hudson City - the Raven - used a raven as a familiar, you might be able to do something with linking that to Odin's ravens. Maybe the Raven only has one eye now? And two ravens? Maybe his girlfriend/partner, the Jade Phantom is dead and returned as a Valkyrie (she was a blonde after all)?

Ground-penetrating radar and infra-red imaging might be out of reach for your Pulp Heroes, but the idea of a lost city never goes out of style - especially if it's someplace they wouldn't expect one.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8177529.stm

Re: Pulp Lucha

The trick to working with pulp scenarios (for me, anyway, other GM's mileage may vary - sometimes wildly) is to remember that no matter what *we* may think from our post-20th Century perspective while watching serials like ""The Phantom Creeps" or "The Fighting Devil Dogs" or reading a Spider or Doc Savage novel, the people who wrote/filmed/watched/and read them back in the day took them seriously. There were moments of humor - intentional and otherwise - but by and large the films and stories that gave us this genre were meant to be taken seriously; they were, essentially, "The Dark Knight" of their day.

If you treat the genre and it's conventions with that kind of respect, and give your players the chance to be 'Batman' and thus buy in to the setting, then even if you whip out tired old deals like 'the previously unknown twin' or bring in lucha wrestlers, everything will be cool.

Having now read the PDF of Lucha Libre HERO (twice), I am already contemplating how to introduce some material from it to the poor souls in my Pulp HERO game.

Tossing aside the real-world temporal issues as unimportant (this is the pulps, after all), in favor of getting the good stuff into the game, I've arrived at the following rough outline for adding things in:

Lucha heroes as a general 'type' have dated back to ancient Meso-American days, and some of the pictographic tales attributed to ancient gods were actually tales of these ancient wrestling heroes uplifted to mythic status.

Both males and females may (and do) 'don the mask' and take up the battle against evil, although the number of women that do so is much smaller than the number of men. Female practitioners face some initial resistance by their male counterparts, but that male resistance tends to fade to a mild sort of protectiveness after a few demonstrations of skill.

In Mexico and other Central American areas where the tradition exists, the populace at large tends to ignore the (for the period) scandalous outfits worn by lucha heroes of both sexes, although that consensual acceptance does not carry over to areas without the lucha tradition. It's a situational issue, so a male luchadore engaging in bare-chested combat against thugs in a warehouse isn't goign to be commented on, but the same type of combat in Times Square will get some raised eyebrows (unless they cleverly allow their shirt to be ripped or torn off ala Doc Savage, in which case it's just accepted). Female wrestlers are going to draw a bit more commentary given the form-fitting outfits they wear, but as long as they're acting in a heroic manner, the worst they can expect is some stares by rookie police officers and snubs/editorials from elderly society matrons and columnists that rail against heroes in general.

Lucha is very much a Central/South American phenomenon, and isn't well-known in North America or the rest of the world. Characters encountering luchadoes for the first time would normally hesitate before reacting to them, but, as in pulp reality tradition, both sides should recognize the innate heroic qualities of the other in short order. (Though not, perhaps, before a round or two of 'misunderstandings.')

In my campaign, which is based in New York City, but spans the globe to get folks into exotic locations, what I'm thinking of doing to introduce things is to have a pair of lucha practitioners (one male and one female, a brother and sister) come to New York in pursuit of the sacred Mask of Quetzalcouatl that grants the wearer dread powers and for 'the Son of the Sun' (the NPC sponsoring the group is the son of a Victorian adventurer and the last princess of the line of the Incan Sun Kings) who can teach them the counter to the dread 'Aztec Death Grip' that their opponents have used against them several times.

The NPC, of course, doen't know the technique they need, but will allow that there are records in the Sacred Valley the remaining members of his people live in amidst the High Andes which might. That lets folks head there after a fight or two with the bad guys to 'train up' [using the rules from the original Ninja Hero for such things, where the 'Death Grip' imposes a -6 OCV/DCV penalty against opponents until they train in the counter,with each week of training reducing the penalty by 1]

On the way, they can stop in Mexico and get mixed up with some lucha vilains for more exposure to the genre, have another fight with the new 'Lord Quetzal' and head to the Sacred Valley to train, returning to fight Lord Quetzal with their new allies after he's assimilated the Mexico City underworld under his control.

After that, I'll just see what happens. Might wind up with a PC/NPC romance with one or more of the luch NPCs, might get PC that wants to train in lucha, certainly wind up with lucha villains that have a grudge against the PCs which demands revenge.

Re: Thrilling Hero Adventures

Just showed the cover to two of my players.

Player #1 - "Oh cool!"

Player #2 - "Hey, the guy has a stone spear and the girl has his pistol!"

Player #1 - "Maybe she's a better shot than he is."

Player #2 - "Certainly has bigger guns."

Player #1 (wife) hits Player #2 (husband) in arm.

Some days you can't script this stuff better than real life does.

Re: Trail of the Golden Spike

That was how it started, yes: he makes the PER roll by enough to tell someone's there, but not by enough to tell that it's a girl. (IIRC, I told him it was "a small guy, shorter than ") He leaps to the conclusion that it's one of the enemy pilots scoping the group out and jumps them... and then proceeds to ignore all the clues I toss out that he's in a fight with someone that's really not up to the task. He stunned her with the first blow (she never recovered from that, and was stunned each time he hit her after that), failed to generate knockout damage but did do real BODY thanks to her unimpressive PD, and then hits her three more times before it dawns on the player that his opponent not only isn't fighting back, but isn't even trying to crawl away any more.

I couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry when he pulled the watch cap off and all her hair spilled out, he realized what he'd done, and looked at me to announce, "Ha! I found the Condor's spy!"

Re: Trail of the Golden Spike

I've run it several times, and while no one's actually *failed* the scenario, there were some spectacular near misses, including (my favorite) a player just beating the stuffings out of the mine owner's daughter when they caught her snooping around in a cap and jacket after dark.

In general, I've had great luck with the scenario, although I have noted that it requires some adjustments when you have more than 2-3 players, just due to the PC tendency to try and be in more than one place at a time.

Re: Nazi Flying Saucers

I, likewise Tivoed it. It didn't really talk about anything that I hadn't already read or seen elsewhere, but there were plenty of ideas in there even if you filter out the conspiricist hype.

Re: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Even counting its flaws (chiefly that I also thought Bello had no chemistry with Fraser, that the fight with Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh was too short, and someone needed to tell Rick to put the crowbar he opened the sarcophagus with upside his son's head) and the lack of Oded Fehr and Rachel Weisz, I think that this ranks higher than the second one for me. No undead pygmies in sight - thank God.

Considering that it's made right at $100 million in about 5 days - while going up against the Bat - I'm thinking that it's likely we'll see a Mummmy 4, with South American mummies.

Re: Rader Men From The Moon

If you do a search on 'cliffhanger' on the site, you can also turn up links for "The Whispering Shadow," "The Great Alaskan Mystery," and one of the BBC Quatermass series' from 1955.

Good stuff, sir! Thank you!

Re: Woot! Hero Wins Origins Award For ASTOUNDING HERO TALES

Congratulations all around, guys!

Re: 20s or 30s?

My house campaign started out on January 1, 1930, and moved forward from there.

Primarily, that choice was made to allow me to utilize the aftermath of the collapse of the stock market, the Great Depression, and the problems of Prohibition from the onset of the game, but there were other reasons as well, which included:

1) The stories I wanted to tell were really all from the era when The Shadow, Doc Savage, and the other pulp figures were in their heyday.

2) The 1930s allowed my players to make an easier connection to the genre, since they'd all seen films set in that period (and very few before it).

3) English was my college major, and thanks to a professor I could not avoid taking classes from I grew to absolutely loathe F. Scott Fitzgerald's Raoring 20's novels.

4) I, for whatever reasons, have the decade of the 1920's firmly fixed in my mind as the correct setting for Call of Cthulhu, and I wanted to divorce myself from that idea, since cosmic horror on that scale wasn't part of the tales I wanted to tell.

5) Both technologically (as far as what was available) and stylistically (in the sense of clothing, architecture, and so forth), the 1930's simply appeal to me more in a visual sense. As an example, I just don't find women's fashions from the 1920's to be flattering and sexy, and that hampers me in describing them to others.

6) Historically, the events taking place in the 1930's are more well known to myplayers, and are thus more accessible for me to spin scenarios off and build them around.

Re: Astounding Hero Tales gets nominated for Origins Award!

Definitely congratulations - and good luck!!!!!

Re: Return To Doctor Han's Island (advice needed)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086756/#comment

'The Master' was a television series that ran 13 episodes in 1984 (whould make the lead character available for a 1983 appearance if desired).

Episode 1 summary (comments in brackets are mine):

Season 1, Episode 1: Max

Original Air Date: 20 January 1984

In the opening episode of this series John Peter McAllister [Lee van Cleef] is introduced as an American who remained in Japan after the War and became a Ninja. [Presumable a ninja master, given the title.] He has just discovered he has a [half-Japanese] daughter after many years and decides to go to America to find her. On his way out he is wounded by a former protégé [sho Kosugi] who vows to track him down to stop him from breaking the Ninja code. Meanwhile in America in the town of Ellerston a drifter and wannabe hero Max Keller runs into a girl who flags him down on the road. Apparently the girl was being attacked or come on to be a corrupt Sheriff. Max saves her and learns that the girl, Holly Trumbull and her father own an airport which is trying to be closed and bought out by a scheming land developer. The Master meanwhile arrives and runs in to trouble with the sheriff at the bar. The Master demonstrates his amazing skill to Max during a fight in the bar with the Sheriff and other hoodlums. Max decides he wants to become a ninja. Arson to the Trumbull's Airport causes even more problems for the heroes as the team up to stop the evil land developer and his cohorts. Max tags along with the Master in hopes of becoming a Ninja and to also help him find his daughter.

The show was fascinating (yes I *am* old enough to remember when it was on the air) in a bizzare way. Lee van Cleef obviously had a blast with the character, delivering ancient master lines and appearing in his black satin ikibana to deliver stuntman-substituted rightous ninja whoop-asss on the bad guys.

If you wanted to use him, an obvious idea would be that his helf-Japanese daughter was shipped off to Han's Island. Being the daughter of a ninja master, it's doubtful that she stayed there long, but being on the run from Han's men (or whoever took his place) gives a perfectly good reason for her being on the move and hiding in America. Having Sho be on the team adds another layer of interesting coincidence to the whole affair.

Re: Superman To Lead Avengers

Of course, as several folks have pointed out, it's virtually inconceiveable that DC wouldn't try to write the big check. What I'm curious about is A) How much 'b-llsh-t accounting' Warner/DC will try to pull to justify not paying the Seigel any heirs anything (a'la New Line and Peter Jackson/the Tolkein Estate); and How pissed the Seigel heirs will be by the time that's over (and how pissed they are now) which will directly reflect on how likely they are to even talk to DC.

Re: Superman To Lead Avengers

The decision (the hyperlink in the blog is fixed) explicitly states:

"The Court begins by observing what is not depicted in the announcements. Obviously, nothing concerning the Superman storyline (that is, the literary elements contained in Action Comics, Vol. 1) is on display in the ads; thus, Superman's name, his alter ego, his compatriots, his origins, his mission to serve as a champion of the oppressed, or his heroic abilities in general, do not remain within defendants sole possession to exploit. Instead the only copyrightable elements left arise from the pictorial illustration in the announcements, which is fairly limited.

The person in question has great strength (he is after all holding aloft a car). The person is wearing some type of costume, but significantly the colors, if any, for the same are not represented, as the advertisement appears only in black and white. The argument that the “S” crest is recognizable in the promotional advertisement is not persuasive. What is depicted on the chest of the costume is so small and blurred as to not be readily recognizable, at best all that can be seen is some vague marking or symbol its precise contours hard to decipher. The Court thus concludes that defendants may continue to exploit the image of a person with extraordinary strength who wears a black and white leotard and cape. What remains of the Siegel and Shuster’s Superman copyright that is still subject to termination (and, of course, what defendants truly seek) is the entire storyline from Action Comics, Vol. 1, Superman’s distinctive blue leotard (complete with its inverted triangular crest across the chest with a red “S” on a yellow background), a red cape and boots, and his superhuman ability to leap tall buildings, repel bullets and run faster than a locomotive, none of which is apparent from the announcement."

Which, in essence, and assuming that they don't just write the really big check, means DC loses Superman and everything directly springing from him.

No, not really.

At least not yet.

But a friend has blogged about it and just about killed me.

http://writethefantastic.blogspot.com/

In case you are wondering, yes the court decision he refers to is real. The danger of DC losing the Big Red S is anyjone's guess. But what if....

Re: Hudson City and It's Brilliance

It is indeed a frickin' great setting.

If you're looking for more material set in/around HC, you might also look at picking up a copy of Thrilling Places. Even though it was written for the Pulp Hero line, many of the settings are already set in Hudson City, and require very little in the way of adaption to a mmodern setting.

Re: Secret Of The Incas

Yep, I remember that one too. Good fun... and now that I think abouut it, a good idea for a scenario in some form. Maybe force the party to work with some bad guys to ward off the ants, watching out for backstabbing and betrayal all the way....

Re: Secret Of The Incas

I have actually seen this one, although I don't own a copy. Chuck's got the Indy Jones look goinng for him with the leather jacket and fedora for most of the film, making me wonder if Mr. Lucas didn't remember seeing it in his youth as well.

Not a bad film. The macguffin is plausible, the action is interesting, and the big throwdown with the bad guys was visually interesting enough that I can still recall most of it after what has to be twenty years.

Re: Who bought a copy of Omlevex by Spectrum Games?

I bought it and had essentially the same reaction as Lord Mhoram: The concept was wonderful, the characters themselves were interesting, the presentation excellent... but the HERO System write-ups weren't that good.

Nothing that I couldn't fix, but it appeared to me that they were literal ports over from Mutants & Masterminds based on a conversion system of some sort, and they were thus rendered somewhat lifeless. A common problem for conversions using a system-to-system port as opposed to a good 'eyeball port' like the ones Mike Surbrook and some of the others here on the boards do.

Re: Putting two-fists into pulp the real way!

"Boxing Stories" is available off Amazon US for 11.21 and is currently in stock.

I've always loved some of Howard's 'lesser light' heroes (Steve Costigan, El Borak) as much or more than I loved his 'big ticket' characters (Conan, Solomon Kane, Kull the Conqueror).