Ranxerox

Re: Batman meets Doc Savage Yeah, I have been looking forward to First Wave comics for months, and every sneak preview they have given us has just looked better and better. Boy, I'm glad that we have almost made it to March.

Re: Your "2010" Pet Gaming Projects Yes it is. Black Hawk Down is a great book, and it is what made me want to run a game set in Mogadishu in the first place. I just envisioned the players trying to infiltrate the city as opposed to go in guns blazing, so I need more cultural information about modern day Somalia. This sort of insight into Somalia is not easy to come by in English language publications so I have some scrounging to do. This easily could turn out to be my 2011 pet gaming project also.

Re: Your "2010" Pet Gaming Projects Uhhh, that would be reread Black Hawk Down for me. It's a decent place to start but I really wanted more local detail than the book (or movie) provides. Also, I suspect my players would like a better outcome than what those soldiers experienced.

Re: Your "2010" Pet Gaming Projects I have a ton of research I need to do first, but I want to run a modern day herioc campaign over at Herocentral where the players are trying to retrieve a stolen nuclear bomb from terrorist hiding in Mogadishu, Somalia/

Re: brainstorming a urban cyber-fantasy setting This sounds like a great setting! I'm sure you and your players will have a wonderful time exploring it. I do have a couple questions, though. Is the campaign set in 2247 AD or 2112 (one hundred years after the event)? If the aliens went out of their way to avoid populations centers when they landed and a hundred (or two-hundred) years have passed since then, where is the post-apocalyptic element? As for suggestions and past experience, I recommend that you start small and instead of figuring out your entire world just work on building one city or even one neighborhood. If you plant a number of adventure hooks setting you can keep your players busy and give yourself time to figure out what parts of this campaign appeal the most to you and your players. Then as you flesh out more of your world you can expand on those elements and downplay parts of the setting that either you or your players didn't find interesting.

Re: Fiction resources for Solar HERO. Wow! This thread went and resurrected itself while I wasn't looking! I googled Planetes and it looked really cool; I'm going to have to track some of that s**t down. I've heard about Cowboy Bebop for ages but I've never taken the plunge with it; something else that I need to do. I may have seen GURPS: Terradyne sitting around at my FLGS; I'll look. More books have been recommended than I will make it through. When I was young, I would read at least one book a week, but now that I'm getting up there in age I seem to need a month to get through a "page turner". That is not to say that you guys should stop recommending books. There might be others reading this thread looking for resources. So if you remember any more good science fiction books about exploration and colonization of the solar system, by all means post them. Even if I don't get to that selection, someone else might.

Re: Fiction resources for Solar HERO. Thanks for all the suggestions. You guys just filled up my reading list probably through the year and into next. Any movie suggestions?

Re: Your Top Ten Science Fiction Writers, and then some. Yes, Ms. Butler was "buried" in my list. Her stuff tends to make me squirm because it causes me to reexamine my assumptions. That is a good thing.

Since the Solar HERO sourcebook is unlikely to ever be published, I figured maybe I could get some resource suggestions the Hero community. However, as I am too lazy to read nonfiction on subject, I was hoping for fiction resources such as novels, movies and comic books. The only ones that come to mind for me are Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy and the move Outland, but I'm sure that there are many others

Re: Your Top Ten Science Fiction Writers, and then some. Bruce Sterling and William Gibson because I does love myself some cyberpunk. Iain M Banks for proving that technology that is distinguishable from magic is insufficient. Kim Stanley Robinson for both his Mars trilogy and his Gold Coast books. David Brin, not the most challenging of writers, but his Uplift universe is great setting and I use uplifted species in all my far future campaigns. Octavia Butler for challenging me. Larry Niven for his Ringworld books. C. J. Cherryh . Phillip K. Dick. I just read A Scanner Darkly and loved it. Douglas Adams because life really is that absurd.

Re: Single Most Powerful Super Hero EVER!!! For destroying the universe as we know it AND replacing it with a vastly cooler one, I vote for Promethea.

Re: What Happened to the Hominids Who Were Smarter Than Us? If this was a Pulp HERO thread and not a Star HERO thread I would agree. However, in a hard(ish) sci-fi setting the bushman option has lots of plot potential. Since we are talking about Boskop genes being found in bushmen that means we must have access to Boskop genetic material, and that means within the next 30 years we will have the technology to resurrect the Boskop line through cloning. We are talking about human racial package could be a lot more interesting than any of the ones found in Terran Empire. Think of the plot possibilities. Paranoia concerning the Boskop by standard humans could make for a ripe context for exploring racism and antisemitism. However, maybe the paranoia is justified as the Boskop decide that they will not become extinct again even if to insure their safety they must enslave or exterminate their mentally slower modern cousins. If you don't like big issue plots like these how about the more personal plot of that would it be like to the first Boskop brought to life by cloning, a stranger in a strange land so to speak. Since the Boskop were apparently capable of passing their genes to main line homo sapiens, that opens the door to romance plots (I wonder if Boskop females looked like that they just stepped out of an anime). Really the possible plots are limitless.

Re: If you Had to Pick, ONE (already) Setting, to Run in, What is it? My first instinct was to choose Iain Banks' Culture books, but to be honest I don't think I could do the setting justice. So I'm going to with GrimJack's Cynosure. I've always been partial gritty urbane settings, and you can't beat Cynosure for variety.

Re: Eeep! Buck Rogers!!! The teaser looks incredibly sweet. I just wish it were going to be a movie instead of a web series. Still, I'm definitely going to check it out once they start releasing episodes.

Re: Celebrity "Pulp" Death Match! Due to my limited familiarity with these characters I probably shouldn't be voting. I have read a couple of the original Doc Savage stories and saw the movie that came out in the 70s. My knowledge The Shadow is limited to it's movie and the comic book series from the 90s. I have heard of The Spider but that is it. Still, if you can't spout your opinion about something you know next to nothing about on the internet where the heck con you? I'm joining the chorus of votes for Doc Savage to win it. I don't think that The Shadow could cloud Doc's carefully trained mind or bend his iron (bronze?) will, and without his mind tricks to help him Cranston loses to Savage in anything even slightly resembling a fair fight. Nothing in your description of The Spider made me think he had what it takes to beat the Man of Bronze. I mean it not like Doc Savage doesn't have experience fighting vicious and merciless foes. Since you want us to rank our picks, I'm going to go with The Shadow to take The Spider. The man who "knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men" is going to instantly recognize The Spider for the psychopath that he is and will find a way to use his mental unbalance against him. That's my uninformed two cents - adjust for inflation as needed.

Re: The Question (Rene Montoya/ DC) This is a very good write-up IMO. The only changes I would make to it would be change the shape shift to transform instant change, and I would give her the leg sweep maneuver (and maybe arm bar if I could the points). But those are small things. Good work.

Re: Dark Champions the Anime Series Based on his confrontation with Revy in Calm Down Two Men, I think that Rock is a bit tougher than this. He was able to grab her gun before she got off her shot, and when she punched him in the face he didn't even flinch.

Re: Lame or awesome? Wolfen has claws made of unobtainablium Lame: "They cut through everything" HKA with Penetrating Awesome: "Whirling death machine" HKA damage shield, restrainable Awesome: "They cut through walls" Tunneling, only barriers a foot or less thick -1/2 Awesome: "I can use them to climb" Clinging Awesome: "I can use them to block" Missile deflection vs. thrown objects and non-gunpowder projectiles

Re: Is "ether" real?

Re: Zombie Event advice need Malador was didn't have the power to bring back the heroes with enough of their spirit to allow them to use there abilities. He needed a special book/amulet/wand/whatever to accomplish the resurrection and the mayor told him where to find it. But why does the he want to bring them back anyway? To provide superpower muscle for some scheme he is working, twelve pure souls for a special sacrifice need to power some unimaginably powerful artifact/unleash some dark god, or to protect him from some dark force that even Malador is frightened of and it on it's way? Also, what unfinished business might the heroes have to pass on to their still living colleagues before returning to the grave?

Re: Does the CU have a Franklin Richards? First the Lovecraft thread in NGD turns into a Mayberry thread, and now Opie is making moves on this thread. When did November become the The Andy Griffith Show month?

Re: Does the CU have a Franklin Richards? Reality bending is kind of the point. Still thanks for the suggestion and kudos on the cool web site.

Re: Does the CU have a Franklin Richards? Yes, and it might be a virgin birth and who doesn't like good old fashion hit them over the head with a hammer religious symbolism. Also, it allows her current instability to be explained pregnancy mood swings on a grand scale. However, using her absorption of Redshift as the point of conception shouldn't she have already had the child at the start of the Teen Champions timeline?

Re: Does the CU have a Franklin Richards? Well, a person doesn't have to be a great match for being a mommy to become one. Heck it seems to happen more often that way. Still your objection is duly noted.

Re: Lucha Libre artwork! Very nice stuff. No offense to LLH, but it looks like Brett is moving up in the world.