BigJackBrass

Re: Favorite Sci-Fi Weapon

Re: How not to fire your weapon in Dark Champions... The allegedly amusing captions are almost as distressing as the photos. I just found myself shaking my head for a few minutes... then suddenly thinking: "Do these guys get full clips free with their breakfast cereal?" It's probably more dangerous to be in a nearby building than to actually be standing in the intended line of fire under these circumstances. Terribly, terribly saddening stuff.

Re: Miniature Heroes (and villains) Magic stuff. Thanks for that.

For the first time in far too long I've been painting some lead miniatures. Specifically, some of the Silver Age Sentinels line from Reaper, which paint up rather nicely even with my meagre skills. That particular line isn't very extensive, however, and most of the other supers miniatures I'm familiar with - Marvel and Golden Heroes, for example - are long out of production, so I'm left wondering if there are any others, licensed or generic, still being made. Can anyone help with this? I'm also very interested in finding a suitable miniature to represent Mr. Matthews, the scarred scientist from Silver Age Sentinels, without too much conversion work, so suggestions and places to look would be much appreciated.

Re: Favorite Sci-Fi Weapon I've mentioned the unstoppable Slow Bullet from K.W. Jeter's Death Arms in another thread, so here I'll go for the throwaway gag of Captain Jack's pistol from the recent series of Doctor Who. It creates square holes because it has a digital blast pattern.

Re: Other HU Fantasy Hero Settings Now that certainly sounds interesting. I've long been a fan of Karl Edward Wagner's Kane stories, which have their basis in a primitive, savage Earth with lots of Lovecraft and Howard influences (and doubtless CAS too) and I could definitely use a book like that. Something to look forward to, I'm hoping. Edit: And I rather like the sound of Primaeval HERO as a title for the book... as long as you get the spelling right...

Re: Power Stunts The problem, I think, lies with my own rather fuzzy notion of what I'm interested in replicating. The Power skill allows players to tweak and push their characters, changing the "limits" on exactly what they can achieve, so it does address the issue to some degree. What I've been considering is the way that comics change, often dramatically, over time and with new writers and artists. Frequently the vulnerabilities of a character, the boundaries of their abilities and their interaction with the universe itself alters. That makes sense in a comic, especially back when continuity was not a big issue and comics were not gathered in graphic novel format and kept in print, although it might upset the readers now and then. After mulling it over I think that it's the sort of change only a GM can make, not a player, and in order to make sense there must be some sort of plot reason behind it. In general play, although it might produce an interesting feel in mimicking the old comics, I suspect that the annoyance to players would far outweigh the benefit to atmosphere and genre-simulation. As the basis of a single adventure, however, I think that it has possibilities, particularly in a campaign just beginning to touch on the cosmic or mystical, where Our Heroes find that their powers begin to operate under unfamiliar rules. Consequently such a theme may best be employed without any specific rules element behind it.

Re: Power Stunts Aha! Quite how I overlooked that one I don't know. It's even in Sidekick, so it's not as though we're dealing with a very obscure rule. [Note to self: increase caffeine intake before reading rules] Having looked at the skill as well as Mike W's suggestions I don't think that either quite does what I've been thinking of, but on the other hand I'm still not sure that mimicking the very flexible (and contradictory) benchmarks of the comics is going to really add much to the flavour of my games, so I may just abandon the whole thought.

Re: Power Stunts This is a feature I'd forgotten. It's been a long time since I made mine Marvel. Recently I've been considering how to make a game, where everything tends to be defined down to the nth degree, have the same fluid feeling as a comic, where every writer and artist had their own ideas on exactly what a character could do or how powerful they were. This might just do the trick.

Re: Comics you loved...but apparently no one else did Fair enough. There ought to be enough shelf space for showcases and mini-series, but these days the mini is certainly king. Perhaps they are seen as having more appeal to collectors? Anyway, back to the thread: Anyone remember DC's Major Bummer? (Which was, ironically, a mini-series!) It got off to a good start, but I missed the conclusion. Never saw anything else of the character after that.

Re: Comics you loved...but apparently no one else did A mistake, I tend to think. It's rare for a mini-series to grab my attention, but a "showcase" title (and I used to read a few of these) is much more likely to hold my attention, if the quality tends to be high. Reading through a few reprints of this sort of comic, as I've been doing this week, I definitely feel that an ongoing title featuring new, or a rotating cast of, characters gives much greater scope for experimentation and dabbling with ideas which might not merit an entire title of their own.

Re: Speedster Tactics My own advice to speedsters: 1. Run very, very fast. 2. Keep your head down. 3. Wear a sharp pointy hat and a neck-brace.

Re: CU question: See through super material? You might not be the only person to think of it, but you may very well be the only person to admit to thinking of it...

Re: Foxbat: A place in your campaign? I think you might have just summed up his character in that one line

Seriously now, does Foxbat feature as a regular in any campaigns out there? And if so, what does he bring to the setting? I've always imagined that my players would lynch me if I presented them with a loon like this running loose in the world. I mean, rampaging bricks and megalomaniac mutants make perfect sense, obviously...

Re: When Bad Translators Attack!

Re: Comics you loved...but apparently no one else did To add to my earlier response, Xenozoic Tales, quite possibly the most beautiful comic ever drawn. Actually a rather nifty RPG too.

Re: Your personal comic book origins

Re: "Hey! Look at me!" How about an item of equipment for the undercover agent with a sense of fashion: 1970's-style disco trousers, rocket-assisted to achieve altitude before exploding. Call them "Distress flares." Ahem. I'll get my coat...

Re: Your personal comic book origins As actual up-to-date American comics were pretty uncommon in 1970's England I mainly read the available British reprints of older titles cropping up in things like Rampage! (any guesses as to which green-skinned behemoth that one featured?) or The Super Heroes and the weeklies published by Marvel UK, such as Captain Britain. Like many a Brit I was also drawn into 2000 A.D. from the start, as well as the spin-off Starlord comic. A totally different experience from the American comics, although I missed those wonderful ads that the American comics had for such unknown exotic items as Twinkies and Spalding basketballs. I once impressed a basketball-loving girlfriend by the fact that I knew who Dr J was; I failed to mention that I'd only encountered him in comicbook ads...

Re: Comics you loved...but apparently no one else did Captain Britain, and here I'm talking about the classic original Cap and not the rather ordinary flag-covered super he later became. I used to read his weekly comic (free cut-out mask in issue one, if I recall!) and the odd appearances in Team-Up and the like (which is when I first noticed that his boots actually had heels... weird, when most heroes seem to manage without them) and he hasn't been the same since. Occasional attempts to revive him seem doomed. I also enjoyed Machine Man, but I was young back then.

Re: [Package Deal] Scouting (Boy Scouts) Not necessarily useful for this thread, but it still amuses me as an unintentional double entendre par excellence: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0192802461/qid=1141772406/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_3_1/202-6247177-3316613

Re: Comprehensive Pulp Resources List Ah, beat me to it. I was especially pleased to see the inclusion of Bullshot! on the list, being something of a fan of that film; all too often spoofs of the adventure / pulp genre are dismissed as having little to offer, but the good ones do a nice job of distilling the core elements into concentrated form.

Re: Cool Toys I'm not sure if it actually is Lego - hard to tell from the pic - but it's a wonderful looking set. I could see that as scenery in a Tekumel game. A HERO Tekumel conversion, obviously. Ahem.

Re: Lost World Found! I'm hoping for a Lost World populated by intelligent yaks, but then I'm something of a dreamer (not to mention the killing I could make marketing hair care products in such a place).