BishopofB&W

Originally posted by Hermit

I've done that myself.

 

It's interesting to play up the frustration a super hero must feel with his mundane life. Imagine some poor mentalist who tries desperately to hold onto high ethics, but is just SO Tempted to get a little revenge on his jerk of a boss.

Considering that comic book canon usually has mutant powers manifest at the onset of puberty, it's surprising that there are more than a handful of heroic mutant mentalists. Surging hormones+Lack of Impulse Control+Power To Alter Others' Thoughts=Villain-In-The-Making.

Originally posted by joen00b

Katherine Kurtz... did she write the Deryni series?

Yes. I haven't read that yet.

The Adept by Kathleen Kurtz and Deborah Turner Harris.

It's an urban fantasy set in modern Scotland combining psychic powers, hermetic magic, and Scottish history and legends. It has some nice ideas for power special effects and organizing Lodges of do-gooders. The only problem I had with it, and this is not to disparage the story, is that it was billed as a regular fantasy when it was really written for women. By that I mean that every action is described in excruciating detail like in a romance novel. The main character is also like the hero of such a novel. He's a male Mary Poppins -- practically perfect in every way. He's so perfect that he has very little personality. It's well-written, but be warned.

Hey Steve or Darren,

it says in the book that Dr. Black knows Atlantean elemental magic. Is this in an upcoming book or should I go dig up a copy of the Atlantis sourcebook?

Originally posted by Monolith

The character's name is actually Myrmidon, not Gladiator. Everything else is the same.

 

And that is all 6 of them.

I remember now. Gladiator is another low-level UNTIL brick. He leads the equivalent of the speeder bike branch of UNTIL.

Originally posted by Southern Cross

So it seems.So who's in UNITY?

Quasar: Leader. Energy Projector with a body permanenty transformed into cosmic energy. No chance of normal relationship with anyone.

Gladiator: Low-level brick that uses Greek-motif magic weapons and armor.

Drs. Black and White: Married couple. Imagine Regis Philbin and Kathy Lee Gifford as wizards bantering back and forth while fighting supervillains.

Mentiac: World's smartest Canadadian;) . Actually, big-headed, short Canadian with world's greatest intellect. The team's social misfit Reed Richards.

El Picaro: Teleporting swordsman. Zorro fan. Costume looks like Zorro but red.

I'm forgetting somebody, but I don't have the book with me.

Originally posted by Blue

I've been lax. I bought a copy of UNTIL last week... last Wednesday I believe it was. All I did was jump to the page that had my name on it and read what I was doing. Since then it has sat next to my laptop waiting, nay, aching to be read.

 

I did however show it to friends. "See, there I am on Page 72."

"Hey! How'd you manage that?"

"I slipped Darren Watts $20."

 

...Not entirely a lie

Intoxicated by the sight of your name in print?

Originally posted by death tribble

Sounds good but where did you get hold of this ?

The Dreaming in Seattle. WA. It uses a very good distributor. Or maybe it's just the hot poker I keep in a scabbard on my belt.

Things I like and first impressions:

UNTIL uniform works better than Viper’s for dynamic art. Draws the eyes along the body to the arms to create a sense of motion.

Art pages at the beginning of each chapter are especially impressive.

The Grond/UNTIL Agents panels make a nice complement to the Nighthawk/Viper Agents panels in V:COTS.

UNTIL Grav-Tank and Valkyrie fighter. Valkyrie gives the impression that it’s smaller than the Dragon-Jet. This is probably right for a fast interceptor.

Cool picture of Aegir submarine.

Storn’s interpretation of Capt. Patriot.

Great illustrations of UNITY members. If I were a CU tabloid publisher, I’d run stories about El Picaro and Sapphire secretly eloping.

Dinosaur Hunt p. 156

Get Smart tribute p. 167

WHO IS MITTEN?

Plenty of info to jumpstart adventures involving UNTIL anywhere in the world. UNTIL culture is pretty generic compared to VIPER because it has to accommodate so many agents of different national cultures. I would expect PRIMUS to have a more distinctive culture.

Even if you don’t use UNTIL, it is a great template for structuring your own international organizations.

UNTIL is simply not capable of being the world's police force because it doesn't have the resources. Therefore it can only concentrate on world-threatening criminals. Maintaing good relations with local and federal law enforcement is critical. You could even run a campaign where a local cop or FBI agent gets pulled into fighting VIPER with UNTIL.

I like the Horror Hero idea. It sounds a lot like the comic Warrior Nun Areala where demons walk the earth at will and a still-powerful Catholic church sends warrior nuns and magic-priests to work with police and the military to stop them.

Originally posted by NuSoardGraphite

When someone mentions Howling, I can only think of Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf, Sybil Danning and a big Werewolf orgy.

 

I've been forever scarred by that movie...

 

Audiences will be glued to their seats as Sybil Danning turns into....Naked Sybil Danning!

Hey, it did save money on makeup and special effects.

I watched The Howling DVD the other night and it still looks good compared to CGI. What struck me was that I never before noticed the scathing satire in it. Its main target was late ‘70s to early ‘80s self-help gurus and the fad theory that most mental illness was caused by repressed impulses. The Colony was for werewolves in therapy! In the commentary, the writer and director said they were using the werewolves as a metaphor for what happens when no impulses are kept in check. They also said they hated the smiley-face sticker, which is why they had Quist (Robert Picardo) mark his territory with it.

Now I have to think about how to draw adventure ideas out of social satire.

Originally posted by Redmenace

Interesting read and thanks for posting. My only criticism, of the author's position not your post, is how is saying "everything is caused by Psychokinesis" any different from saying its magic?

 

PS- One of the Wild Cards books posits the same explanation in an in-world article at the back.

It depends on whether you think of magic as a force in and of itself or a process of manipulating forces. In my world, I use an idea from Mercedes Lackey's Diana Tregarde books and say that psi and magic are related because they both manipulate physical laws but they operate on slightly different

"channels", for lack of a better word. Psi, in my world, is less versatile than magic, but requires much less in the way of ritual and since it is more focussed, greater power can be developed in a shorter time.

Of course, some authors say that psi and magic are the same thing.

This guy has a fairly entertaining take on superhero comics and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer universe.

http://www.javapadawan.com/calliope/martian-vision.html

Originally posted by Outsider

The Iowa team doesnt have to be low-energy, they just have to have reasons for staying in Iowa.

 

SNIP

5) Perhaps the team is a highly mobile team that looks out for rural/smaller urban areas in a multi state zone, and is simply headquartered in Iowa, since it is centrally located in their area of responsibility?

I like this. They would be within a couple of hours of flight of Colorado, Michigan, etc. They could get called in to help out with a major supervillain attack as so many did when Dr. D wasted Detroit. Also, the terrain means that an enemy would have to use stealth technology or tunnel underground to sneak up on their headquarters. Remember the underground facility in the cornfield in the the X-files movie? Make that a VIPER or ARGENT lab or base. The fact that Iowa appears so innocent on the surface just begs for villains to come to it.

Re: On the other hand...

Originally posted by Tech

Sorry, Bishop, but I'm gonna have to disagree. I can't say I either like him or hate him. I'm neutral regarding Seeker.

Ah, so you're an agnostic on the subject. Seeker may be cool or too stupid but you're not sure which. Or if there even is a Seeker.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Seeker

Originally posted by McCoy

I always thought Steve Irwin would be the perfect Secret ID for Seeker, as well as my first choice to play him him in Champions: The Motion Picture.

The problem is that Irwin himself says he has no patience to learn a script. He only did the one movie to raise money to add on (IIRC) to his zoo.

Re: Re: Re: Seeker

Originally posted by Solomon

Of course in my campaign it's Nighthawk who gets to be a comic book character instead. Seeker's just too cool.

You either like Seeker or hate him. I put him in my timeline as Dr. Emory "Seeker" White, 1930s explorer and zoologist with a working knowledge of archaeology from years of adventuring. I picture him as an amalgam of Mel Gibson and Steve Irwin.

Hmmm.....put Irwin in silk pants with no shirt and give him a sword? Its...THE CROCODILE SEEKER!

Nice cover. I like the depiction of teamwork.

Originally posted by D-Man

serpentor?

Purchase a copy for yourself and all your friends and family!

This I command!

Originally posted by BoneDaddy

BishopofB&W:

 

Your ideas look fine. This is a theme I was thinking of exploring/exploiting in a campaign, and you've given me food for thought.

 

As for your ghosts, they seem to pass the Turing test (if everyone else thinks they are independant intelligences, they are,) and I really can't find much difference between there plight and our own - a consciousness created from fabricated memory, defined by its interactions with others in the same predicament.

 

Zombies are usually created on purpose, unless you are going for something Romero-esque (talk about a grim evening!). The big villain is usually the culprit here. The mechanics are where the fun comes in. Is the zombism contagious? Can one become infected? Can Ash get his Bad Hand?

There's one idea I've seen a lot of by various authors since White Wolf started that never sat well with me. If a person can be taken against their will and transformed mind, body, and soul into something evil, then good and evil are just convenient labels and it's ridiculous to portray humanity as the "white hats". Kind of like assigning moral superiority to a football team just because you're rooting for it.

The original Euro-vamp legends were about corpses animated by evil spirits. Even the early Hollywood movies had a little sympathy for people who had monstrous urges forced on them. Thus the hunters would talk about "laying them to rest". It makes no more sense to hate a Buffy- or White Wolf-style vampire than it does to hate a rabid dog. Both would be extremely dangerous and have to be destroyed to protect the rest of us but they couldn't help being what they are.

My idea for an involuntary vampiric transformation of a living person is an attempt to compromise between "kill the evil undead!" and the peaceful after-staking facial expressions in the old legends and early pop fiction and films. You can despise the parasitic spirit that is controlling the body and feel sympathy for the bound soul forced to watch helplessly. Unfortunately, destroying the vampire releases the living soul to its final reward but a whole set of adventures could be based on finding a method of exorcising the evil spirit and restoring the person's mortality. A willing transformee, OTOH, you can despise to your heart's content.

As for ghosts, I don't rule out the actual person's spirit making an appearance, but it should be rare and never automatic.

As far as zombies go, I'm not ruling out means that aren't overtly supernatural. What I decided is that if an event, supernatural or otherwise, allows the Netherworld to interact with the campaign world, you can get undead roaming around. If the interaction is prolonged and powerful enough, zombies can be infectious. Resident Evil would fit easily into this. As evidence of this I would point to Michelle Rodriguez turning into a zombie instead of the hunter-beast even though she was still alive when she got infected.

Originally posted by Blue

I ascribe to the means set forth in most movies: "Mr. Jenkins' coffin got doused with chemical waste and now he walks and has a hunger for brains." WHY doesn't matter so much.

 

Fighting the damned should always be uncertain. Players should never go into a first encounter with someone/something and know exactly how to deal with it. If I ironed out all those rules so that everything followed a conventional wisdom then things might get too easy.

 

Plus I enjoy that look when the players go, "Hey, how come he didn't dissolve in the holy water like that guy we doused last year?"

 

BUT your thinking certainly is fitting and seems to work pretty darn well.

I agree. That's why I put in the bit about variations because of imprecision and different types of spirits. That way I can also account for more than just European-style undead. And thanks.

My apologies to Mr. Winston Zeddmore for abridging his words.

Steve’s original Hero System Universe outline is understandably vague about the hows and whys of the undead. Do any of you use a particular background premise for ghosts, vampires, zombies, and other undead? I’m posting here on the Champions board because I want to make definitions that are reasonably consistent across genres.

Mine is a work in progress based on comic book science, pop parapsychology (some would say this also is comic book science), and an idea I ripped off—er, paid homage to, from the Ghostbusters movies.

Basically, almost all undead are either spirit equivalents of artificially intelligent automatons, bodies controlled by bound spirit entities from the Netherworld (a spirit dimension within the realms of Apophis, my version of Qlipoth that I’m still defining), or in the case of vampires and liches only, either an infusion of Netherworld energies to transform a willing, living soul into a Netherworld spirit or a process (only vampires) by which the living soul is bound and left unable to influence its body and a Netherworld spirit is left in control with full access to the living soul’s memories. This can be either by spell or vampiric attack. There can be many variations in powers and weaknesses because not only is creation imprecise, but there are many, many different types of Netherworld spirits. Very rarely, something goes completely wrong and the living soul gets in the dominant position. Such a vampire can choose to restrain its urges and do good.

Ghosts are usually the result of psychic imprints left by strong emotions or personalities left in objects or places and subsequently activated when filled with enough stray bio-energy from passersby (who ya’ gonna’ call?). Depending on how strong the imprint is and how much it has faded over time, the ghost can be anything from an unexplained noise to a poltergeist to a full-blown spiritual automaton with the appearance and memories of the original person and the belief that it is the person. The latter can be a pretty tragic figure, indeed. I still have a lot of fine-tuning to do.

What do you guys do?

Originally posted by Susano

And I have more to add... once I get around to it.

 

*Sigh*

 

Why couldn't I be independently wealthy so I could devote more time to projects like this?

 

If you were independently wealthy, you would be too busy sipping champagne with Bunny and Trixie on your private yaht.

Originally posted by Galadorn

 

When you get a statistical clue about corruption in religion, I'll let you know.

 

Galadorn

Order of Discalced Secular Carmelites

Of the Catholic Church

Professed Member of Seven Years [/b]

The second Blackadder series (Elizabethan period) has an episode called 'Money' which centers around Blackadder's efforts to raise 1,000 pounds to pay off the Bank of the Black Monks. He can't do it so he drugs the Bishop of Bath and Wells (played brilliantly by Ronald Lacey, whom you might remember as Toht in Raiders of the Lost Ark) and has a DaVinciesque artist create a painting showing him in a compromising position with Blackadder's hanger-on Lord Percy Percy. The quote is the Bishop's response before acquiescing to blackmail. The quote is funny because the writers exaggerated the corruption in the Anglican Church at the time for effect. The Bishop was expressing how impressed as well as angry he was. I have seen an interview with the present-day Bishop of Bath and Wells and he wasn't offended at all by it because it wasn't intended to be considered accurate by the viewers.

I hope that clears it up for you.

Originally posted by BishopofB&W

Let's see. Pencil in 5 minute hate for Jhamin for getting it before me. Nothing personal, but I must purge the green-eyed monster lest it fester inside me.

 

Wait! Possible entry for MMM2?

All done!