Matt Frisbee

Re: What Would Your Character's City Be Like? Hey Hermit, In the few games I've been privileged to be a player: Fisteel's hometown was Chicago, slightly higher tech and less suburban than its real world incarnation. He was a south-sider who became a superhero after getting caught in the middle of a super-fight in an industrial chemicals facility, so the whole campaign had a kind of technology bender to it. The Thorn battled minions of the underworld and the super-criminal syndicates in the Hudson City setting in a street-level supers campaign. To the villains of the campaign he earned the nickname "Cockroach" because they thought he had been snuffed so many times and kept coming back. My all time favorite campaign, however, was a DC Heroes affair set in Los Angeles where The Gray Ghost (son of Simon Trent) battled the forces of evil. Gary Trent was a Hollywood stuntman who picked up the mantle of the fictional superhero after his father was murdered. He developed a reputation of being able to pull off the impossible stunts, due in part to his superheroic activities.

Re: This week on "Champions"... Bay City Rollers -- 7pm Sunday "Fighting Fire With Fire" Firehawk continues his hunt for Bay City's serial arsonist after investigators discover some unusual clues. Meanwhile, Artemis battles the insidious Followers of Set as they seek to wake the Moonserpent! Could both of these problems have a common source?

Re: My New Project - 101 Days Of Champions More power to you, Theron! If you're only doing 101 days, however, you may want to scrap the extended setting preparation. My suggestion is you do the whole "Supers are just showing up now" thing in the Hudson City setting. (Maybe the turn of the Millennium is when they appear and all of the ones showing up so far are supervillains.) Superhero team or fight club? I can imagine that the supers get to know each other through "under the radar" internet chat rooms and by chance meetings on the streets, and eventually develop a clandestine network to pull the team together during a crisis. Of course, the heroes aren't going to get any help from the police, since they would be considered vigilantes, and the local press would have a mixture of fascination and trepidation for the city's new "heroes" (a la The Daily Bugle vs. Spiderman). Anyway, good luck with the project and keep us informed. Matt

Re: What Champions Books Would You Like Published in the Future? Here's my two cents' worth: One thing that really needs to be done for this game system is something similar to the Cyberpunk 2020 supplement "Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads!" A comprehensive guide for GM's on how to create unique and interesting campaign settings, how to manage player character (and villain) progression, guidelines for creating adventures and story arcs, and so on. Admittedly, the "Challenges For Champions" supplement was extremely helpful, but didn't really tackle the angle on how to make an extended campaign work. Kudos to Aaron Alliston for his work in the Champions Sourcebook for tackling the subject as well, but I still see a lot of posts here about campaign settings and people wanting help with them. It wouldn't have to be written as a canonistic work, it could just be commentary by various "acknowledged" GM's on how they dealt with issues such as these in their campaigns. And now I'm out of pennies. Be well. Matt

Re: Campaign writeup advice needed Hey Megaplayboy, If your players are really into reading about the world their characters are in, then this effort is going to be worth the time. Otherwise, my suggestion is keep a fairly loose timeline and keep fairly tight campaign notes on the places where the characters are going to be interacting for an extended time (the home city). Never, ever fall into the trap that the whole world has to be defined before the campaign starts. Just make sure you're solid on those parts of it where the characters are going to be during the adventures. Anything else, you can either mention in passing while making a note to yourself to develop it when you have the time, or (if appropriate) let the player concerned develop the item, idea, etc. on their time, and work with him or her to make it fit into the campaign. It's been my experience that good players welcome this opportunity to contribute. Most players will toss some ideas at you and leave it to your imagination. The bad players don't do anything and you have to decide how badly you want them in the game. Silly question -- just how serious are you going to play this campaign? Is it a dark and moody universe or a more light-hearted one? Is it going to be serial in nature or episodic? The more continuity you want in the game is going to dictate how much detail you're going to need to pull it off. Good luck with the campaign! Matt

Re: This week on "Champions"... Hello all -- this has been fun to read! (I love stealing ideas, since it is so much easier than creating ideas from scratch!) Here's a quick rundown on the season in my corner of the universe. Bay City Rollers -- 7pm Sun. [Premiere] "The Replacement Heroes" -- Two rookie superheroes are out to clean up crime in Bay City! Artemis and Firehawk find out just how tough that is when an invasion of werewolves hails the arrival of Spellbound! Can the rookies handle the opposition or will they, like the city's former superhero, fall by the wayside? Bay City Rollers -- 7pm Sunday "The Replacement Heroes, Part II" [Conclusion] After learning the insidious plot of supervillainess Spellbound, the Bureau of Metahuman Affairs brings in Crystal and Sasquatch to back up Artemis and Firehawk. It's a battle royale as the heroes square off against Loupe Garou, Nightowl and Powerhouse in a desperate attempt to thwart Spellbound's bid for the ultimate magical power! Bay City Rollers -- 7pm Sunday "Throwing Stars & Bars" Artemis and Crystal investigate the theft of an ancient suit of samurai armor along with a matched pair of swords with mystic overtones. Meanwhile, Firehawk and new superhero Longbow investigate the disappearence of a popular television reporter. Could the two events be linked? And how does it all tie into the Civil War? [From Heroic Adventures, Volume 1] Bay City Rollers -- 7pm Sunday "Throwing Stars & Bars, Part II" [Conclusion] It's a race against time as our heroes try to stop the mad revenge plot of Yatsomoto and his crew of Techno-Ninjas, backed by a crew of Japanese supervillains -- Raiden, Ronin and Tsunami! [From Heroic Adventures, Volume 1] Bay City Rollers -- 7pm Sunday "The Transdimensional Kid" Artemis, Crystal, Firehawk and Longbow are brought in by the Bureau of Metahuman Affairs to help the BCPD investigate the disappearance of the daughter of a local politician. But where do you look when the child is a metahuman with the ability to bridge dimensions? [suggested by the Patsy Conrad writeup in Normals Unbound] And this week's entry: Bay City Rollers -- 7pm Sunday "The Transdimensional Kid, Part II" [Conclusion] Our heroes have managed to track down the dimension Patsy is in, but so have operatives of DEMON! Can the heroes find her in Dimension Fairy Tale before the Black Paladin, Dark Seraph and their horde of agents do? [suggested by the Patsy Conrad writeup in Normals Unbound] Don't forget the popcorn! Thanks for the space!

Re: What's in a Name? Tahngarth? Like the Magic the Gathering CCG card? Sheesh.... Thomas and Garth Underwood were human beings once -- human beings with seperate bodies, seperate minds and seperate futures. But that was all before now. That was back when they both knew nothing of the power of dark magic and the madness of those who wield it. That was back when they were just police officers responding to a suspicious person call at the abandoned house near a crumbling graveyard. They arrived seperately, searched seperately, thought seperately, sweated under seperate kevlar vests in the mid-summer heat as they seperately discovered that their quarry was within the old house. They had their last conversation as seperate people about how they would enter the house seperately and approach what they assumed was a vagrant. They entered the house from opposite ends, converging slowly on the room which smelled of fresh blood and incense, into the flickering light of guttering candles and the unearthly non-light of black magic. The magician stumbled in his incantation, and the dark forces he toyed began to consume him. Thomas and Garth reacted as only true policemen could -- they tried to help. They stepped into the magic circle together, acting together, of one purpose. The dying magician cursed them in his pain and fear, and the dark forces heard and gleefully obeyed... Thomas and Garth were merged, fused together in an unholy union of flesh and black magic. The creature that remained was both less and more than human. Two minds joined together, forever forced to share the same thoughts, the same limbs, the same curse. Twice as strong, twice as big, suffused with the unholy power of the black arts -- invulnerable, twisted and evil. A dark spirit found a home in the twisted flesh of two men and now is free to roam the earth, provided it can withstand the assault of alien thoughts of two humans, forever entwined, forever fighting for some measure of peace. No longer Thomas and Garth, but Tahngarth, The Patchwork Man. How about something a little easier now? I choose "Failsafe" Good luck, true believers!

Re: Extra Extra: Is 5ER actually bullet proof Random thoughts on the movie: 1) Very entertaining, especially the last bit. 2) Where does the term FRED come from? 3) Seems like a perfectly good waste of a $50.00 rule book. Matt