Murrkon5

Re: Anywhere but your own country I always base the game in Canada, usually in the city I'm currently living. The only time I've GM'ed a game set in New York was because I "inherited" the Big Chair from another GM's longtime campaign. I've run into this USA-centric attitude in one particular player. An emigrant from down south, he made two faux pas in a WW II super campaign. The first was pretty mild, as he mused once that it was odd "Nobody had picked a patriotic character." Why he thought a bunch of Canadians in a game set in Canada would might choose a "Captain America" clone was a greater puzzlement. His second faux pas was a deeper cut. We started the campaign in 1939. He grunted and asked "Why don't we begin when the war started?". That derailed the game for a length of time while we berated him for America's 1941 tardiness. But that's all beside the topic. I had a yearning to run a second WW II campaign set closer to the front lines, in England. Have a government formed team called "The Empire Brigade". Players would be "restricted" to a character from any country in the British Commonwealth. However, the previous Golden Age campaign was still pretty fresh, so nobody (including me) had any great push to see it happen.

Re: WWYCD: Registration The majority of my characters tsk-tsk and feel sympathetic concern for their Yankee counterparts. For the two that actually are American citizens, both have a sufficiently nomadic-footloose tone that they'd emigrate to a less oppressive regime. I'd say any American superhero should do the same, if only on a temporary basis. A sort of "work to rule" strike. See how well the Homeland boobs do when super crooks and megalomaniacs realize America is "open for business". See how long it takes for a new policy to emerge. Actually, any hero would only make a big public noise about emigrating and then slip back home very low profile, to be on hand in case the subsequent villain jamboree hit critical mass.

Re: one year to change the world A year? Huh...luxury. In the days of the early (or even pre-) Silver Age, there were potions and a few gizmos around the DC Universe that gave a normal human Super Powers (and in those days, "super powers" meant "powers like Superman") for 24 HOURS. That's the mental munching we indulged in, usually waiting for the other gamers to show up. 24 hours means you better use that superspeed to good advantage. After dumping a few old chests of seaweed-dripping antique pirate swag in my apartment (a man has to think to the future), I'd get busy. Removing weapons and armaments doesn't work. It just gives fresh, new incentive to the evil military industrial complex to make new ones. Whether you have superpowers for a day or a year, you won't be around to police the release of the new product line. For me, I'd construct the basic foundations and infrastructure for bases/cities on the Moon and Mars. Move in a couple of huge chunks of asteroid ice to supply them. Tell the U.N. they exist. If I have 24 hours, I bluff and warn them about getting too rough in a space race to occupy the bases. If I have a year, it's not a bluff. One side question is what to use as a mask? A full costume would be fun, but concealing my identity seems crucial. Again, whether a day or a year later, I don't want the "men in black" knocking on my door when I'm back to being a mere mortal.

Re: Call Captain Planet! Noise Pollution. It's a legit concern. I know New York City has some strict noise and decibel bylaws with a squad of special inspectors checking everything from airports to air conditioners to make sure they're in code. Another "pollution" that pops off my tongue is Light Pollution. However, that is pretty much the bane of astronomers and pretty much nobody else.

Re: How to get ideas across (GM's) In the instances when vagueness and wishy-washy concepts come up, sadly the players really don't have a problem communicating. They just have nothing to communicate. I try to avoid an actual "baby talk" tone to my voiice. "What do you want to do? Hit stuff? Shoot stuff?" And we narrow it down like a game of 20 Questions. One memorable instance the desire and wit were there, but no focussed concept. My friends had brought in a new player. They recommended me as GM, they recommended her as a player. However, she had read virtually zero comic books in her life and had no idea what to do for a superhero campaign. She was trying too hard to anticipate the genre. She did read a lot of sci-fi. I explained that many supers, from the Big Kahuna from Krypton on down, were aliens on Earth. I suggested she simply think of an alien with nonhuman abilities from a favourite book and imagine he/she/it as a new immigrant on Earth. It took her about five minutes after that. A GM to Player communication problem happened that same campaign. The heroes fought Godzilla. Their reactions seemed faint and bland. Somehow it came out that NONE of the players had ever seen a Godzilla movie! They only knew he was a "big lizard or something". The game session was immediately suspended. The tape was put in the VCR. "We're fighting THAT???" Thirty minutes later we returned to the game, now in full colour in reaction and sharp RP.

Re: Help Requested: Name my Canadian team and it's members You might take any of the suggestions that feel "marginal" and run them thru a English-French translator. If the resulting word rolls off the tongue easily enough (unless you have bilingual players, pronounciation isn't too important), you have a fresh-sounding Quebecois character. My favourite Canadian brick name is from the western prairie: Haymaker. On a side note, this is great fun but why-oh-why do any teams not based in the US of A have such ethnic/national labels? In "retaliation", my world's GM character American team had: Eagle, Johnny Reb, Greenback, Da Wise Guy and the Big Apple

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Superhero team, narrowing the search for the villains, anticipating battle. Our Leader, half in character, half out of character: "Let's keep the damage down to one city block this time, eh?" Chuckles all around. I tentatively raise my hand, speaking for my super-strong character. "Yes?" "Is that one city block for the whole team, or a city block each?"

Re: The Amazing Adventures of Doc's Boys-Final Chapter The Exploits, Enterprises and Experiences of DOC's BOYS Ham, Monk, Renny, Long Tom and Johnny (as witnessed by your faithful correspondent, Dr. W.H. "Johnny" Littlejohn) CHAPTER THREE: Endgame A flock of hand grenades bounce into the room we occupy. As a result, we depart the premises with consummate, but dignified, haste. Fortuitously, the contractor enrusted with the construction of this structure used substandard window glass. I clasp the sand and coarse sea grass outside to my bosom as consecutive detonations tear the room and night apart. The bombardment does not cool our determination. Even as Renny and rise from the ground, we hear Monk's happy chortle punctuating the stacatto reverberations of his beloved tommy gun from within the abused edifice. Renny proposes an alternate maneuvar to re-entering and in a trice, we are on the roof of the first level, approaching the second floor windows. Below, Ham and Monk can be heard squabbling as they finish the last of the dastardly grenade lobbers. It is therefore a nigh-simultaneous event when vertiginous waves crash through all our cerebrums, inciting pain and hallucinations of a woebegone girl. The fantastic visions and disorientating paroxysms of pain drive us to our knees and then oblivion. Roughly five minutes later, we escalade from insensibility to congnizance. The unexplained assault is gone, leaving only a fading migraine. I begin to suspect the Cross of Atocha's powers are not the poppycock and superstition I had conjectured. We return to our search of the building,only to discover all enemies fled and files aflame. We quench the destroying fires as fast as we are able, and salvage the following from teh scorched remnants: - Plans for a stupendous zeppellin aircraft carrier, far larger than the US Navy's USS Macon or USS Akron. - A fragment of a letter bearing a date three days hence. - An empty chest containing customized slots for a large and a small cross. Renny recalls a special event hosted by the President and his upper echelon advisors is scheduled three days from now in Washington, DC. The coincidence is too dire to elide. Further rummaging discovers the secret access to the inaccessible and ulterior first floor wing. Descending, we find an armoured bunker housing its own light source and a sinister laboratory of vivisected bodies. Before we can comment on the horrific experiments, we are again the subjects of the psychic onslaught upon our ego structures. Ham is cerebrally poleaxed at the manifestation before us. While we three are none too steady, we retain our rationality to try and puzzle the phantasm before us. The young girl returns, still as desperately despondent as before. However, this vision alternates with a vile lizard demon. Both images wear a miniature of the Cross of Atocha about their neck. Physical responses from my comrades prove fruitless. I pummel my brain for 17th Century Spanish idioms, hoping to match the era of the Cross. I speak in the language of the Iberian Penninsula, speaking calmly and politely. Astonishingly, I capture her attention. In a manner pointedly discombobulating, her replies echo in my very skull. She pleads for aid and succor, but is frustratingly unresponsive to on details. We can only deduce the Cross is the source of her malaise, but it remains spectrally elusive to our grasp. Finally, in desperation, Renny makes a masterful shot with his firearm and shatters the evil antiquity. The lizard abomination fades in silent rage. The beatific expression of release on the young girl's face makes all our travails worthwhile. Her ascension to a Better Place engulfs us in a transcendent, and restoring, inundation of euphoria. Words fail me. This will require a great deal of rumination in future days. For now, haste is of the essence if liberty is to be preserved. To Washington! We telegraph the capital with our dire news and suspicions, but we have too much savvy to expect the monolithic bureaucracy to act precipitously in the matter. We put our own plans into motion. An aircraft is outfitted with armaments and an ingenious anchor attachment up top. Essentially, we intend to patrol the skies, battle through any defending air support and board the zeppelin via their own docking procedures. Simplicity personified. Two hours of enervating watching and searching and circling pass before a radio broadcast provides the clue we require. Adventitious cloud cover masks our approach to this leviathan of the skies. It is quite startling how such an enormous thing can float serenely in the firmament. Then admiration is rudely replaced by needs of survival. Ham and Monk man our offenses, duelling with flitting fighter craft. The thunderbolts of the gods could not match the power modern mortals wield in casual carnage. It is difficile to maintain personal morale clutching naught but binoculars as our mechanized pegasus fills with the hot tang spent chordite and light beams pierces the fog from new holes in the fuselage. However punctured and maimed our craft becomes, the enemy suffers a greater portion. Soon the skies are open for our boarding attempt. Adrenalin continues to flow freely as Renny and I squat atop our wounded bird, several hundred feet above ground, listening to the fusillade of gunfire around us, applying wrenches to lock dock to anchor. Secure and safe (though "safe" is an altogether relative term), we scramble, jump and rappel thru the aluminum buttressing and interior superstructure. Echoes of shouts, screams and ringing ricochets abound. We regroup as the immediate hangar is won, just in time to witness the mass of our aircraft overwhelm the the strength of the docking arm. Plane and assemblage vanish in a single, sharp protest of squealing metal. This could be a concern. The alarm klaxon rumbles through the brobindangnian vessel and we press forward to the Bridge. I am uncertain whether it is the incessant running battle that saps endurance or the sheer grueling distance. Any air ship of these proportions should provide a taxi cab service. The final rampart to scale, the door to the Bridge itself. Bursting thru debouches on to a tiny balcony. The capacious space stretching away gives us all a moment's pause. A vast opera house of a cockpit, filled with intense flight crew and veritable horde of Green Serpent Elite Guard at parade rest. Standing with his fellow officers of evil stands another snake demon shifting ethereally with the form of a distinguished man in uniform. The Cross of Atocha gleams prominently on his chest. The mental assault experienced on the Caribbean Island crashes into our cerebrums anew. The occult miasma clouds our perceptions to a terrifying degree. To our subjective senses, we go from aloft high over Washington to grounded with the debarkation ramp lowered in an eye's blink. Fortuneately, whatever acroamatic forces manipulated us in such a fashion also safeguarded us from harm. We fight our way to normalcy still perched on the entry balustrade. The Serpent Captain vanishes into thin air before our first offensive effort is begun. The initial exchange is a harrowing event, forcing nimble evasion on our part. Our gas grenades are less than efficacious, but our bullets wreak the necessary violence to allow us to depart our beachhead. Into the fray! The savagery of my purloined Thompson Machine Gun is boggling to my civilised sensibilities. Grim necessity forces me to allow the brutal warrior within to stay dominant. As enemy bodies fall, the implacable force of evil grips Monk in a cerebral vice. His sub-vocalizations reveal the mental invader is commanding him to attack Ham. Fortuneately a first rate brain exists within that simian cranium and Monk mutinies in fine style. The extrasensory dictates fly like machine gun volleys. Ham is ordered to kill Monk. Renny is commanded to kill me! The unseen mentalist learns that Doc's Boys are unshakeable comrades with pure hearts. Such contemptible commands are ignored with the disdain they deserve. The craven miscreant takes to the physical and stabs Renny treacherously in the back. As I sweep the area behind my stricken ally, I am savagely clawed across the trapezius and spine. I collapse into darkness. The luck of the Irish, a bucket of horseshoes and the grace of the gods brings me lurching to my feet ere too great a time has elapsed. Monk and Ham are in a martial waltz with a demonic dance partner. A calculated burst draws blood on the monster. A surgical sniper shot from Long Tom drops him to the deck. Victory! Removing the flagitious Cross of Atocha from around the fallen villain is a ticklish business, but it is secured as USA troops and agents arrive to secure the ship. The day is saved, the President is spared (we learn that while we fought, the mental puppeteer had attempted to attach strings to the commander-in-chief), and the sun will dawn on a free country.

Re: Pulp Apocalypse - Suggestions Wanted Other than those excellent suggestions above, I can only think of "Who Goes There?" by JW Campbell (or "Don Stuart"). Published in 1938, it is the story that the movies "The Thing from another World" (1951) and "The Thing" (1982) were based on. The story, and the 1980's movie, both discuss the catastrophe involved if the shape-stealing alien escapes to civilization...

Re: Let 'em eat clichés Whether your players will accept a cliche or a trope also depends on what sort of game you're running. If the session revolves around the mystery and the plot, they might well want something a little more sophisticated in the way of a trope. If they're just having a character-driven good time, finding a matchbook with "Club ChiChi" and a phone number is just fun.