David Johnston

Re: DC versus Marvel: different styles

I came up with a series of splinter universes in which some of the semi-segregated realities of Marvel were fully segregated. As I recall my universes included:

Xverse: Powers come from being a mutant, alien, robot or cyborg.

Widespread fear and loathing from normal humans toward anyone or anything with powers.

Strangeverse: Powers come from magic. Normal humans are oblivious

to the paranormal and sorcerers erase evidence that would convince them

otherwise, including people's memories, en masse if necessary.

Ironverse: Powers come from costumes with circuitry in them and high tech weapons (including robots), created by corporations and governments to deniably duel with each other for power and profit. The distinction between a corporation and a criminal organisation is iffy.

Normal humans are perfectly aware of the existence of the costumed warriours but largely unconcerned about them and ignorant of the secret agendas they represent.

Ameriverse: Powers come from deliberate human enhancement experimentation and weapons development carried out by major governments and a plethora of loosely related secret societies dedicated to taking over the world. Since the subjects are chosen for loyalty the conflicts are intensely ideological. Normal people judge heroes depending how their own personal ideological stance conforms with the apparent stance of the hero, with adoration or great hostility.

Thorverse: Powers come from being an alien (some of whom were once worshipped as gods by primitive humans) or being a human altered by an alien's powers or in possession of an alien artifact. What humans think or don't think about the alien warriours who sometimes battle among them doesn't really matter and isn't gone into.

Note that in reality, though, Avengers spans all of these "realities" from time to time depending on the precise storyline. Thus, although they don't constantly deal with hostility toward mutants and mutant efforts to conquer humanity they have encountered it on many occasions, as well as Iron Man's villainous Roxxon corporation, Thor's godlike aliens, and Captain America's Hydra and Communist opponents.

Re: A little help please.

While this would upset the Administration for understandable reasons, it isn't going to have even a fraction of the popular impact that having CNN running a shot of an airliner crashing into a skyscraper again and again all day continuously had, particularly if Rumsfeld is recovered alive, making it essentially just another foiled supervillain plot like so very many others in a comic book universe. I doubt that would get the Administration enough congressional and international support for two invasions. It's more likely that they'd launch a major "covert" effort against those involved, maybe using supervillains on a Suicide Squad parole to hit the Al Q and Viper leadership and of course try to tighten up general border security. Give intelligence agencies more latitude and still create DHS for what that's worth.

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

If you were going to let a player run Wonder Boy then I'd suggest having his daughter be Wonder Girl in 2006. Assuming he's 16 in 1930 at the start of the campaign then he'd be a mere 76 in 1990, and even a normal human male can father a child at that age. What happened to Captain Wonder so he isn't around in 2006 and his daughter is left to be raised alone by her mom? It was

very heroic of course but we still avoid talking about it just in case Wonder Boy will hear and have to suffer under the burden of predestination. It was Captain Wonder's last wish.

Re: charictor picture, teen champions

That's a really good picture, but why is one leg so much paler than the rest of her? Is it sticking out of the magic field surrounding her?

Re: Concepts you wish your players would play

I once designed a gun bunny with superhuman strength just because her gun was absurdly exagerratedly big. She was inspired by a picture of Evangeline, the nun with a gun.

Re: Comics "Ages" sound bites

More of a Greek allusion really:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_Man

The progression in the Book of Daniel may have been influenced by contact with the Greeks, but it was Greeks like Hesiod who talked about the "golden and silver ages" of the past. Really the modern age shouldn't be named until it is over since only then can we view it in perspective.

Re: "Look, up in the sky! It's Super Saint!" Christian-themed heroes

The whole concept of the superhuman is, by Judeo-Christian definition, 'blasphemous'. It is based on man being discontent with waiting on and for God to be our hero, our justice and our vengance. Now that's an extreme POV, and if one follows it through you really can't make any excuses for it... you either agree with it or you don't, but by definition it is undeniable no matter if you are profiting from it or not. If you are serious about being a disciple to the Christ then you would be serious in seeing how rediculous the concept of the 'Christian superhero' is.

 

RE: Spears, Weapons, Powers, etc. Artifacts are useless to the true Christian tradition. As a matter of fact, they are counter-intuitive to the concept of the Holy Spirit being all that we have been left with and all that we need for the fulfilment of our faith. Sure these relics exist, but if they were lost, stolen or destroyed tomorrow it wouldn't mean a thing to the Spirit's contemporary work. Useless trinkets are meaningless when the Creator who made them can never be lost, stolen or destroyed. It's harmful to engage in such talk... why not just make up a religeon instead of making light of such a serious issue? You'd get further and you could have total freedom when it comes to what you're dealing with.

This kind of line of reasoning is of course precisely why Marvel ended up with quite a few characters with Satanic or quasi Satanic connections and a distinct lack of representation from the other side of the table. The Satanists weren't going to complain about their side's fictional representations, while some Christians inevitably would. But it always bothered me that in the fictional battle betwixt good and evil, Heaven was a no-show but Hell was very much in evidence. It just struck me as wrong.

Re: So that's what you think?

The divergence into real life physics aside, one problem here comes with the powers that don't do damage. What's the opposite of an entangle when the character's already free of entanglements? Maybe an absorb to dexterity? But what would the opposite of a controlled mind be? Still, there's a more fundamental problem with the character. His usefulness as is, is dubious.

So he's hard to hurt. But given that he doesn't actually pose a threat, why bother to try? With most people who primarily rely on absorbtion, the punch you gave him at the start powers him and makes him dangerous. Not so with this guy. He has no attack. I'd suggest giving him other more offensive paradoxical abilities to screw with people in a serious way so the player characters will actually be motivated to try to disable him. For example, how about a power which changes the laws of motion in the area so people move in the same direction as they apply force instead of the opposite direction? If they jump or fly upwards they find themselves slamming into the ground and if they try to run they have to pull their feet back to get forward momentum.

He might be able to reverse the special effects on people's powers so to protect a Vulnerable teammate or exploit someone's Vulnerability. Disable Foci by reversing the flow of force inside. Make it so people see as though they had eyes in the back of their head and not in the front. Essentially transmutation effects with bizarre special effects is what I'm thinking.

You could call him Professor Paradox.

Re: Susceptibility Question

Yes, the instant susceptibility would be a different one from the slower one.

But have you considered just buying your defenses with "Not versus Cold Attacks"?

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

Something of the sort mightn't be a bad idea. At the very least I will have some periods of time being easier to access than others.

 

The only thing that bugs me about having a portal is the fact that it coincidentally links two periods that happen to have superheroes. I guess that that isn't the biggest coincidence in a superhero world, and I shouldn't about something so unimportant when I'm accepting so many other equally unlikely things.

Well that isn't really much of a coincidence at all, if all of history from the time of the first superhero continues to have superheroes. Any portal into the future would lead to a timeframe that had their own superheroes and villains. And if the portal is actually created by supervillainous shenanigans 97 years apart which "rip the fabric of time" (sort of like the Philadelphia Experiment movie) then the two sides of the portal _have_ to lead to a time that has supervillains, and thus one would hope, those who oppose them.

Through the night

To the dawn

Behind you another runner is born

Don't look back

You'll be laaaate...

Re: 1930s Superboy and the 21st Century LSH

The problem is that it would be a waste to ignore either of the two settings. That makes PC time travel more or less a must.

 

Of course time travel causes problems of its own, but they can be worked around.

Do it Feng Shui/Shadowfist style! There's a stable portal that leads back and forth 97 years. You could put it in space so you need a ship or flight and immunity to space to use it, or you could just plop it in some cave underground.

The respective superteams of past and present each set up a headquarters above it so they'll be in position to stop the villains from the past who want to steal the future's technology and the villains from the future who want to rewrite history.

Re: "Look, up in the sky! It's Super Saint!" Christian-themed heroes

Armageddon is an overlooked but fascinating superhero RPG universe where, apart from the human magic users and psychics (who are generallyat the lower end of the power scale) most of the super characters are angels (both the kind who were directly created by the Creator and the less powerful former humans endowed with angelic powers and sent back to fight evil) "gods" (referred to in the text as "titans" both to avoid offending sensitive players and also because the largest faction of angels violently object to anyone except the Creator being referred to as a god and the titans already fought and lost that war.), and their half human offspring and avatars.

The ingame explanation for the titans is that the Creator didn't like to get It's hand dirty dealing with base matter so he created the titans as "subcontractors" who first constructed the world, and used their powers to keep it running until it was geologically and ecologically stable enough that direct intervention was no longer required.

Re: Pcs and the presidency

Well, no. Great popularity is not a burden that Cheney struggles with.

Re: Pcs and the presidency

It shouldn't be a problem if he wants to be a Vice President. Just think about it - Most VP's do nothing' date=' and have little power. The President sends them off to get them out of their hair.[/quote']

 

That's a really intriguing idea. The superhero boosts the ticket with his presumable popularity and then helps the administration with those little

terrorist problems or flood relief. I wonder though, whether a President would tolerate having a V.P. who is much more popular and respected, and in some ways more powerful than he is.

Re: Super Names

One of the problems with getting names of Middle Eastern characters is that

the dictionaries for Arabic won't give romanisations. So I cheated by looking up a bunch of stars with arabic names.

Al ta'ir (Arabic: The Flyer)

Elnath (Arabic: Attacking with horns)

Al Na'ir (Arabic: Bright One or the Light)

Murzim (Arabic: Herald)

Al Fard (Arabic: The Hermit)

Saif (Arabic: Sword)

Jabbar (Arabic: Giant)

Al Hawwa (Arabic: Snake Charmer)

Ghul (Arabic: Ghoul)

Hadar (Arabic: The Ground)

Janah (Arabic: Wing)

Al'Adra (Arabic: The Virgin)

Izar (Arabic: Veil)

And a late entry: Poseur

Re: Pcs and the presidency

I would have my characters point out to the character that winning would necessarily mean retirement from the field. And if he did win, I'd have him assassinated so the remaining PCs can track down the assassin.

Re: Was watching Superman TAS and wondered about Mxyzptlk

Was this a fanfic or an actual comic story?

Not only was it an actual comic story, it was the only Myx story I ever thought was worth anything. It would make an interesting alternate world to visit if you had a campaign set far enough back in comics history. Superman, for example, kind of got pounded by Clara Kent/Superwoman because, still stuck in the Silver Age he couldn't bring himself to hit a woman. Imagine a World War II campaign where the PC team is blown out of reality and find themselves in a world where 9 out of ten heros are female and men are treated with the breathtaking condecension that female Golden Age characters were regularly treated to.

Re: Hybrid Characters

As I was saying before I was interrupted, most battlesuit characters ARE hybrids in the first place. If you look at someone like Iron Man, he's actually a flying zapper/brick/gadgeteer. It's just such a common type of hybrid that it gets an archetype of its own. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with a Brick who maybe isn't quite so strong but knows martial arts, or a Mentalist who wears a protective suit of powered armour, or a stretching martial artist who can scan or attack the minds of people he grabs. Archetypes are fundamentally for beginners who are baffled by the complexity of the design system and need a hand.

However, that doesn't mean that people who want to be able to do absolutely everything can't annoy me. When someone designs a character with all basic levels in stats, but then buys them all up through a focus so they'll have enough points to make Captain Everything and turn all of the other characters into his supporting cast, that annoys me. When, once again, somebody gets the bright idea of designing a Captain Trips so they'll have an identity for each and every occasion I get very tired. And above all I get most annoyed by people who want to do everything and end up spreading themselves so thin they can't do anything, or making massive math "errors" to make it fit.

Re: Super Names

Canadian Shield, The

Bastinada: Spanish, "To beat with a club"

Doctor Meridian

Ferox: Latin, Ferocious

Kaze: Japanese, "Wind

Lady Killer

Jack Ketch: British generic name for executioners

Jebal: Arabic, "Mountain"

Madame Sabotage

Mizu: Japanese, "Water

Past Master

Serpentine

Sindona: Italian, "Coffin"

Strega: Italian, "Witch"

Yuki no Onna: Japanese, "Snow Woman"

Hokage: Japanese: Fire Shadow

Lagarto: Spanish: Lizard

Kin No Yuri: Japanese: Golden Lily

Lethe: Greek river of forgetfulness in the underworld

Melusine: A french fairy tale shapeshifter, with magic powers and

a long serpentine lower body in her true form.

Niebla: Portuguese: Fog