Tjack

1 hour ago, archer said:

  Reveal hidden contents

Part one:

 

Wolverine strolls into the lab and throws a very bloody cloth on the table. 

 

It lands with wet, meaty thump.

 

Wolverine says, "It wasn't easy. But now you have what you need to build the gizmo which will save the world.

 

Mister Fantastic looks at the cloth dubiously then lifts the edge to look underneath. With a visible wince, he lowers the cloth and says, "Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. When I said that my invention needs buckyballs, what I meant was...."

 

      Not to mention what Mr. Barnes went through.

Very nice write-ups. Thanks.

31 minutes ago, Pariah said:

"Geddy Lee looks like an intergalactic time-traveling wizard." 

    Are we sure he’s not?

8 hours ago, Cygnia said:

   Well, that’s one way to win a race.

4 hours ago, Cygnia said:

    Those are gonna be some UGLY babies.

On 3/15/2022 at 8:52 PM, Logan.1179 said:

Beware the Ides of March...

 

     That would be a Cesear salad I assume...

55 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

So we're going beyond comic-book superheroes now. In that case, for me there can be only one.

 

 

    He’s Gumby, dammit!

    You never said if you’re looking for an on-line situation or a real life spot at a table.  If the latter you need to say where you’re located. We have members scattered all over the U.S. and in other countries. 
      Either way, best of luck finding a game.

4 hours ago, Bazza said:

New job title: planetary saviour. 

     Do you have to go to a special school for that?    And is there an apprentice program?

3 hours ago, Old Man said:

That would have been an improvement over the script that got filmed. 

   Disney’s The Black Hole wasn’t all that bad for what and when it was.  It was an Escape to Witch Mountain or The Apple Dumpling Gang kind of film with solid for its era special effects.   It was written for 10 year olds, with joy in their hearts.  Not 25 year old college students with a stick up their butts.

      And let’s also lay off the British for a while.  It was funny at first, and I was a part of it.  But it’s starting to look like just piling on and that’s just mean.

  We can still bitch about the Russians though.

  After major heart surgery and a small stroke I had to spend time in a rehab hospital to re-learn walking and climbing stairs. They only had one closed circuit TV channel and it played movies . On the weekend the guy who programmed the movies took off and would leave three films on a repeating loop. From my first day there on Friday afternoon until Tue morn. (Holiday weekend) I was trapped in a bed watching Snow Dogs, Legally Blonde & A Beautiful Mind.

   Try watching A Beautiful Mind for four days straight coming down off of heavy medication while having short term memory lapses.

43 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

Not British, but a battered and fried fish fillet and a mess of tater logs is one of the finest bits of breakfast you can eat.

 

 

 

 

The single most common holiday on the planet is, in any language, loosely translated as "freedom from the English" day.

 

And yet they _still_ carry on like they are somehow significant.

 

The nerve of some people...

 

 

   I’ve been Brit-bashing as much as anybody else here, but they do have two very important things going for them...

1) They have given the world The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Monty Python and Eric Clapton.

2) They’re not the French.

54 minutes ago, death tribble said:

BLASPHEMY !

PERSECUTE !

KILL THE HERETICS !

     Don’t look at me, I come from a place where we still celebrate the day we threw the Brits out of the city!  Happy Evacuation Day everybody!   It’s even this week!

3 minutes ago, Cygnia said:

One of my best meals still was St. John in London...

     Probably by a chef trained somewhere else.

On 1/1/2022 at 12:26 PM, Ninja-Bear said:

I forgot to mention that one of the killers has an eye patch. Now the line in the movie is great for building a character that has an eye patch as a DF but NOT for Phy Comp. It goes something like though he lost an eye now, his aim is as true as ever.

  Also called “The Nick Fury Effect”.

   I got bad news for ‘ya bunky, tomorrow’s not gonna be any better.

19 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

No deferral necessary. I don't presume to believe I have the only material worth contributing.

 

However, I want to make clear that I've been confining myself to groups that are "official" for the current incarnation of the Champions Universe, the one described in books for the Fifth and Sixth Editions of Hero System. Books for those editions are relatively easy to find and are consistent from one to another. I don't know yet whether that matters to marediv or not (it would be helpful if you could clarify that, marediv), but this thread has already mentioned organizations from much earlier books which have not been carried over to the more recent ones, or which are third-party products that aren't necessarily compatible with the CU. With the game's four-decade history contributed to by scores of authors, there are dozens of orgs one could mention if one wanted to cast that wide a net.

     Maybe not the only material certainly, but my offerings were meant only to be thumbnail sketches to example the types of groups while yours were much more detailed.

Here we go again...

U.N.T.I.L. ; United Nations Tribunal of/on International Law  It is basically SHIELD from Marvel & the MCU. Global good guy spy group.  They counter VIPER and any other world wide threats, including Alien invasions.

P.R.I.M.U.S. ; (I don’t remember the acronym) It’s more or less the American Counterpart to U.N.T.I.L.  But, with a strong nationalistic viewpoint.  Think SHIELD if it were run by Secretary of State “Thunderbolt” Ross.

M.E.T.E. ; (See above note) Good guy research and First Contact experts in Extra-Terrestrial matters. A number of lost or homeless aliens reside there.

Quest Industries;  Cutting/Bleeding edge technology.  Inventors of Questonite, the Champions ‘verse version of Adamantium.  Friendly to Heroic types since the founding family has a long tradition of adventurers.

The Blood; Long-lived family line of heroic/villainous types that began with a dimensional traveler.  (Have you read Zelazny’s Amber series?)

Dr. McQuark’s;  Mad, but friendly Scientist always willing to help out a hero in need of tech support for little or no cash. His stuff works great....if it doesn’t explode, turn everybody in 100 foot radius invisible or accidentally open a portal to another dimension.

The Circle;  A magical study and training group run by an ancient Asian wizard.  Think of a magical version of the early X-Men.

These should help you get started.

    (I was writing while Lord L. was posting.  I defer to his vastly superior experience.)

I’m not sure how familiar or not you are with Champions game history, so in regards to Steriaca’s post, he’s some context.  I’ll be using a lot of comic book explanations so I hope you’re fluent in geek-speak.

VIPER;  This is the equivalent of HYDRA in Marvel comics/MCU.  World-wide, world-dominating, “got our grubby fingers in every pie” bad guys.

DEMON;  What VIPER is using tech, DEMON does with magic.  If somebody is trying to use the Serpent’s Crown to control the President?  Chances are it’s DEMON.

DR. DESTROYER;  The scariest, most competent version of Dr Doom you ever read.  He’s such a bada$$ he doesn’t even need Latveria. If his organization is involved....make sure your characters wills are up to date.

  
   I hope some of this can help.     Always remember GM’s rule #1   Never be afraid to reference (re: steal) from the comics.

9 hours ago, Old Man said:

My boss at my last job used to quote The Fountainhead at me now and then. 

   Good, that’s one of the best ways to identify an a$$hole.  Nobody with any regard for others quotes Ayn Rand.

20 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

I recall the novelizations of the early Star Trek movies not only including minor background characters with fleshed-out stories, but their stories continuing from one book to the next.  The one I recall was the casualty who "stayed at his post when the others ran".

    That’s the kind of thing that good novelizations are best at.  That character was Peter Preston. He was played by Ike Eisenmann and was Scotty’s nephew.   That’s why Scotty was holding the kid in his arms taking him to Sickbay.  The Turbolifts were malfunctioning and he had to crossover at the Bridge to get there.  All this came from scenes written but not filmed and was part of the writers info packet.

1 hour ago, mattingly said:

  Isn’t that the restaurant where the waitstaff chants “One of us, One of us, One of us.”?  No, no, that’s Tod Browning’s Waffle Shack.

   I don’t eat liver, I don’t eat tripe, I don’t eat haggis.....’ya just don’t mess around with the lower tract.

54 minutes ago, Cygnia said:

Liver with bacon, onions & sage.  My father-in-law told me it was better than his mom's -- and his mom was a terrific cook. ❤️

 

    Bacon, onions & sage, all good.    Liver?   ‘Ya just shouldn’t eat the organs.   Yeeesh!😱

40 minutes ago, Killer Shrike said:

 

Yes, I'm aware of the industry reality, and there have been occasional exceptions where I've read a particular licensed work after being vouchsafed by one or more people whose opinion(s) I give some credence to, and some of those turned out to be ok. Exactly zero have ever blown me away, though. Given that there is a lot of competition for my time and the track record of licensed works for me is overall poor, I don't think it is unreasonable to filter them out baring extenuating circumstances. 

For instance, I read very quickly so when I travel I usually take a couple of books in my laptop bag and (depending on the length of the flight) finish them before landing. On the return trip, I'll generally buy a couple of books inside the airport after checking in, and take the best I can find from the limited selection available. My usual pattern is, one fiction and one non-fiction. Possibly a magazine as well for old times sake if there is a likely victim on the newsstand. In that sort of a scenario, I might pick up a licensed fiction book for lack of other options as a means to kill some time. Otherwise, when wider choice is available, I look elsewhere.

 

As another for instance, I like the Arkham Horror setting from FFG, and have found the novellas and most of the paperbacks to be decent enough reads. A few of them I've put down unfished due to mediocrity, but most of them have been entertaining enough and I consider them good enough light reading to continue buying them.

    Are there any of the larger TV/Movie/Comic franchises you like?   It’s possible I’m predisposed to like these types of books because I enjoy fan-fiction.

52 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

What power range is Batman in Batman Begins?

The Justice League?

X-Men in Days of Future Passed?

Guardians of the Galaxy?

That's the kind of stuff we have to answer, not just "vague range" stat, stat, stat

 

You buy a new Champions adventure from Hero Games.  It says "For Street Level Supers"

What does that mean?

    First we’d have to figure out, which version of the Justice League?   Detroit street level or ‘70’s in the Satellite Defenders of the cosmos.

    What lineup of GotG? The original resistance unit or the ‘’90’s one with Firelord and Hollywood/Wonder Man and didn’t they have somebody using the Phoenix Force.

  I’m not trying to be my usual jackass here.  I’m just pointing out that it’s very easy to get these terms confused. As much as I’m generally a words and descriptions guy, I think that point levels are the only way to keep this all straight.

1 hour ago, Logan.1179 said:

One of the nice perks of working in a public library is Advanced Readers Copies. I found a few treasures that way (Soon, I Will Be Invincible) a few duds, and one that pissed me off. The Resurrectionist is one such book. Now that I try to look it up to get the author, I see there are a lot of books with that title, and I can't tell you which one to avoid. I hated it, but I really wanted to finish it because I thought it had to be leading up to a big finish. It did not. Awful. 

   I’ve read “Soon I Will Be Invincible” many times. And hearing the audio version in the car is a must for long drives.   Before his legal issues (I couldn’t think of a better phrase) I thought Kevin Spacy would be a mortal lock for Dr. Impossible.