Marchwarden

John Barleycorn. An actual stalk of barley, in an armoured pot. Radiation accident had given him superintelligence and mental powers. Plus, if "killed" you could just replant him.

Marchwarden: Back home in "New Zealand", fathers traditionally compel their sons to swear irrevocable oaths to carry on the family struggle. Marchwarden would probably assume that this was the case, and treat Junior as an enemy unless there were obvious evidence to the contrary.

Never as powerful as the villains, sadly...

Well, naturally he doesn't have the faintest hope of being released (the real-life one, I mean; a class-7 psi would be harder to keep locked up). But try telling *him* that.

Re: Re: Real People Plot Seeds #1 Amended. Thanks for the catch. I sometimes get the real Julian confused with the version of him from our old campaign (the GM used him as the sponsor/bankroller of our team, and played up the more Bruce-Waynish elements of his character).

Charles Manson was born November 12th, 1934. A would-be musician and self-proclaimed messiah, he is best known for assembling a "family" of cultists and setting them on a killing spree which was to claim seven lives in 1969. He is currently incarcerated, although the transcript of his 1992 parole hearing indicates that he believes his release to be inevitable. He regards himself as the saviour who will preside over a post-apocalyptic world in which the human race is cannibalized by its own mutant offspring. Note: thus far, I haven't made anything up; the above is entirely factual. I'd always known old C.M. was an apocalypt and wannabe Christ-figure, but it wasn't until I read the transcript that I caught the "mutant offspring" quote. I'd never realized he thought of himself as a champion of Homo Superior . Which leads us to our next little plot seed. Charles Manson has a swastika tattoo on his forehead. Rearrange that into something more like an X set in a circle. Charles X. Manson. He's pierced the veil of the future. Helter Skelter, babies; it's on its way. Some may call him insane, many consider him a monstrous menace, but the visions he's foreseen cannot be lightly dismissed. After all, he's the most powerful mutant telepath on the planet.

In New York City, on December 8, 1980, John Lennon was shot twice in the chest and twice in the shoulder, by a deranged fan. He died of massive hemorrhaging, after losing 80% of his blood. Now, his son Julian, since grown to manhood, has remained something of an enigma. While recordings of his are relatively rare, many have marvelled at the uncanny resemblance of his voice to that of his father. Nonetheless, he has never vigorously pursued a musical career, nor has he exploited his celebrity status. He avoids the media, shuns the trendy hangouts of the rich and famous and does not make conspicuous public contributions to charity (not to say he doesn't donate; he apparently keeps his causes private). I made up none of the above; so far, it's all been factual. And yet, in a slightly different world, in a universe of Champions, what ought we to think of a reclusive young multimillionaire whose father was so violently torn from life? Julian Lennon has had all the money, all the time and certainly all the motive he needs. And was that terrible murder merely the lunatic act of a solitary madman? Was some darker agency at work? The influence of a most villainous mind? And to what fateful ends might such questions drive Julian? What precisely has he been doing with his life, out of the public eye, a mystery to all but a few intimates? Nowhere to be seen, nowhere to be found, nowhere to be recognized. Nowhere Man.

Daimyo-no-yooso. Or just Yooso-sama.

Blame the GM, not me. I was actually outside paying the pizza-delivery guy. Hey, R.R. took 4d6 Unluck; my sympathies are limited.

I think that Nucleon and Koshka have it right. I make no claims to gamer-godhood, but the simple fact is that I skillfully detected that we were playing Champions, not MERP or LOTR:RPG. The charcter origin became merely a bit of colorization. Marchwarden is a Champion. Granted, he's a bit out of his element, but no more so than Obsidian or Ironclad. Not OGC, but OGP. I like that. Well said.

A few notes: Odin was slain by Fenris. Vidar in turn slew Fenris, and so avenged his father. Props for Vidar might include an impenetrable wolfskin cloak, and/or a gauntlet or vambrace with the fangs of Fenris set therein, Wolverine-claw style. Incidentally, Vidar Odinsson would be, by rights, King of New Asgard. Freya survived, and could become an interesting character. She was originally a goddess of love (or, more accurately, a goddess of sex), but after the Brisingamen affair, she became a sex/war goddess along the lines of Ishtar or the Morrigan. Half the Valkyriar were placed under her command; the senior half remained Odin's. In a post-Ragnarok setting, she's one of the few deities of her generation to survive. Sex/war goddess turned den mother to a pack of orphaned godlings? Adopting a semi-maternal role, but still able to summon up the old magic when necessary? Hmmm...PC concept for high-powered campaign...

Re: Re: Off-Genre Characters: The Do's and Don'ts Fear not the wrath of the Galadhrim, Winterhawk; you are free to disagree. I'll concede this: the sword-and-sorcery archetypes are probably the hardest to make work in a supers genre, for precisely the reasons you describe. A time-tossed cowboy, a Jedi-analog, a Minbari-analog, even a caveman...I've seen them managed without too much difficulty. Fantasy types *do* have a low success rate. Marchwarden is working out well, it's true, but credit must be shared with an Oxford linguist turned author, a kiwi filmmaker, a cooperative GM and a great group of players. We end up with a Green Arrow who moves like Nightwing and talks a bit like Thor. The pieces all fit.

I've noticed that a number of this board's users seem to harbor a pronounced dislike for the off-genre character, the kind who seem to be in the wrong game. Paladins, cowboys, Klingons...they catch a pretty bad rep. And yet, in a genre whose established icons include wizards, mutants, aliens, cyborgs, thunder gods and ninja masters, who can say what's "off-genre"? I've seen several such characters work out fine in the past; in fact, I'm playing one currently who seems to fit right in. I've come to believe that the "Annoying Off-Genre Character" problem stems not from which genre the character is drawn from, but rather from how the character is played. I've tried to codify what, IMO, separates an odious OGC from a successful one. 1. DO: Create OGCs who can do the job at hand. When Thor is with the Avengers, he acts like a superteam member (albeit one who talks funny). His mythological origin doesn't prevent him from understanding what the Avengers are supposed to do (defeat the bad guys, save the world). The team isn't constantly hampered by Thor insisting on doing "god stuff" instead of working with the team. His "Thunder God" schtick simply becomes a colorful character trait. 2. DO: Create an "amalgamation of settings". The Marvel and DC Universes have both linked satelite genres into their primary milieux. For instance, Gotham City, Paradise Island, Legion HQ and Jonah Hex's Wild West all share the same continuity, and so it's not hard to contrive a plot that could transfer characters andd plot seeds between them. For Marchwarden, the lynchpin was our team's nemesis group, the Crowns of Krim. Let's see: some huge evil bad guy was defeated at the end of a magical age long past, he's back, there are these evil artifacts of power which ultimately corrupt those greedy enough to accept them...there are enough points in common to adapt a certain other mythos so that the stories mesh. DO: Keep the OGCs in the minority (unless you'd enjoy playing Captain Bewildered and the Wheretheheckaretheyfroms!). One barbarian or Jedi among four mask-cape-and-spandex types won't spoil the flavor of the supers genre. Three out of four, and what you're really playing is a crossgenre game, a la TORG or Tales From the Floating Vagabond. If that's what everybody wants, fine; but if some of the people desired and expected a Supers game (not merely to play a super in an anything-goes game), those people will not be happy. DON'T: Play a specific pre-existing character. Actually playing Indiana Jones, Luke Skywalker or Conan rarely works. It can be fine to amalgamate a few icons ("He's sort of a cross between Turin Turambar, Elric and Miyamoto Musashi"). It's also possible to use an original design but yield up the occasional homage: you might, say, design your own 30's pulp hero and occasionally borrow a line from Alan Quartermain, Indiana Jones or, argh, can't remember name, Brendan Fraser's character from "The Mummy". DON'T: In similar vein, avoid using unaltered settings unless your GM wants to add them to the existing gameworld. Being straight out of Star Trek is dubious; creating a Federation-like future setting that ties in with the current setting can actually enhance the campaign. DON'T: On the opposite end of the spectrum, don't be from a generic, undeveloped alternate genre. "I come from a fantasy world" usually doesn't work. Either work with your GM to create something from scratch, or take a preexisting world and modify it. Your thoughts?

If she can simultaneously MI a basefull of soldiers plus a superteam, we're doomed anyway.

Do you consider the mind class of a multiform character to be that of the current form or the true form? Example: My true form is human, but I turn into a wolf sometimes. While in wolf form, am I considered human class or animal class?