Doug McCrae

Re: Re: Ethnic stereotyping in heroes and villains

Originally posted by bcholmes

Interestingly, the four colour silver age of comics isn't actually what I enjoy anymore. I want nuanced worldviews in campaigns that I'm a part of. Good heroes versus evil villains is just to dull for me. Give me more Authority and less Justice League).

Subtlety is not something I associate with the Authority. It was a just a left wing Justice League with the gore amped up to ten. And the ass rapings. My God, the ass rapings! What was it up to by the end? One per issue?

The Authority was totally black and white. It's just the bad guys were Bill Clinton, governments, etc in addition to the usual suspects.

Originally posted by Law Dog

He had managed to get everything down to (-5)...the other two heroes beat him down royally and his character wound up in jail.

With everything on a -5, how did they manage it? Golden Paladin must've been a monster of points efficiency.

Originally posted by altamaros

For a frost-based character, words to consider are :

- Froid (frost/cold)

How about Doctor Froid?

They both have their hearts in the right place IMO, emphasising the fun stuff in superhero universes. You know - acronymically named organisations, robots with all the powers of a superhero team, hitting your opponent over the head with a Cadillac. With SAS, you just get a bit more for your money. I was a little disappointed with the size of M&M. (I loved the Atomic Brain though - best thing in it.) SAS has a good short history of comics and an excellent section on genre conventions, which contains this little gem in a paragraph headed 'Gorillas'- "For some reason, comic books with gorillas on the cover always sell more than usual. In fact, in the 1960s DC Comics had to create an editorial policy limiting the number of issues per month with gorillas on the cover to keep everyone from doing it!"

Buy Silver Age Sentinels. The only superhero roleplaying system with a section devoted to gorillas.

The GM at a convention game I was in ruled that knockback did knockback - so if you hit a wall, if you didn't go thru, you'd bounce off like a pinball. I argued about this a little but I gave up as I didn't want to get in the GM's bad books for prize giving. As it happened, I didn't win a prize anyway.

Originally posted by Burnout

Then there was this one guy who had a set of magical robes that gave him wind powers. We all wondered how he could be so powerful- turns out he took Independent on EVERYTHING. In our game we ruled that Independent allowed enemies to use your items while Foci just meant that only you could use that particular item. He took it just a little too far. He was supposed to be this big magic wielding character, yet the only magic he wielded was a summoning spell to bring his robes to him (Instant Change).

Now that is some nice rules-raping. Even if the robes are taken away, he can instant change back to wearing them.

Re: Villain Help

Originally posted by winterhawk

I also need a 5th member. Was considering an evil lawyer, but thought it too cliched. Suggestions?

The CEO/owner of a software company.

Cool idea BTW. Kind of like the Royal Flush Gang but in reverse - they were all failures in their chosen field.

Very cool. I like the 'animated adventures' look.

I liked Bad Medicine For Dr. Drugs a lot. It follows somewhat the X-Men concept of superheroes-in-training but emphasises the school aspect even more, and is in the spirit of 80s movies set in high school or college. I particularly like the player handout 'The Unwritten Code' which describes how school kids, even superpowered ones, must act if they want the respect of their peers. No squealing, for example. Good for getting across the distinctive feel of the setting.

It says at the start "The real fun of this scenario is in playing teen-age heroes who have just come into their powers". They're not the Justice League, they're not the Avengers. They're highschoolers. The one with the Matter-Eater Lad power is called 'The Masked Avenger'. He is based very much on the John Belushi character from Animal House and IMO makes a really entertaining PC personality-wise, though his power is a bit stupid. It should be pointed out that the rest of the team have perfectly sensible powers like speed, psychic powers, force fields, etc.

Re: Re: Worst...Supplement...Ever...

Originally posted by winterhawk

The first two Blood of Heroes (1st Edition Rulesbook and the Sidekick supliment) offerings ultilize the old DC Heroes rules (one of the best systems ever IMHO) and have some of the worst artwork and sample characters ever...

You are so right. I can't stand to read those books because of the drawings. One of the few examples of a product that has been made a lot worse by adding artwork. The Sidekick supplement actuallly has even more of the crap.

Johnny Radar

ESP Maiden

Deflector

Costume, The

Myth

Weapon

Symbol

Mobster From Saturn, The

Extra-man, the Man With Extra Powers!

Masked Blaster

President Hate

Silicon Soldier

Automatic Dragon

Tree, The

Plutonium Worm

Chaos

Secret Sphinx

Archaeopteryx

Mesmerine

Duke Nihil - 'Nihil' is Latin for 'nothing'

Xenon

Crescent Knight

War

Boy Electric

Coma

A-Man

RoboGo

Tantric Jupiter

Slam

Freestyle

Head, The

Uberfly

Toxin

Volcano

Roach

Fever Dream

Sabbath

TNTeen

Bullet

Big Boom

Dittolad

Ghostdance

Organik

Bronco

NRG

Gravity

Cannon

Boneyard

Clockwork

Furnace

Originally posted by death tribble

Now that I have my original copy again, I have two copies of Strike Force.

 

Trouble is, I'm in Britain and postage to the States can be a pain.

I'd happily buy it from you. As you can see, I live in sunny Scotland.

Originally posted by Marchwarden

Red Harbinger was a 600-point NPC, sort of the female Captain Marvel.

 

Lore of Isis

Might of Kali

Splendour of Freya

Craft of Hekate

Light of Amaterasu

Fury of the Morrigan

So her magic word was IKFHAM!!?

I'll list all the superhero games I've played in, not just Champions, to see if a pattern can be determined.

1) Britain (and the world's) greatest (and only) superheroes - named Britannia's Fire by the press. The fact that we were all only 15 years old and attended the same school in our secret IDs was irrelevant. It was V&V. The PCs were either square-jawed heroes or merry quipsters however the world we were in was rather dark, with government conspiracy and betrayal lurking behind the fights. In the end we were all killed by a nuclear bomb dropped on us by the government. Bleak, huh? I guess that's the 80s for you.

2) Our second set of V&V PCs were never played but had a very definite tone - comedy - which we all just seemed to hit upon. They included Moonman, who got his powers from eating Moon cheese, and Crazy Kung Fu Robot (the name says it all, really).

3) A dark future where VIPER have formed a world government. Campaign was set in Las Vegas. PCs were a mix of out-and-out supervillains working for cash or out of fear of VIPER and real superheroes fighting for good. Weird mix. The supervillains were probably much more in line with what the GM intended though.

4) A mix of fairly typical superheroes reminiscent of the New X-Men in tone and more comic characters. The GM for these campaigns (in which I first created Dog Girl) was totally incapable of building serious villains. Example: Flora Man. He flew through the air on a large piece of toast.

5) Force Manhattan - greatest heroes of the Silver Age, analogous to the Avengers. Most of the players, including myself, probably didn't get the tone of our characters quite right, but it remains the best role-playing campaign I've ever been in.

6) Conspiracy X-Files/Twin Peaks low-powered non-costumed superheroes, created by alien experiments on humans.

7) Overwatch UK. Set in the same universe as (5) above. Back to being Britain's greatest superheroes though we were small fry in the wider world of heroes and just part of the American-dominated Overwatch organisation. The PCs managed to some extent to have a distinctively British character. One was a nobleman (you always seem to get one of those in every British team).

8) Britain's greatest superheroes again. In this game there were supposed to be many American superheroes but our status compared to them was rather unclear. Chris Claremont's X-Men was a major influence on the GM. There was a British flavour to this team too. A nobleman (again) - a heroic swashbuckler patriotic type, a Celtic nature spirit and a bunch of mutant cyborg time-travelling aliens - the X-Men influence showing here, I think.

You know the only pattern I can see, apart from a preponderance of being Britain's Greatest Superheroes, is that in the earlier games there is more of a divegence between the GM's vision and the player's. I think we've all just got better at roleplaying over time.

BTW, Big Willy, who also posts on these boards, was the GM for games 3, 5, 6 and 7.

Horse

Smackdown

Gaunt Man, The

Dread Alkali

Motorised Algernon

Lingo

Goo, The

Secret Leader, The

Naiad

Formic Acid Man

Fortissimo - Italian: very loud

Mobius Man

Bugaboo

Puzzler, The

Blood-Red Blade

Lobster, The

Flaming Fury, The

Ruby Consciousness, The

Targeteer

Virtuoso

Ropedancer

Plastic Titan

Stellarina

Gymnastic Master

Re: DNPC's- Friend or Foe??

Originally posted by DrSavant

#1 - Player has a DNPC mother. Unknown to the PC this character was actually a retired member of a top secret government organization. (she was in her 60's )

Well when the 'agency' found out that her son had superpowers -he bungled into a situation that they were involved in- they returned her to "active status" (with the help of a "Super-Soldier" serum). Fun time!!!

I always thought Spider-man's comic would've been much improved by giving Aunt May superpowers.

Originally posted by Trebuchet

Worse, with the fall of the Sentinels, radical elements in the US Government, aided by the Minuteman robots, had seized control of America and converted it into a police state, where all paranormals were illegal unless they were government agents.

Why are so many alternate timelines ruled by fascist dictatorships?

I'm not sure about Yankee Poodle, Rubber Duck or Pig Iron - they were all members of the Amazing Zoo Crew

Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew - 'The funny animal book for people who hate funny animal books'. They should also have marketed it for people who like funny animal books. I bet it would have been more successful.

Originally posted by TheEmerged

There are also those people (usually people that haven't played it more than once) that deride HERO's "complexity" -- which is only partially true.

Well I first played Champions about twenty years ago. I've run two campaigns and played in half a dozen or more plus a couple of fantasy Hero runs. And I deride HERO's "complexity".

Originally posted by Supreme

Interesting... I've never played a "god" and neither have I ever seen anyone else play one. We've all played characters with powers that were borrowed, stolen, or given from the gods, but never the god itself. I notice from the other postings that this tends to be the way it is in other campaigns too. There are a couple of Thor-types, but the majority seem to be Captain Marvel types.

Archetype over Original.

Lord Liaden: I really like your 'Amazonian Avengers'

Some Golden Age villain websites:

The Golden Age Super-Villain Fact File - DC villains only. Includes lengthy bios and quite a few I hadn't heard of.

Cash Gorman's Golden Age Villains Encyclopedia - Exhaustive though only covers non-DC, non-Marvel bad guys. Obscure or what?

My long time PC, Dog Girl, wed the Norse god, Magni, and became a deity by marriage. After that she called herself God Girl.

Originally posted by Yogzilla

I had a poster for "Excalibur" (the Marvel mutant group) on my wall done by the incomparable Alan Davis.

He's a fantastic artist. The two double page spreads on his first issue of Avengers were awesome.

Meggan (Meggan) - VavavaVOOOM!!!!

Did you know she started out ugly? Like a female version of Man-Bat. She was transformed in something of a retrofit by a later writer.

As a side note, I do recall my female friends of the time remarking that Davis had also drawn Nightcrawler and Captain Britian similarly *ahem* correct. Hmmm, funny how I never noticed that until it was pointed out to me...

Are you talking about their packages? Who was bigger?

Originally posted by Supreme

What I've noticed that you almost never see, in comics or games, is a female character over the age of 17 with breasts smaller than a "C" cup. Never seen it.

Raven of the New Teen Titans, drawn by George Perez.

She's the exception that proves the rule, though.