Doug McCrae

Re: Who is... COUNT INFINITY?

There's a William Gibson story called Count Zero.

Re: [4color] Why do you dislike the Iron Age style? (No flames, ok?)

Hey' date=' Power Puff Girls are way cool... [/quote']Forget the Authority shit. The Power Puff Girls are the true Iron Age.

Re: [4color] Why do you dislike the Iron Age style? (No flames, ok?)

Perhaps Authority and Preacher may be a little extreme' date=' but they are so also by being a deliberate liberation/defiance from the unsufferable and suffocating pro-establishment, pro-religion, pro-family, anti-sexuality, pro-conservative values constant lecture that have been shoved in the unwilling comic reader's throat for decades, via the Comic Code. [/quote']It was the Authority and Preacher that broke the Code!!? Not the ground-breaking works of the 70s? Or the mature work in the 80s by Moore, Miller, Pat Mills etc. The Authority and Preacher use the efforts of genuine talents for nothing more than childish scatological shock value.

Re: [4color] Why do you dislike the Iron Age style? (No flames, ok?)

Dude' date=' have you gotten a load of humanity lately? People really *do* suck that much and we're (at least in the U.S.) living in a dystopia.[/quote']Oh for fuck's sake.

Re: [4color] Why do you dislike the Iron Age style? (No flames, ok?)

However' date=' in terms of what I dislike about something like the Authority, it's the gratuity and, to some extent, proxy-hedonism of it. The Authority have great big drunken orgies on a giant space ship because... well, I can only assume its because the writers think that'd be a cool thing to do if they were super hip.[/quote']Bang on the money. You're exactly right.

Re: The Golden Age Recruitment Drive

Note that minorities and women will garner reactions

far different than those of today. No sexism or

racism is intended, but the climate of the times will

be portrayed as realistically as possible.

Female characters are encouraged to balance out the

team. At least one of the characters chosen will be

female.

Re: How do I make this a golden age character?

Golden Age superheroes wear colourful circus costumes. Pulp heroes might dress a but funny but didn't have the distinctive superhero cut. Superheroes always have codenames, pulp heroes usually don't. If it ends in '-man' then it's a superhero - dead giveaway.

Hating guns is a bit modern Batman-y, don't you think?

Re: D & D Diatribe

I love 3rd ed D&D. Don't think it's munchkin at all, though it depends what you mean by that. IMO it's the most balanced system I've ever played. The one drawback is that spellcasters rule the roost from about 10th level onwards (and suck at low levels) but that's always been the case.

Re: Champs Worldwide: Whaddya want?

Given the world we live in there simply must be one or more Al-Qaida type genuine bad guys. However there also ought to be at least one Arab or Muslim good guy as a counterpoint.

See, you can please all the people. At least some of the time.

Re: Champs Worldwide: Whaddya want?

In general' date=' interesting characters that just happen to be from X country, it's not their whole reason for being.[/quote']OTOH there must be something distinctively British about a British character, for example. Otherwise what's the point?

Re: I should read more... comics...

And really' date=' what are we on now, since we've used up gold, silver, bronze, and iron?[/quote']Still iron. I don't see any difference between the sensibilities of Dark Knight Returns and the Ultimate series. Just a quality gap.

And I'm not sure what to do about it. I'm not sure what sort of law officer would be most appropriate (not knowing much about the setup in the US) whether the government would be agreeable, whether a new post should be created etc.

The background: Superheroes have only been around for about 10 months. There are only about half a dozen in existence (along with a much larger number of supervillains, most of those currently in custody). The PCs have good relations with the government. In particular they have the ear of the Secretary of the Dept of Homeland Security, having been called in by him when a small town in Tennessee tried to secede from the union. (They defeated the hillbilly mind controller responsible.)

The PC in question, Event Horizon, volunteered to reveal his secret ID to the government as part of gaining official status.

Re: Gay and Bisexual Superheroes

Patriot never realized his supermodel girlfriend' date=' Nadja Poulos, was also his stealthy and sword-wielding teammate Spirit Ninja. His player Dan K. did, of course, but we had a lot of fun with it over the years. [/quote']That's a really cool idea. Y'know, I think it would've been even cooler if you had kept it secret from Dan with the GM playing Nadja as if she were an NPC, while you just play Spirit Ninja and make out she has no secret ID. Do a big reveal a few sessions later.

Re: Iron Champions

Stay on target.

By making this post though I have, unfortunately, failed to stay on target. For which I apologise.

Re: Background Cliches

I'd say elements derived from the publishing history of comic books - the first superhero being a strong guy who debuts in 1938 or a lull in the 1950s - don't count as cliches.

That 50s lull being due to McCarthyism OTOH, does count as a cliche. It's been used in Watchmen, Wildcards, probably Superfolks I'm guessing and, of course, Champions Universe.

Re: Background Cliches

Orson Welles famous 1938 Halloween hoax is real - alien invaders genuinely did land at Grovers Mill. The superheroes that arrive separately to repel this invasion form a superteam. This is used in CU and also independently by Big Willy, the GM of our Golden Age Golden Heroes campaign. And in this random bloke's superhero universe that I just googled. Three's a bit too many for my liking. I'm calling cliche.

Re: Iyo: The Most Underrated Or Underused Character In Comics

Vigil, you make good points but superhero comics are unlike the heroic myths of Hercules, Balder, etc in one important respect - they never end. Since the beginning, superheroes have been more like Sexton Blake, Doc Savage or other pulp heroes. For as long as they make money, their stories must go on and on and on with no end in sight. You can't kill off all the X-Men, no matter how grand their deaths are (and I'm not sure they ought to be, given that the X-Men are a little closer to real life than the likes of Superman or Thor) cause the X-Men are big money makers.

I've always felt the best Superman stories are the ones where he dies. This story has actually been told a bunch of times in the Silver Age, as well as the Doomsday thing, but the SA ones were all imaginary stories. Though, to quote Alan Moore, "Aren't they all?"

Re: Iyo: The Most Underrated Or Underused Character In Comics

Barry Allen died' date=' and damned but his death was momentous, and touching and he's still dead.[/quote']Yeah, you're right.

Re: Iyo: The Most Underrated Or Underused Character In Comics

That's one of the multitidinous flaws of the Authority' date=' a complete failure to understand the fundamental premise of the genre. The death of a hero should be a monumentous, transformative event.[/quote']So why is a 'monumentous' death the fundamental premise of the genre? The only characters I can think of that had meaningful deaths and stayed dead aren't really heroes at all - Uncle Ben and Bucky Barnes.

Re: Iyo: The Most Underrated Or Underused Character In Comics

I really liked Raven from the Wolfman/Perez Teen Titans. One of my favourite characters in comics. Is she still around? She had very poorly defined powers though, even by comic book standards.

Re: Achilles' Heels

The experience has soured me on any character that completely shuts down in a given circumstance because it is just so hard to tell a good story with protagonists that are always either "on" or "off" depending on if the bad guys get to hit a soft spot or not.

Re: If Champions didn't exist...

I'm running a Silver Age Sentinels game at the moment. If SAS didn't exist I'd probably use DC Heroes or Champions. For a game set in the Marvel universe I might use the Marvel SAGA system - the one with the cards. At some point I'd like to give Mutants & Masterminds a try as I hear it's pretty good.

Re: Tales of the Common People

As far as I'm aware, Kurt Busiek's Marvels (1994) was the first example of this idea - a superhero universe as seen through the eyes of a normal.

Re: Unused Bird/Flying Creature Motifs

I've got Thrush

Hyuk hyuk hyuk.

Re: Unused Bird/Flying Creature Motifs

Harrier

Lammergeier

Skua

Shrike (with apologies to Killer Shrike)

Carrion crow

Black swan - black=sinister, right?

Hornet

Pteradactyl

Pteranodon

Ornithocheirus - largest winged reptile evar!

Cockatrice

Pegasus

Wyvern