BoloOfEarth

The only surprise there is that it's 15 klicks away, and not closer. Aren't Starbucks spaced like 100 yards apart?

The Batman punching bag... that punches back. NT: Surprising results of the first flight of Ingenuity (the NASA helicopter on Mars) - other than seeing its own shadow, foretelling six more weeks of Martian winter.

Had a laugh while watching Thunder Force last week, when they showed the classroom with a sign saying that if miscreants (their term for supervillains) were sighted, "DUCK AND COVER!"

There, I fixed it for Tucker.

Many thanks, all, for the input. I know much of it will make its way into the character and the game. Tjack, I'll have to look for such a picture. LL, I'll have to check out those Superman cartoons. Thanks for the link. Amorkca, great idea about the accent. Dr. Argon has dissociative identity disorder due to the trauma of his origin story (I'm giving him Accidental Change in stressful situations), so having the Zarkon identity sounding so distinctly different will be a great touch. And the 'z' thing in his speech fits very nicely. Pinecone, the idea about the Zarkon Particle / Zarkonite will be good, too. I'm making his "science" not quite fit real-world (or even the game-world) science, so him going off about this particle / element will fit nicely. A bit of background - this campaign world was normal and powerless until about a year and a half ago when the Paranormal Flux event happened, and a significant number of people mysteriously got powers. And the intro adventure for Zarkon and his friends will involve them stealing a meteorite that fell to Earth the same day that the Flux happened. (The meteorite has nothing whatsoever to do with the Flux, but they don't know that.) Zarkon can be positive that the meteorite contains pure Zarkonite - and if it happens to contain some radioactive element, all the better. Pinecone and Derek - Zarkonoids is a great name for his robotic minions. And Steriaca - I don't know how, but somehow I have to use Dehydrated Henchmen. It's a moral imperative. Thanks again, everybody!

I'm creating a "mad scientist" character for my new Champions campaign. A lab accident drove Dr. Zachary Argon around the bend and he now thinks he's Zarkon (alternately, Dr. Zarkon / Lord Zarkon / Dark Lord Zarkon / Baron Zarkon / Duke Zarkon). Personality-wise, I see him as a mad scientist type villain from an 1950s sci-fi serial. I'm aiming for "over-the-top" here. Unfortunately, I was born too late and didn't see a lot of Flash Gordon or his ilk growing up. (Though I do acknowledge the similarity of his name to Dr. Hans Zarkov, formerly of NASA...) The picture below is what I'm using for him. First I'm trying to figure out what his gear is called. Currently, his armored battlesuit is called his Z-Suit (or sometimes Zed-Suit), and most of his attacks come from his Omni-Gauntlets. (I'm not married to either name - if someone else has a better idea, by all means suggest something.) Next, I'm trying to come up with a slew of attacks for him. I'm not (necessarily) looking for the actual power writeups, but mainly want the names of the attacks - since of course he is going to telegraph every action. "Ha! You pitiful fools! Let's see how you like a taste of Lord Zarkon's Omni-Beam! Bwa-ha-ha!" If you feel absolutely compelled to provide an actual writeup of a power, he has a 62-point Multipower. (Why 62 points? Because you can do a 50-point power with +1/4 advantage, 40-point power with +1/2, 35-point power with +3/4 in advantages, etc.) But mainly I'm looking for some ridiculous "mad science" names for various attacks. I'm toying with him either having a bunch of robots to throw at the heroes. If so, I'd like a better name for them than Z-Bots.

Way back in the first Champions campaign I played in, 1st edition rules. Midnight was a blind brick martial artist. 60 STR, and IIRC for martial arts you paid your STR in points and got a punch for 1 1/2 x STR damage, and a kick for 2x STR damage. And Haymaker was IIRC 1 1/2 x damage. We were going up against a group that included a guy whose entire schtick was defense. Basically, nothing hurt him, ever. (He had like a 3 SPD and one attack he could use something like twice a day.) The villains had taken down all the heroes except Midnight, and he's facing off against the defense guy (don't recall his name). Midnight decides to push his STR and do a Haymaker martial kick. Hits with no problem (defense guy had already moved that Phase and had low DCV, and was too overconfident to pull and dodge). Midnight's player rolls 42d6. WHAM!!! And after flying back through a building or two, defense guy comes back out and says, "I FELT THAT!" Yeah, we may have lost that fight, but the big bad respected Midnight enough that he allowed Midnight to date his daughter. His reasoning was, "If he could actually hurt me, he'll be able to keep her safe."

canter

Borders book store. My family and I spent a ton of time there. Comic book racks at the 7-11. Rumble seats

Let's go down to the five-and-dime. I can't tell you about it on the phone - it's a party line. - - - - - - One day years ago we were having trouble finding our cordless phone, and my daughter (then in elementary school) said, "They should make phones that are attached to the wall, so you can't lose them."

Unfortunately not. I had: All Shook Up (as I Vant Your Blood) Hound Dog (as Blood Hound) Heartbreak Hotel (as Undead Hotel) Blue Suede Shoes (as Blood Red Shoes) Jailhouse Rock (as Vampire Rock) - - - - - - - - In my new campaign (set in San Francisco), one of the PC heroes owns a series of pet spas, so for the intro adventure I introduced the New Peace Armada, a cause-of-the-week team from the Villain Theme Teams thread. Their cause that week was animal rights, and they decided to "free" all the pets, as well as let loose all the animals at the zoo. The New Peace Armada's membership include Captain Compassion, Ranger Rick, Reefer Gladness, Hippie Biker, BMOC... so you can guess that they're not the most serious group.

Well, supporting democracy certainly seems to run counter to the Trumpster portion of the GOP.

To be fair, he's not all that wrong. Maybe "shown" instead of "convinced"?

Foxbat has featured in a number of silly adventures in past Champions campaigns of mine. There's the one where he decided to kidnap Adam West and Burt Ward at a mall opening, and had his group (the Foxbat Five) dress up as various villains from the 1960s Batman TV show. He also had the Photonic Optiocal Waveform (POW) hologram generator to produce visual sound effects (POW! BAM! CRASH!) throughout the fight. Before even running into the Foxbat Five, the heroes had decided to ALSO dress up as Batman foes, and managed to pick the exact same 5 characters. There's also the time he broke into the Federal Reserve - not to rob it so much as to replace the money inside with bundles of FoxbatCash with his face, and the faces of his Foxbat Force teammates, replacing the presidents. Another "update" included the replacement saying "In Foxbat We Trust". Had a non-Foxbat adventure where a group of vampires were trying to steal something that would have made them very powerful. For the minion vampires, I included one who had been an Elvis impersonator before getting bit. I rewrote the lyrics to a number of Elvis songs - Don't Step on My Blood Red Shoes, Undead Hotel, etc. and sang one of on each of his Phases. Keeping in mind this was a minion, not the big bad or even one of her major minions... but half the hero team ganged up on Vampire Elvis just to shut him up.

I can't recall if I posted it before in these forums. If so, I apologize. When I was in college, my sophomore year roommate and I were both on scholarships from Air Force ROTC. On April 1, he called his dad and told him, "Dad, I need your advice. I got a girl pregnant, and I don't know what to do. I mean, I think I should marry her and raise the kid. But if I do that, I'll probably have to drop out of school at least for a while, and I'll permanently lose my scholarship." The conversation went on from there as you'd expect, with a very worried dad going over options with his son. After about 10 minutes or so of this, my roomie said, "Oh, by the way, Dad, what's today?" His dad realized it was an April Fool's joke and shouted, "You son of a b****!" Now, my roomie's mom was only hearing her husband's half of the conversation, so she knew it was (supposedly) about something serious but not specifically what. So she asked, "Why are you calling Charles that?!" And my roomie's dad told him, "You tell your mother!" and handed over the phone. Without missing a beat, my roomie said, "Mom, I got a girl pregnant..."

Duke, Disregard the above and read my latest PM. For others, if you got the Hero Systems Magazines Bundle from Bundle of Holding, the Invasion of the Gweenies original article from Haymaker! #17 is in that bundle - Haymaker Archives 5 - Adventures. If you didn't get the bundle, you can purchase that particular archive through DriveThruRPG.com - https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/327875/Haymaker-Archives-Volume-5-Adventures?cPath=337

I sent you a PM but the short answer is, Unfortunately not. But I'll check on an outside chance.

My daughters once bought me a cookie decorated with the Batman symbol. They left it on my desk with 16 mini-Post-its lined up before it. On each mini-Post-it was written "Na".

My only comment is completely non-political. I find it amusing that Tussaud's Waxworks museum had a manager named Clay.

I heard they have a place like that in Australia. It's called... Australia.

In fairness, once things were pointed out the guy did apologize for being out of line and owned his mistake. A rarity online, IMO.

You look through the COVID Relief Bill, and notice that you are specifically excluded by name. NT: What strange image or sound does the Perseverence rover pick up from Mars?

Operator: 911, what's your emergency? Man: I was out hunting with my friend John. We got separated, and I fired at what I thought was a deer, but it was John. I think I killed him! Operator: Sir, calm down. First, check to make sure he's actually dead. (pause, followed by a gunshot) Man: Okay, now he's dead for sure. What do I do now?

Agreed, both about 4E Viperia and the 4E VIPER book. Back when that first came out, I used that book to great effect, and my players *loved* fighting with, and messing with, Viperia. One time, they managed to KO her long enough to snap some pictures with her (posing her in one well enough to blow up the picture into a poster that they swapped with some VIPER plans during a later adventure. That poster soon graced many a VIPER Nest.

One of the people I shared a house with during my freshman year at college was one of the most forgetful people I've ever known. He would *always* put popcorn into the microwave, then walk away and forget about it, so our place frequently smelled of burnt popcorn. It got to the point that my brain would smell popping popcorn and immediately associate it with the burnt smell that was soon to follow, and turned me off popcorn for life. The worst was when he had chicken for dinner one evening, and decided to use the bones and scraps to make chicken soup. He put them in a pot on the stove (with a lid on), turned the burner on low... and then of course forgot about it. Overnight, all of the water boiled away, and the chicken and bones burned to a crisp. The next morning, I smelled the lingering smoke, went into the kitchen, noticed the burner still on low, and made the mistake of taking the lid off the pot. I got a face full of smoke. I was in my Air Force ROTC uniform, which then reeked of smoke for weeks. (I was a starving college kid, no money to have it dry-cleaned.) Looking back, it's a miracle that place didn't burn to the ground while George lived there.