Theron

Re: GMs, which character concepts did not make the cut in your game? "The King" - a Japanese billionaire inventor/Elvis Impersonator who constructed a giant Elvis-shaped power armor. I'm fairly certain he was pitched by the player simply to annoy me. "Elemental Control - Armor" (back in the 3rd Edition days). That was an easy veto. In a straight-up Golden Age game, I had a new player pitch a "soldier from the future -- 1967". I gave a conditional OK, until I realized they meant someone with a flak vest, M-16, and a grenade launcher. I told them to consider a ray gun and a jet pack and I'd reconsider.

Re: After the Ultimate Evil... what? Wreck the world. Change things fundamentally. Maybe the sorts of techonology once available to a few becomes common. Perhaps a natural disaster no one anticipated hits before the PCs can react. Change the dynamic of what it means to be a superhero. What does being superhuman mean when everyone can be superhuman? What does upholding the law mean if society falters or crumbles? What does all the power in the universe mean if the earth is dying from the inside and it's too late to reverse the disease?

Re: CLOWN for 5th Champions Less than you might think. Most of those characters were produced back in the day when HERO/ICE hired lots of freelancers and the contracts allowed for properties to revert to the creator after a certain number of years. I remember Aaron Allston being a bit annoyed by the HERO/ICE version of Champions Universe because it mentioned Strike Force characters that had reverted to him. So it's not as simple as looking up the old characters and updating their stats and backgrounds. A lot would involve tracking down creators, getting their permission, and paying for the privilege.

Re: CLOWN for 5th Champions Back before the Cybergames days, I worked on editorial and layouts for a Hero Plus update of CLOWN. Without being unduly cruel to the manuscript (by Stan West, author of the previous two versions), it wasn't pretty, and largely operated on a "more is more" principle. It really didn't cover new ground, just upped the power level of the original team, adding about a gazillion second and third stringers, an entire fleet of AI vehicles, and...well, that's about it. Ultimately, I ran out of steam and bowed out of the project, and as I understand it, Stan contacted Bruce and pulled the plug on it the next day. Any rights to CLOWN should have reverted to Stan some years ago, and I have no idea what he's doing writing-wise, if anything these days.

Re: Golden Heroes... I just sold a copy a few weeks ago. Lovely game, but it was lonely since no one had played it in twenty years or so. Still, you had to love a game where you could roll "God" as your character's origin and then had to roll for his weekly salary.

Exo-Man

JSA. They were the first, they are the best.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for consistency. I'm even for short-term continuity. I just think there's a point where continuity becomes so deep as to become a self-defeating prospect.

Ya mis-spelled 'peasant' up there, Sparky. Let's see...Marvel re-launches it's continuity with the Ultimate Universe. Basement dwelling fanboys decry it as the end of the world. New readers come into the products in droves, not having to deal with 60 years of continuity that's so convoluted that it's reduced to trivia. It's a business. Their job is to sell funny-books. Whether you realize it or not, the hard-core comics fan does not make up the majority of sales. They make for a consistent core to be certain, but the fact is, they want to sell as many books as possible and the hard-core comics fan audience is getting older and their dollars are often tighter. So they look to the people who will spend money. Those people don't want to know that the Incredible Infinite Drool-Monger last harrased our hero in Bombastic Tales to Astonish #4 in 1961. Hell, most of this audience's parents weren't alive in '61, much less the prospective reader. If they don't care, they don't buy. If it's too tied up in an impenetrable history, they don't buy. If the hardcore fans buy, it's not enough. You do the math. So continuity suffers. Big deal. Some of the best comics I've ever read had nothing to do with existing continuity. "Kingdom Come" and "The Golden Age", to name but two. If that's dirt, I'll take an extra helping, please. If you don't like it, vote with your wallet. Or write them a letter. Complaining about it on a game company board, especially complaining about the way a TV series didn't accurately reflect comics continuity is rather pointless.

Urm...ensure good and entertaining stories, perhaps? Continuity is overrated.

Animated Series - Golden Age in look and spirit, if not in specifics. TV Series - Silver Age Movies - Lead Age

Spiffy! My guy's the one adorning my posts. My first PC, and through a quirk of fate, my current one as well.

Well, if you have any questions, feel free to shoot them my way. We've had another year of playing with that style and added a couple of new players, so it's still working for us. One benefit not documented showed up when my wife joined the game. She's always been a good player, but found the matter of experience points to be a bad trigger for her rather massive competitive streak. Removing EPs from the game significantly changed her playing style for the better. (Also her rabid mania for HeroClix tends to get most of her competitive attention, but that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish).

Quick self-plug: My article, Pointless Champions, from Digital Hero #3, discusses a number of approaches that are applicable to the high power campaign.

Since I began posting here somewhat regularly, I've seen three mentions of people with characters named Spectrum: myself, Spectrum, and Lemming. Anyone else? We could have a clubhouse and a crime computer and stuff.

Troubadour would get bored rather quickly and find new challenges - exploring the Amazon, climbing Everest, deep-sea diving in the Marianas Trench. Spectrum would go back to full time research, torn between seeking a cure for his condition and utilizing the unusual opportunities it affords him to explore the world of nuclear physics in a very hands on way.

My retired PC, Troubadour was hunted by the Troubadour Revenge Squad, a group composed entirely of ex-girlfriends and other women who felt jilted by him. Some already had super powers, some gained them by accident, and a few went so far as to obtain them just to wreak vengence on the Playboy Powerhouse.

Troubadour: Call up Gorgon and take the Righteous Indignation out for a flight. Nothing like sailing the skies in your own private galleon during a lull. Spectrum: Take Isotope, the Atomic Dog to the park and play fetch. - lazy player TB

Another board I used to frequent just made a separate forum for polls. That way, people who like such threads had their own sandbox and those who didn't stopped tripping over them.

Apart from creating the campaign world's best martial artist, I've never really seen the need to take things above a 17-, and that's only for character concept.

Troubadour is, first and foremost, highly annoyed that for the first time in his career as an unpowered crimefighter, he's ended up hospitalized. If he's hurt that badly, help is going to be needed, so he'll contact the Mighty Man-Frog, Black Hercules, Doc Clockwork, and Hourglass, and ask them to look into things. After that, he sadly reflects that if it's true, then Gorgon is yet another of his loves to turn from the side of the angels and whether this is just another one of Titan's experiments gone awry. Or perhaps it's the Crime Cobbler again. Spectrum firsts ask if anyone was hurt by his being wounded (he's highly radioactive; if his suit is breached, he presents a serious threat to life and health). After that, he contacts his FBI supervisor to find out all he can about this apparent change as well as determining the current whereabouts of all known criminal mentalists. After that, he calls in reinforcements similar to Troubadour's list, but with the addition of Vanguard members who just left the group, such as the Angler and High Tide.

Embryo. Imagine the world's most powerful mentalist. Now, make him an angry, nigh-invulnerable, six month old child. He normally appears as an egg-shaped nimbus of light (his very powerful force field) with the hazy silhouette of a baby inside it.

Another point of order. The revealing LSH costumes were a product of the 70s, not the 60s. Largely designed by Dave Cockrum (except for those designed by Mike Grell). Regardless, that was all well past the end of the Silver Age. - Old School Legion Junkie TB

Gardner Grayle was the leader of the Atomic Knights. He was doubtlessly named after Gardner Fox, a writer responsible for many of DC's Silver Age stories.

Allow myself to be captured. It's always easier to take out the bad guys once you know what they're up to and where they're hiding.