Theron

And let us not forget my poster child for bad Silver Age comics. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: the one, the only, TOD HOLTON, SUPER GREEN BERET! (Warning: Very high cheese content. Readers with a history of cholesterol problems should not follow that above link.)

You're right. I plead "Weekend With a 4 Year Old Constantly Underfoot" and throw myself on the mercy of the court. FWIW, according to http://www.dictionary.com

[Engaging Pedantic Nitpicker Mode] Physiognomy means, "face". It's also the name of the Victorian "science" of assigning personality traits to bumps on the head. Somewhere in the 70s, some funny-book writer decided it sounded cooler than the proper word, "physiology", and it's been wedged in the mind of comics fans ever since. [Pedantic Nitpicker Mode Off]

After the latest issue of Astro City, I've decided there's no hope for the successful prosecution of a superhuman.

For nearly the last year I've been brainstorming and writing setting material for a fairy tale England/France analog (not for the HERO System, it's destined for publication in a new RPG). I so can't wait to be able to seriously think about other flavors of fantasy.

As an alternative, I've seen some GMs require players to use Armor Piercing with an Activation Roll, which (unless taken multiple times), keeps the amount of Defenses reduced to a reasonable level.

Our Silver Age game has had a fair bit of romantic entanglements. The most noteworthy was between my PC, Troubadour (a noted womanizer, who had a hunted composed entirely of his ex-girlfriends) and Gorgon, an NPC heroine on the team. They were set up from the start to play on the Green Arrow/Black Canary schtick and it worked pretty well (especially since her secret ID was the crusading District Attorney and Troubadour was a bit of a radical liberal). When her identity was exposed and most of her superpowered convictions overturned, they hit the road together to "find America" (I felt like it was time to play a new PC and the circumstances allowed for a graceful exit). Since my current PC is pretty much stuck in his radiation suit, I don't expect him to have much in the way of romance.

I don't have a problem with FW. The increasing penalties offset its utility, IMHO. When the dice cooperate, it makes for some pretty spectacular/dramatic stuff, too, like when my martial artist took down the Superman-level villainess who'd hurt his lady-love with two kicks after FWing her down to 1/8th defenses.

If you feel enterprising, have some rudimentary graphics manipulation skills, and don't mind Bruce Timm-style artwork (and what right-thinking person WOULD? ), you might give this site a look: http://www.wuji-web.com/multiverse_templates.html Lots of silhouettes ready to play with, draw on, color, and re-size.

Lemme clarify. (All of what follows should be prefaced with IME/IMNSHO/YMMV ) Remember that we're talking genre-emulation here; specifically, things that the comics do well that gaming can't. In a team situation, everyone knowing everyone else's secret identity makes sense from a trust standpoint. And true, I can think of a few times where a villainous threat exploited the secret identity thing to good effect ("The Judas Contract" back in the glory days of New Teen Titans, for instance). However, in most cases with the comics, a secret identity crisis tends to affect a single member of the team, or more often arises in a solo book (see the issues leading up to Daredevil #50, or virtually any Superman comic published between 1945 and 1984 . In the comics, you can pull off a single character focused story in the context of a team book (see, "Who is Donna Troy", from Titans again, which really only features Wonder Girl and Robin, neither doing anything superheroic), because the reader is the sole audience and a passive participant. In a gaming situation, if you turn the spotlight on one character long enough to do their crisis justice, you turn the other players into passive audience members. A big no-no in my book. On the other hand, if you're playing the crisis with one player and have the heroes doing something else (cutting back and forth), you dilute the impact of the individual storyline (and to me, Disads are, to a large extent, a request to the GM for specific storylines -- to take Secret ID is to say that you WANT to have you character deal with the complications inherent in the Disad). But that's just my take. On the surface, Secret IDs are sort of goofy to begin with, IMHO, though I use them because it's a genre thing. IME, IMNSHO, YMMV

Re: google am our friend! Apparently, Bruce Timm dislikes both the name Amazo and his look, but the story was too cool to pass up. That having been said (and it was an excellent story), he did look way too much like the Adaptoid, IMHO.

Certain things, in my experience, don't translate well from the comics to gaming. Secret ID's for instance. They're fine for stories focusing on a single character and his problems, but in most team situations, things like that get shunted off into the corner compared to the team's needs or else causes a basic trust issue among the other members. And yeah, it's possible to play the "well the team knows who he is, because they need to" card, but that gets a little old, in my book. By the same token, mind control/doppelganger/evil twin stories are hard to pull off. If the GM is running the suddenly bad PC, it's a dead giveaway. If the player does it, well, you've got to be careful lest the player give it away too soon. As Daffy Duck said, it's a trick you can only do once. Others mentioned the splitting up the team thing. This is an issue, but can be mitigated a wee bit if the GM keeps things entertaining for the folks whose characters aren't in the spotlight. One problem with a lot of the classic comic book bits is that players, especially Genre Fiends, are likely to know them inside-out. While a good player will keep his knowledge and the PCs knowledge separate, it's hard sometimes to keep preconceived notions out of the equation. For instance, in our ongoing campaign, it was very obvious to our entire crew that Montgomery Midas, the richest and most-loved man in Fair City was being set up to be our Lex Luthor style nemesis. As a result, even though our characters only knew of him as a wealthy industrialist with a heart of gold, the players had a very difficult time seeing him in that light. Within weeks of the campaign's start, we all spoke of him out of character like one would speak of Mr. Burns from the Simpsons. As a result, by the time his true colors were finally revealed, it was sort of anti-climactic. The final danger is that the classic comic plots work because you've got one vision controlling them. Unless you're running your campaign on greased rails, players have a tendency to throw a boot in the works from time to time. Which actually lends some spice to the matter, IMHO.

Superhumans without comic-book genre trappings: The Matrix The One Most Wuxia films (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, The Bride With White Hair, too many more to mention) Tons of anime stuff (Dragonball Z, Inuyasha, Slayers, Akira...too much to mention again) Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel White Wolf's Exalted fantasy setting Unbreakable The Crow Equilibrium I can go on, but it's a start...

"School Holiday" from Space Gamer magazine, especially if coupled with the additional material from GURPS Super's "School of Hard Knocks". "To Serve and Protect"

Patriot. It's your game. If this guy is that far out of balance with the other PCs and it's creating a problem, then it's your responsibility to deal with it, and not in an in-game context. I'm not going to say, "Bad Player" or "Bad GM" or anything of the sort. Only, that ultimately, it's the Screen Monkey who decides what is and is not appropriate for the campaign and makes it stick. I've been there, and it sucks, but it beats shredding an entire campaign over one player.

Malachite (after Scott took the time to 'splain him to me). Coatlicue (from "To Serve and Protect") Overlord (from "Strike Force") and if I can include one from San Angelo, Shatter, a character that rewards deviousness like none other.

The little guy in my avatar is Spectrum, my original PC, who I recently re-created for our current campaign. Here's the full sized view. (If my scanner were here at the house, I'd throw in a picture of his super-pet, Isotope, the Atomic Dog)

I used METE, but re-named it NASA (the National Alien Studies Administration) and made it a federal agency. I ran a campaign for a while set in a variant of the Strike Force Universe (it helped that I knew a couple of the old players at the time and could milk them for additional background info), so the Blood and the Circle both played a part. Stronghold was also a regular feature of my campaigns, but it was located on an artificial island several miles off the coast of northern California.

Strike Force Champions II VIPER (the older one, haven't gotten the new one yet) UNTIL Super Powers Database Champions: The New Millenium (Which was saddled with a terrible rules set, horrific art, a layout that looked like the DTP guy was trying to use every feature Quark had to offer, and yet, was a whale of a four-color setting once you scraped away the Image-isms. I truly think that if it had been released with 4th Edition character write-ups and more conventional layouts and artwork, it would have been a fan favorite. Then again, I'm proud of my small part in the death of CLOWN, so your mileage may vary.) edited for clarity

And ultimately, that's all that matters. We've just begun year four of our campaign, have saved the world twice, foiled the most powerful man in Fair City's plot to eliminate all superhumans from the planet, fought our evil duplicates on Counter-Earth, lost one player, added two more, and had a near-100% changeover in characters. And the GM still hasn't issued a single Experience Point.

Points are for sissies

Worst character hands-down was Sage. The player pitched him as an older guy who didn't gain his superpowers until he was in his 60s. Low-level psionic with a moped who was more inclined to call a bad guy names and throw rocks at him than use his powers on him. Not comically bad, just utterly and completely bereft of heroic motivation. A friend of mine delighted in pitching bad concepts which he knew wouldn't get approved. I think the worst was "The King" - a genious Japanese inventor/Elvis Impersonator who fought crime in a giant robot that looked like...you guessed it. The same guy gave us Cap'n Stretchy and Cap'n Wombat...

A while back, I picked up Microtactix "Dirt Cheep Cityscapes" on CD for about $25. It consists of three PDF files containing various map and building elements you print out on cardstock and assemble. I bought it for HeroClix, which is the default scale, but the PDFs can be scaled for HERO use as well. The only downside is that the maps utilize a square grid, but this could also be overcome by printing a hex grid over the maps or just measuring the distances with a tape measure. The upside is that with some patience, glue, and creativity, I can make just about any map I want. Now, if I could just find the time to actually do it.

Our Silver Age game is set in Fair City, nebulously located somewhere on the west coast of the US. Like most Silver Age comics, geography isn't exactly our strong suit. Taking a page from Toon, the action either happens Inside, Outside, Out of Town, In Another Town, or Off-World.