Darren Watts

Re: Golden Age Characters by Darren Black Owl was never a GA team member and rarely if ever encountered superhumans at all. I find your idea interesting, though- IME, GA heroes rarely successfully avoid being hypnotized/illusioned or whatnot, unless they themselves are pretty skilled at magic. Is your experience different? dw

Hey all! An exchange with a board member led me to post Black Owl, a sample of the heroes likely to turn up in Golden Age Champions when I finally get that done. Any interest in seeing more of these periodically from Herodom Assembled? dw "This version is just the stats- the quick description is he's Robert Ramsey, up-and-coming prosecutor in the Philadelphia DA's office, who became sickened by the number of mobsters who managed to get off thanks to crooked judges and lawyers in that city. He adopted two different secret identities- "Lefty" LeGrand, who's become quite well known as a local thug and "professional" henchman, and the dark-cloaked Black Owl who busts up the crimes and criminals Lefty finds out about. Obviously, this is a tenuous situation- not only is Ramsey becoming exhausted from his triple life, but Lefty's picking up a reputation as "bad luck" since so many of his crimes get thwarted. Also, Robert's girlfriend, reporter Alice Jackson, is starting to nose around in the Black Owl's affairs as well." [cs]BLACK OWL Val Char Cost Roll Notes 15 STR 5 12- Lift 200 kg; 3d6 HTH damage [1] 20 DEX 20 13- 21 CON 11 13- 14 INT 4 12- PER Roll 12- 13 EGO 3 12- 20 PRE 10 13- PRE Attack: 4d6 8 OCV 25 8 DCV 25 3 OMCV 0 3 DMCV 0 5 SPD 30 Phases: 3, 5, 8, 10, 12 8 PD 6 Total: 16 PD (8 rPD) 8 ED 6 Total: 16 ED (8 rED) 8 REC 4 50 END 6 11 BODY 1 32 STUN 6 Total Characteristics Cost: 162 Movement: Running: 16m/32m Swinging: 40m/80m Gliding: 16m/32m Cost Powers END 10 Padded Costume: Resistant Protection (5 PD/ 5 ED);OIF (-1/2) 10 Swingline: Swinging 40m; OAF (-1) 2 5 Glider Cape: Flight 16m; OAF (-1), Gliding (-1) 1 4 Swift: Running +4m 1 Perks 10 Contacts: Various in the Philadelphia Legal System (As Robert Ramsey) 10 Contacts: Various in the Philadelphia Underworld (As Lefty LeGrand) 2 Deep Cover: Lefty LeGrand 1 Fringe Benefit: Law License 4 Money: Well Off ($35,000/year) Talents 6 Combat Luck (3 PD/3 ED) 3 Lightsleep Skills 10 +2 Combat Levels with Brawling 3 Acrobatics 13- 5 Acting 14- 3 Breakfall 13- 3 CK: Philadelphia 12- 3 Climbing 13- 3 Combat Driving 13- 3 Concealment 12- 3 Conversation 13- 5 Criminology 13- 3 Deduction 12- 3 Disguise 12- 3 Interrogation 13- 5 KS: Criminal Law 14- 2 KS: Philadelphia’s City Government 11- 4 KS: Philadelphia Underworld 13- 3 Lipreading 12- 3 Lockpicking 13- 2 Lockpick Set: +2 to Lockpicking (OAF -1) 3 Paramedics 12- 5 PS: Attorney 14- 3 Security Systems 12- 3 Shadowing 12- 3 Stealth 13- 3 Streetwise 13- Martial Arts: Comicbook Martial Arts Maneuver OCV DCV Notes 4 Martial Disarm -1 +1 Disarm; 30 STR to Disarm 4 Martial Dodge -- +5 Dodge, Affects All Attacks, Abort 4 Martial Escape +0 +0 35 STR vs. Grabs 4 Martial Strike +0 +2 6d6 Strike 3 Martial Throw +0 +1 4d6 +v/5, Target Falls 4 +1 HTH Damage Classes Total Powers & Skills Cost: 153 Total Cost: 315 300 Matching Complications (60) 10 DNPC (Alice Jackson, reporter; Normal, Useful, Unaware, Infreq) 10 Hunted (Philadelphia Mob, Less Pow, Freq) 15 Psychological Complication (Driven to pursue criminals who have escaped justice; Com, Str) 15 Social Limitation (Secret ID: Robert Ramsey; Freq, Major) 10 Social Limitation (Secret ID: Lefty LeGrand; Infreq, Major) Total Complications Points: 60 Experience Points: 15

Re: Allen Thomas projects? Allen also did a chunk of the plotting and most of the adventure writing for Reality Storm, if you're tracking down all his work for Hero. Impressively, he was also a skilled layout guy, and did several titles for us there to help Andy avoid the Dreaded Deadline Doom. dw

Re: Allen Thomas projects? Allen isn't doing much writing that I'm aware of these days, alas, though I agree he's a brilliant guy and personally think Demon is probably Hero's single most underrated product. dw

Re: Music For A Pulp Noir Detective Story Harlem Nocturne is for me the definitive noir tune. Actually, my favorite version of it is by the Viscounts in the late '50s, though the song is much older. dw

Re: Steve Long, Thank you Heh. Sounds like somebody's hit the wall in making their own book for the first time. Head down, JmOz- the only way out is through. I for one would very much like to see what you come up with! dw

Re: 3rd edition Supplements Robot Warriors was an experiment by Ben a few years back to see if there was sufficient demand for old books to be worth manually scanning them in and making PDFs out of them. I think we sold less than a dozen of them, for several days work on Ben's part (and an old book getting cut up!) I doubt it will ever be a priority for anybody to try that again. dw

Re: Destroy Your Geek Cred!! Yeah, that's about my take on it too, and I've loved the series since childhood. As you might imagine, there's an entire collection of fanwankery explaining the various plot holes throughout the series to rival anything Roy Thomas ever imagined, but thankfully for the most part the actual producers of the show have blithely ignored it and continued to sail forward. You still have "Empty Child/The Doctor Dances" yet this season (current show runner Steven Moffat's first take on the show), so let me know what you thought of that. If you're still into it at the end of season 1, I might give you a couple of old ones to watch before season 2 so you can fully appreciate the wonderful return of an old character from the 70s when she arrives. dw

Re: Destroy Your Geek Cred!! Well, the good news, then, is that the BBC provided you with an excellent jumping-on point by putting the series in limbo for about a decade. Start with the new series (available on netflix) Series 1 (2005), with Eccleston as the Doctor. 13 episodes, each 45 minutes, with a smattering of references to earlier continuity that are pretty easy to ignore. He gets a new sidekick and pretty much spends the first couple of episodes telling her all the audience needs to know. That'll tell you whether you have a taste for the rest of it. (Don't get too attached to Eccleston, though, 'cause that's all there is of him.) If you like it, continue forward with Series 2-5, and in the meantime I'd be delighted to help you find the best of the older stuff as well. You're right, there's fifty years of story there, but you don't *need* it. Kind of like Hero, actually. dw

Re: Destroy Your Geek Cred!! Oh, and for me, I can't stand Japanese animation styles and therefore not only have avoided most anime, but also most of the American series that are heavily influenced by it. And I gave up on Battlestar Galactica after the first season. And I don't generally care for "high" fantasy- I tolerate Tolkien though I make fun of a lot of it, and I generally avoid most of what came after him. Though I do like pulpy fantasy, Howard or Leiber-style. dw

Re: Destroy Your Geek Cred!! Out of general curiousity, is there something keeping you away from it, or have you just never gotten around to it and you're open to be sold on it? Because it does surprise me a bit, based on what I know of other things you like, that the sheer goofy romanticism of "The Girl In The Fireplace" or "Blink" wouldn't appeal to you, and I'm pretty much dead certain you'd think young (and even old) Sarah Jane is as cute as I do... dw

Re: Champions Villains Volume Three: Solo Villains when will it be on the shelf? V3 will be out before Empress, or Mythic, or Martial World. As we've said, the holdup on V3 has nothing to do with Steve and everything to do with cash flow and the small size of our company. V3 is next on our list to print. dw

Re: How big should a Golden Age superteam be? In my previous GA campaign (the San Francisco one where DOJ got named), we once tried a genuine period-style adventure, where a bad guy was trying to get all the pieces of a high-tech weapon, which had been disassembled and hid by the scientists that created it. Each player got a solo adventure battling some minor henchman villain for the piece, but in each case the mastermind had slipped in and stolen it, so they had to all team up in the end to unmask the mastermind and stop him from using the assembled weapon. It was fun and all, and the players seemed to like it, but nobody thought it was fun enough to do again instead of our regular group adventures. In GAC I'll be writing extensively on the difference between Period GA (in the manner of the comics as they were actually published) versus Retro GA (stories in the GA period and influenced by the original comics, but with much more of a focus on modern superhero storytelling sensibilities like active teams, powerful supervillains, and less casual sexism and racism.) dw

Re: How big should a Golden Age superteam be? The "home" (powered) team right now consists of: Crimson Palm, the team leader, a mystic wearing only the right gauntlet of a suit of mystical armor; Guardian Angel, a winged powerhouse who may or may not have been sent here by a higher power; The Streak, a circus-trained speedster and practical joker; Miss Strange, a wealthy art patron possessed by a strange extradimensional being; Amber Wave, a WAC given GL-like force manipulation powers by the Philadelphia Experiment; Chance, an FBI agent who is able to astrally project; and Toy Soldier, a young teen who controls a miniature army with the magical army helmet of his dead father. The "away" team (mystery men) consists of: Justice, a former mobster given a second chance at life as a vigilante; Agent Liberty, an acrobatic spy, Gypsy and femme fatale; Doc Rocket, America's most brilliant inventor who uses a personal jetpack; Spring-Heeled Jack, London's own street vigilante armed with rocket-powered jumping boots; John Q. Citizen, mysterious method actor and master of disguise; Synth, a biologist using gear derived from the world of nature; and The Raven, masked hero of the jungles of the South Pacific. dw

Re: How big should a Golden Age superteam be? My playtest team totals 14 heroes, not including a couple of DNPCs I throw in occasionally (Captain Patriot, who's usually off the field being Roosevelt's personal bodyguard, and Sea Hawk, who has recently reclaimed the throne of Atlantis.) That's seven players with 2 PCs each, one a powered hero defending the homefront and one a mystery man operating abroad since the Axis territories are protected by a magical "no-powers" field. Since we're now in the fall/winter of 1944, both teams are active in Europe, with the powered team now able to operate freely in France, and the nonpowered team currently on a mission to free a very special island in the Pacific (actually the home base of one of the players) from Japanese control before they figure out what it is they're holding. Usually the two teams remain separate with the entire group switching between one or the other, but a couple of times recently the whole crew has gotten together and players have been able to pick which of theirs they're using at any time. So far it's working pretty well. dw

Re: Champions Villains Volume Three: Solo Villains when will it be on the shelf?

Re: Champions Villains Volume Three: Solo Villains when will it be on the shelf?

Re: Champions Villains Volume Three: Solo Villains when will it be on the shelf? And CKC was one of our best-selling 5th Ed titles, which is what spurred us to do the trilogy in the first place. I don't know why some significant minority of Champs buyers didn't buy Villains 1 and 2, I only know that's what happened. dw

Re: Champions Villains Volume Three: Solo Villains when will it be on the shelf? PDFs are a vital part of our business, and grow every year as a percentage of our sales. When I say CV1 and 2 are mildly (Mildly!) disappointing in sales it's because I'm comparing them directly to our other Sixth Ed books, which of course also have PDFs. The Villains books so far are the lowest-selling books in the 6th Ed line, 11th and 12th place overall, with Star and Beyond still listed as "incomplete.". I'm not making this stuff up, guys. dw

Re: Champions Villains Volume Three: Solo Villains when will it be on the shelf? It's still weeks, guys. We're working full time here on this (and our other problems, like IPR being hacked this week). I have hopes it will be ready to go very soon, but I've definitely learned not to give out dates before they're 100% set in stone. dw

Re: Champions Villains Volume Three: Solo Villains when will it be on the shelf? I'm disappointed to see that instead of getting credit for getting the PDF out as early as it's available, as a company this is now being seen as a negative and the hardcopy book being "extremely delayed." V3 has been extremely delayed, yes, by circumstances out of our control at first and by the decision to have Star at Gencon later. Apart from that, books have largely been coming out on a pretty regular schedule. If we hold PDF releases to closer to the book being printed, Hero loses (or at least delays) sales and antagonizes PDF customers. How does that help us? dw

Re: Champions Villains Volume Three: Solo Villains when will it be on the shelf? You the consumers of Hero Games already voted with your dollars, by not buying enough of V1 or V2 to make us think V3 was a smarter print project than Star Hero. I'm sorry that upsets some people in this thread so much, but unless you were planning on buying hundreds of copies each of V3 you were outvoted. dw

Re: Champions Villains Volume Three: Solo Villains when will it be on the shelf? OK, first things first. APG2 almost certainly will be ready before Villains 3. That's because of two reasons- they're not the same printers, and APG2 is *considerably* faster and less expensive to print, being black and white and softcover. We are not "giving up" on Villains 3- we're getting it out as quickly as we are physically able to, and if that's not fast enough for some of you than I'll be sorry to see you go but there's not a thing I can do about it. Color hardcover books and b/w softcover books go different places at different speeds and cost vastly different amounts of money, guys. The only place we had a "choice" was whether to do Star or V3, and we chose Star. Now we can only do the next big book, V3, at the speed we can physically do it at. dw

Re: Champions Villains Volume Three: Solo Villains when will it be on the shelf? We don't decide a book is "first tier" or "second tier" arbitrarily, PamelaIsley. You guys decide that by what you buy. The Villains books have so far sold decently, but not great, and we would have little reason to think this one would be different from the first two. So yes, we think Star is going to outsell it. Again, we're sorry this decision upsets some of you so much, but there is quite literally nothing I can do about that except put my head down and get Villains 3 out as quickly as we can afford. dw

Re: Champions Villains, Volume 3: Solo Villains Umm, one book long, as we've been saying. I don't know how many times I need to repeat this- we couldn't afford to have Star miss Gencon, and we couldn't afford to do both big, expensive color books at once. So it's the next big color book we'll do. I don't have a date for you yet, but as soon as I do you'll all hear it. dw