Darren Watts

Re: A little help with a power construct? Shaman of Alpha Flight IIRC, there's a nasty Side Effect on it too- if you look into it without the proper training you go insane (like Smart Alec did.) dw

Re: [Release Schedule] Dark Champions Battlegrounds? Well, in a "Battlegrounds"-style format, yer probably right. But "Worlds of Empire" will have many interesting locations and probably at least a few cool maps. It's a slightly-different format, but the same basic idea. While no Star Hero supplements have exactly been hits, they've done quite solidly as backstock titles and certainly have justified continuing the line even if it's only a book or two a year. dw

Re: Trolling for suggestions, 1982-style. Okay, I've settled on the PCs: Buckaroo Banzai, Steve Austin, Mark "Man From Atlantis" Harris, Daniel "Invisible Man" Westin, Jonathan "Manimal" Chase, and Carrie White. I've also more or less got the plot figured- no further details in case future players might be lurking about. Thanks for all your help! dw

Re: "Essential" Graphic Novels / Trade Paperbacks Squadron Supreme (the Gruenwald stories from the mid-80s.) V For Vendetta and the Miracleman and Swamp Thing collections by Alan Moore. The various JLA, JSA and Starman collections from DC. dw

Re: Trolling for suggestions, 1982-style. As long as they were reasonably active in '82, it doesn't matter exactly when the show was. Banzai will be appearing before "8th Dimension" occurs, for example, but he's well-established as an adventurer before that movie. The Pacific Princess is an excellent example of "local color." Even if it's just a throwaway reference as the heroes fly overhead or something. The Misfits of Science definitely need to be in there somewhere. I'm picturing a scene where the PCs walk through a secret government facility, a la Men In Black, and they pass a door marked "E. T. Case Management" or something, where a labcoated functionary is trying to interview a man wearing rainbow suspenders sitting on his head in a chair. Maybe I can work in an appearance of the KISS evil robot replacements, stolen by the bad guys to use as henchmen/security. And of course, Fantasy Island is the secret headquarters from which Rourke launches the Eugenics Wars. Tattoo is clearly his chief of security, having narrowly escaped his previous employer, Scaramanga. dw

Re: Trolling for suggestions, 1982-style. You are a very strange man, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re: Trolling for suggestions, 1982-style. I'm almost certain the PCs will include Steve Austin, Buckaroo Banzai, Michael Knight, and the Man From Atlantis, and the group will be sponsored or recruited by the government a la League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I like the Invisible Man idea as well- I'll need to do some research on the show. Manimal might get a nod just 'cause he keeps coming up- I have no idea why the character is so memorable, since the show is dreck, and not even fun dreck, just boring. But the power level seems to be sufficiently high here to make bringing in Magnum or Jessica Fletcher a bit untenable. I'd completely forgotten Matthew Star- dunno if any players will remember him, either, but a mentalist on the team might be pretty useful. Secretive government agencies will be plentiful- OSI, UNIT and the CIA will all have their hands in. I'd like to develop a Unified Theory of the various private good-guy organizations and foundations out there- from the Phoenix Group to Knight Industries to Charlie. I'll fit in as many other references as I can muster- the Pulp game included Green Hornet & Kato, Alexander Waverley (from UNCLE), Tom Swift and Masado Banzai as supporting characters, a visit to Skull Island, and Radium-X figured into the plot. How about some villains? There have to be some Russkies running around causing trouble... dw

Hey gang! It's about time for me to start writing the "Official Hero Con Adventure" for 2005, which I'll run probably half-a-dozen times over the course of the year at various shows and events. Last year's "Pulp All-Stars" was a pretty successful adventure, pitting Doc Savage, the Shadow, Tarzan, Mandrake, the Saint, Nancy Drew and occasionally Indiana Jones against the malevolent menace of the Volcano Master in 1936. In that spirit, this year's event will be a similar collection of all-stars, except this time around the year is 1982, the Cold War is on, and the heroes will no doubt be heavy on bionics and talking cars. So I'm looking for suggestions of characters, shticks and events that absolutely need to be in the story. Keep in mind the following ground rules: 1) No comic-book superheroes. (There are occasionally gray areas on this, but no straightforward costumed heroes owned by Marvel or DC are allowed.) OTOH, frex, "Greatest American Hero" is in fact available. (So don't bother to mention him, 'cause he's already in the plot.) 2) No characters or events from settings impossible to reconcile with the "real world." So, no Star Wars characters, since it's a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. OTOH, "Star Trek" might be a possible future, so connections to that timeline are allowed. (Gary Seven is an established character in our timeline.) 3) Crossovers and connections between characters, a la "Wold Newton" but without so much obsession over family relations, are not only allowed but actively encouraged. Continuing with our GAH example, Kelly Robinson and Bill Maxwell are clearly the same guy, with some sort of incident in between the shows that led to him changing his name. Likewise, John Drake is Number Six, and Jaime Sommers did in fact wind up in the Village. (If the preceding doesn't mean anything to you, don't worry about it.) So let's hear some ideas! dw

Re: [Release Schedule] Dark Champions Battlegrounds? For me the biggest surprise was USPD, and probably for everybody else here except Steve, who believed strongly in it all the way. It's one of our best-selling supplements ever (along with UMA, Bestiary and CU.) dw

Re: Well, I finished reading Conquerors, Killers and Crooks, and... I think you guys are taking the near-future presented in Galactic Champs way too seriously. Not only can you obviously make any changes you want to for your own campaigns, as always, you're also not taking into account the line-wide historical reboot that happens in 2017 when Dr. Destroyer, Takofanes and Man O'War team up to destroy the multiverse just before the release of 6th Edition and Foxbat saves the day by taking over the powers of Entropus and... oh, snarf, I've said too much, haven't I? Nevermind. dw

Re: Vibora Bay... the Mystery of the Queen City In the real world, High Street (which runs north-south and bisects the city) is the county line between Walton and Bay counties (which helped us find it on the map easily.) We've turned a fairly straight stretch of coast west of Panama City into a shallow bay running a couple of miles inland, but beyond that we've tried to keep the surroundings as real as possible. Many of the smaller towns in the area have kept the same names, though in most cases they've become larger in population and changed in character a bit to reflect the changed history of having an enormous city plopped in their midst. dw

Re: Vibora Bay... the Mystery of the Queen City Yeah, the costume is right but the mask should have been darker. I just think somebody's shining a green light on her from somewhere. And yeah, that's Dr. Ka's astral form. He's got a connection to Horus and several other Egyptian gods, hence the bird motif in his helmet. The portrait inside shows it off better. dw

Re: The Authority RPG ???? The point wasn't to duplicate Apollo in the Hero System, it was to duplicate the TriStat Apollo, compared to their own system, into the Hero equivqlent as closely as possible. It would certainly be possible to build the character more efficiently, but the straight translation of stats gives Apollo an 80 STR with no limitations, high other stats across the board (mostly high 20s) for a total of nearly 300 spent on stats, an EC of light blast effects (because he occasionally uses more than one at a time, ranging from a 16d Cone, 14d Line, and 7d6 KA Autofire Megascale), a 100-point Combat Flight/Mega-Flight Multipower, Life Support, butch defenses, actual regeration in sunlight, and high levels of "combat mastery" (at his rank in Tri-Stat, 8 levels with all combat.) Whether that accurately duplicates the Apollo of the comic is for individuals to decide, but it's what GoO gave him. And several of the other members are grosser than that. (And while the "sterilization" attack you wrote above is cool, the creatures that were busting out at the time were way tougher than you apparently give 'em credit for.) dw

Re: The Authority RPG ???? As a test I ran Apollo through the Hero/TriStat translator from RS just to see what would happen. He came out pretty believable, about 1200 points. Many of the other members of the Authority are built with GoO's "Dynamic Powers" construct, which basically translate into large themed VPPs and would require a lot of GM interaction to get right, but conveniently all of Apollo's powers were easy to translate. Took me about half an hour. It's a purty book, for sure. dw

Re: Forgotten Golden Age Villains

Re: Forgotten Golden Age Villains Nope. He was created by Stan in the pages of Avengers as a Cap nemesis. The Red Skull appears at least half a dozen times in the original Captain America Comics run. (As a neat little aside, the Ringmaster first appeared in the Golden Age, too, in a Cap story by the young Stan Lee. Liked him so much he brought him back twenty years later...) dw

Re: Forgotten Golden Age Villains It's interesting- most GA publishers didn't have much in the way of costumed supervillains, with the notable exceptions of DC and Fawcett. For many publishers, since there was a war on it was considered pretty unpatriotic for the "other side" to have costumed superbeings-it was pretty rare for Timely, say, to have a Nazi or Japanese villain even survive the story. (The notable exception, of course, was the Red Skull.) DC and Fawcett, on the other hand, combined their "war effort" stories with occasional battles against interesting home-grown villains, and therefore when the war was over were in better shape to tell interesting stories than most of their competitors. Some of the best GA stories are actually from '45-'48, when the war was over and the villains were back on center stage. Look at some of these Rogue's Galleries of the GA: Superman: Luthor, Ultra-Humanite, Toyman, Mr. Mxyzptlk Batman: Joker, Penguin, Catwoman, Cavalier, Hugo Strange Flash: The Fiddler, The Thinker Green Lantern: The Gambler, The Icicle, Harlequin, Solomon Grundy, Vandal Savage, Sports Master, Huntress Wonder Woman: Baroness von Gunther, Cheetah, Dr. Psycho, Ares The JSA as a group: Brain Wave, Psycho-Pirate, Wizard, Per Degaton The Marvels: Dr. Sivana and his assorted family members, Capt. Nazi, Ibac, Mr. Mind, Mr. Atom Compare that with the scanty collections the Timely heroes had to face. Pretty much no question why DC trounced all comers, except for the one it had to beat in court. The Quality characters you mention didn't really have any notable bad guys- the only Quality character with an extensive group of nemeses was Blackhawk. dw

Re: Forgotten Golden Age heroes Well, most of the heroes were PCs, so you'd have to ask them, but it's certainly true that we tried to create a feel that was heavily influenced by All-Star Squadron, the Invaders, and my own collection of period reprints. The joke was that any "character bit" or type we could think of more than one of from different publishers needed to be represented somehow in the setting; therefore, since DC had Hawkman and Timely had Red Raven, we needed a hero with wings and so we created American Eagle, who wasn't really that similar to either except in the broadest sense. Princess Mara was cerainly influenced by Namor and Aquaman, but also by Supergirl and Disney movies. Optimus had some Captain America in him, but probably more Doc Savage, and Dr. Twilight was a weird combination of Dr. Mid-Nite, Dr. Fate and the Shadow. The most straight-up ripoff was probably Cowboy, who started off entirely as a Vigilante ripoff (hero who uses the tools of the Wild West to fight crime in the "modern" cities.) Except that we eventually revealed he wasn't the tobacco-spitting hayseed he'd seemed to be, but a well-educated man playing a role, and expanded his character to make him the ultimate master of disguise and infiltration since he'd so fooled even his closest friends. We were also fond of inserting pulp and other pop culture heroes into the setting, though our rule was "no comic-based supers." Therefore, our setting also featured the ongoing war between the Lensmen and Boskone, the remnants of Professor Moriarty's criminal organization, Fu Manchu, the early days of organizations like U.N.C.L.E and UNIT (including Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart's father, who was an important NPC, as was young Naval officer Alexander Waverley), and a British teenage reprobate with an eye for the ladies named "Bond. Jimmy Bond." dw

Re: Vanguard (the one from the books) Vanguard will get his origin story in Silver Age Champs (and a writeup there of his early stats) and probably will get more story in the proposed Champs Universe update. Basically, he's Jeffrey Sinclair, a mightily-powerful flying brick type given his powers by an "alien artifact" in 1959. He teams up with several semi-retired Golden Age heroes in New York later that year and re-forms the Justice Squadron (which had been the #2 hero team of WWII after the Defenders of Justice), with that original group remaining the core of the team for decades (as opposed to the Sentinels, who have a lot of membership turnover. In many ways, the Justice Squadron is seen as "Vanguard and his buddies," which is probably unfair, though he clearly was the heart and soul of that team for more than thirty years.) One of Earth's most famous and respected supers, he sacrificed his life in the orbital portion of the Battle of Detroit in 1992. That's all we've established about him so far. dw

Re: Questions about Vibora Bay I've always thought of them as the CU version of the Doom Patrol or Silver Age X-Men- a band of freaks and outcasts gathered by a mysterious stranger to protect the world that shunned them. That's sort of the Defenders' shtick too, if you put Dr. Strange in the leadership role; the thing is, most of the Defenders are quite comfortable in their weirdness, and don't care or sometimes even notice that the world thinks they're freaks. The Outcasts all are either "monsters" or have sufficient problems controlling their powers so that they can't fit into society, something they actually want to do (as opposed to, say, Namor or the Hulk.) And many of the later Defenders can just take off their costumes and be normal people (Cage, Nighthawk, Hellcat)- they enjoy and actively seek out the weirdness. If the CU has a Defenders-style team, it's probably somebody like the Bay Guardians (who are led by a powerful mystic) or the California Patrol (who are a loose group of "friends" who only work together when they need to.) And no, the Outcasts are long since broken up. I personally think the passage of "real time" in the Champs Universe is one of the coolest things about it, and one of it's defining features is that characters stay in the "ages" that spawned and defined them. The Outcasts are very "late Silver Age"- probably their comic was drawn by Neal Adams. Now, a new team of Outcasts, inspired by the exploits of the old team- that's an interesting idea. Hmmm - dw

Re: Iconic Characters: the Justice Squadron While we'll certainly consider a book of nothing but heroes, I think the more likely location for a lot of this info would be in a "Champions Universe Update," which is a book I've been considering for late '05/early '06. In theory, part of that book would be a chapter on "what's happened in the baseline universe since '02," alng with a bunch of adventure seeds. That's unlikely to fill an entire book, though, so separate chapters, say, on the Sentinels and Justice Squadron (including rosters of villains) would fill it out nicely. Until we can get to that, the '05 schedule does include books like Champions Hidden Lands (which I'm writing now and will include writeups for Sea Hawk, Marus, Archon and probably a couple more high-end heroes), Teen Champions, Champions Worldwide and probably three Ultimate books that will each include at least a few heroes and continue the ongoing efforts to flesh out the Champions Universe. dw

Re: Forgotten Golden Age heroes Well, Shining Knight was brought back in Stars & Stripes, and Johnny Quick appeared in a bunch of places (IIRC, he died in the Zero Hour crossover, but his daughter was in the Titans.) And check out the "Golden Age" LS or trade paperback by James Robinson for JQ, Robotman and a bunch more in an Elseworlds story that should have been canon. dw

Re: Questions about Vibora Bay Hmm. No guarantees at this point, but I think the team included a blind precog called Dr. Oracle, a big shaggy brick with a speech impediment called Mammoth, a female teen elemental-metamorph called Copycat, a telekinetic with control issues called Maelstrom, and a spooky guy with his own pocket dimension called Enigma. At least, that's what they looked like as PCs- a lot of water'll go under the bridge before they see print. Also, they'll presumably get a bunch more history and probably a few more members- that's the '60s lineup. dw

Re: Iconic Characters: the Justice Squadron Eventually both the Sentinels (who are being explored in the pages of Digital Hero when I have time to get columns in) and the Justice Squadron will both be fully detailed. I don't know yet whether it will be in the pages of Silver Age Champions or perhaps some sort of "Champions Universe Update," since both teams are still around and active, as opposed to SA teams like the Fabulous Five and the Outcasts who are defunct. As for point totals, well, the JS is Steve's team and I don't know exactly how they come out, but my current playtest group is playing the modern Sentinels while playtesting stuff for the forthcoming "Champions Hidden Lands" book, and they all range between 450 and 580 points. dw

Re: Questions about Vibora Bay Nope, alas. The Outcasts will turn up in Silver Age Champions when I get around to that book. dw