assault

Re: Stone/Bronze Age help

Re: Champions universe created by magic? One of the interesting things is what the effect of mobile phones would have been on a whole bunch of Science Fiction films. Which brings us back to superheroes, because, of course, one of the most underrated Golden Age superheroes was: Air Wave. His main power was the ability to make a telephone call from anywhere. That's really useful, actually. Particularly during the 1940s, when such technology was pretty close to unheard of. (Try bugging organised crime bosses, for starters.) Add a standard Golden Age "right to the jaw" and you are a perfectly viable crimefighter. But, if "magic" had cut out a couple of decades ago, presumably his "technology" would have ceased operating. Yes, that is, stuff which is entirely routine now would have ceased to function. Fortunately, I have sufficient magic stored for my crystal ball to send you this message.

Re: Elves

Re: Elves See: http://www.angelfire.com/tx3/robertehoward/branmakmorn1.html Looking at it, aspects of his presentation do seem to have precedents. Still strange, though.

Re: Rarity of Magic? What ended "this way of life" in Iceland was the extension of centralised state power, ultimately resulting in Iceland becoming a Norwegian colony. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Iceland In many ways, this was a step backwards. What was originally something resembling a democracy ended up as an autocracy, with many formerly free inhabitants becoming serfs. Good old feudalism... Incidentally, that means that feudalising the Sagas is no particular drama. They weren't written down until relatively late, and replacing the various characters with "knights" would be fairly trivial. And that brings the fantastic elements into a feudal setting. Just right for a "traditional" fantasy game.

Re: Elves

Re: Stone/Bronze Age help "Bronze" shields rarely had more than a thin layer of bronze. It was simply too heavy. Stone knives aren't primary fighting weapons. Think clubs, spears, bows and slings. Bronze armour would obviously be useful against the last three of those, but not necessarily all that much compared to non-metal forms of armour. As usual, bigger armies would tend to beat smaller ones. As for why should a society prefer to use bronze rather than stone: they didn't. The transition tended to be gradual, and often through an intermediate "Copper Age". To put it simply, the differences were marginal, and only built up over time. When Bronze Age and Stone Age societies met, the former were usually the more highly organised societies, and would tend to win out. Then again, it's quite likely that "Stone Age barbarians" beat up various Copper and Bronze age societies on occasions. I would suggest studying Pre-Dynastic and early Old Kingdom Egypt, and their neighbouring societies in order to get a feel for the interaction of these factors. While you are at it, do the same for the Sumerians and their neighbours. Advanced students could consider the Indus Valley, China, and so on... You might want to consider economics as a military factor, too, rather than immediate battlefield utility. Add in levels of social organisation: how big is the community you are drawing your army from?, and so on, and you get a view of technological change that is sadly less heroic, but actually more realistic than a simplistic "Bronze weapons are better than Stone weapons" picture. Incidentally: the (Stone Age) Australian Aborigines were able to succesfully contain the European invaders of their country for several decades. Apparently, flintlock muskets aren't superior to fire-hardened spears as a weapon for fighting in the bush. Eventually, they were defeated by disease, not by military action.

Re: Batman vs Midnighter

Re: Legion of Super-Pets That's why you don't need to upgrade Comet to the Iron Age. Let's face it, you've got a hawt teenager married to a freakin' stallion. This is grosser than most things you would ever want to think about. For extra grossness along these lines: * what if Superman married Lori Lemaris? (The word "cloaca" may be of value here.) * what if Jayna from the Superfriends adopted the shape of a Blue Space Monkey? At this point I suggest applying sulphuric acid to your frontal lobes. It worked for me. And, not only is all of this incredibly gross - the resulting team could probably own the Authority.

Re: Stone/Bronze Age help Tell it to the Aztecs. OK, the Aztecs had a bit of bronze, but they mostly used stone... You certainly can't knock their dress sense, though. Incidentally, agriculture and organised states were actually late stone age developments. So even here there isn't necessarily a massive discrepancy between the two. Of course, "Bronze Age" covers a whole bunch of different societies, and thousands of years, in its own right. There was a wide difference between, say, Old Kingdom Egyptians, Mycenaean Greeks and northern European pre-Celtic fleabags, for example. Of these the Egyptians probably had the most organised state(s), but were by far the earliest.

Re: Stone/Bronze Age help Tell it to Goliath. In fact, this statement is not true at all. A club is a club. A sling stone is a sling stone. You wouldn't want to get in the way of either of them, even if you were wearing steel armour. The main advantage of the Bronze users would be that the Stone users would probably have little armour of their own - but that doesn't rule out them having effective shields, and non-metallic armour. As usual, of course, the side with the most troops would tend to win...

Re: Elves Three Hearts and Three Lions rocks too. And its elves owe very little to Tolkien.

Re: Homeric Hero That would be Pieman. See my signature. More alarmingly, see: http://www.supersimpsons.com/handbook.htm

Re: Homeric Hero Mythic Greece is awesomely cool, and is the main basis of the Fantasy Hero campaign I have sitting in my head but am unlikely to ever get around to running. You're not kidding! Still, I wonder how he would have compared with Hercules? EDIT: Maybe we should have a "Who would win?" poll.

Re: Length of Background/Origin By preference, a few paragraphs, max. Unfortunately, it seems that the current trend is for much longer writeups. This is a real pain. One of these days I am going to draw my character's origin using Microheroes. (http://www.geocities.com/wicket_harley/ ). One or two pages should do... I can't see any GM complaining.

Re: Limitations and the Silver Age I must admit that Metallo doesn't really rate on my list of "incredibly silly Silver Age villains". He's a cyborg who is powered by radioactive materials - uranium, or, preferably, kryptonite. Sounds fine to me. In fact, the original Metallo story was a classic. I read a reprint of it as a kid, and still remembered it three decades later when I read it again. There are many, much sillier characters than Metallo around.

Re: What are _____ like in your game? Only in PBEM's.

Re: What to do with your stuff... Hopefully your host won't breach the laws of hospitality and steal from his/her guests. If he does, he will probably try to kill you too. Either way, you are in serious trouble. Once you escape, you should raise an army, come back and burn his city/castle to the ground. And hopefully retrieve your stuff. (If you ever have to stay at an Inn, you are probably too far from home.)

Re: Rarity of Magic?

Re: Rarity of Magic? I have to admit that a lot of what I have been suggesting has been based on a certain set of assumptions. But that has been largely due to the fact that other people have been following other assumptions, apparently without realising that that was the case. Here is one example:

Re: Greatest Post-Apoc Film of All Time I prefer Mad Max to its sequels. The three films saw the camp element escalate in each one, reaching true awfulness by the third. The second was still OK, but I prefer the first. I also think these films are a terrific source of names for Australian supervillains.

Re: Rarity of Magic?

Re: Rarity of Magic? Yeah. That's the one! Repped.

Re: Rarity of Magic?

Re: Limitations and the Silver Age A little too complicated for my tastes. Still, it would work.