assault

Re: Powerpuff Girls This tends to be supported by the account at http://www.angelfire.com/ns/powerpuffgirls/bio.html The relevant quote: "Craig McCracken's story situations for the Powerpuff Girls stem from what he did as a kid. He considers what happened when he was that age and then adds the concept of what he would've done, had he had superhero powers." I know that the superheroes *I* played as a kid were Silver Age planet-pushers! You could probably get the same effect in a Champions game with a more modest build. This would be even easier if you used homages, rather than direct copies. I do like their origin, though. "Sugar, Spice, Everything Nice, and Chemical X". Works for me. There's also the picture of a PPGed version of the 4th Edition Champions in the Champions genre book. Something could surely be done with it.

Re: [Campaign] 'This Mutant Life' - An Uberworld Campaign Mine should be finished this afternoon or this evening. (I'm not working today and have nothing else to do...)

Re: The original 1934 Superman Strip I love that site.

Re: Powerpuff Girls Tricky. I'm not familiar enough with the show to get a feel for their exact power levels, but their power sets seem straightforward enough. According to: http://www.afunk.com/powerpuff/ "They are able to fly, shoot lasers from their eyes, and have super strength." Assume a bit of invulnerability with that, and you have a pretty standard kind of character, which you can build at whatever power level you feel is appropriate. http://www.angelfire.com/ns/powerpuffgirls/bio.html gives an interesting account of how they were originally created in the Real World. It adds a whole new perspective when you learn that they were originally called the "Whoopass Girls", doesn't it?

Re: Curiousity about vampires and werewolves The best approach to humans versus vampires I've seen was in the British series "Ultraviolet". http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A590843

Re: McDowell County, WV - plot seed

Re: The original 1934 Superman Strip

Re: McDowell County, WV - plot seed Watch the movie "Matewan", and read "Red Harvest" by Dashiell Hammett. Umm... Those are actually true statements, regardless of the present context. http://www.matewan.com/ covers the real history of the Matewan Massacre (and also the Hatfields and McCoys!). Red Harvest is set in Montana, but does the mining town thing. There's a review/plot synopsis (spoileriffic!) at: http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/engl/marling/hardboiled/Redharvest.html

Re: Champions Worlds Exactly. There's a saying on the Traveller Mailing List: "Canon is for writers". In other words, the only people that have to worry about all the stuff that's been written before are writers, and editors and all the other people who are involved in producing products set in the offical setting. For everyone else, anything goes. Funnily enough, this has never stopped Traveller players from arguing over minute differences of interpretation of their official setting's canon.

Re: Call For Submissions - Update Assault has his kooky side too, of course. He's certainly no Iron Age Ultra-Serious Guy. As for heart of gold... yeah, whatever... I'm starting to experience one of the side-effects of having to meet a deadline: irrelevant creativity. In other words, a semi-humourous Legion of Superheroes homage has started erupting in my head, saying "Write us down! Write us down!". I hate it when this happens, and it happens every time. Still, if I get Assault (almost) finished this afternoon, I may be able to start working on them tonight. Wonder Boy and Phan Servis versus Roxxor the Space Pirate and Killer Robot 1337. Yeah. I needed to write that down to stop my head from exploding. Now, back to Assault...

Re: [Campaign] 'This Mutant Life' - An Uberworld Campaign Here are two pictures of Assault - one in costume, one in civvies.

Re: [Campaign] 'This Mutant Life' - An Uberworld Campaign Cool. As long as you realise exactly how much of a role model and upstanding citizen Assault actually is. Quote: "No, smoking is bad for YOU. I'm fine."

Re: Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible?

Re: [Campaign] 'This Mutant Life' - An Uberworld Campaign I've decided, after much vacillation, to just submit a teacher. I couldn't think of a student that I really wanted to play. I had a similar problem with teachers, too, until it occurred to me that there actually was a character I know I would enjoy playing, because... I've played him before! Of course I'm giving him a rebuild, to make him fit the campaign requirements, but the basics of his personality are well established and very easy for me to play. So... just for kicks... guess what his name is?

Re: WWYCD: the Securitas Raid Assault's not a cop. He wouldn't get involved unless there were unusual circumstances involved.

Re: Pulparize It! Perry Mason was an undeniably pulp character who relied on someone else for the muscle work. EDIT: Actually, I wasn't quite right. From http://www.thrillingdetective.com/mason.html --- PERRY MASON is Raymond Burr as a Defense Attorney, right? Not a P.I., right? Well, sorta. In the first ten or so books, Perry comes off as a particularly hardboiled lawyer/detective, throwing his weight around, duking it out with suspects, breaking and entering, and other private eye shenanigans. As Doug Bassett pointed out on Rara Avis recently, "The first Mason, The Case of the Velvet Claws, in particular, is certainly hard-boiled. Mason is definitely seen as a sort of Sam Spade-like character, willing to twist the law to serve his own higher ideals of justice. I like Gardner's work generally -- he's a wonderfully readable author -- but later books are much tamer, maybe "medium boiled", if anything." Erie Stanley Gardner, the creator of Perry Mason, was one of the leading writers for Black Mask, the legendary hard-boiled crime fiction magazine. Although Mason never appeared in its pages, in the early 1930s published a string of six short stories starring a crusading defense lawyer named Ken Corning who fought against injustice in a corrupt city. In many ways, Corning served as a rough template for Mason. ---

Re: Death of Heroes Meh. Assault will be back next week. Maybe he'll be able to fly this time.

Re: Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible? Maybe. Alternatively the character can buy skill levels for their preferred attack(s) and neglect the others. And that's assuming that the character actually bothers to buy skill levels.

Re: Battlesuits: Too efficient and flexible? In other words: after buying a whole lot of stuff, battlesuit characters only get to buy as much other stuff as other characters. The advantage of battlesuits is precisely that they can buy "a bunch of points of enhanced senses, life supports, and of course the skills needed" as well as having as much bang for their buck as other characters. Well boo hoo. They get a focus limitation, and, in any case, are often powers that other characters will want to buy as well. But in a lot of cases, other characters won't be able to afford them, because they are paying full points for them. As far as the main question in the thread is concerned, I don't have any particular problem with battlesuits. But, it is a fact that they get significant cost breaks that make them relatively tough compared to other characters. And the fact that they will get hosed occasionally only partly counteracts that. It's not a problem, but it does mean that Iron Man (or Green Lantern), not Superman, is likely to be the most powerful/flexible member of a superteam. Oh yes, Green Lantern: like a battlesuit, but with different special effects.

A neat website about Marvel's monster books... http://monsterblog.oneroom.org/ If that's not relevant enough, here are some articles giving Marvel Superheroes RPG stats for some of them. There are a bunch of different systems around for converting MSH characters to the Hero System. Pick whichever one you prefer. http://www.marvelrpg.net/mp/dm186mp.pdf http://www.marvelrpg.net/mp/dm198mp.pdf Happy rampaging!

Re: Duos Assault began in a two player campaign - "Assault and Battery". It worked, although Assault tended to overshadow Battery, because Battery wasn't particularly well designed, and because the GM hadn't applied limits to DC and defences. With those sort of adjustments made, everything should be fine. As far as the source material goes, a lot of my favourite stories are two member team-ups. Power Man and Iron Fist. Superman and Batman. Green Arrow and Green Lantern... Given that several of these combinations involve substantial discrepancies in power levels, Hero and Sidekick teams might not actually be all that different. One thing you might want to do is work out how to split the characters up and run them in parallel. After all, it doesn't matter how much more powerful Superman is than Batman, if he can't be in two places at once. That's easy enough in combat - you just run a single combat split across two maps - but can be trickier in other cases. Maybe you should try not to split them up until you are setting up the combats... You could always add guest stars on occasion if the game starts to feel a bit routine. Unfortunately then there would be a risk of the guest stars becoming permanent... Hmm... before all the team books of the early 60s, most Silver Age superheroes operated either solo or in small informal "teams" like this. You could, theoretically, do something really fancy with this... (but I'm daydreaming now).

Re: Was watching Superman TAS and wondered about Mxyzptlk Another cool Mxyzptlk story had him team up with Bat-Mite to hassle both Superman and Batman. Again, it's on-line somewhere.

Re: Current Submissions Three metamorphs? Whoa. One and a half female students is OK. Most Silver Age teams only had one female member when they started. Or I could do a bit of nip and tuck to the character I am working on, although I've been sidetracked into trying to design a teacher. I've discovered that I'm really not that good at coming up with personalities and motivations. (Three metamorphs? Well, scratch my metamorph idea!)

Re: Was watching Superman TAS and wondered about Mxyzptlk http://superman.ws/superman-comics/ There used to be another really neat site, but it shut down.

Re: Was watching Superman TAS and wondered about Mxyzptlk Real. Superman #349, July 1980 It's actually online somewhere.